The Information Trade by Alexis Wichowski

Author:Alexis Wichowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-12-09T00:00:00+00:00

THERE ARE SOME REASONS TO TAKE HEART THAT NET STATES SUCH AS Google and Tesla are increasingly investing in, and thus in charge of, future-leaning infrastructure projects. In addition to expanding into cities’ electric grids, as described in chapter 2, Tesla is investing in transportation projects: the city of Chicago has approved Tesla affiliate Boring Company’s proposal to build a high-speed transit system from its O’Hare airport to its downtown area.34 The reason? Given that technology is their core business, net states may be in a better position than governments to manage high-tech projects.

Often bogged down by politics and bureaucracy, government doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to implementing and managing tech projects, especially in the United States. Take Social Security, for example. In 2000, recognizing that a massive backlog of claims had amassed, Congress approved an overhaul of the claims-processing technology used by the Social Security Administration (SSA). By 2007, the SSA had spent upwards of $381 million trying to integrate its 54 separate information technology (IT) systems, followed by another $200 million in 2011.35 Six years after they’d launched the project, “they found out that they really didn’t have anything. In fact,” commented reporter Bob Charette, “the initial system has consistently been projected to be 24 to 32 months away. So for five years, it was always kind of like Wimpy in Popeye: ‘I’ll gladly pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today.’” The rest of the US government doesn’t fare much better, and it’s no wonder: 70 percent of government IT budget dollars go to maintaining legacy—read “really, really old”—systems.36

Again, however, even though net states may be in better positions to successfully pull off large-scale technology infrastructure projects, they are ultimately not legally required to act in the public interest. Net states have shareholders. They have bottom lines. Democratic governments may be delinquent in how they execute their policies, but at least they work to ensure that those policies serve all their people. In the absence of government regulation of technology, especially as it pertains to data sharing, there’s no guarantee that net states will choose to protect people’s rights as new data sets become available in a suddenly digitized physical environment. While attempts to protect user data exist here and there, we still lack a cohesive guide that countries and net states can follow to protect user data. As data scientist Venkat Motupalli wrote, “There is a bewildering array of acts, guidance, and agreements across dozens of countries that attempt to address the new size and shareability of citizen data.” Most important, he noted, “While almost everyone agrees that personal data should be protected, there is little consensus as to how and who should be responsible.”37

In the absence of consensus, net states are left to take up the responsibility for themselves. And, in the absence of protests from their populations—the citizen-users who use their products and services—they will most likely continue along the path they’ve taken thus far: sharing data with their partners, not only to fuel innovation, but also to maximize profit.

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