Data Drives New Challenges

Technological breakthroughs transformed data into the “new oil” — the essential capital asset of what would eventually be recognized as the data-driven economy. Even as we grapple with those disruptions’ profound implications for international governance, the next new era, of machine knowledge capital, looms.

In this opinion, Dan Ciuriak asks: How do we manage change when lived experience is inadequate to guide reforms as technology is adopted without referendum?

Join Ciuriak and CIGI Managing Editor Michael Den Tandt on Friday, October 7, at 12:30 PM EDT (UTC–04:00), for a Twitter Spaces chat about this new piece.

Antitrust broke big oil. US senators believe it can now shatter Silicon Valley’s exploitative tech giants. So does the European Union. But Wingham Rowan says that antitrust could be the wrong solution.

Market platforms are a natural monopoly. Rowan argues that governments should dare to think about how they might initiate an alternative version for citizens and local businesses — and that it’s time for a new public utility that delivers the full potential of today’s economic infrastructure.

“It is strangely charming that Canada’s cautionary case study in surveillance capitalism comes from Tim Hortons,” Vass Bednar writes. Canada’s privacy commissioner recently found the popular donut shop chain to have violated privacy laws with its app’s thirsty collection of users’ sensitive geolocation data.

In this op-ed first published in the Globe and Mail, Bednar details how some of Canada’s oldest and largest companies are quietly adopting and emulating big-tech strategies, without adequate transparency.