We are fast approaching a time in which technology will enable a continual sensing of all of the world’s activity. Such holistic collection of data will enable a detailed model of the planet and all that is happening on it. Some of the benefits of a model such as this could be:

• Precision agriculture resulting in increased yields;

• Real-time detection of nefarious activities like poaching and illegal fishing;

• Natural disaster preparedness; and

• Enhanced measurements of the planet’s environment. At the same time, one can imagine the downsides of the model:

• State intrusion into citizens’ private lives;

• Refugee interdiction; and

• Abuse of state power employed against minorities and/or dissidents.

So, the key questions arising from this model include:

• How does one balance the advantage of shared awareness with the potential for misuse?

• How might our society adapt, innovate and evolve to harness the power of geospatial data and technology while mitigating the ethical challenges?

“Properly thought through, an era of radical transparency can lead to a better planet.”

Being open to modification

As we seek to address these questions, we must do so with a heavy dose of humility. These are unchartered waters, and precipitous actions could have deleterious effects. This does not mean we should “go slow”, rather, it means “be deliberate, be connected, be thoughtful and be ready to modify as we understand the impact of our initial decisions.”

Nearly anything that can be measured about life on Earth will be sensed and delivered. From there, it can be processed into analytics. Because it is in real time, it will be able to become intimately “in-the-loop” with measure-analyze-adjust feedback loops to optimize many physical industries and activities on earth.

Some argue that protecting ourselves will mean rethinking privacy itself. Current privacy laws focus on threats to the rights of individuals. But those protections are anachronistic in the face of Artificial Intelligence (AI), geospatial and mobile technologies, which not only use group data but run on group data as gas in the tank. Regulating these technologies will mean conceiving of privacy as applying not just to individuals, but to groups as well.

Living in a world with radical transparency

I have used the analogy of the rising tide of data that has the potential to overwhelm us and bring us more data but less shared awareness. That tide is cresting in a way that puts us now on the curling edge of the wave. computer vision, Machine Learning and AI offer the chance to live in a world of radical transparency.

Such a world will answer not only questions like “where are the people?” but also “why are they there?” The answer to the latter can help anticipate where they will be tomorrow. So, much as search engines like Google lead the way in indexing and categorizing knowledge deposited by humans into the online world, a globally persistent sensing architecture could lead the way to being able to find information, intelligence and understanding of the physical world in real time to benefit the physical aspects of all life on earth. I propose that such transparency favors justice. Properly thought through, an era of radical transparency can lead to a better planet.