The future is all about data. Stuff that’s produced by people like you and me. And how it is distributed, used and re-used.
Data you generate. Data that cannot exist without you. Now that data is valuable, it is the new lock-in. Anyone can build another auction site, but 200 million ratings can’t be acquired overnight. Anyone can build another bookstore, but 10 million reviews can’t be acquired overnight. Google. Amazon. eBay. Flickr. Facebook. YouTube. Everything where the value is created via data you create in the first place.
Is there such a thing as digital philosophy? If so, I think I’ve found one. A digital philosopher that is.
JP Rangaswami is chief scientist at British Telecom (BT). He writes a blog under the name Confused of Calcutta. I only discovered him today.
And I’m not sure I understand everything he’s saying. But what I like is that he’s challenging our existing paradigms (man after my own heart).
This piece, sent via twitter today is called Musings about evil. And he talks about the importance of data and careful experimentation.
It took IBM 40 years to “become evil”. It took Microsoft 20. It took Google 10. It took Facebook 5. It took Twitter 2.5…….
Actually nobody “became evil”. Becoming evil is not suddenly getting easier. What we’re seeing is the confluence of a number of trends:
- Growth in the power of the consumer, in consumerism, a post-Nader, post-Sixties phenomenon
- Advances in information transmission and reproduction, particularly with the advent of the internet and the web
- Emergent affordability and ubiquity of edge devices that increase the number of people connected to each other
He contends that despite the huge amount of change that is occurring, business, and ways of doing business, have not changed. Which is creating problems.
No new business models have emerged … since the year dot, there have only been three ways of collecting value for services provided: pay-per-drink, all-you-can-eat, get-someone-else-to-pay. We have a litany of terms for the third way: advertising, sponsorship, patronage, gifting, subsidy, freemium, it doesn’t matter. There are still only three models.
The way we store, share and use data is becoming incredibly important.
These are some of the reasons why privacy and sharing and not-sharing are needing to be discussed, understood, legislated for. These are some of the reasons why identity and intellectual property and net neutrality are critical issues, issues that must be resolved in a sensible way.
It’s going to take some time before we have the conventions, practices and laws to make the digital landscape the land of the free and the home of the brave. Until then, our watchword should be careful experimentation. But experimentation nevertheless.
Read his piece. And think about this stuff.
This thinking lies at the heart of the issues that underpin copyright in the digital age. We must do some new thinking about what we produce, how important it is, who gets to use it and how they use it. Government can and should have an enabling role in this I believe.
If you’re interested, my speech in the first reading of the Govt’s Copyright Bill (replacement to Section 92A) raised some of these issues. The big question is, what to do about it?
Hat tip: @LaurenceMillar
Yes, better leglislation around privacy!
Thank you! I’ve been harping on about this stuff for the last couple of years. There have been a few strange moments where it suddenly felt like I’d grown a second head. The stunned look I’ve recieved when asking the simple question:
“Who owns the data?”
Simple question. And I don’t just mean contractually but effectively. When a community comes together or forms online their choice in the services they use, do they have any concept of how their choice of today is going to effect them tomorrow? A year from now? 3 years away? Can they take their data with them? Or has the number of convinient choices blindsided them into just thinking about what’s easy?
I don’t think legislation is the answer here. I do think people need to be aware of what they’re potentially signing away and how much those things are worth.
Regards,
Nevyn.
nevyn
education of the populace is crucial. For example apaparently the majority think the three strikes law is a good thing… it must be in part because it isnt clear to 0 hem that not only cannot it not be shown to reduce crime (as some claim) it can be proven it wont, Sound bite politics, means we get into stuff that wont work, and spend millions or more later cleaning it up, instead of millions into things that will actually achieve what we want.
Completely uninspired by Labour’s position on this.
I will definitely NOT vote Labour if this continues to be the party’s position.
Legislation like this is locking the gate well and truly after the horse has bolted (similar to ‘P’ legislation).
Where was the communication with party members on their general feel towards copyright infringement and file sharing?
Microsoft anyone? Not only have they used the laws created at the beginning (and probably some from before) of the Industrial Revolution to lock in their monopoly they’ve also been locking in the customer by using planned obsolescence. Win7 isn’t exactly compatible with Vista and Vista wasn’t exactly compatible with XP etc etc. As applications will be written for the new OS and not the old it means that people need to upgrade. Their monopoly (yes, someone with 95% of market share has a monopoly) needs to be broken and only governments could do that and they only have one way of doing so – declaring Windows to be an Open Standard. See my take here. Without Windows becoming an open standard we’ll be stuck with a choice of one supplier for computer OS.
BTW, Windows is just one example. Smart Meters are likely to end up being another one.
