who owns the data?
Incorporating notes from: Who Owns the Future, Jaron Lanier
Lanier's website
Seems like data is a pretty big commodity right now, generated in so many ways that it would be difficult to quantify all of them. The data is coming from all of us in all kinds of interactions and, in many cases, is available in public places. The person who can leverage any/some of that data makes money--the data itself often costs nothing, although some data is purchased.
In the old world, that data was not easily accessible, if at all. And, there were not quick and easy methods of aggregating the data (here I'm not saying it's easy to develop equations that make useful predictions of the data only that machines can crunch that data in ways previously unimaginable).
Courts don't seem to know for sure if that data should be open to everyone and all uses. Should it be free? If someone should be paid for it, who and how?
Lanier seems to be suggesting that people should get paid, in some way, for their data as it is used on the internet. So if insurance companies are gathering it to draw conclusions about how to insure others, they should be paying the owners of that data. If Walmart is gathering info to figure out which stores will sell which products, they should be paying. If Amazon is gathering info to determine its pricing, they should be paying.
Lanier is arguing that as technology becomes more ubiquitous, the slogan information wants to be free ends up contributing to unequal wealth distribution with, as usual, the losers being those at the bottom. All those people will have left when technology has replaced many jobs is their data.
Addendum from Lanier's essay, "How Should We Think About Privacy" from Scientific American, Nov. 13, paper, p. 65-68.
First, a note on reading this essay, I find Lanier very difficult to comprehend. It's like he's saying something that I can vaguely understand out of the corner of my eye/mind but I just can't quite grasp it. I've read You are not a gadget as well, and had the same feeling. Not quite sure why his happens. . .
Anyway, in this essay Lanier is arguing that paying for data might be the best way to deal with privacy issues because attempting to tighten privacy is like trying to repair the barn door after the horse has left and the idea that no privacy is the best way to protect privacy actually leads to he with the most powerful computer (and thus the most ability to manipulate and manage data) wins. Apparently, he is currently collaborating with the Palo Alto Research Center and Santa Fe Institute to examine what happens when information takes on a price. I found this link to W Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute, http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~wbarthur/
Arthur is a believer in "complexity economics", which, from a brief preview, appears to be the idea that economics is contextual. Here is a brief quote from his article on his website:
" I will argue that this new approach is not just an extension of standard economics, nor
does it consist of adding agent-based behavior to standard models. It is a different way of
seeing the economy. It gives a different view, one where actions and strategies constantly
evolve, where time becomes important, where structures constantly form and re-form,
where phenomena appear that are not visible to standard equilibrium analysis, and where a
meso-layer between the micro and the macro becomes important. This view, in other words,
gives us a world closer to that of political economy than to neoclassical theory, a world that
is organic, evolutionary, and historically-contingent. "
Lanier's website
Seems like data is a pretty big commodity right now, generated in so many ways that it would be difficult to quantify all of them. The data is coming from all of us in all kinds of interactions and, in many cases, is available in public places. The person who can leverage any/some of that data makes money--the data itself often costs nothing, although some data is purchased.
In the old world, that data was not easily accessible, if at all. And, there were not quick and easy methods of aggregating the data (here I'm not saying it's easy to develop equations that make useful predictions of the data only that machines can crunch that data in ways previously unimaginable).
Courts don't seem to know for sure if that data should be open to everyone and all uses. Should it be free? If someone should be paid for it, who and how?
Lanier seems to be suggesting that people should get paid, in some way, for their data as it is used on the internet. So if insurance companies are gathering it to draw conclusions about how to insure others, they should be paying the owners of that data. If Walmart is gathering info to figure out which stores will sell which products, they should be paying. If Amazon is gathering info to determine its pricing, they should be paying.
Lanier is arguing that as technology becomes more ubiquitous, the slogan information wants to be free ends up contributing to unequal wealth distribution with, as usual, the losers being those at the bottom. All those people will have left when technology has replaced many jobs is their data.
Addendum from Lanier's essay, "How Should We Think About Privacy" from Scientific American, Nov. 13, paper, p. 65-68.
First, a note on reading this essay, I find Lanier very difficult to comprehend. It's like he's saying something that I can vaguely understand out of the corner of my eye/mind but I just can't quite grasp it. I've read You are not a gadget as well, and had the same feeling. Not quite sure why his happens. . .
Anyway, in this essay Lanier is arguing that paying for data might be the best way to deal with privacy issues because attempting to tighten privacy is like trying to repair the barn door after the horse has left and the idea that no privacy is the best way to protect privacy actually leads to he with the most powerful computer (and thus the most ability to manipulate and manage data) wins. Apparently, he is currently collaborating with the Palo Alto Research Center and Santa Fe Institute to examine what happens when information takes on a price. I found this link to W Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute, http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~wbarthur/
Arthur is a believer in "complexity economics", which, from a brief preview, appears to be the idea that economics is contextual. Here is a brief quote from his article on his website:
" I will argue that this new approach is not just an extension of standard economics, nor
does it consist of adding agent-based behavior to standard models. It is a different way of
seeing the economy. It gives a different view, one where actions and strategies constantly
evolve, where time becomes important, where structures constantly form and re-form,
where phenomena appear that are not visible to standard equilibrium analysis, and where a
meso-layer between the micro and the macro becomes important. This view, in other words,
gives us a world closer to that of political economy than to neoclassical theory, a world that
is organic, evolutionary, and historically-contingent. "
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