What is Data in this Brave New World?

Abstract

During last year, there had been a whirlwind of events such as– digitalization of society be it in governance (e.g. Aadhaar) or even our daily mundane lives (e.g. cashless payments), debates surrounding net-neutrality, ransomware attacks, data breaches and numerous other privacy or surveillance issues. All of them reveal two important aspects of being linked together in a common thread. Firstly, humans are getting smarter through advanced technology, as they are living in an age of information. In this age data is not merely a piece of information, rather it is equivalent to an ‘economic good’ or ‘commodity’ and even regarded as an ‘asset.’ It consequently lends the second aspect – as for how our lives in a cyberspace are stretched, intensified and speeding up under globalization where effects over one part of the world are quite visible in another part of the world.