Truth on the Market – “…People who analogize data to oil or gold may merely be trying to convey that data is as valuable in the 21st century as those commodities were in the 20th century (though, as argued, a dubious proposition). If the comparison stopped there, it would be relatively harmless. But there is a real risk that policymakers might take the analogy literally and regulate data in the same way they regulate commodities…A better—though imperfect—analogy, as author Bernard Marr suggests, would be renewable energy. The sources of renewable energy are all around us—solar, wind, hydroelectric—and there is more available than we could ever use. We just need the right incentives and technology to capture it. The same is true for data. We leave our digital fingerprints everywhere—we just need to dust for them…”