Re: [projectvrm] What can people do with data that companies can't?

[Don Marti < >]

Mindful buying and pricing without discrimination
are prerequisites of VRM.

If you can't count on yourself to do the first, and
your vendors to do the second, the only information
that you want any vendor to have is incorrect
information.

Otherwise you still end up participating in
transactions where the other side has an advantage.

"Never let anyone outside the family know what you
are thinking." -- Vito Corleone

More here: 
  http://zgp.org/~dmarti/business/intention-economy/

Don

begin Doc Searls quotation of Mon, May 20, 2013 at 06:09:38AM +0100:
> Date: Mon, 20 May 2013 06:09:38 +0100
> From: Doc Searls 
> <
 >
> To: "T.Rob" 
> <
 >
> Cc: 'ProjectVRM list' 
> <
 >
> Subject: Re: [projectvrm] What can people do with data that companies can't?
> 
> This is great stuff. Thanks!
> 
> Doc
> 
> On May 20, 2013, at 5:29 AM, T.Rob 
> <
 >
>  wrote:
> 
> > My answer to this question is integration.  
> > 
> > As you mentioned, Digifit is a silo and their integrations are limited to 
> > a
> > privileged list.  But I want a much bigger integration with regard to
> > quantified self.  I want to integrate to categories not ordinarily 
> > connected
> > to health.  For example, your list has quantified self data and media 
> > usage
> > in different categories.  I think we'd find a very close correlation 
> > between
> > health and hours of media consumption.  Even more interesting would be to
> > analyze not just the time spent consuming media, but to analyze specific
> > shows in relation to health.  Would we be surprised to find a correlation
> > between some specific content and positive health benefits?  Are people
> > actually inspired to action by watching Biggest Loser, Intervention, or 
> > Food
> > Revolution, for example?  Would we discover a negative health correlation
> > with certain talk radio shows?
> > 
> > But I don't see giving my insurer or health care provider all my 
> > audio/video
> > consumption history.
> > 
> > Another thing I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is that few of these
> > providers can do much, if anything, with children's data.  The opportunity
> > to capture kid's health data and let parents crunch it is priceless.  As a
> > kid I went through a lengthy epilepsy diagnosis and it was obvious to me,
> > even at 7 and 8 years old, that medicine was geared toward adults.  My 
> > first
> > "half dose" of phenobarbital knocked me out.  It was only "half a dose" in
> > an adult context.  EEG electrodes were so big they overlapped on my small
> > head making readings difficult.  Eventually I just told them to use the
> > scrub-and-paste method and later on just use the needle trodes because 
> > they
> > hurt less than abrading the skin for the pasted trodes.
> > 
> > Although the issues I faces are mostly solved, we still have a situation
> > where kids are not represented well in the data and for reasons of privacy
> > we'll always face some hurdle there.  So if our kids can't be members of
> > many of these health sites, perhaps we can load their data into the family
> > personal cloud and crunch it there.  At some point when they come of age,
> > they can choose whether to release that history (because all the devices
> > will soon sign their data, right?) to their insurer, health care provider,
> > research project, etc.  Perhaps we can find a way to anonymously donate 
> > that
> > data in near-real time so the research doesn't have to wait.
> > 
> > Which brings up yet another point.  We can bequeath our data like any 
> > other
> > personal asset, right?  If we are afraid of what insurers might do with 
> > our
> > data while we are alive, maybe we can donate it to science after our 
> > death.
> > That may cause a situation where cadavers are stacking up on the loading
> > dock untended whilst disk drives are lovingly hot-swapped into the
> > university Storage Area Network but we'll have to deal with that if and
> > when.  Or perhaps some future NAS device will double as an urn so you can
> > bury your loved one and their data together, should they choose not to
> > donate either.  I imagine driver's licenses of the future will have an
> > additional check box:   Organ donor?  Data donor?  Maybe uploading the
> > deceased's data to Paste Bin is the digital equivalent of scattering their
> > ashes to the wind.
> > 
> > I'm being a bit dramatic here but the point is that any research hospital,
> > insurer or philanthropist who takes the long view may consider building
> > personal cloud apps that collect data they hope will be interesting within
> > an 18-year time frame (for kids who might release it at 18) or within a 
> > 10 ~
> > 20 year time frame (for seniors who agree to release it on their passing).
> > After the initial priming period, the pipeline would have a continuous
> > supply of new data coming online.  It would be possible to collect broadly
> > and let the teens decide which categories to release based on the state of
> > current research.  
> > 
> > Something else I'd like to see done with this data that companies would 
> > have
> > a hard time doing is socialize it.  For example, today I changed out a fan
> > toggle switch for a timer.  Affixed to the package was an NFC tag which
> > could be sensed by my waste bin or recycle bin.  I'd like to correlate
> > retail purchases to the waste/recycle stream but I really don't want to 
> > give
> > my sanitation company all my purchase data.  Nor do I want to give the
> > disposal data to the retailers.   For one thing, to which retailer do you
> > give the data?  You really need a complete purchase history across all of
> > them for this to be useful.  So I don't see any one vendor getting all 
> > this
> > data but I could envision an app that cryptographically bound the purchase
> > data to the disposal data and forwarded a result, something verifiable
> > without revealing the source data, to a social site that allowed you to 
> > earn
> > badges based on reducing your footprint.  The badges could be earned by
> > individuals or allow people to form teams much like World Community Grid
> > does.  It would also publish data by neighborhood, city, state, region,
> > country, etc. so that you could see your rankings.  Can you imagine scout
> > troops competing to become "Mayor" of the local recycling facility?
> > 
> > There's a lot more to explore here.  I have a whole category of stuff I 
> > call
> > "Stupid Internet of Things Tricks" that I hope to get to soon.
> > 
> > -- T.Rob
> > 
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Doc Searls 
> >> [mailto:
 ]
> >> Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 9:54 AM
> >> To: ProjectVRM list
> >> Subject: [projectvrm] What can people do with data that companies can't?
> >> 
> >> That's what I ask, and partially answer, here:
> >> 
> >> <http://hvrd.me/14jYxGn>
> >> 
> >> Prompting this was a question from a major publication. Improve my 
> >> answers
> >> there, or provide your own elsewhere (including here), and our case will
> > be that
> >> much better.
> >> 
> >> Thanks,
> >> 
> >> Doc=
> > 
> 

-- 
Don Marti                      +1-510-332-1587 (mobile)
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/        Alameda, California, USA