On Data Hegemony and Monopolies
Edition #044
Introduction
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Everyone should decide how their digital data are used — not just tech companies.
by Jathan Sadowski, Salomé Viljoen & Meredith Whittaker
In this article in Nature, the authors call for creating, managing and curating behavioural data in public data trusts.
Here are the arguments that the authors put forth why this must be done:
They recommend a transformative change is needed due to the private monopolisation of data. Just like how patent knowledge comes into the public domain after intellectual-property rights expire, they recommend a similar approach for behavioural data.
Spain created a ‘city data commons’, giving residents control over how data about them and their communities were produced and the power to participate in governance decisions.
They suggest the following:
Public infrastructure to be built to fund and support the maintenance of large data sets for quantitative or qualitative research.
Take control and transfer data controlled by private entities to public institutions. Private entities have limited control of the data they create and own, say, three years.
Expand governance with the support of dedicated institutions to steward data in the public interest.
Read here
What Does Success Mean To You?
by ContraMinds Podcast
Hearing collective advice from different individuals versus listening to solo advice creates a different perspective. This is precisely what happens while listening to the ContraMinds Podcast - Recap 2022 edition.
Often, we always look at success relative to others:
- I am growing faster than my colleagues
- I am earning more than the other person
- I got promoted faster than my classmates
- I am doing better in life than my friend or colleagues
- I know more than them on this topic or subject area
But is this the form of success The ContraMinds Guests went behind? Or is this the success they believed in or aspired for? Have their views of success transformed over the years since they started working and seeing the world after so many years?
Just a quick snapshot of what success meant to each of these great guests, who are achievers in their own right.
Listen to the episode here:
The Master Switch
by Tim Wu at The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
Tim Wu is a policy advocate, a professor at Columbia Law School, and the chairman of the media reform organization Free Press. Wu was recognised in 2006 as one of 50 leaders in science and technology by Scientific American magazine, and in 2007 Wu was listed as one of Harvard's 100 most influential graduates by 02138 magazine.
In this speech, Tim Wu talks about how inventions go through a period of openness and then a period of a closed era, leading to monopolies and centralisation. This leads to the decay of inventive thinking and openness to change or adapt.
Tim asks a more important question - Is the internet going through this phase just like how media, information and communications industries grew and expanded 50 years back? He argues that leaders of these companies had the temptation of power, building as many touchpoints with as many large numbers of customers, thereby influencing their choice and thought.
Information industries have a low production cost and can create a scale plus network with immense possibilities. Therefore, the importance to have open networks or protocols.
On Data Hegemony and Monopolies
The views on data and monopolies brought up some interesting thoughts and perspectives. While, at one end, the firms that encourage bleeding-edge innovation seem to be the ones who end up restricting competition and influencing policies that work in their favour, they also become the ones that discourage openness, transparency and building further innovation. Why is it so?
Do monopolies encourage a particular behaviour as size and revenue get out of proportion? The interesting perspective is to look at the time elapsed between an invention and firms becoming market dominant. This happens over many decades, and the senior leadership within these companies’ change and insecure mindsets too may be driving this behaviour. The leaders of some of these early-stage companies, due to a scarcity and survival mindset, strove for breakthrough innovations during the early growth stage. However, over the years, it looks like the senior leaders who took over, has looked for scaffolding to protect the revenue and the head start they got. They had an ‘entitlement mindset’, which puts these companies back by many years. However, the boards don’t have any measurements for disaggregating revenue growth and revenue mix, as these senior leaders carry significant power and influencing capability. One mental model that works very well is Prof. Vijay Govindarajan’s Three-Box Solution which is an incredible way to manage company growth and revenue mix.
It is based on a very simple premise:
Manage the present - Keep the current business going
Selectively forget the past - Forget what made the business successful in the past
Create the future - Create a new model
This is an excellent place to start and get leaders to focus on this premise to disrupt ‘Monopolistic Thinking and Operational Mindsets.’
Speaking on data hegemony, this is a severe challenge facing companies that have built an internet-centric business model. Online users don’t understand that nothing is free on the internet. It is their data which is being traded between companies that sell products/brands to companies that hold this data. Like physical expressways that transport people and vehicles, digital info-ways are equivalent to expressways. Finding an innovative PPP( Public-Private Partnership) model is essential. Policymakers should look at a toll-booth switch for the digital world, which connects the buyers and sellers, but the control must lie with the data switch, which the customer owns. How solar roof-top panels have a way to send back additional electricity generated from the customer to the grid, thereby saving on electricity costs, a similar model for data hegemony must be looked at. A ‘data-toll meter’ can be created, which is identical to the solar rooftops model, acting as a conduit between the customers, businesses and internet platforms/ companies.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
Internet infrastructure needs to be a public digital good, which requires a radical new way of thinking and the implementation of rules by policymakers.
Success is best experienced when you have the right balance and alignment between intrinsic and extrinsic expectations or motivations. Think of success not relative to others but relative to self.
The declining decay principle: Highly successful, innovative companies transform into monopolistic institutions when they move from an open to a closed-era mindset and decision-making.