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Privacy. Transparency. Surveillance. Security gap. I can’t stand to hear the words anymore. They simply downplay a radical new condition: We no longer own ourselves.

You want proof? If personal data is the oil of the 21st century—a commodity companies pay billions of dollars for—then why aren’t we, the source of such data, the oil sheiks?

This new oil, this content, big data, it’s personal data—it's me. My digital personality. Today "going online" is no longer a choice or a potentiality, but rather a necessary condition of existence. It is essential. Part of me. I spend at least half of my time online: both professionally and privately. As Artie Vierkant recently said, we live in a “post-internet” reality. The internet is not a separate realm anymore, it’s become an integral part of life. My identity remains unified, but it’s become partially digital. We’re made of atoms and of bits. The internet is the externalization of my inner world. And this inner world is clearly linked to the rest of me.