“Data as oil” has been the default metaphor to describe the way the capture, processing and repurposing of our personal information is changing the world, one typically used by the perpetrators of these practices.

Like oil, our personal information can be tapped by private companies and government, tracked by fossickers following a user’s web journey, and refined by data scientists looking for patterns in its usage.

Like oil, this refined data then powers new forms of energy, personalised marketing, behaviour-modifying platforms and smart new algorithms that replace the need for costly human workers.

And like oil, it may get a little messy when some of the resource is compromised or someone drills in the wrong place but, hey, isn’t that the price of progress?

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In fact, the argument goes, data is even better than oil because while oil is a finite resource, new reservoirs of data are created every time a smart new application of network technology comes online.

Voice-activated home organisers? More data! Driverless cars? Even more data! Smart cities? Keep it coming! Facial recognition? Now I’m salivating! Every move, every scroll, every human impulse adds to the pool and all it takes is a simple click of the consent box to produce some more.

Underpinning the oil narrative is the assumption that the more data we collect, the smarter its application and the better off we will all be. Data is both sustainable and renewable, a magic energy source that will drive our future prosperity.

But as results in last week’s Essential Report, released on Thursday to coincide with the launch of the Australia Institute’s new Centre for Responsible Technology (which I am excited to be leading) show, a strong majority of Australians are beginning to voice discomfit at the way their personal information has become this combustible resource.

These results speak to an alternative energy analogy that sees the collection and storage of our personal information more like uranium: delicate to hold, dangerous to use and impossible to dispose of safely.

In this telling the harvesting of personal information can have toxic side-effects for the individual whose details are rendered and the broader society who must live with its radioactive consequences.

Like a child who learns to walk before it has attained spatial awareness, organisations are blundering about with massive troves of our personal yellowcake but little idea of how to handle it safely, or even what to do with it.

From the addictive design of social platforms such as Facebook and their inbuilt tendency to drive division, to the constant expansion of the government’s ability to monitor the movements of its citizens, the products of personal information seem less than their promise.

One of the ways the public has been kept out of the debate about the use of personal information is to mystify the process. “Data” sounds technical, like this is something only experts can understand, rather than what it is: the collection of our online behaviour, down to the content of our emails, our geographical footprint, even our verbal conversations.

But these results speak to a growing appetite for the establishment of rules around the collection of what is ours, including a set of guardrails for the collection of information and red lines that should never be crossed.

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The general data protection regulation adopted by the European Union is the first serious attempt to codify citizens’ rights to their personal information, but is only a loose failsafe, with the “right to be forgotten” assuming there is an underlying right to collect the information in the first place.

Meanwhile there is a broader question that is rarely canvassed. Should certain types of personal information be collected at all? Would the world be happier and more secure if there were more explicit protocols that prevented the collection and storage of information unless there was a compelling reason to the contrary?

I think these results are a warning for the “data as oil” brigade that the collapse of the social contract is real.

When people refuse to share their health records online they are sending a clear message they don’t trust the “internet” with something so personal. When they see Facebook’s chief executive defending his company’s policy of allowing political lies online, they can see a link with the rise of extremist, borderline authoritarian politics that is thriving across the west. Even national security is no longer accepted as a justification in and of itself for collection of our most personal of information.

Supporters of the “data as oil” metaphor will push back and say people are consenting to the use of their personal information when they click the box to join an online platform, but as a second question in this week’s report shows, very few of us actually fully read the terms.

The striking thing about the two tables taken together is that we are clearly uncomfortable about the very things we are blindly accepting. Every time we log on to our favourite social media platform, each time we search on Google, each time we take the rewards card or the bonus points we are feeding the same data beast that is making us feel uncomfortable.

Given these numbers it’s hard to argue our online consent is informed. Often the terms of service are so indecipherable – pages of legalese – that people just click to get on with it, never realising what they are giving up.

Worse, the choice is binary, there is no nuance in the exchange between user and platform, no “maybe” or “only this information” or “only for these purposes”. Instead the ultimatum is stark: consent to what we demand or lose touch with your families and friends.

The good news is that these insights present a pretty compelling theory of change: to recognise the value of our information and make informed choices about its use would be a meaningfully disruptive act.

Like saying “no” when you are asked to approve of “cookies”, those inexplicably creepy embedded codes that attach themselves to you and record your online activities for the commercial benefit of the online platform you are visiting.

Like choosing to use online platforms that make their money from the services they provide and not the incidental data about your behaviour that they collect.

Like asserting sovereignty over your online footprint and pushing back on anyone who asserts it’s theirs not yours and using your power as a consumer to favour businesses that keep their paws off your information.

We are at the start of this journey towards public data literacy, and its importance will only intensify as artificial intelligence develops, creating self-evolving models based on the ongoing surveillance and algorithmic interpretation of our personal behaviour.

It begins with developing a simple language around how our information is being used. About what is OK and what is not OK. And ultimately about asserting our power to say no.

• Peter Lewis is the executive director of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company and the director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology