![OS POSITIVOS](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zKKfxaIfpU8/Wv1aApfmmBI/AAAAAAAARbk/X7F-ldyPjjE3TCXHeH3HZ2xeVNDugZDCgCKgBGAs/s1600/x_header-200.png")
Internet access as a fundamental human right: it is nearly impossible to imagine effective social participation -from employment, to education, to healthcare- without Internet access and know-how, even as these once flourishing networked spaces fall to a new and even more exploitative capitalist regime.
in "Master or Slave: The Fight for the Soul of Our Information Civilization"
Da mais recente Economist, cuja filiação ideológica não deverá requerer qualquer descrição até aos mais distraídos: está no nome. Especial novas economias no digital, vários artigos dos quais registamos os dois que se seguem.
Primeiro, porque até a esta publicação de pró-capital a dimensão dos novos titans assusta.
These titans—Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft—look unstoppable. They are the five most valuable listed firms in the world. Such dominance has prompted calls for the tech giants to be broken up. This newspaper has argued against such drastic action in the past.
But there is cause for concern. Internet companies’ control of data gives them enormous power. Old ways of thinking about competition, devised in the era of oil, look outdated in what has come to be called the "data economy". Antitrust authorities need to move from the industrial era into the 21st century.
in "The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data" 6 maio 2017
Porquê dessa urgência anti-monopólios? Porque os monopólios são maus, até que sejam teus.
What has changed? Smartphones and the internet have made data abundant, ubiquitous and far more valuable. Virtually every activity creates a digital trace. Meanwhile, artificial-intelligence (AI) techniques such as machine learning extract more value from data. Industrial giants such as GE and Siemens now sell themselves as data firms. This abundance of data changes the nature of competition.
The potential for incumbents to be blindsided by a startup in a garage or an unexpected technological shift [is] less likely in the data age. The giants’ surveillance systems span the entire economy: Google can see what people search for, Facebook what they share, Amazon what they buy. They have a "God’s eye view" of activities in their own markets and beyond. They can see when a new product or service gains traction, allowing them to copy it or simply buy the upstart before it becomes too great a threat.
in "The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data" 6 maio 2017
Soluções? Variantes do que já antes registámos por este espaço:
[To] loosen the grip that providers of online services have over data and give more control to those who supply them. More transparency would help: companies could be forced to reveal to consumers what information they hold and how much money they make from it.
in "The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data" 6 maio 2017
E da nova economia. Data, not dollars.
The quality of data has changed, too. They are no longer mainly stocks of digital information—databases of names and other well-defined personal data, such as age, sex and income. The new economy is more about analysing rapid real-time flows of often unstructured data: the streams of photos and videos generated by users of social networks, the reams of information produced by commuters on their way to work, the flood of data from hundreds of sensors in a jet engine.
in "Data is giving rise to a new economy" 6 maio 2017
Não é apenas uma questão de quantidade ou qualidade da informação, mas de ambas juntas pela primeira vez graças aos novos avanços na AI:
The value of data is increasing: data can be turned into any number of artificial-intelligence (AI) or "cognitive" services, some of which will generate new sources of revenue.
in "Data is giving rise to a new economy" 6 maio 2017
...Que por sua vez alimenta um loop crescente de mais informação.
"Data-network effect": using data to attract more users, who then generate more data, which help to improve services, which attracts more users.
in "Data is giving rise to a new economy" 6 maio 2017
Lucky us, nem tudo são rosas aos monopólios do amanhã. Da peça, algumas da dificuldades actuais que impendem hoje a distopia do amanhã.
Aquilo dos silos, mas em reverse:
The data economy, that term suggests, will consist of thriving markets for bits and bytes. But as it stands, it is mostly a collection of independent silos. Each stream of information is different. This lack of "fungibility" makes it difficult for buyers to find a specific set of data and to put a price on it: there is a disincentive to trade as each side will worry that it is getting the short end of the stick.
The pricing difficulty is an important reason why one firm might find it simpler to buy another, even if it is mainly interested in data.
in "Data is giving rise to a new economy" 6 maio 2017
Aquilo da ganância e do contrário da partilha desinteressada. Ie $$$:
Digital information, unlike oil, is also "non-rivalrous": it can be copied and used by more than one person (or algorithm) at a time, [pelo que] data can easily be used for other purposes than those agreed. And it adds to the confusion about who owns data.
in "Data is giving rise to a new economy" 6 maio 2017
Sem esse incentivo ao não partilhar secretamente entre si as suas BDs (bases de dados), estaríamos francamente pior.
E para uma revista pró-mercado, a sua conclusão é emblemática dos tempos a que parecemos ter chegado. Da sua conclusão, destaque nosso:
"Data workers of the world, unite!"
Já o tínhamos registado. Explicando.
Ao contrário dos silos que isolam a corporate data refinada pelos gigantes da indústria, we 'r all just too eager to please e trocamos valor por bugigangas:
[With] personal data the problem is the opposite to that with corporate data: people give personal data away too readily in return for "free" services. People do not know how much their data are worth, nor do they really want to deal with the hassle of managing them - terms and conditions for services are often impenetrable and users have no choice than to accept them.
in "Data is giving rise to a new economy" 6 maio 2017
Felizmente, esperemos, uma situação que não poderá persistir por muito mais tempo, se conseguirmos educar as pessoas para os seus hábitos digitais. Wink wink, OS POSITIVOS, wink wink.
For personal data, at least, the current model seems barely sustainable. As data become more valuable and the data economy grows in importance, data refineries will make all the money. Those who generate the data may balk at an unequal exchange that only sees them getting free services. AI services are not provided by algorithms but by the people who generate the raw material.
in "Data is giving rise to a new economy" 6 maio 2017
Infelizmente, e naquela que parece ser a advertência em todas as nossas entradas ao tópico, a dificuldade de sempre. Da última vez chamamos-lhe "complacência". Então como agora, chamem-lhe o que quiserem, será sempre o artsy-farsty.
The problem is getting people to understand that their data have value and that they are due some compensation.
"We need some sort of digital labour movement"
in "Data is giving rise to a new economy" 6 maio 2017
