Facebook and Google are destroying

When we look back in 2017, we can see it as the last moment of unconditional trust in the technology industry. The findings on the use Cambridge Analytica made Facebook data using the personal information of more than 50 million users came at a time when people were already thinking, to find the right ways, to curb that handful of dominant technology companies, not just the American economy, but more and more, American life.

With the start of the technological revolution in the 1990s, we were replaced by the excitement of the age, along with the innovations of products and their transforming power. We were enthralled by the wealth created by 25-year-old rookies, who were instantly billionaires, and it was revenge from <x0... And among all of this, as the U.S. was going through the digital economy, we ignored the question: What is the role of the government?

The image of technology companies stemming from unhindered free markets was never entirely accurate. Today's digital economy rises above three major technologies: computer chip, Internet and GPS. All three are owed for their existence, the federal government. The last two, of course, were held from the beginning, possessed and operated by the government, until they offered for the private sector. Most people do not realize that the global satellite positioning system and control center, which is so critical of the modern economy, to this day, owned by the U.S. government and is employed by the U.S. Air Force.

Yet, as these revolutionary technologies created new industries, destroyed other and reformed communities and cities, we just assumed that this is how the world worked and that nothing could be done to change it. It would have been a socialist-style intervention to the free market.

The result, however, is not one that a Liberian would greet. Now we have a technology economy, which is dominated by a few mammoths, who practically create access barriers for the resorts. In Silicon Valley, new companies don't even claim to become independent companies. Their business plan is to be bought by Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft or Apple. The situation seems more like an oligopol than a free market. In fact, during the era of large technological companies, the number of new companies has come in decline.

The next obvious result was the erosion of privacy, highlighted by the Cambridge Analytica / Facebook scandal. Because technology companies now have billions of consumers, each individual is a small point of data. And since for most technology companies, the digital consumer is also a product whose information is sold to others for profit, he or she is doubly abolished. The technology giants would certainly answer that they have democratized information, created products with tremendous power and potential, and transformed their lives for the better. This is all true. So did earlier inventions, such as telephone, automobile, antibiotics, and electricity. But it was due to the transforming power and impact of these products that the government needed to play a role in protecting individuals and to curb the new winners in the economy.

Change is likely to come in two directions. The regulatory actions in the West will give more control to the individual. The European Union has set rules that will take effect on May 25th, which will make it much easier for people to know how their data is being used and limit that use. The odds are for the United States to do the same.

The second course is even more intriguing and comes from the East. Until recently, as Indian entrepreneur Nadan Nilechani told me, there was only a handful of digital platforms with more than 1 billion users, all put in place by companies in the United States or China, such as Google, Facebook and Tencent. But now India has its own digital platform with one billion users: “Adhear”, the biometric identification system, which includes almost 1.3 billion people in the country. It's the only such big platform, which is public property. That means there's no need to make money from user data. It is possible to imagine that in India, it will become normal to think of data as personal property, that individuals can store or rent, or sell as they please, in a very open and democratic free market. India may well become the global inventor for individual data rights.

Add that innovation to “Blockchan” technology, and we will most likely see more challenges to today's Internet guards in the near future.

Whether East or West or Up or Down, change is coming and it will transform the world of technology. If managed properly, they can produce cheaper markets and more individual empowerment. / The Washington Post world.al