I always love seeing documentaries from the point of view of DW, the German public broadcasting channel. This show examines the precipitous rise of Amazon.
“One day, Amazon trucks will circle people’s homes and if someone needs a diaper, they’ll get it in three seconds,” says Viktor Schönberger, professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University, when asked what we can look forward to, from the corporation with the third largest market capitalization in the world.
It’s said that data is the new money and this appears to be borne out, when one considers that no company stores more data than Amazon and that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world.
Amazon can simultaneously observe, compare and analyze more than 300 million people worldwide, giving us a glimpse at the Internet of Things. “The change from the Industrial- to the Data Age is a very fundamental one, greater than the change from an agricultural to an industrial society,” Schönberger explains. “Amazon is at the forefront of the radical change to this Data Age that we’re experiencing right now.”
Amazon collects everything – and it does not reveal the conclusions that it draws, as the company continues to grow unabated, branching out into new fields, like its Blue Origin space venture, that’s currently developing reusable rockets for a manned base on the Moon.
