It has been another intense year in the world of data, full of excitement but also complexity. 

As more of the world gets online, the “datafication” of everythingcontinues to accelerate.  This mega-trend keeps gathering steam, powered by the intersection of separate advances in infrastructure, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, open source and the overall digitalization of our economies and lives. 

A few years ago, the discussion around “Big Data” was mostly a technical one, centered around the emergence of a new generation of tools to collect, process and analyze massive amounts of data. Many of those technologies are now well understood, and deployed at scale. In addition, over the last couple of years in particular, we’ve started adding layers of intelligence through data science, machine learning and AI into many applications, which are now increasingly running in production in all sorts of consumer and B2B products.  

As those technologies continue to both improve and spread beyond the initial group of early adopters (FAANG and startups) into the broader economy and world, the discussion is shifting from the purely technical into a necessary conversation around impact on our economies, societies and lives.

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Read Matt’s analysis and breakdown on his blog.