The new data economy
Tuesday, 16 September 2003 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eHere is an interesting thought.
I was musing today on why most people still haven't caught onto the incredible change that has crept up on the world with the advent of a data economy. My insight came from considering magic and spells.
Those who believe in magic spells have made a mistake in confusing the words for the thing they represent. Religious people and patriots commonly do this too. The book or the flag is revered, rather than the concept it symbolises. When people utter a magical chant they think that the words have some sort of power. It comes from the old days when reading and writing were special capabilities mastered only by a small minority of privileged people. Illiterate folks seeing someone read the "magical" symbols and utter strange incantations (as in adding and multiplying numbers for instance) would naturally mistake the symbols for the knowledge they represented.
Well, it is a similar thing now with opposition to the data economy. A file is not important; the data contained within it is. People are mistaking the physical representation for the data that it symbolises. Data can't really be stolen. Once it has left your control then... well, you no longer control it. It is not like bricks or bicycles where theft means that someone is now worse off -- they lose that object. When data is duplicated there is suddenly more wealth in the world. For the first time in history we can increase the wealth and knowledge of humanity almost without bounds. Previously there was something like conservation of mass that restricted how widely wealth could be distributed. An object always remained a single object. If someone got richer somebody else got poorer. Now a single object can easily become thousands of objects at virtually no cost. The first time this happened, with the introduction of the printing press, it was vehemently opposed. It was clear to all that the information rightly belonged in the hands of the priests and aristocracy and should not find its way into the hands of the common people. After all, that would lead to the breakdown of society, right? Similar arguments are being used now to oppose data sharing and to fence in "Intellectual Property" (IP).
Instead of crying about how data sharing doesn't fit with the old way of doing things we should simply recognise that data is different and move on to developing a workable economy that can utilise this wonderful new capability. If we don't, somebody else will... and they will inherit this new technology's great benefits while we squabble amongst ourselves... and our children simply miss out.
I was musing today on why most people still haven't caught onto the incredible change that has crept up on the world with the advent of a data economy. My insight came from considering magic and spells.
Those who believe in magic spells have made a mistake in confusing the words for the thing they represent. Religious people and patriots commonly do this too. The book or the flag is revered, rather than the concept it symbolises. When people utter a magical chant they think that the words have some sort of power. It comes from the old days when reading and writing were special capabilities mastered only by a small minority of privileged people. Illiterate folks seeing someone read the "magical" symbols and utter strange incantations (as in adding and multiplying numbers for instance) would naturally mistake the symbols for the knowledge they represented.
Well, it is a similar thing now with opposition to the data economy. A file is not important; the data contained within it is. People are mistaking the physical representation for the data that it symbolises. Data can't really be stolen. Once it has left your control then... well, you no longer control it. It is not like bricks or bicycles where theft means that someone is now worse off -- they lose that object. When data is duplicated there is suddenly more wealth in the world. For the first time in history we can increase the wealth and knowledge of humanity almost without bounds. Previously there was something like conservation of mass that restricted how widely wealth could be distributed. An object always remained a single object. If someone got richer somebody else got poorer. Now a single object can easily become thousands of objects at virtually no cost. The first time this happened, with the introduction of the printing press, it was vehemently opposed. It was clear to all that the information rightly belonged in the hands of the priests and aristocracy and should not find its way into the hands of the common people. After all, that would lead to the breakdown of society, right? Similar arguments are being used now to oppose data sharing and to fence in "Intellectual Property" (IP).
Instead of crying about how data sharing doesn't fit with the old way of doing things we should simply recognise that data is different and move on to developing a workable economy that can utilise this wonderful new capability. If we don't, somebody else will... and they will inherit this new technology's great benefits while we squabble amongst ourselves... and our children simply miss out.