By Joshua Lowcock , Op-Ed Contributor, 2 hours ago

As we enter a new year and with CES now behind us, I have been reflecting on what trends in digital and technology will shape the decade ahead. After some thought, I landed on 3 Rs — Rights, Responsibility, and Regulation — as what will define the future of our industry.

1. Rights.  People are and will become increasingly better informed about their digital rights, and will demand that these rights be respected and protected.

There will be multiple drivers of this, including a desire for people to know that they won’t be discriminated against or penalized by their choices to share/not share data or the way algorithms apply that data.

The driver of the public demand for rights will come from multiple corners. In part, regulation will be a catalyst because people do have their curiosity piqued when everyone is emailing them about updating their privacy policy.

But a key driver will be the increased investigative reporting of issues around data and technology, especially as journalists from specialist industry publications move to more broad-based publications. We’re already seeing this trend play out with recent articles from the New York Times piece on location data.

Academic research will also begin to reframe how people think about their rights. Harvard Professor Shoshana Zuboff’s book Surveillance Capitalism is one of the defining pieces that start new conversations around digital and data rights, and it’s no wonder that it was on Barack Obama’s list of favorite books of 2019 — putting it on the reading list of even more people this year and the years ahead.

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