E = mc2 = Value

Part 1: Data As An Asset

The idea that everything of value can be conceptualized as energy in some form is deeply rooted in physics and the broader philosophical and economic notions of worth and utility. Let's delve into this argument:

1. Foundation in Physics: Einstein's equation, E=mc2, posits that energy (E) and mass (m) are intrinsically related. At a fundamental level, any matter is a condensed form of energy. When considering value, we can extrapolate this principle to suggest that the intrinsic worth of any object or concept is tied to the energy embedded within it or the energy required to produce, maintain, or access it.

2. Human Labor: When people work, whether in manual labor or intellectual pursuits, they expend energy. In economies, this energy is often compensated in the form of money, representing the value of the work done. Therefore, the money earned directly represents the energy expended, making it an energy equivalent in the economic sphere.

3. Goods and Services: Every product or service we value requires energy to produce. This encompasses raw material extraction, transportation, design, manufacturing, and even the intellectual energy required for innovation. In many ways, the value of a product or service reflects the cumulative energy invested.

4. Intangible Values: Even abstract concepts like knowledge, experience, or time can be seen as forms of energy. Knowledge represents the cognitive energy spent learning and understanding. Experience signifies the energy consumed across various tasks over time, and time itself can be seen as a vessel carrying potential energy, given its potential for productive use.

5. Natural Resources: Resources like coal, oil, and even wind or solar potential are directly valued for their energy content or potential. But even resources like water, while not primarily seen as energy sources, are crucial for energy-intensive processes (like agriculture or industrial), amplifying their inherent value.

6. Art and Culture: One might argue how art, which often holds significant value, fits into this energy paradigm. But art requires creative energy. Our art value can reflect the emotional and cognitive energy it evokes in viewers or listeners and the artist's invested energy.

7. Economic Systems: At a macro level, economies aim to optimize the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services—all processes that require or represent energy. Economic growth, productivity, and even market dynamics can be seen as manifestations of energy flow and transformation.

8. Relationships and Emotional Bonds: Our relationships, which many hold as invaluable, are built and maintained through emotional and time energy. Trust, for instance, can be seen as an accumulation of positive energy exchanges over time.

In conclusion, from tangible objects to abstract notions, the value of anything can be interpreted as a representation or manifestation of energy in some form. Viewing value through this energy lens offers a unique perspective, bridging diverse fields like physics, economics, and sociology.

Conservation of Energy

As defined by Einstein's famous equation E=mc2, the concept of energy can be viewed metaphorically to understand how various forms of value in our society essentially manifest energy. Let's discuss this concept through the lens of labor, money, and data.

1. Labor and Money: At the most fundamental level, when people work, they expend energy. This energy can be physical, as in manual labor, or mental, as in knowledge-based jobs. This expended energy is often converted into monetary value through wages or salaries. To continue the cycle, people spend this money to buy food, which provides them with calories (a unit of energy) to sustain their bodies and continue working. So, in essence, the cycle of work and consumption can be seen as a continuous transformation and transfer of energy.

2. Value as Energy: Anything that holds value, whether a precious metal, a service, or a product, has required some form of energy to produce or bring it into its present state. The value we assign to objects or services represents the energy embedded within them, both in terms of raw materials and the labor involved.

3. Data as an Energy-Saving Mechanism: Data plays a pivotal role in our modern, knowledge-based economy. Data informs decisions, drives automation, and uncovers insights that lead to innovation. When we leverage data effectively, we save time, resources, and effort—all forms of energy. Just as a machine can amplify our physical abilities and allow us to do more work in less time, data, when harnessed properly, boosts our cognitive abilities. It enables us to make informed decisions faster, automate routine processes, and predict future trends, thus improving productivity.

4. Data as an Asset: Like any tool or machine that improves productivity and holds value, so does data. It's not just about the raw data but the potential insights and efficiencies it can lead to. Businesses can uncover new revenue streams, optimize operations, and innovate faster using data. This is why companies invest heavily in data infrastructure, analytics tools, and data scientists. The return on investment can be significant.

5. The Bigger Picture: If we step back and view the economy as a massive energy transformation system, we see that everything—from raw materials to complex services—is about transferring, converting, and optimizing energy. In this grand system, data acts as the 'lubricant' or the 'circuitry,' ensuring energy is transferred and converted most efficiently and optimally.

In our modern age, data holds immense value as it improves productivity, efficiency, and innovation—all of which can be metaphorically seen as optimizing the flow and conversion of energy. Recognizing data as an asset is essential for any individual or organization aiming to thrive in today's information-driven economy.

Why is Data so Important?

The importance of data is a challenging question, but I will do my best to summarize my main point of view. Data is rapidly becoming one of the most valuable assets in our time and is on an exponential growth trajectory. I believe it will become the next form of currency, and as it becomes more liquid, people will increasingly own and control it. This shift in ownership will fundamentally transform our society in ways we cannot fully comprehend. Data will be held by those who create, generate, and use it, profoundly impacting our lives. We are already seeing this trend take shape with the rise of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), which is becoming a part of everyday conversation. Soon, data will become even more dominant and shape our economy, culture, and society in ways we could never have imagined before.

Data is becoming a form of currency with its inherent value. It is a fundamental change like information and underpins the emergence of the exponential age. As information becomes value, currency, and even money, we must understand how we got to this point.

