My current job involves working with large amounts of people's data. Specifically I am involved in digitising this data so that the paper copies may be destroyed. This data goes back to early 1990 when I was just 9 years old.

So has started a fascination with what data is. I am on a journey to answer some questions.....

What is data?
Why do we keep data?
What does data do?

Clearly all data is not the same. Nor does it have the same value between different people. My personal data such as my age, DOB, address, email address, phone number are all pretty public information. But my data, which I freely put onto the internet into such services as Google or Facebook, is this my data too. Do I own it or do I give that away? Should I worry that companies can use my data for profit.

But I believe these questions go beyond this to a broader question of systems of data.

Should they be integrated?
Be portable?
Who owns them?

It is my hope that this blog will become a place to start a conversation about data as something that impacts on us all the time