Yesterday, during a technical presentation about data analysis, the presenter declared that “Data is the new oil.” I understood what he meant.
After all, vast fortunes were made in the last century from oil extracted from the Earth. Similarly, vast fortunes are now being made from data extracted from human activity.
“But there is an important difference,” I told the presenter.
“What is that?” he asked.
“We are running out of oil,” I said. “But we will never run out of data.”
He agreed. Data, unlike oil, is a renewable resource.