Data (and the generalized, universal data-ification) is the new “gold”, the new endless raw material of bio-informational capitalism. The 4th industrial revolution relies everywhere on data: on their collection, management and processing, on their capitalist exploitation. All the announced miracles of the 4th industrial revolution, from the internet of things to the cloud, from personalized medicine to the universal mediation/mechanization of everyday life, are based on data or pass through them.
It would not be possible to underestimate this development. In this issue we publish translated a very recent (August 21) article by Dennis Snower 1 on what he himself calls “Redemption from digital slavery”. The interest of the article, apart from the author’s “prestige”, is that it aims to contribute to shaping a “left” ideological direction regarding the “data” issue, which in our opinion is dangerously manipulative; while it speaks about “freedom”. Precisely for this reason, a second text follows, our own.
Without prejudging further your reading and opinion on Snower’s article, we note that it focuses on:
– what he calls “digital slavery”, that is, the free provision of our data, which should be replaced (as he argues) by our ability to sell it; and
– what he calls “digital identity”, meaning it as the capable and necessary form of securing our individual ownership over our data.
We must clarify that neither of these two issues is “yesterday’s news.” Nor is Snower the first or, at least, the most famous person to support the positions you will read about next. He is someone among others, within a broader propaganda campaign in favor of big data, which, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, has been around for a few years. However, because various “public opinion polls” show that in continental Europe, contrary to what is happening in the Anglophone world (USA, England, Australia) and in East Asia (Japan, China), there is strong skepticism toward the wonders of the “big data” kind, Shower’s effort may perhaps have particular significance…
Ziggy Stardust
digital work handling
Imagine a new kind of slavery – let’s call it slavery 2.0. The slaves work for free for their owners; in exchange, the owners provide the slaves with free food, clothing, and shelter. Additionally – and this is the new addition – the slaves are free to leave their owners whenever they want, but if they do, they must leave behind all their possessions, their friends and relationships, their reputation, and all external aspects of their identity. Could a labor market built on such a system be considered efficient and fair?
The obvious answer: Silly question, of course not. But this silly question has become particularly significant for all of us today, since we are slaves 2.0 in the digital world. We provide information about ourselves for free. This free labor allows digital networks – the “Big Five” (Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) – to accumulate huge profits. In exchange, they give us free apps and other internet services. We are free to leave any network we participate in, but if we do, we must leave behind everything within these networks – our related information, our contacts, others’ opinions about us, our digital identities. We have no property rights over the data we generate, and only by generating such data can we gain benefits from the digital networks we participate in. This relationship between digital networks and their users is digital slavery 2.0.
An ineffective and unfair system
This system is inefficient, since markets cannot produce efficiency when the exchange of goods—individuals’ information in exchange for certain internet services—is free. It is the equivalent of the old slaves who offered free labor in exchange for free food, clothing, and shelter. There is, of course, no natural guarantee that the marginal value of the free internet services received by each individual equals the marginal value of the information they give about themselves. On the contrary. We have every reason to believe that the value of the information users give to network owners is much greater than the value of the services they receive for free—just as the marginal value of slaves’ labor far exceeded the marginal value of the food, clothing, and shelter they received in exchange. People with upgraded credentials in data production have no incentive to utilize their talents if the data they provide is free. Free data, on the other hand, provides no incentive for developing skills that could improve internet services.
These kinds of inefficiencies are tolerated by digital service providers because what they lose due to them, they gain back and more through the power they acquire in the market via digital slavery 2.0. Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, argues that data today is abundant and, consequently, almost worthless, while network designers are few and, accordingly, produce most of the value in digital services. This claim is self-referential. It is analogous to claiming that slaves’ labor, at the height of slavery, was abundant and that most of the value was produced by the designers of the plantations where the slaves worked. It is impossible to calculate the marginal contribution of data providers and digital network designers when one of these groups works for free. Moreover, as Posner and Weyl (2018) point out, it is far from certain that the marginal value of data generated by network users declines as its quantity increases, given that this data is used to construct algorithms for increasingly complex issues (such as facial and emotional recognition, as well as predictions of behaviors and consciousness).
