Digital Exhibitionism: The Future of Relationships?

The production, distribution, aggregation, and consumption of data is changing dramatically. This trend has in turn opened up the door to what we call the consumer data revolution, which carries with it significant personal, business and societal implications. Traditionally, paid specialists actively collected data for a specific purpose. Now, individuals stream their attention, intention, location, etc, and explicitly share highly sensitive data, including their DNA and financial information.

This lecture discusses these emerging data sources, while seeking to understand how to design the incentives that fuel the creation of data, how to interpret the collected data, and most importantly, how to arrive at concrete decisions and actions based on them. Furthermore, we present a framework for decision making that considers both expectations and extreme outcomes.

As individuals begin to get a glimpse of the potential benefits and risks of the traces they leave, what are the implications on relationships, both between individuals and between individuals and companies?  What can we learn from the limitations of Facebook, and how to overcome them? For companies whose business models were built around leveraging their information asymmetry against their customers, their advantage is rapidly being disintegrated by the emergence of social media. How can companies create sound information and data strategies, as well as cultivate ecosystems in order to tap on the unrealized potential of the consumer data revolution?