O&C – ownership and control – *that’s* the lens by which we should be evaluating data and technology.

Who owns and controls data and technology?

If we want a fair, just world with human rights, freedom, and democracy, the answer to that question must be twofold:

1. Data about and technology for the commons must be owned and controlled by the commons.

2. Data about and technology for people must be owned and controlled by individuals.

That’s it.

Notice what’s unnecessary – not to mention antithetical to the stated cause – and thus omitted entirely: “Data and technology should be owned and controlled by corporations.”

That’s only a requirement for the perpetuation of the social cancer that is capitalism, not for the fostering of a humane world.

The fact that nearly all data and technology is owned by corporations today should make you shudder.

Fixing this won’t fix all the world’s problems but neither can we solve the world’s problems without fixing this.

(Because privacy is a fundamental human right that is a prerequisite for all our other human rights and without ownership and control of our data we don’t have privacy in the digital network age and because technology is an amplifier that amplifies the ideas and voices of the people who own and control it.)