Apart from being inefficient, the system is also unjust, since the owners of digital networks hold overwhelming power. They control access to the digital data on which users rely, much like the old slave owners controlled access to their slaves’ basic needs. The fact that slave owners gave something of value to their slaves did not make the exchange fair. Slave owners were able to exercise their power in the market for their own benefit, just as the owners of digital networks do today.
The solution: digital detox
There is a dynamic solution to this outrageously unfair and wasteful system: digital empowerment. Just as empowerment from old slavery gave slaves property rights over the services they provided, so empowerment from digital slavery must give users property rights over the data they produce.
Since users do not have ownership rights over their data, they generally do not know how their information is being used. They are targets of manipulative advertising that exploits their data. They are exposed to attacks from hackers. They are largely powerless in the hands of global digital monopolies. They are exposed to digital automation, enabling machines to take over routine jobs they do, without having the ability to create new, user-generated types of work. All these problems can be overcome through recognizing ownership rights for digital users, for providing their data.
There is a small but growing number of visionary politicians calling for such reform. Recently, at the Global Solutions Summit, Chancellor Merkel proposed that digital data should be priced and users should be able to sell it. One should not hesitate to support such reform – improving data protection, giving users more information about how their data is used, etc. – since there is no doubt that strong voices from special digital interest groups will ask us to hesitate. An inclusive solution – one that would provide real empowerment – is feasible. We have the knowledge and technology to implement it. What is needed now is political will.
The solution could be called a Digital Freedom Pass (DFP). This DFP would mean that every individual would have a digital equivalent of a wallet, which would contain priced pieces of his/her digital identity. In addition, each person would have a private key, which would allow access to his wallet and encrypted data by an unlimited but only approved set of other individuals. In this way, the person would have control over which of his data he shares, with whom, and when. This would make the person “sovereign” over his digital identity, a condition that could be called “self-sovereign identity.”
In the world of technology, “digital identity” is information about an entity (for example, an individual) that represents that entity. Digital identity is created from the use of personal information and the actions of individuals on the internet. In the real world, each of us is the provider of our identity details, since we produce the characteristics that allow others to recognize us. On the internet we have “identity providers”, which supply us with recognition indicators (often a password) that are valid within specific domains, proving that we are who we claim to be. Consequently, identity providers focus on those of our characteristics that relate to their own organization and its characteristics and goals. These identification characteristics belong to the digital organization, not to us. Thus, ultimately, we acquire a large number of online personalities scattered across various companies. In contrast, “self-sovereign identity” keeps our identity in our own hands.
Digital identities must be “secure,” which means they must meet privacy and truth specifications. “Security” means that only approved recipients will have access to your digital identity; “truth” means that the information included in your digital identity is correct. The Cambridge Analytica scandal and others like it show that there are serious privacy-related problems. The absence of a background check for the authenticity of information that users provide to digital identity providers creates counterfeiting problems.
Prerequisites for the success of digital transformation
Self-sovereign identity gives individuals control over their digital identity, granting them full access to their data; something that is unprecedented in today’s digital landscape. Everyone’s digital identity should be stable, persistent, portable, interoperable, and secure. These characteristics have been recognized as important prerequisites for achieving freedom in the digital space.
Since individuals will be responsible for their digital identities, they themselves will be responsible for ensuring these prerequisites are met. To achieve this, they will need public assistance in managing digital identities. For example, they will need access to useful digital sources of proof of the accuracy of the information they provide and receive (via digital signatures from third parties that verify the authenticity of the information), processes that ensure consent for the use of content and the transfer of data, and systems that ensure consensual usage rights of personal data. The implementation of such systems can draw inspiration from decentralized applications, such as blockchain and smart contracts. These applications allow us to seek decentralized identity guarantors, without there being a centralized registry. They allow everyone to verify data about themselves, using decentralized, reliable methods.
From the moment that digital identity will need to function within (and) legal procedures, it will be vital to shape an international legal framework that ensures these functions. For this purpose, the “General Data Protection Regulation” (GDPR) uses the basic principles of Lex loci solutionis 2 according to which transactions are linked to the nationality of the individuals involved in them.
What I call the Digital Freedom Pass covers the entire range of self-sovereign identities, along with the supporting technologies, legal systems, and standardized interfaces. The DFP places users at the center of managing their identities. It allows users to use their identity across different locations, but always with their own approval. Moreover, since decentralized identities are hard to access, they are also hard to hack.
This scheme has already become an object of processing and is applied in some specific cases. OpenID, an open and decentralized authentication protocol, allows its users to control their personal data by giving them the ability to be identified by other users, without the need for external identity providers. ID2020 is a public-private partnership, aiming to provide every person on the planet with access to a personal, private, secure, permanent, and portable digital identity, based on goal No. 16 of the UN’s sustainable development program.3 DFP can lead such initiatives.
DFP provides the basis for selling user data to digital companies. The process of such digital sales should be taxed, and the revenues used to expand and upgrade internet access, as well as to reduce the cost of internet access for disadvantaged individuals.
But DFP will not happen on its own. There are far too many companies whose interests lie in continuing to control users’ data. Slavery did not disappear by itself. For DFP to be successful, broader acceptance is needed. For such broader acceptance to occur within the E.U., a legal framework will be required. DFP could play a central role in shaping a unified European digital market, as well as serving as support for GDPR. Progress in this area would place the E.U. at the forefront of a movement to globally empower people from today’s digital slavery.
The rise of all-powerful digital monopolies – which is connected to the rise of inequalities in the major market economies, large-scale manipulation of digital users for political purposes, and an extensive inability of digital users to control the business purposes that their data serves – threatens to undermine market economies and democratic processes. DFP can reverse these worrying trends, as it will give us ownership rights over our most important asset – information about ourselves – and thus, it will be able to grant us the most valuable freedom in the economic sphere: the freedom of choice.
Dennis Snower
beware of the “liberators”!!!
The phrase “the old has died, the new has not yet been born, in the meantime morbid phenomena are observed” is attributed to Gramsci, from his Prison Notebooks. Although the Italian communist was pointing to the morbidity of a specific transitional period (Gramsci wrote these particular notes in prison between 1929 and 1935), there was an optimistic element in his observation. That “the new will be born” definitively at some point and, consequently, the intermediate morbidity will end. But what would happen if the “new” was constantly being born and reborn, emerging through an evolving morbidity which, however, it would reproduce, sometimes as its fertilizer and sometimes as the fog around it? The answer is neither simple nor easy.
Meanwhile, something else is happening, especially during transitional periods: many and various “wise men” appear, that is to say charlatans who pretend to be “prophets” and “saviors” – making their bread (or their five-spice powder). Dennis Snower – based on his most famous sayings – can easily be placed in this galaxy.
can one speak of the “production of their data” as work?
Snower’s reference to slavery and its (capitalist) “overthrow / transformation” into a wage relationship is made in order to support that the most natural (and liberating) thing in the world would be, instead of providing our data for free, to sell them. Of course, in 21st century capitalism everyone can sell whatever they want. However, is there a substantial relationship between labor (unpaid, waged, piecework, contract…) and the “production of data”? In other words: does each of us, as an individual and humanity as a whole, labor when appearing as a “data producer”? Ultimately: does even the very word / process of “production” fit with data?
Let’s investigate by starting with examples. The date of birth, the place of birth, and the blood sugar level in the last blood test are three “data”. Three data. One could argue that anyone who is born at some time, somewhere, or when having a blood test, is working; it’s impossible… However, let’s not yet draw a final and general conclusion. Noting, however, that the concept of value as a result of labor is quite well worked out (both by Marx and before him).
What now is the value of my “personal data” called date of birth, or place of birth, or blood sugar level? We know that for the first, for centuries it had no value at all; not even in the early phases of capitalism. It began to acquire value for the bureaucratic classification of populations, value for the biopolitical power, when capitalist states started to organize general obligations of their citizens towards them, such as education, general taxation or enlistment at a specific age. And, consequently, they began general registrations (birth and death certificates, police IDs…). The place of birth, on the other hand, had (and possibly still has) great (emotional) value insofar as it was directly connected to daily life, close or broader social relations, customs and traditions, even to spoken dialects. The recording of the place of birth by states, connected to the control of population mobility (with issues of spatial planning and public health, that is), had particular value for the organization of state bureaucracy; however, it had an entirely different value from the subjective value of belonging.
