Overview

Greetings. Technology and technological advances are always interesting. The intention of this book is not just to showcase new technologies and their specific values, but rather to examine the special values that emerge when some key technologies are intermixed, and primarily intermixed with many different (usually real-time) sources of data.

Data is all around us and it is growing at a furious pacefrom cellular-controlled ovens to video-controlled manufacturing to embedded chips in our bodiesand we cannot help but wonder whether the new pervasive wireless technologies will allow for unforeseen power to come from all this gathered data. The Inescapable Data environment specifically looks for new streams of data to be combined and analyzed against other streams or historical data in an effort to drive higher personal or business value. For example, although it might be interesting to have your child's school record available electronically, it is perhaps more interesting to be able to correlate various achievements and progress against a wide populationand even further interesting to correlate that data against a detailed analysis of his or her medical history.

In a more business-oriented example, technology might enable us to track inventory levels better and in real time. However, inventory-level information might be the wrong question to ask? New levels of efficiency appear in the Inescapable Data world because business systems are tied so closely together, across company boundaries, that inventory level no longer becomes the question and is replaced by "are any manufacturing dependencies suggesting date-skew anywhere in our outside supply chain for product X?" In the Inescapable Data world, we allow our business systems to join together throughout a product's value chainand even perhaps to competitorsfor the sake of efficiency and flexibility.

Similarly, our personal lives demand continuous connectivity to all the activities that comprise our days. Whether it is communication with customers in different time zones or e-sending to the team a better map to the soccer field, we discover time efficiencies that in turn give us more flexibility. The tools of our business lives have become the exact same tools used in our personal lives, allowing for a convenient blending of activities.

Most of this, we believe, is for the good. Some of it brings new worries and exposures. But as notable Harvard sociologist Nicholas Christakis says, "There is a way in which technology is inexorable, so I doubt there is a way to stop any of this."