People intuitively fear their data flowing where they can't see it.

If your data can flow invisibly and do some kind of diffuse, unknown harm to you in the future, that's scary.

Data is unlike physical things in that it can be copied for ~free ~immediately without affecting the original, and transmitted for ~free ~instantly.

What if you could make data more concrete, more rivalrous.

More like a physical thing that you can reason about.