And that was all: two personal data that at some point became elements (police) identity, keeping, modifying or/and losing their initial value (one might say, perhaps, use value?). Their value (outside the state) was self-contained, and in any case not directly correlatable with other data, such as for example “health status”.
It is now clear that these two personal data, under the conditions of general datafication, fall under another, completely different evaluation as data, in their combination with others. For example, the date of birth is an opportunity for a multitude of companies to “wish you many years”, making you a purchase offer with a discount – as a “gift”… Or it is part of a password which someone wants to remember easily…
Similarly, we could comment on blood sugar levels. As a number (or as a sequence of numbers through successive tests, let’s say a “sugar curve”) was never absolutely private data. In the sense that it had value (and again: use value?) mainly as a diagnostic factor, therefore for the doctor, therefore for a (medical) “body of knowledge” that could “translate” it into something beyond a number. Inherently as a symptom… Up to that point. Now it’s different if the same data is requested either by an employer or by an insurance company; even as a “quality check” before the officialization of a marriage…
A first conclusion, with these “old” personal data as an example: Would there be a case where they would be sold within the relationships from which they emerged as “personal data”? Would there be a case where someone would sell their date of birth at the registry office, or the results of their medical tests to their doctor? No. They do not have “commercial value” within these specific contexts!
What if the frame of reference changes? For example, if the results of medical tests are requested by a pharmaceutical company, in order to use them for creating customer lists and organizing its advertising? Even if one assumes that as raw material for commercial purposes these “old” personal data acquire commercial value (while in the previous, “old” frame of reference they do not), what would the selling price be (when they exist elsewhere too, “free of charge”, with “zero selling price”?) There cannot be a clear answer; some will say the laws of supply and demand will determine the price. We will see later if this can be done. However, whoever sells their personal health data ignores both the general supply (of such data) and the general demand… In short, they completely ignore “market data”!…
Let’s continue with two more modern data points. Someone’s purchases over the past week, and the totality of their movements over the same period. Not only was this “something” recently without commercial value, but it was also “something” non-existent as “data”. It existed only in stories among friends or families: oh, I didn’t tell you, I bought this… or oh, I didn’t tell you, as I was passing by there I saw this…
A new frame of reference (let’s say the strategy of advertising companies) creates interest for this data… Not only for each data set (purchases or movements) on its own, but in their combination. At what price though? Who determines it? The seller will ignore the range of demand for such data, and the range of supply… For them it has zero value. For the potential buyer?
We have, now, a sketchy but characteristic material to ask: the date / chronology of birth (attention: the date / chronology, not the birth itself!), the place of birth, the blood pressure, the purchases of the last week, the movements in the same period, are they results of work? What work “produces” the origin, or the correct / wrong function of a gland or an organ of the body? What work “produces” the stops in the movements in the city?
It is clear to us (as much as it is provocative): A “labor theory” for the “creation” of countless data cannot be supported! Nor, consequently, can their commodification be supported with the argument of the “effort” necessary for their creation!2 In short: the parallel with the work of slaves (and wage slavery) is more than unfortunate. It is deceitful. (We will see later where the deceit lies…)
what data is not;
As strange as it may seem, there is NO specific definition of what “data” is!!! One could assume it refers to the “unit of information” – but this simply shifts the definition from “data” to “information”, for which there is also NO specific and accurate definition!!
It is not at all bold, on the contrary it is historically accurate, to claim that data (in the plural) is a very recent conceptual construction, a kind of meta-conception directly and organically connected to the conception and operation of electronic computers. A specific mathematical theory that captured the operation and usefulness of mechanical “decision” switching (with the famous American mathematician Claude Shannon as its most prominent creator) needed names (and theory) for the operation of these two-position switches (“yes” or “no”). Without exaggeration, the idea of data gave birth to electronic computers, not the other way around: anything that can be reduced to on or off (of electric current flow) is data (and under certain conditions, information).
Consequently, data is what is needed in order to perform calculations. Anything, as long as it is possible to carry out calculations with it. From this perspective, one could argue that, to begin with, there is no such thing as “personal data,” just as there are no “personal numbers” or “personal equations.”
However, there is personal height or weight. Just as there is a personal cholesterol measurement, or a personal bank deposit. Since anything can be converted into a form suitable and necessary for becoming “an object of calculations,” any individual or collective condition can be transformed into data. From coughing to depression, and from a favorite football team to hair color preference.
