2050: The Story of Urbidata

Abstract

At the moment of writing, we are witnessing a data revolution. In this chapter we present our perspective on the direction of the developments in the coming 30 years. By offering both a dystopian and a utopian vision on the (open) data world in 2050, we open the debate on the direction the use of open data should take. This final chapter demonstrates that current developments towards open data, which can be referred to as the democratisation of data, paradoxically result in a very few data companies that have access to significant portions of data available globally including open government data, without sharing these data fully with society. We argue that this skewed balance in the information position of government, citizens and the (big) data companies may result in a dictatorship dominating our information societies over the coming decades. Therefore, we hold that the current open data system should be revolutionised from the democratisation of data available to and controlled by the happy few into a data democracy for all, a true open society.