(gigaom.com) -- Companies are collecting ever more data on end users, through mobile devices, connected devices, sensors and other inputs. While some people appreciate what companies are doing with the data, end users don’t necessarily know what companies are collecting. In a discussion on data science in San Francisco on Thursday, some panelists thought out loud about what it might look like if more data were shared.
“What does it mean to own data?” said Andreas Weigend, a lecturer at Stanford University and formerly chief scientist at Amazon.com. “… Does it mean I can do with it whatever I want to do with it?”
Weigend went on to ask if people would be able to rent out their data and make some money off it. Weigend has been thinking a lot about the subject of data ownership and expects to address that topic and others in a forthcoming book, “Our Data.” Different industries have different standards, and those could shift, Weigend told me later.
After the talk, I couldn’t help but wonder about what Weigend called “a cloud-like store of person-level data,” or what some people refer to as a data locker or simply a personal cloud. Here are some questions that came to mind:
It might not be the easiest thing in the world to get businesses into the habit of disclosing to customers the data they keep. But as the internet of things gets bigger, it’s a good time for the dialogue to get louder.
Feature image courtesy of Flickr user aweigend.
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