“The data revolution? Big data? What does it have to do with me? Let them collect all my data – after all, I have nothing to hide! And who cares about what I think and do anyway?”

Does this sound familiar? Yes, the data revolution really does affect you. Personally. It affects all of us. Big data is not just about Edward Snowden, the NSA and possible travel bans to the United States. Neither is it about whether the secret service knocks on your door tomorrow. It’s about how you see the world, your own life and how you wish to shape it in the future.

Big data can save lives and ensure that we all live to be much, much older. Moreover, it can help protect our environment and finally curb our depletion of the planet’s resources, while at the same time making our lives simpler and more comfortable. Just imagine: No more sitting in traffic, no more wondering whether the stove was left on. It also opens up completely new horizons in business and science. Many experts are euphoric and fascinated by big data. For companies, data is the oil of the 21st century – and we are already in a race to tap into new data sources and bring this new oil to the surface.

However, if it falls into the wrong hands, big data could lead to disaster, creating a surveillance state with instruments the likes of which the world has never experienced before. Even in democratic societies, big data can create complete profiles of us all, classifying and sorting us and thereby determining our future. Big data can create a future in which our past never lets us go. After all, your profile forgets nothing: everything will remain saved. Big data can bring about increased automation and make people superfluous across broad swaths of the labor market. At the same time, it can also take away our freedom and lead to a state of affairs in which in 50 years only the very old can still imagine what it is truly like to have a private sphere. Are we prepared for this situation?

But on the other hand, is the human right to privacy still equally important to all generations? Is privacy even dispensable if our lives become safer and more convenient without it? Where does privacy end and human dignity begin? Big data raises a number of important questions. If we wish to avoid unpleasant surprises, we shouldn’t delegate these questions to someone else. It is an existential matter.

Big data isn’t a vision of the future; it is already with us today and is irreversible, changing our world more and more. We will never be able to turn back the clock. Moreover, big data is more than just a technological development. It is more significant than the invention of the lightbulb or of television. It creates a new type of thinking and acting or, as interpreted by Prof. Dr. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, “a new approach to reality.”1 We are experiencing changing times, which even Mayer-Schönberger, who is fully aware of the gravity of the terminology he uses, calls a “revolution.” In his interview with us, he makes it clear that, for him, big data represents an epochal event comparable to the Enlightenment: “It is an event to be measured over the course of centuries.”2 Big data will change how we think, act and live – and how our society will develop.

Far-reaching changes are looming, but they are gaining a foothold virtually without a sound. Even today, the outlines of this future are clearly recognizable in many areas, resulting in sweeping consequences for our lives. Can you imagine that several billion objects are already equipped with sensors and connected to the internet? Yes, you read that correctly: not people, but objects. How does it sound to you when we assert that a window “talks” to a radiator? Or the street to the car tire? Exactly this has already been happening for a long time. And this Internet of Things will continue to expand. Leading analysts and industrial corporations estimate that, in 2020, 50 billion objects will be equipped with sensors and will communicate with one another.3 Just look around yourself now while you are reading these lines. Where are you right now? In an apartment or a house? Everything that you see will belong to the Internet of Things. The floor, the doorknob, the window, the lamp – absolutely everything. If you are currently in a pedestrian area, you can see streetlights, benches, shops and store windows around you. And they will talk to one another too. Are you in the woods? Even here, sensors will in the future be fixed to the trees. Vines are already delivering information for winegrowers, and trees will do the same for foresters in the future. But why are all these things communicating? They are synchronizing themselves with one another, exchanging information and thus optimizing their “behavior.” This allows your apartment to start your own personal feel-good program, greeting you with the right music and serving you food as soon as you feel hungry. Not magic, but a real possibility thanks to big data. The flip side of this is that nothing in your apartment will go unobserved. Who should be allowed to know and use your data? And who already has that right?