Imagine that you’re buying a $40,000 car.
Now imagine a world in which you could negotiate the sale of all the data generated by its five sensors: traction control, headlights, clock, wiper and barometer. Combined, those sensors provide very accurate data about the weather in that car’s location. Who would be interested? For one, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a scientific agency that monitors the weather and predicts serious storms like hurricanes, tornados and blizzards. Rather than seek federal funding for another weather station, why wouldn’t the NOAA purchase up-to-the-second weather information from all the vehicles in every region of the country?
If you could sell the data from those weather-related sensors for an agreed-upon, lifetime price — let’s say $3,000 — your $40,000 car now costs $37,000.
Cars also contain suspension-monitoring systems that, while providing information on the health of the vehicle’s ride, also record every time the vehicle passes over rough stretches of road or highway in need of repair. That’s real-time data of interest to government agencies that maintain roads and highways. If you could sell the information from your suspension-monitoring systems for, let’s say, $5,000, the price of your new car has now been reduced to $32,000.
In some cases, brokers would act as middlemen. For example, Google already takes our personal data and uses it to attract advertising. If we controlled the data generated by our car, we could sell Google the information from the sensors monitoring tire pressure, alignment and tread. Google, in turn, could alert drivers to the need to fill up or rotate their tires and, using the car’s GPS and Google Maps info, recommend a store in the area willing to do it as soon as the driver arrives for a guaranteed low price. For the right to harvest this data, Google might pay $2,000. That $40,000 car is now $30,000.I believe we need a sy...