Taming the Tech Titans: goodbye Exxon, hello Alexa…
Will we allow our new digital overlords to walk away with all the power and wealth that ‘personal data’ generates?
It happened almost overnight. Yesterday’s digital heroes have been recast as today’s ‘evil overlords’. Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are attracting attention they don’t like, from politicians, regulators, and ordinary people. Today’s Tech Titans are accused of being BAAD — Big, Anti-competitive, Addictive, and Destructive. Even, perhaps, destructive of democracy itself, as the recent furore over Facebook and Cambridge Analytica has highlighted.
Heading the charge sheet is the sin of profiteering. They have been making far too much money. From our personal data.
These new economic overlords have more detailed information about what we do and think than any organisation in history. The raw data they farm, from us and our mobiles, is stored and refined; piped around the world; processed in ways we can’t see; and traded, for large sums of money. The perpetrators of this have become, suddenly, the world’s most valuable companies — each now worth more than $500B, and competing to become the world’s first trillion dollar company.
Meanwhile the previously unchallenged king of the oil economy, Exxon, languishes at less than half the value of these new Titans. How has this happened? As The Economist recently said, ‘Data is the new oil’. And the figures prove it.
A Brief History of Titan Taming
We’ve been here before, though never with quite so much at stake.
Previous generations of Tech Titans also faced charges of being ‘overdominant’. In the 80s, it was IBM; in the 90s, national telcos; in the 00s, mobile operators. But each time, seemingly dominant and unchallengeable monopolies were comprehensively tamed. They are no longer a threat.
This looks like a rhythm that repeats itself about every 10 years. Can we rely on this happening again? The arrow of history seems to be on our side. But this time, it will need our active, personal participation. The recent news about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica reveals just what is happening to our data, behind the scenes. It gives some insight into how companies are making so much money from information that, apparently, we don’t think is important or valuable. We just tick the box and take the freebies that are offered in return.
As long as we continue to show that we don’t care what happens to our data, companies (and countries, and individuals with money) will continue to do what they like with it.
Or we can just carry on as we are and let the Titans walk over us. History won’t mind.
A Shift in the (Economic) Wind
Just 10 years ago, the world’s most valuable companies were the producers of oil, and of oil-consuming machinery: Exxon, GE, Total, Shell and their like. Now, in a dramatic switch that has no precedent in economic history, the list is headed by Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook — all now in the ‘$500B club’. In China, the story is the same but with a different cast of characters: Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu.
These are tech companies, but more importantly they are data companies. They are coming under fire for exerting too much dominance over all our lives.
These are tech companies, but more importantly they are data companies. That is why they have conquered the ‘Pre-Tech Titans’ of the industrial era, and why they are coming under fire for exerting too much dominance over all our lives. Data, it seems, is not only the new oil, but the basis for our personal — and social — identity. Especially the ‘digital’ identity that we all now have, and is an increasing part of who we are.
Back to the Future: Making Computing Personal
Back in the 1980s, the technology story was not data, but computing. The ‘Tech Titan’ of those days was IBM. What changed that was the personal computer — powered by the marvel of the age, the microprocessor. The Apollo Guidance Computer that powered NASA’s mission to the moon was constructed from thousands of individual components, wired together by hand. The microprocessor shrank these rackfuls of electronics — overnight — into a single silicon chip, and sparked a computing revolution that is continuing to play out today.
Microprocessors came from the Titans. They were first developed by Texas Instruments, the inventor of the original ‘silicon chip’, and Intel, originally for military applications. But ardent computing enthusiasts soon realised they could make it personal. Add a few additional components, a keyboard and a screen, and you had a personal, affordable version of the ‘computers’ that once filled entire rooms, and were available only to the largest organisations. A few small startups, Apple prominent among them, sold hobby kits from which you could ‘build your own computer’, followed soon after by fully-assembled ‘personal computers’. The rest is history.
Digital Ping Pong
This interaction between large tech corporations and individual enthusiasts began a game of ping pong which has been the pattern of digital development ever since. The advance of technology into our lives would never have happened without both the corporate giants, and the enthusiastic, often amateur, revolutionaries. Who quickly realised they knew better than the ‘big boys’ what the market wanted, and how to deliver it. This intergenerational game has supplied the underlying drumbeat of digital development ever since.
Today’s startups become tomorrow’s corporate giants, who are in turn displaced by their own insurgents
Today’s startups become tomorrow’s corporate giants, who are in turn displaced by their own insurgents. It is ‘digital’ that makes this possible. When oil dominated, we did not have a chance to play the game — unless we happened to own land with oil beneath it. But data, we all own. Due to the previous ‘digital revolutions’, we all have entry to the digital world. Processing, and even AI, are easily and cheaply available. The same ‘Tech Titans’ are falling over themselves to sell it to us, at very competitive rates.
‘Data’ amounts to ‘knowledge of us’. This time, it’s really personal. And it’s more important — more valuable — than ever before. So do we care enough to take personal control of the data that we, ourselves, generate?
Where the revolution is taking us next is entirely up to us. But in the game of ping pong, history suggests we are overdue a return of serve from our end of the table.
Do we want to share in some of the extraordinary value (in all senses) that the ownership and processing of data generates? The Cambridge Analytica/Facebook saga has provided a wakeup call, exposing what is happening under our noses. The question is: do we care enough to do something about it?
Beyond Good and Evil
‘Big’ is not necessarily ‘evil’. But too much asymmetry in the use of a radically new source of power and wealth can lead to undesirable results. It turns out that ‘personal data’ has even more impact on all our lives, and even more potential to generate wealth, than either ‘personal computing’ or ‘personal communications’ did. We know how those stories turned out. The personal data story is just beginning, and it is up to us what part we play in it.