The process that “creates the data” is the meta-conception 4 of anything, whether it requires effort to be created or not. It does not hold, therefore, that “we produce our personal data,” whether the word “production” implies labor, artistic creation, or anything else. The reality is that data is the name of the abstraction of our lives through a specific computational process!
And here lies a fundamental difference. If we accept that “we produce our data,” then the issue of “ownership rights” can fit nicely and simply into the historical continuity of the civil notion (and legislation) of individual property. However, if we accept that “they steal from us by converting us into units of information / data, thus making us objects of calculations,” then the words “ownership rights” can have only one meaning: that of refusal against theft / abstraction!
Is it a matter of taste choosing what is what? No. Someone may have height or weight a or b (conditions that constantly change in life) and it can be argued that they “produce their height” or “produce their weight”… However, they do not produce either the units of measurement (points and grams) or even the need for measurement!!! For the first (the units of measurement), a science is responsible – “productively” responsible. Arithmetic. For the second (the need for measurement), specific social and ideological conditions are responsible – “productively” responsible – which recognize as “true,” “existent” only what is measured.
Let us use an example again. It is already technologically feasible for data arising from 1000 different points of our body to “produce” (with the appropriate processing / algorithms) a complete and continuously updated digital copy of ourselves, on some computer. From the analytical and complete recording of organ function (and every minor or major change in these functions) to the “type” of thoughts we have (whether they are pleasant or unpleasant)… From recording all movements, even micro-movements, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as well as our actions, to the duration and “quality” of sleep, the “quality” of sexuality, etc. etc.
These continuous flows of our personal data from 1000 sources are collected by a medical organization. Which guarantees the monitoring of our biological, emotional, and mental health in real time; the timely “prevention” of problems; the online provision of advice at any time of day or night; etc. etc. – in exchange for a relatively affordable monthly charge… Above the collection and processing of the infinite quantity of our personal data, HEALTH is written in large letters. Does one consider it realistic that under such an important banner any kind of “negotiation” of the sort “no, I won’t pay you for the ‘provision of services’ but you who take my data”? Probably not.
The same continuous flows of our personal data from 1000 sources are not collected by a medical organization, but by a public order and security organization. Which guarantees the monitoring of our biological, emotional and mental balance in real time; the timely detection of problems that cause behaviors in others, or problems caused by our own behaviors; the online provision of instructions at any moment of “emergency” (from a small quarrel to a slip on the road…); etc. etc. – in exchange for a state reward (for us) with “good citizen” points. Above the collection and processing of the infinite quantity of our personal data, PUBLIC ORDER AND SECURITY is written in large letters. Does one consider it realistic that under such an important banner any kind of “negotiation” of the sort could take place, “no, I won’t give data from 1000 points of mine but only from 10”?
In both cases 5 there is a political / ideological / institutional “frame of reference” regarding our “data controller”. With the proper persuasion / propaganda (it’s not that difficult!), both can appear necessary: the first for individual reasons (health), the second for social reasons (public order). However, there is no unified economic / commercial order in their social signification. It is given that you pay for your good health; and that you don’t get paid for public order (unless you’re a thug!). In the first case, the extraction of our data is done consensually; moreover, we purchase the “conclusions” of the calculations. In the second case, the extraction of our data is done forcibly; since it wouldn’t be wise (according to mainstream perception) to have something to hide from the authorities…
In the end, what is systematically presented as individual (or even collective) data production is the fetishistic reversal of generalized informatization. While, that is, informatization is centrally organized and improved (either by corporations or by states), imposing on us to become “data”, our cheerful obedience to this process, which is its result, appears as its driving cause!!! The raison d’être of generalized informatization: Well, since “you continuously produce data”, what else can we do? Not utilize them?
It’s as comic as if someone were to say a few centuries ago: Well, since you continuously walk around, going here and there, what can I do? Not make (and sell) maps?
