If you’ve read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince , you probably remember the businessman on the fourth planet. He was so busy counting stars that he didn’t even look up when the Prince arrived. "Five hundred and one million, six hundred and twenty-two thousand, seven hundred and thirty-one," he muttered, obsessed with "possessing" things he couldn’t even touch. If we drop this Businessman into 2025, he wouldn’t be using a paper ledger. He’d be sitting in a dark room with three monitors, obsessing over Bitcoin charts, Instagram reach, and Big Data. This is why his story serves as a crucial warning for our digital age. 1. Data is the New "Golden Stuff." The Businessman called stars "little golden things that make lazy people dream." Today, we have our own version: Likes, Followers, and Impressions. We hoard digital data like it’s gold. We feel "rich" when our follower count goes up, but just like the Businessman, we often do...
Human thoughts out loud