Early on I, like most of the tech press, framed privacy concerns of the Internet economy as "trading advertising for services."

I was slow to realize that our private info wasn't being used for advertising

... but as a way to SHAPE how we see the

- THEY had internet services that could entertain, connect, & enable ME.

- I had personal information THEY could sell to companies wanting to target goods & services to a receptive audience.

Not only was it a consensual transaction, but it SEEMED as if we got the better deal.

After all, what were we REALLY trading?

Browsing patterns? Location data? Emails?

For most it was data that not only did we not care about, but we didn't know that data was being created in the first place.

That assumption was true... at first.

Then enter "Big Data."

Over a decade ago, the idea of creating actionable intelligence from the disparate data pools collected from all that "useless information" moved from the rarified air of academic research into the enterprise

At first, we rolled our own big data analytics using tools like Hadoop. Then vendors developed their own BDA into CRM.

Soon, companies like Salesforce, Amazon & Microsoft transformed ALL markets w/one promise:

"The data shows us what your customers WANT"