Having in mind the totality of data, we cannot speak of individual (or even collective) “data production”. Data is a specific measurement process; more accurately, a specific process of converting everything into raw material for a particular type of computation (called algorithms). Our personal data are not the data that each of us has produced; they are aspects of our everyday lives that have been excluded, seized, and transformed into “information units” for the account of a specific technical model that “utilizes” them.
what are data;
The concept of “raw material” is fundamental to us, with the necessary redefinitions. “Raw material” is the unprocessed ore X or Y, mixed with other rocks… “Raw material” is soil, earth… “Raw material” is water… “Raw material” is crude oil… For every type of raw material, one can, if they insist, “find a creator.” The Almighty… Or the big bang… However, these “raw materials” do not exist – in – order – to – be – exploited – capitalistically. They exist on their own; and moreover (for ores) they may exist indifferently. Ultimately, life itself, in the millions of forms it manifests on planet Earth, can be considered “raw material” (if it attracts the attention of capitalist exploitation): otherwise it exists on its own. “Raw material” has meant, for at least 2 centuries: “something – that – acquires – value under the condition of capitalist accumulation and exploitation of it”.
The extraction of our “personal data,” that is, the extraction of our lives to the extent that they are converted into “information units,” into data, is only part of the general, bioinformatic extraction of life (and not only) on the planet. Just as our species in general (and each one of us individually) becomes a “data generator,” in exactly the same way all living forms become data generators. From viruses to higher mammals. Data generators also become the wind, the clouds, or the movements of tectonic plates in the Earth’s crust; solar flares; the surfaces (for now) of other planets in the solar system; the infinite, dark space… No one would dare claim that microbes “produce data” – nor, of course, is there any question of “work,” “labor,” “exploitation,” “individual property,” or trade on the part of the “data producers”…
Seen therefore across its entire scope and intensity, generalized data-poïesis can only be thought of as the bioinformatic exception / encoding of everything! Facing it, all these everything, living or not, are nothing else than the “prime matter” of existence itself, of the existence that is being excepted. Existence living or not.
We could, therefore, speak about a social “prime matter” limited to our species? Yes. It is everything of its existence, understood in their sociality, that is in their interconnection and interaction. And this, the interconnection and interaction between the individuals of our species, makes (human) social “prime matter” and its generalized data-poïesis very interesting – capitalistically.
For example: the analysis of the fly’s dna or the study of how it flies is exhausted in data-poïesis through the study of “individuals” of the species. There is no issue of data-poïesis of the interrelations among the billions of flies as a species; there is no issue of data-poïesis of the “sociality” of flies. Or the atom of a chemical element can be data-poïesized, but beyond (chemical reactions) there is no issue of its interrelation… with flies (for example).
In the social “raw material” everything is (or should become) magnitudes to be recorded, measured, correlated, processed, etc. Do you sneeze? “You produce data.” Do you breathe? “You produce data.” Do you remember or forget? “You produce data.” Do you sleep? “You produce data.” Do you wake up? “You produce data.” Do you sneeze, breathe, remember, forget, sleep, wake up? Everything can (and should) be abstracted, become digitally transmitted “information units,” data; be accumulated; be stored as orderly as possible (not in amorphous piles!); become objects of processing (that is, calculations) by complex, “smart” algorithms; lead to conclusions exploitable either for capitalist profit or for state control.
Data-poetry as a fundamental element of the 4th industrial revolution (the establishment of the Bio-informational Capitalist Paradigm) once again confronts human life and sociality, treating it as barren land! As a “fixed asset of capital” which, as before, with “traditional cultivation methods,” yielded very little; small (economic or/and political) “geo-profits.” Therefore, barren land that must be cultivated again this time with a radical method, with a radical encoding. It must become an object of hyper-extraction, to “extract” from this barren land (the life and sociality of our species—and not only, but we limit ourselves to this) the maximum possible quantity and quality of “elements,” the maximum possible profits. Barren land that must become the target of the most intensive exploitation ever, colonized on an entirely new technological basis!
That there is mass consent to this development is absolutely certain!!! Whether from ignorance, stupidity, or subjugation—the result is the same. It is thanks to this mass consent that not only does this new process of capitalist accumulation and exploitation pass unnoticed for what it truly is, but it has also become possible to present it in a reversed manner—as a process for the good of our species, and of each individual separately.
“digital feudalism” through “individual ownership”?