The explosion of data is happening in two main dimensions. Firstly, new forms of data have emerged, such as emotional data, facial recognition data, mood data, voice recognition data, and mood patterns in voice. These are incredible new forms of data. Secondly, there is the sheer volume of data that is being generated. The International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that by 2025, there will be 175 zettabytes of data.

To put it into perspective, one zettabyte of data would take approximately five million years to download on a household super-fast broadband connection. However, some experts believe that this is a significant underestimate and that there will be tens of thousands of zettabytes of data by 2025 to 2030.

The explosion in data volumes we are currently experiencing is unprecedented. Non-verbal data, a new digital asset, is now visible and can be linked to human emotion. Apple's creation of a new channel has made this possible. While we hear of zettabytes of data, the reality is we will create around 75 zettabytes in a short amount of time. This age is beyond what we ever imagined.

Data Generation

It is crucial to realize that machines, not people, generate this data. Machines, objects, and buildings are making the data now. The data is becoming completely ubiquitous, and there is data that we have never seen before. The data comes from many devices, such as IoT devices, the Internet of Things, headsets, and wearables. There is so much data that it will be living, breathing, and organic and drive economies.

This is no longer something that can be stored in a database. It will be something that is living and breathing, and it will drive economies. The world around us is changing rapidly with the rise of electric and autonomous vehicles. Each vehicle is essentially a rolling supercomputer that continuously collects data about its physical surroundings. Even Amazon's Fulfillment centers generate enormous amounts of data daily with thousands of robots. With more and more objects becoming connected to the internet, we're heading towards a world where everything is connected to everything else.

In this connected world, data will become ubiquitous and always on, like a mist that surrounds us. We'll access this data through wallets, and it will drive markets. Governments and businesses are struggling to keep pace with our current changes. Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a crucial role in this new world, as it helps us move away from simply acquiring knowledge to using it to make decisions.

The Augmented Worker

AI will become like an augmented worker, serving the knowledge we need to act and make decisions. It will not replace human workers, but rather, it will become an employee of organizations. As the physical world becomes a super network of networks constantly streaming data, the nature of data changes, and the relationship between the physical world and information also changes. We're just scratching the surface of what's already here, and the possibilities are endless.

When dealing with data volumes at scale, only AI can handle it. Even if we consider moving avatars and visuals, AI will be necessary to handle the vast volumes of data, including images of people and avatars. In a 5G world, the data won't just consist of zeros and ones but will also include massive amounts of data that no human could ever read. Our new knowledge worker will be an artificial intelligence machine that will gather insights that a marketing agency would have done only a few years ago. Then, the human element makes decisions based on this data and uses it to drive business forward.

If you're a government, you can use this data to make crucial decisions, such as changing the direction of your country or city to improve the lives of your citizens. In essence, AI is becoming the new fundamental.

The Exponential Age

The emergence of knowledge workers signifies a significant shift challenging for us to comprehend fully. It involves a fundamental change in how information is disseminated and permeates everything, including our physical environment. This transformation requires a layer of intelligence that can only be achieved through artificial intelligence. Essentially, the exponential age is focused on integrating information with the physical world, where information almost becomes a new kind of physical property, and intelligence becomes a form of infrastructure that operates on all that information.

These profound changes are happening before our eyes, so data is critical. For instance, renewable energy networks that continuously stream data can only be managed through artificial intelligence. Likewise, 6G networks built in the next decade will be automated and control energy distribution, among other things, through AI. This new way of living and doing business will create a smarter economy, with data at the center of it all.

The Role of AI

In today's networked world, AI is vital in managing information flows. It helps manage physical buildings, autonomous vehicles, people, objects, and a continuous data stream. AI draws insights from this data that we can use to manage things such as the energy grid and supply chains. In some cases, AI can autonomously operate these things without human intervention.

However, it's essential to acknowledge that there's a lot of hype and conversation surrounding this topic. Generative AI plays a crucial role in data creation and management. Without data, there is no generative AI, no models to operate on, and nothing that can materialize. Generative AI is getting closer to the predicted singularity, where it will generate data for purposes and use cases. Although we're not there yet, conversations about merging the two are happening. Generative AI will be autonomous, consuming its data and data from ecosystems that other AI agents or communities of people create. Data will be the cornerstone of next-generation intelligence, and AI in harmony is driving the creation of the metaverse. Data and AI will transform everything we've known, so they're critical.

The emergence of virtual worlds and the metaverse plays a significant role in the story. Virtual reality will have a place, allowing us to explore new areas and spaces. However, data is a crucial component of the emergence of virtual worlds and the metaverse.

It's worth noting that Hong Kong Airport recently built a meta bus for the airport. However, what will truly revolutionize the world is augmented reality. This technology will bring the metaverse to life by blending the digital and physical worlds. We won't need bulky headsets like in Black Mirror; instead, we'll use glasses to shift between the real and digital worlds seamlessly.

Data is what will make all of this possible. By overlaying data and information in the real world, we can interact with it in entirely new ways. For instance, digital mapping will help us quickly navigate places like supermarkets. Thanks to our data, cities will be geofenced, and we'll be recognized upon entering.

Data and AI will be pivotal in facilitating personalized experiences in this new world. Digital wallets will also be crucial in storing our data. Whether it's virtual cities, digital twins, or our augmented world, data will be the engine powering everything.