Policy experts and technologists too often tacitly accept the concept of “data capitalism.” [thread] technologyreview.com/s/612588/its-t…
They see data either as a source of capital (e.g., Facebook uses data about me to target ads) or as a product of labor (e.g., I should be paid for the data that is produced about me). It is neither of these things.
Thinking of data as we think of a bicycle, oil, or money fails to capture how deeply relationships between citizens, the state, and the private sector have changed in the data era.
A new paradigm for understanding what data is—and what rights pertain to it—is urgently needed if we are to forge an equitable 21st-century polity.