It is, we believe, clear that this process has matured so much and so unchecked within at most 3 decades, that the concept of “data portability” can be very easily distorted. It is not about data portability against the process. But about (pseudo)data portability within it. In reality: legitimizing it against welfare! In our opinion, it is an attempt to address the still unformed but existing social fears about big data; and the actual control of them by a handful of mega-corporations (and security services).
Individual ownership of data (individual cooperation in data-ization) appears as a counterweight to the already active and dynamic concentration of capital regarding the extraction/accumulation of data; and to the upcoming new forms of capitalist profitability from them.
However – not at all paradoxically – “individual ownership” of data does not exactly mean individual ownership!!! It is one thing to have your money in your wallet and quite another to have it in a bank account; the difference became clear to everyone in our parts when capital controls were imposed! Suddenly, without anyone formally disputing the ownership of their deposits, they simply … didn’t have them.
Similarly, electronic companies have already begun to emerge as “vaults” for personal data, acting as intermediaries in their commercialization. One of the first is the American datacoup, founded in 2012, with headquarters in New York.
datacoup offers for a trial period of one month 8 dollars (!) to have the consent of its potential customer to access their accounts on facebook, linkedln, google+, as well as their credit and debit card transactions. The customer chooses which of their accounts’ data they want to “sell”, and then datacoup informs them with various diagrams about the value of their data. datacoup sells the processed data to some (few so far) interested parties. Customers are informed about these transactions.
In March 2014, catacoup had 1500 customers / users. Whether it is logical or not, none of them made more than 5 dollars per month from owning their personal data and trading it…. However, the followers of “make money from your data” are not discouraged. They say that this so low income (let’s not call it “data salary”!!) is due to the fact that interested parties (advertisers or whatever else) find much more data elsewhere that doesn’t cost them anything as such. If (they argue) more and more people “acquire ownership” the prices will go up…
data and small traders
We would not exclude the possibility that some people might want to “make money” as bosses-of-themselves in this form: selling (or renting) some of their personal data. There are people who sell their organs out of necessity. There are men (out of necessity or choice) who sell sperm and women who sell eggs. Commodification as “logic” (or, if you prefer, as “ethics”) is extremely advanced in the capitalist 21st century to allow us to exclude anything!
Nevertheless, the way in which generalized data-fication has already progressed differs from other (potential) cases of commodification. The simplest and most accessible example is social media. Even if user X decides that they are “selling their data,” what their “contacts” say about them (and which become data for free) might be more than enough to sketch their profile. Automatically, their own “locked” data might even be useless. In the online digital “community,” many “nodes” must be “locked” simultaneously for there to be some kind of disruption / artificially created difficulty in free accumulation.
Beyond, however, the question of whether “individual ownership of personal data” is feasible, to what extent it is feasible, and also whether their trade is feasible, the mass coding / expropriation through generalized data-fication is THE fact in 21st century capitalism.
Its understanding and addressing will prove to be a matter of life and death, sooner or later.
Ziggy Stardust
cyborg #13 – 10/2018
- The 68-year-old American Dennis Snower is president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, and researcher at the Center for Economic Policy Research (an international think tank, considered “left-leaning”, based in Washington). ↩︎
- For example, birthdays as (significant) personal moments/celebrations are directly connected to civil registries and identity cards and did not exist before them. In contrast to name-day celebrations, which were tied to the religious annual cycle, as well as to family relationships/inheritance/succession. ↩︎
- One can find other personal data: for example, the type of degrees and knowledge certificates that someone has. Indeed, a great deal of effort has gone into these. Invaluable effort!!! So that if someone were to sell them, pricing the effort of their education, they would be extremely expensive personal data; which no one would be interested in buying at their “labor” prices!!! ↩︎
- If the word “meta-cognition” seems mysterious, replace it with “cognition from the specialist’s / meter’s side”. ↩︎
- The second shows dystopian, however it is already happening to a very large extent (although not with implanted body sensors) in Chinese society. There is in the West a certain underground envy for this achievement of the Chinese state: in the West personal data is collected by various companies / platforms, while in China all platforms are united into one.
To correct this “imperfection” the secret services in the West have deployed (either through blackmail or in exchange) these business platforms for collecting personal data, making their unification (on behalf of central control) behind the scenes. ↩︎