  It's the year 2020, and every space and place on- and off-line has been
augmented with digital things that observe, record, transmit, and compute, for
the purposes of recording endless data traces of what is happening in the
world. Individually, these things (and the invisible services the power them)
have reached considerable sophistication in their ability to analyse and
dissect such observations, turning streams of audio and video into informative
data fragments. Yet somehow, individuals as end-users of platforms and services
have not seen the full potential of such data. In this speculative paper, we
propose two hypothetical mini scenarios different from our current digital
world. In the former, instead of hoarding it, data controllers turn captured
data over to those who need it as quickly as possible, working together to
combine, validate, and refine it for maximum usefulness. This simultaneously
addresses the data fragmentation and privacy problem, by handing over long-term
data governance to those that value it the most In the latter, we discuss
ethical dilemmas using the long-term use of such rich data and its tendency to
cause people to relentlessly optimise.
