Data isn’t oil, whatever tech commentators tell you: it’s people’s lives | John Naughton

The pervasive metaphor likening information to crude obscures the reality of surveillance capitalism

The phrase data is the new oil" is the cliche du jour of the tech industry. It was coined by Clive Humby, the genius behind Tesco's loyalty card, who argued that data was just like crude. It's valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc to create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so must data be broken down, analysed for it to have value."

It turned out to be a viral idea: marketers, tech companies, governments, regulators and the mainstream media went for it like ostriches going after brass doorknobs (as PG Wodehouse might have put it) and it rapidly attained the status of holy writ.