Horizon scanning is a funny thing. It can be awe-inspiring. It can be frightening. It can make you feel big, proud and jazzed about what is to come. It can make you feel small, insignificant and anxious. It’s like looking up into the night sky, and being struck with a sense of wonder at its vast expanse of unknown.

Technology has been moving forward so quickly for the past ten years, that sometimes you need to just stand still and think. Think about where we’ve come from, and where we’re going. I’m not trying to go all Black Mirror on you, I’m just fascinated by it all.

Just take a look at the Edinburgh startup scene, for example. CodeBase is the UK’s largest tech startup incubator, how cool is that? I love popping over to their site to see what the future holds. There is a company in there that can tailor satellites for your every need – who knew! There’s a hologram company. And a company that will deal with all your AirBnb bookings, which in itself din’t exist 10 years ago, and now has become a verb in itself. Just like you don’t “search on the internet” you Google it, you don’t “rent a holiday cottage” you Airbnb. Once only read about in science fiction, this is the stuff of the future. The stuff of now.

Data is now

If CodeBase is creating the future, then the future is data. In this one (albeit mighty) space you can find:

• Confbuzz: “Confbuzz uses ground-breaking machine-learning techniques to discover useful connections between delegates and displays these on interactive maps which give you all the information you need, quickly and on one page.”
• Wallscope: “Uses semantic web technologies and linked data principles to help organisation unlock the rich narratives within their data.”
• Velocity: “We bring together decades of creative retail marketing expertise and experience with our personalization and insights technology platform, Darius to solve retailers’ business challenges.”
• Symphonic: “Built on patented technology and founded on five years of academic and industrial research, it offers a robust framework for supporting organisations which need to securely share data based on commercial or regulatory needs.”
• Topolytics: “Our live data platform maps the generation, movement and fate of industrial and commercial waste. This enables waste producers and recycling companies to achieve better commercial, environmental and investment outcomes.”
• Numbertelling: Taking raw data, Numbertelling help enhance the potential of organisations. Large and small. They tell stories with your numbers.
• Money Dashboard: “Gives you the true view of your finances by showing exactly where your money goes across all your online financial accounts.”

I could dig out some staggering stats about how much data we create right now, but the numbers are, frankly, too big for me to understand, let alone explain to anyone else. What I see when I look at these businesses is that data is now a by-product of how we live our lives. Like carbon dioxide.

The big question now, is what do we do with it? How can it make our lives better? What can we learn from it? How can we make it useful? How can we keep it safe?

As usual, I have many more questions than answers (a by-product of an insatiably curious brain). This is something that I will keep reading about, keep learning about, and keep writing about. It’s important for each of us to understand how we create data, and what happens to it.

How do you feel about the future? What will be the norm in ten years, that’s only a dream today?