Apple and Facebook should not commodify pregnancy

Indeed, our work schedules are being totally reshaped through the use of remote working platforms. In many cases this is for the better, though some studies suggest that there are limits to the benefits of working remotely.

The CEOs of these and other tech giants do not invest big money in such things as constructing and maintaining Cloud computing networks because they are good humanitarians.

They do so because personal data is the new global currency.

The emergence of Big Data sees mega-computers analysing all the data collected from the many internet-connected mobile gadgets sprinkled throughout our daily lives.

Mobile phones, CCTV cameras, cash registers and facial detection cameras mounted in LCD monitors all provide valuable information about human habits, aspirations and movements.

The volume of this information, this Big Data, is being used to predict marketing trends, economic shifts, voting patterns and even the flow of traffic through our streets.

The worlds of politics, business, advertising, investment, town planning and law enforcement all benefit from Big Data processes.

The companies that own the Big Data hardware are making huge money on this trade in data about us.

In a sense, we are being turned into tradable commodities. This worrying trend is addressed in books by such eminent philosophers and ethicists as Michael Sandel and Debra Satz.

Dr. Satz argues that some things in life should not be for sale, that markets should be subject to clear limits. Dr. Sandel similarly writes about the need for markets that serve us as opposed to markets that define us.

The volume of saleable data will explode as we move further into the age of the Internet of Things - or, as some have it, the Internet of Everything. By 2025 the developed world may have as many as 50 billion micro-processors built into mundane everyday objects, each of theml sending and receiving information from the internet.

Most new technologies come with the exciting promise of huge potential benefits. The Internet of Things will revolutionise everything from how we buy and sell to how our physical comfort is regulated. It will change for the better many of the more prosaic of everyday chores.