The Rise of the Data Natives

A longer version of this article appeared in Recode two years ago, before Amazon Echo, Tesla Autopilot, Google Photos and the AI hype. Since then, it has inspired a conference that is now a yearly event, and we're all becoming data natives (or at least really well-assimilated data immigrants). A few years ago, YouTube was abuzz with viral videos of toddlers pinching magazines with their fingers as they would an iPad. These children were heralded as members of a new generation of digital natives: People who grew up surrounded by computers, shaped by always-on technology and the Internet. We are now witnessing a new revolution -- that of data natives who expect their world to be "smart" and seamlessly adapt to their taste and habits.