Agree with him fully there. These acts of government are acts to try and maintain monopolies in a world where such artificial monopolies are seriously restricting the worlds creativity.
And that is, IMO, the most damming sentence in the whole article. It also happens to be true as seen in the delusional rantings of John Key about how we need the rich. When everyone becomes a producer consumerism fails and the present hierarchy collapses.
Copyright has had its day.
Copyrite is a ceremony of taking the wealth of thinking from the world around you, constructing a slant on it and calling it your own, and some would have it be forever.
No person works in a vacuum. We pay no one royalties when a wheel is made, an egg is cooked or a house is built to look like a pyramid.
Gates did a dirty on IBM when he wrote IBM dos as un be known to IBM who paid him to do that, gates also wrote a parallel dos using the same commands with similar processes and called it PCDOS. He released this after IBM had established their PC architecture in the marketplace to run on IBM clone machines.
Grand piracy from within.
The commands used in both IBM Dos and PC Dos were based on CPM commands which the industry was familiar with hence a relatively easy uptake of the new IBM Dos.
Gates gained ownership of those commands by buying up a tiny software company where the main brains that wrote CPM started their working career. That legally gave him enough ownership of the commands to prevent successful suite.
His empire is built on the backs of IBM and others.
The M$ Corp spends heaps on preventing piracy as they know full well what such activities can facilitate – first hand. You pay for this if you buy M$
Linux on the other hand is free and shared world wide in hundreds of flavours. A cooperative Linux community with a richness of human aspiration to assist in a common cause. The very essence of real human wealth as opposed to the narrow greed and intense looting of opportunity M$ opitomises.
Linux has no advertising promotion. advice is free and development done out of interest and social reward.
It has become so successful that some Governments have dropped M$ for Linux.
Not a bad progress record to date and a growing % of users by the day in spite of much of the tide still running with the M$ systems supplied at a wicked price.
Linux has no downloads to update security nor virus problems. Microsoft has major ongoing problems.
The world is only dictated to by corporates if you let it happen.
Fair reward for inventive or creative effort is hard to assess and certainly most of the copyright wealth does not go to the inventive individual but to corporates who also flout copyright held be those who cannot afford to battle in the courts.
Copyright should also be bought up by government to reward the individual and yet make the advantage of the innovation freely available with what ever public tags are deemed useful for the nation.
Any length of copyright period shoulds be scaled according to the worth to society. Nothing should be permanently protected and most copyright should expire in a short period.
DTB
Do we need the rich when the wealth comes from society anyway and they just happen to have collected it.
Many of our social problems stem from this situation of leaving a tiny amount left to share with the bulk of society.
This kind of stuff is about to touch NZers in a very personal way. Are not medical records going to be capable of access online? The Privacy Act will govern how data is stored etc etc security of it and so on (although we’ve already seen a Cabinet Minister choosing to ignore those safeguards)… now, hackers? Some hackers may be commercially motivated, hired guns to access records for marketing pitches?
The law moves slower than technology, that has certainly been highlighted in the last decade or so. It is not good for data to be out of the box, then try to put he lid on later.
I’ve been saying for a long time that we do not need the rich and that they actually get in the way of making this (any) society better.
As for Linux. It’s a great OS and the development model is awesome. The problem is that if you really want to get anything done then the chances are that you’re going to need Windows which is why I keep calling for it to be made an open standard. If that happens then all that R&D going into Linux will go into producing a better Windows compatible OS.
DTB
Agreed with the compatibility issue.
The problem is M$ in not a standard worth following. The design of M$ is inferior and shonky hence M$ has to follow their own poor path of compatibility with each new attempt to rectify the problems and meeting new market innovations. A sorry mess but still makes billions.
The pedigree of Linux is older than M$ and based on Unix which still out performs any M$ network / server system.
Whenever you see Apache appear on a site then that is just one of the very reliable and stable systems which run for years without a crash.
M$ has captures a large section of the market and hold us all to ransom with its captive customers. M$ is attempting to coerce and frighten off governments from dropping M$ products and have big bucks spent on this unscrupulous corruption of users rights.
They cannot succeed as open source is not based on M$ but M$ copied a lot of the innovations from open source. Its the old US cartel at work ruling by fear and massive dollars employing protectionist ruses using dollars extracted from the paying public.
There are ways around M$ compatibility issues and they are all legal. It but some individual skill is needed at this stage.
Change is happening just as commonsense has to prevail.
Some snippets:
http://linuxologist.com/linux-general/10-governments-running-linux-you-probably-didnt-know-about/
http://www.linux.org/news/govt.html
http://www.linux.org/info/linux_govt.html
Open Office is a massive start but some small compatibility quirks still remain with microsoft using their own standard. They refuse to comply with more open standards available.
What is new with big dollars trying to control power extracted form the common citizen.