another day, another trillion digits 

   We all certainly have our hands full keeping track of our conscious day-to-day purchases.  But we make digital-era payments almost every minute of every hour, every day.  Some are big-ticket items; others, nickel-and-dime or even micro-cent transactions.  We don't always even notice them, let alone check who's making the money off them, and hoarding the data they get from you.  I don't know if anybody's ever calculated how many bytes of data a person generates in a day, these days.  Commute.  Make a couple of phone calls.  Download some music.  Heat your apartment.  Use your bank card.  Take a few pictures.  Send an email.  And a thousand other things.  And then a thousand more.  Billions!

    Managing those mega-billions of ones and zeroes generated by almost everything we do is worth trillions of data-dollars and millions of jobs.   It'll take some work, but our contacts and contributors will help us understand the secret life of software.

    That life includes the relentless march of new sources of entertainment that boost our cable fees and digital subscriptions.

    And the big one:  the silent-but-costly accounts we have with the profit-hungry financial world — through our bank accounts, credit cards and retirement savings.

    Where are the jobs in these sectors going?  Where are the profits going?  Who’s calling the shots?  Who deserves my business?