Since the coronavirus pandemic took over, people around the world have been hearing and reading about 'flattening thecurve.' While simply referencing a graph of COVID-19 infections or deaths plotted against time, it is data, and if coronavirus has taught us anything, it is that data is crucialto solving the challenges facing a highly-interconnected world. However, under the current circumstances, there is a dangerthat most of the world's data will continue to be owned by so fewcompanies.

This is not ideal considering how influential data can be in political, economic, and scientific decision-making. Companies who own the data on people's interests, issues and preferences will be able to outdo their rivals when it comes to advertising or investment decisions. Social issues are also business opportunities for companies with the right solutions, even if the dividends are not immediate. For instance, experts predict that companies like Apple and Googleare likely to come out of the crisis more influential than ever before. Coronavirus contact tracing, proximity alerts and mapping apps are technologies built on big data, and this often comes fromlocationinformation collected by tech giants, including Facebook and Google. Two companies whotrack quite a lot ofonline user information already. The widespread use of these newer tools will, in turn, help tech companies collect invaluable data that they can rely on when evolving their own products and services.

Related: How To Use Facebook's New COVID-19 Symptom Tracker Map

This situation could result in an even greater widening of the already deep data inequalityissue. In fact, the expectation of this outcome recently prompted a surprise response from one of the big tech companies. Microsoft has now launched an Open Data Campaign, in collaboration with the Open Data Institute and The Governance Lab, to deal with data inequality among companies, as well as regions. The campaign aims to facilitate open and secure sharing of large-scale data, and especially information that could help in tackling some of the biggest challenges facing society, like healthcare, sustainability, and urban socioeconomic issues.Microsoft has declared that it is going to be part of more thantwenty data projects to helpfight the data divide issue and this number includes some of its own projects, such astheAirband initiative, which looks to improve broadband connectivity in the US.In addition,Microsoft says it will share datasets from the project openly on GitHuband willpublish the resultsof its COVID-19 research project, aimedat decoding the response of the immune system to the virus.

Microsoft researchers have found that less than 100 companies collect more than 50 percent of the data produced today. These companies profit enormously from this, while highlighting the staggering divide in data ownership right now. However, it is not just about the economic inequality that such a situation creates, as data ownership also gives considerable political power to companies, andFacebook isa perfect example. The social media giant's effectivenessat swaying political opinion is down to how much informationit has access to. Facebook's unique platform allows the company to customize content to suitindividual interests, making it a perfectdelivery system for targeted political ads.

However, this need not be the case and big data can be a force for good.For that to happen,data needs to be usable, openly shared, securely stored, and not a threat to the privacy of individuals.Microsoft's campaign is just the latest in the list of recent open data projects intent on helping with that. In fact, the pandemic period has witnessed widespread open publishing of research to enable scientists all over the worldto work on the issue. One of the major initiatives is the Folding@Home's open-science projectwhich intends tosimulate protein folding in viruses, thus helping to design drugs thatmightcure specific issues, like COVID-19 andCancer. Even among tech companies, open publishing of research is catching up, with the likes Google now sharingits work on open repositories, including arXiv.org.

Going forward, data is going to play a significant role in shaping society. From climate action and curing deadly diseases to fighting crime and solving severe socioeconomic issues, data-driven AI tools will be key in finding ways to overcome these global challenges. Until then, if data remains disproportionately concentrated in the hands of a few, the world is unlikely to solve these issues, and the economic disparity will continue to get worse in the post-coronavirus world.

Next: How To Donate Your Cough Online To Help COVID-19 Screening Reasearch

Source: Microsoft

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A passionate reader, writer and photographer, Aswin is a journalist based in Kerala, India. He has worked as a feature writer for The Hindu, one of the biggest English newspapers in India, and has authored a travel-tourism book on a wildlife sanctuary in Kerala. As a writer for Screen Rant he focuses on speculative fiction, adaptions of real-life stories, Indian cinema (Not just Bollywood!), technology and science in pop-culture. When not writing, you might find him watching soccer videos, analyzing Ghibli movies, finding joy in Emilia Clarke interviews, fanboying over Greta Gerwig, aspiring to be Alan Moore, worshiping John Oliver, listening to Eric Clapton songs and re-watching old BBC series 'Yes Minister', which he considers to be the greatest TV production of all time. Aswin graduated from University College London with an M.Sc in Science, Technology & Society.

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Why Closing The Data Divide Is Now More Important Than Ever - Screen Rant