The British-American entrepreneur and professional skeptic Andrew Keen recently published this article on the opinion section of CNN.com. With his permission, we are happy to feature his commentary on the DLD 2012 conference. For more food for though follow @ajkeen on Twitter.
'Just as the politics of oil shaped the 20th century industrial
economy, so the politics of data will shape the 21st century digital
economy. At DLD, a prestigious technology conference held annually in Munich, the
fault lines of the political debate about data were exposed by the
event's two keynote speakers: The European Commission's vice president
for justice, Viviane Reding, and Facebook's chief operating officer,
Sheryl Sandberg.
Reding and Sandberg were in agreement about one thing: personal data is the new oil, the vital fuel of our digital economy. But that's about all they agreed on at DLD. In every other respect,
their priorities and agendas represent the bookends of an increasingly
fractious debate that is pitting European politicians like Reding
against American social media networks such as Sandberg's Facebook. Reding's focus is on the consumer's control of their own data. 'Personal data is the currency of today's digital market. And like any
currency, it needs stability and trust,' Reding argued in the opening
keynote of the conference.
That 'stability' and 'trust', she believes, can only be won by
legislating in favor of consumers' ability to protect their personal
data. The great threat to individual liberty in the digital age, Reding
argued at DLD, comes from companies that use our data to enrich
themselves -- buying and selling our most intimate details for their own
corporate benefit. Individual privacy in today's networked age, she argued, can only be
protected by tighter legislation on what companies can do with our data
and by more aggressive data-protection officers and agencies. To this
end, Reding is introducing legislation which will give consumers the right to be forgotten on online social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
'The journey has only just begun', Sandberg told the DLD audience in
the final speech of the event. But this is a journey - of a data
revolution driven by powerful social networks like Facebook - that
Sandberg, in contrast with Reding, relishes. What we do online is
increasingly who we are, she said. 'We are our real identities online.' Rather than wanting to be forgotten, Sandberg believes that we all
want to be remembered. All this personal data empowers us, Facebook's
second most powerful executive insisted. It represents a shift to what
she called 'authentic identity,' from the wisdom of the crowd to 'wisdom
of our friends.'
Above all, she said, it turns all of us from being passive receivers
of other people's information into active broadcasters of our own lives. The digital data revolution is 'a really big deal,' Sandberg insisted
at DLD. It represents a profound shift in the balance of power between
institutions and individuals. The sharing of information reshapes our
lives; it brings us together and empowers us. And it makes us richer too, she argued, suggesting that Facebook
alone had created 230,000 jobs and is even committed to giving 50,000
European small businesses €100 euros ($130) apiece to develop their
social identities.
Reding and Sandberg's presentations represented the first and last
speeches of the three day event. But their speeches were separated by
more than just 72 hours. There's a gulf, perhaps even an inseparable
chasm, between the two women's assumptions about both the value and role
of personal data in our increasingly digital society. I'm not sure if Sandberg is correct to argue that the digital journey
of the 21st century is only just beginning. But I am pretty certain
that this debate about the politics of data will run and run in a world
in which personal data is increasingly the oil powering our digitally
connected economy.
Internet: An engine of progress or hate?
There was much talk at DLD about the internet representing a historic
shift of power - from the nation-state to the 21st century empowered
individual. From Alec Ross, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's
special Advisor on innovation, to Katie Stanton, Twitter's head of
global innovation, and to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, the DLD core
message was that the internet represented a vehicle of democratic
progress and global toleration. The DLD message of openness and toleration was also reflected in the
event itself. Hosted by the Munich-based publishing mogul Hubert Burda
and the legendary Israeli networker Yossi Vardi, DLD brought together
peoples from all over the world and included speakers from Turkey,
Libya, Japan, and Russia as well as from Europe and the United States.
The speakers' dinner was even held in the Hubert Burda Hall of
Munich's Jewish Community Center, a building distinguished by both its
spacious architecture and its wonderful acoustics.
Turn on, log on, drop out
Neither Mark Zuckerberg nor fellow Facebook founder Sean Parker were
at DLD, so it was left to Tumblr's CEO David Karp to wow of this year's
conference with his youthful exuberance. His speech, with its
acknowledgment that Tumblr was 'an accidental social network' whose
remarkable success has been built on what he calls the network's 'curators,' was one of the most admired of the event. I had dinner with Karp and found him to be a disarmingly impressive
young man. A New York City high school dropout who never attended
college, lived for a while in Japan, and started his first company in
his teens, Karp has that entrepreneurial quality of being both
refreshingly humble and yet uncannily poised. With Twitter creator Jack
Dorsey, he is a good bet to inherit Zuckerberg's mantle of the world's
most charismatic young start-up entrepreneur. Karp also joins that pantheon of start-up entrepreneurs - from Steve
Jobs and Bill Gates to Zuckerberg - who have dropped out of school to
pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. This is no coincidence. Traditional
education is failing to stimulate remarkably innovative young men like
Karp. Perhaps PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is right. We really should
be paying unusally talented kids like Karp to drop out of college.'
(source: CNN.com)
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