HP on Privacy: Info Will be Bigger Than Oil, But We Need Standards

HP's Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy and Technology Office Shane Robinson spoke this morning at Techonomy and adressed consumer data privacy extensively. "Information is the most important resource of the 21st century," he said. "It's not oil, it's not water. The right policies are essential if we're going to exploit those resources."

The policies Robinson was referring to were in large part about privacy and consumer control over their own information. He said that HP's own policy was to take an opt-in approach, not using consumer data without explicit permission to do so. (Here's HP's global privacy policy.) That's not something that can be taken for granted; any time a large company says it takes an opt-in approach to personalization and privacy, we should make note of it because many companies will do otherwise. 

Eric Schmidt said here yesterday that the social layer of location services that gets analyzed needs to be opt-in as well, perhaps a surprising statement given the uproar over Google Buzz's opt-out data exposure defaults, which Schmidt still insists were an imagined not real problem.

The uproar over Facebook's Instant Personalization feature earlier this year, as well, was based in the way it took an opt-out approach instead of being opt-in.

HP may be best known for printers and personal computers, but the company's technology in fact grows more far-reaching every day. Last week, for example, reports surfaced that HP had filed for copyrights concerning both tablet computers and an airline reservation management system. Both of those are areas wherein privacy will be important.

HP's Robinson:

"What we tend to do, which is the easiest approach, is an opt-in approach. Personalization, context based search, where the system knows where you are and what your interests are - if we make sure people can opt in then we're part of the way there. But it's going to be policy and technology. And privacy varies by region, there's a different set of issues here than there is in China.

We really need to establish a set of standards around privacy that will help companies around the world interoperate. We are going to be very active and invest heavily in standards bodies, but this is an industry issue so all the big players need to be active. This is a really big issue if we want to expand [the information economy] the way we should be.

Robinson also said that "unstructured data" like video, audio and user click-streams is growing three times as fast today as data structured with clear metadata and formatting is. In order to deal with that, many departments in HP are working on facial and image recognition. That's part of where the company's interest in privacy comes from.

The potential for value to be found in the information economy truly can't be overstated and it's very interesting that HP is taking a firm stance in support of standards and an opt-in strategy.

Comments

[TahoeBlue]

Information is clearly an important source of economic value, but when Mr. Robinson opines that "information is the most important resource of the 21st century ... not oil, not water", he is taking the role of electronic cheerleader over the top.

There may be 'gold in them thar hills' with regards to managing, capitalizing, and monetizing the increasingly informational and interpersonal nature of human interaction in the 21st century, particularly in light of the fact that it is easier to move electrons and light in wire or glass than it is to move humans from point A to point B.

But Mr. Robinson is having a bit of an "out of body experience" when he relegates the importance of such things as sources of physical energy and life itself to a status that is less than 'information'. Simple cause-and-effect: the human mind can not enjoy the fruits of its conceptual interactions with others if the physical basis for life support is missing or wanting ! He has perhaps rushed a bit too headlong and prematurely into the 'singularity' anticipated by Ray Kurzweil (and feared by Bill Joy).

One other thing about 'information', such as "unstructured data" in the form of video and audio streams: such data is largely unbounded, and can be created, manufactured, or instantiated by simply turning on billions of devices and pouring the output of their codecs and transponders into the waiting arms of the Web. One thing that techno-evangelists should consider, a lesson learned from basic economics, is simply that over-abundance and over-supply actually *reduces* relative value. Just look at what has happened in the music industry, for starters.

If personal and social information -- and privacy -- is of such inherent value, then individuals should be compensated by the social networks of the world to be able to monetize the activity and identity of the participants, not the other way around.

I suspect that, as important as technology and information is to the total economy, that Mr. Robinson is on a bit of a well, flight of fancy !

[Marshall Kirkpatrick]

Good comment Tahoeblue. In Robinson's defense, he also argued that the sea of information would derive a substantial amount of its value from the way it enabled optimized management of other resources like oil and water.

As for oversupply leading to diminishing value, there is a fundamental difference between music and other types of data that gain value through network effect. At a certain point there may be diminishing value for kinds of data that are consumed individually (like songs or albums) but other kinds of data just illuminate more patterns, details and opportunities when amassed in larger numbers.