How Data is Becoming a Catalyst for Imagination

Most weeks in this newsletter there is at least one story about a survey result or a new finding from science or insights groups that might offer a unique perspective on human behavior. In seeking out stories every week, I often gravitate to those sorts of stories myself. This week I encountered a few that got me thinking about how the power of data and what it can unlock for us all is shifting. First there was a story from fashion about how several resale platforms are pivoting more to live auctions [paywall] instead of fixed price sales. The more successful auction deals, the more data they can generate about the real prices people are willing to pay for various items. Then there was the story about the Wheels4Wheels project that uses sensor mapping data from e-scooters to assess what streets are most accessible for wheelchair users. The pilot program in Estonia “generated 40.5 million data points and more than 66,000 surface ratings across eight districts.” Finally, there was a report about a deep dive analysis into the number of shots and cuts in 8,770 movies and how the pacing of those cuts has evolved over time. What is interesting about all of these is how the data itself presents open-source opportunities for any of us to build our own creations from this. I found beauty in this over the summer while I was building The Unwondering Project. The amount of public data that was available on places to spotlight was fascinating. With the data from the stories above and the help of AI, you could build your own pricing engine for various products, create accessibility maps on your own or build a film editing engine based on the editing habits of successful directors. Some of this data is (or should be) owned by someone and the questions of ethical usage of what you can find online aren’t easy to answer. When data becomes this ubiquitously available along with new tools to be able to sift through it to create new meaningful things, the real limit is going to be motivation and imagination for what any of us create next.