Michael Clark wants you to own - and profit from - your personal data. You want it, too!
Who knows you best? Your wife? Your kids? Your best friend?
Could it be that data knows you better than them all? Including how well you think you know yourself?
Will data know you better than yourself? Than your best friends?
Michael Clark thinks that’s what’s coming and that you should own the right to that knowledge, not faceless corporate or state behemoths.
Clark, a self-defined Data Scholar believes that data is among our most valuable assets - and we as individuals don’t yet have access to its control. Our unique stories, information and memories only have emotional value, of course, but also financial value. He envisions a world where we can “cash in” on our data by selectively feeding AI’s full potential through what he calls “the currency of you.”
In Clark’s upcoming book “Data Revolution, the New Currency of You,” he advocates for a new data economy that will enable people and businesses to have full autonomy over their data and generate value from it.
Watch Michael Clark at METAL
“My data is my identity,” he explains, “who I am, what I care about - and this is getting lost into statistics and how to drive revenue for my data’s innate value..”
In a recent presentation at the men’s entrepreneurial group METAL, he pointed out that the word “data” is rooted in “datum” - which means “gift” in Latin. “Why,” he asked, “should we be giving away our gifts? Why shouldn’t we get to choose how private we want to be?” He asks. “We should be able to expose as much identity as we choose.”
Clark’s vision is not merely based on people's right to own their own data, it’s also about defining and creating actual value. “In the barter age, value was based on physical things. With the industrial age, value became grounded in uniformity and scale. Now 
in the digital age - if data is owned by me it becomes scarce, it becomes valuable. If you own your data and someone, some company or organization needs it - how much would they pay for it? Your data has been freely available until now so it hasn’t been valued, meaning monetizable. But with the currency of you, it will be.”
The Oracle of Delphi advised us to “know thyself.” Data says “this is how I know you.” Michael Clark adds on to that, “sell that knowledge rather than having it taken for free!”
Today's email was brought to you by Adam Gilad.
