Data is the future, I hear. Well, if it’s not already the present.

How is data created? As the Merovingian would say, something must be the cause for its effect.

In the digital world, data is generated through event handlers, or some kind of lever. That lever is an action of some sort. Mostly it’s a human doing something physical like clicking a mouse button or snapping a picture on a camera. Events can trigger other events, but there’s always a root.

Eventually, the ultimate event handler will be time. Every millisecond data will be generated everywhere, monitoring everything we do.

I can imagine a future were every millisecond data is being gathered. Our clothes, our objects, our digital lives—we’re going to be monitored and every second data will be gathered about us.

Time will eventually be the ultimate event handler.