Selling the Cloud Sublime - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 108

solved within the parameters of the technologies that major IT compa-
nies identify. With each reason not to worry about privacy, one is led to
wonder why it should be a concern at all. The myth of a digital sublime
is strengthened by inoculating it with the identiication and subsequent
dismissal of what many see as a major limitation on its power to bring
universal progress.
Cloud computing makes up a second major theme of the World Eco-
nomic Forum report, with one chapter on the cloud and another on big
data. It is particularly interesting that the cloud-computing chapter returns
to the issue of privacy and, even before getting to the speciic details that
make the cloud important, delates fears about privacy and security: about
concerns over “infringement of privacy . . . we cannot escape the fact that
big data offer meaningful social and economic beneits that mitigate these
legitimate concerns because of the hugely favorable social and/or economic
impact they impart—on private commerce, international economies, and
economic development. Certainly data security issues are important, but
if big data are to become the currency of the future, we need governance,
transparency, and security, as opposed to reactionary plans to lock up the
data and throw away the key. As with any currency, suppression is not a
sustainable way forward” (Dutta and Bilbao-Osorio 2012, 97). In essence,
the report concludes that economic beneits trump privacy worries and,
more importantly, it sets up a dichotomy between progressive policies that
unleash the power of big data and retrograde approaches that lock it up.
There is only one intelligent choice, one way to move forward.
With privacy essentially out of the way, we are free to unleash the power
of big data and, more speciically, its power to beneit business in a very
big way. Aside from the inancial beneits of using the information “hid-
den in the world's existing data sources” (ibid., 98), such as the estimated
$600 billion revenue gain from using personal location data globally and
the 60 percent potential gain in retail operating margins, there are the
enormous qualitative beneits to companies, particularly those that mine
social-media data. Among the beneits are the ability to “protect a brand,
engage the most inluential voices in a market, understand what trends
lead to sales, identify an untapped market, enhance market research,
understand the impact of industry changes, gather competitive intelligence,
improve warranty analysis, create a better customer experience, and man-
age a crisis” (ibid., 99). Acknowledging what it views as the “irony” that