Forty years ago, it took a four-drawer filing cabinet to store 10,000 documents. Now, it takes up no physical space at all to store 10,000 documents on the cloud. As data storage has evolved, so too has the information landscape, and with it the challenges of storing, transferring, and appropriately using people's personal data. An exhibition by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which opened at Manchester Central Library, charts the evolution of data privacy through 40 items. Each item has been chosen to illustrate how access to information has evolved, or how data has been at the heart of some of the biggest news events of the past four decades. The exhibition, which is also available to view online, includes items such as a Pokémon toy, a floppy disk, a Tesco Clubcard, a modem, a millennium bug pamphlet, a football shirt, and a Covid vaccination card. Other exhibits highlight how the ICO has made changes in society, from ending the "employment deny list" in the construction industry to the introduction of public food hygiene ratings for restaurants. The ICO was founded 40 years ago, as the UK's data protection regulator, responsible for presiding over a new Data Protection Act. Since then, the landscape overseen by the regulator has changed beyond all recognition. Today, people have "tens of thousands of times" more personal data out in the world than they did when the role was created. The biggest challenge, according to Information Commissioner John Edwards, has been trying to keep up with the pace of change. "Companies innovate very quickly, we regulate and investigate very slowly," he said. "I think part of the objective of an investigation is to put some lines in the sand for companies to say: 'You can't do this,'" he added. "But if it takes us three years to do that, then all the companies have moved on by the time we learn that lesson. So that's the biggest challenge, and that's something we've got to get better at." What will data and privacy look like in 40 years' time? "Look, I don't know where we're going to be four weeks from now," Edwards said. "The geopolitical situation is really kind of volatile at the moment. We've got an environment where US tech firms are pushing back on a lot of regulation that affects them, even when it's in a jurisdiction that they want to do business in. We haven't seen how that's going to play out." "Quantum computing has the potential to change everything," he added. "Agentic AI is the next AI coming down the pipeline. It's going to be really fascinating even the next 12 months, let alone the next 40 years."
