Data Sovereign Devices

We need to author data from devices that are sovereign from the hardware to datastore to the application. With the right technical skills you can extract data from devices you own but for most they have to sign-up to cloud apps. Do not get me wrong these are phenomenal services, they just require you to sign over your data from the get go and well, maybe sell it for their profit too.

The one hardware device I have focused on and this tells the story well, is wearables. I met the founder of Fitbit in SV when they were a small startup. I purchased an electronics kit from Texas Instrustrument and backed a few kickerstarter projects in the subsequent years, ones that would give you access to the data from the wearable, e.g. amiggo and the more well known pebble . Both went out of business. Others in recent years have come along PineTime and Bangle.js. But here is the other tradeoff, the quality of the data from true open hardware has been poor, the user experience far behind too. However, this is changing, the Bangle2 is much improved and the level of control over the data to be collected is fine, yes, the UX and hardware needs one or two more itterations, but we are heading in a more encouraging direction again.

What can be done for wearables needs to be done for all other devices, blood testing & glucose, DNA, to tractors and vechicles and even to satellites in space. A data sovereign world starts with data soverign devices.