Facebook is the world’s most popular personal data store.
Using a personal data store to share information online is like driving a car. It’s inherently dangerous. It’s also incredibly powerful.
A personal data store is like our own personal space that we can take with us when we travel from website to website. It frees us from being stuck in any one service just because that’s where our stuff is.
Unfortunately, it also increases our risks. We can be tricked into giving our data to the wrong party. Companies we thought we could trust might end up hurting us. Just having our personal data online opens us to risks, just as driving a car—or even living in a society with cars—increases our chances of being in a car accident.
The Internet today is like the national road system in the first decades of the 20th century when automobiles were just catching on. Personal data stores are like the personal automobile, which first found widespread adoption with the cost-friendly Model T Ford.
Some people will believe that these crazy new contraptions are deathtraps and avoid the whole system. Others will dive in before road signs and traffic rules are figured out. Many will simply wait and try it when it becomes simple and easy and affordable. And for all the innovative uses that improve our lives, there will be dangerous consequences that threaten and harm us. There will be unsafe vehicles and unsafe roads. There will be speeders and people who fail to stop at red lights. There will be car jackings and drunk drivers and foolish kids drag racing.
But in the end, it will be worth it.
We’ll learn how to regulate it and we’ll learn how to drive. We’ll put up signs and establish safety standards. We’ll teach people how to drive safely and pass laws to prevent the worst violations. We’ll learn how to protect ourselves and how to protect society. We’ll argue about it, debate it, and vote on it and eventually settle on mostly reasonable solutions. But, it’ll never be perfect. Instead, it will be an ongoing process of learning and fixing and learning some more.
The result will be an entirely new kind of digital infrastructure where individuals are free to use their own data seamlessly at any service, as easily, and as safely, as we can drive to the grocery store today.
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