Nvidia was just a gaming graphics card company and then some crazy bros used them for crypto mining and AI and they stumbled into being the largest company in history
I don't know what the lesson is...
Beyond "Data as the new Oil" – A New Era of Control or an Impending Revolution?
The metaphor that "data is the new oil" has moved from tech circles into mainstream discourse. At first glance, it’s compelling: like oil, data is a raw resource extracted, refined, and monetized to generate immense wealth and power. However, a deeper examination reveals a more provocative narrative about the transfer of global influence.
The 20th century’s petrodollar system demonstrated how a single commodity, oil, could anchor global finance and geopolitics, granting oil-rich nations and allied financial institutions significant control. As that system faces legitimate challenges, a new architecture of control is being built, not on energy, but on information. The financial industry hasn't just observed this shift—it has funded it. The trillion-dollar valuations of companies like Meta, Apple, Amazon, and the heavy investment in entities like OpenAI aren't merely about profit; they represent the capitalization of the new dominant commodity: human behavioral and personal data.
This data empire operates on a dual engine: surveillance and influence. By harvesting our digital footprints, comments, likes, uploads, these platforms build psychographic profiles of unprecedented detail. This enables more than targeted advertising; it allows for the subtle manipulation of emotion, opinion, and even democratic outcomes.
The ability to micro-target voters, amplify divisive content, and shape public discourse constitutes a form of soft power that rivals traditional state influence. The "attention economy" is, in essence, an influence economy, where our clicks and engagement are the currency of control.
However, is this model inherently short-sighted? The analogy to oil may break down at a critical point: tangibility and scarcity. Oil is a finite physical resource. Data, in contrast, is infinite, generated constantly, and its value is contingent on aggregation, analysis, quality and uptake. More importantly, the entire edifice is built on proprietary, mostly centralized software and hardware, which is great for control— but may become a potential Achilles' heel.
The rise of robust open-source alternatives poses an existential question to this centralized model. From decentralized social media protocols (like Mastodon's ActivityPub) and privacy-focused tools (similar to Signal) to self-hosted cloud software like Bitcoin and even open-hardware initiatives such as Risk-V, tools for data sovereignty are emerging at a faster pace than ever before.
What happens if individuals can truly own their data vaults, grant temporary access to services, and communicate on encrypted, federated, soverign networks?
The trillion-dollar valuation of a company built on harvesting data becomes precarious if people can choose to no longer be the product.
The current financial elite may be betting on controlling the new "oil," but they may be underestimating the potential for a "renewable energy" revolution in tech—decentralized, user-owned, and open-source. China is already leading the charge on both these fronts, as data and AI consumes huge amounts of energy and China is leading the world in making both renuables and novel nuclear energy solutions cheaper and more available than ever before. As well as developing their own hardware, from semiconductors and open source computational solutions, to the software that these run on, offering serious challenges to the notion that data like oil will only be controlled by a handful of big multinationals.
The real battle may not be over who controls the data refineries, but over whether the refineries themselves become obsolete, replaced by a peer-to-peer ecosystem of information exchange as file sharing did in the 2000s.
The question for us is: Are we witnessing the entrenchment of a new, unassailable form of financial and social control, or are we seeing the peak of a centralized data oligarchy just before a fundamental democratization of technology? The next decade may hinge on whether open-source solutions can achieve mainstream usability and whether regulatory or cultural shifts empower individuals to reclaim their digital selves. The "data as oil" narrative is powerful, but the future may belong to those who see data not as a commodity to be extracted, but as a shared resource to be stewarded.
The metaphor that "data is the new oil" has moved from tech circles into mainstream discourse. At first glance, it’s compelling: like oil, data is a raw resource extracted, refined, and monetized to generate immense wealth and power. However, a deeper examination reveals a more provocative narrative about the transfer of global influence.
The 20th century’s petrodollar system demonstrated how a single commodity, oil, could anchor global finance and geopolitics, granting oil-rich nations and allied financial institutions significant control. As that system faces legitimate challenges, a new architecture of control is being built, not on energy, but on information. The financial industry hasn't just observed this shift—it has funded it. The trillion-dollar valuations of companies like Meta, Apple, Amazon, and the heavy investment in entities like OpenAI aren't merely about profit; they represent the capitalization of the new dominant commodity: human behavioral and personal data.
This data empire operates on a dual engine: surveillance and influence. By harvesting our digital footprints, comments, likes, uploads, these platforms build psychographic profiles of unprecedented detail. This enables more than targeted advertising; it allows for the subtle manipulation of emotion, opinion, and even democratic outcomes.
The ability to micro-target voters, amplify divisive content, and shape public discourse constitutes a form of soft power that rivals traditional state influence. The "attention economy" is, in essence, an influence economy, where our clicks and engagement are the currency of control.
However, is this model inherently short-sighted? The analogy to oil may break down at a critical point: tangibility and scarcity. Oil is a finite physical resource. Data, in contrast, is infinite, generated constantly, and its value is contingent on aggregation, analysis, quality and uptake. More importantly, the entire edifice is built on proprietary, mostly centralized software and hardware, which is great for control— but may become a potential Achilles' heel.
The rise of robust open-source alternatives poses an existential question to this centralized model. From decentralized social media protocols (like Mastodon's ActivityPub) and privacy-focused tools (similar to Signal) to self-hosted cloud software like Bitcoin and even open-hardware initiatives such as Risk-V, tools for data sovereignty are emerging at a faster pace than ever before.
What happens if individuals can truly own their data vaults, grant temporary access to services, and communicate on encrypted, federated, soverign networks?
The trillion-dollar valuation of a company built on harvesting data becomes precarious if people can choose to no longer be the product.
The current financial elite may be betting on controlling the new "oil," but they may be underestimating the potential for a "renewable energy" revolution in tech—decentralized, user-owned, and open-source. China is already leading the charge on both these fronts, as data and AI consumes huge amounts of energy and China is leading the world in making both renuables and novel nuclear energy solutions cheaper and more available than ever before. As well as developing their own hardware, from semiconductors and open source computational solutions, to the software that these run on, offering serious challenges to the notion that data like oil will only be controlled by a handful of big multinationals.
The real battle may not be over who controls the data refineries, but over whether the refineries themselves become obsolete, replaced by a peer-to-peer ecosystem of information exchange as file sharing did in the 2000s.
The question for us is: Are we witnessing the entrenchment of a new, unassailable form of financial and social control, or are we seeing the peak of a centralized data oligarchy just before a fundamental democratization of technology? The next decade may hinge on whether open-source solutions can achieve mainstream usability and whether regulatory or cultural shifts empower individuals to reclaim their digital selves. The "data as oil" narrative is powerful, but the future may belong to those who see data not as a commodity to be extracted, but as a shared resource to be stewarded.
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