The development of civilization through the evolution of ideas has continued steadily since the 5th century BC with the rise of sages such as Zoroaster in Persia, Confucius in China, Buddha in India, and Socrates in Athens.
We still don’t know how these people we call saints emerged simultaneously in the East and the West during the so-called Axial Age. However, it was around this time that Confucianism and its representative political systems, democracy and republic, were born, with great sages influencing East Asia. And they still have a profound impact on our humanity’s thinking and consciousness. We have entered a new era of civilization where the coronavirus has forced us to change everything, and we are entering a new era of fundamental change driven by technological advancement rather than ideological change. And at the center of it all is ‘data’.
Uselessness (無用之用, the usefulness of useless things). Our definition of what is useful is also changing. Humanity’s view of usefulness has changed dramatically, and the momentum is frightening. There is an overabundance of information, an overabundance of stuff. It is a world where various data is also traded through exchanges. If the last 20 years have been an era of information brokerage, where “wealth” was monopolized by those who acquired and utilized information first, the next 50 years will be an era of data-driven data brokerage. If IT (Information Technology) was about controlling the future, DT (DataTechnology) is about creating the future. If IT has turned people into machines, DT will turn machines into people.
Human beings are different from machines: they have faith, soul, and unique creativity. Human beings can control machines, and machines will never surpass human beings. Human beings will be able to do more creative and valuable things instead of repetitive tasks.
In his retirement speech, Alibaba founder Ma Yun said that the IT era created manufacturing, but the DT era will give birth to creation. The IT era relied on knowledge, but the DT era will require the wisdom of humanity to be unleashed. Everyone questions the platform idea, but what I mean by platform is a form of service to others, enabling them to achieve greater fulfillment in their work. IT requires standardization and scale, but DT requires individuality and flexibility.” He explained how humanity is changing in the era of data intermediation. According to him, in the industrial and information age, humans invented the assembly line (a process of assembling products on a conveyor system) and led the production era with scale and standardization. In the data age, he said, assembly lines will be used to produce customized and unique products. In the future, we will manufacture according to customer and market needs. Data is essential. Data will become an indispensable production material for manufacturing. In the past, we used to look at electrical indicators, but in the future, we will look at data and computing indicators. It is said that IOT, semiconductor chips, artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing can transform manufacturing in the same way that steam engines and oil transformed handicrafts.
As we have seen from the story of Ma Yun, companies all over the world are already entering the data economy era. Recently, South Korea is also trying to become the “first penguin” in the actual data economy era by activating data exchanges through the MyData project and establishing policies on the use of personal data in the era of hyper-personalization through the Data 3 Act. This is of great significance in terms of preempting the establishment of a new economic system with data at the forefront of the new world.