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Cities Culture Startup Politics Management Leadership Newco Shift Forum Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Search for: Newco Shift Covering the biggest shift in business and society since the industrial revolution Menu and widgets Latest Stories Facebook Pivots to Privacy. Why? March 12, 2019 The Internet Must Change. To Get There, Start With the Data. January 28, 2019 Predictions for 2019: Data, Tech, Media, Climate, Markets and…Cannabis… January 2, 2019 One Year Ago: How Our Predictions Fared December 31, 2018 Don’t Blame Facebook. December 26, 2018 Facebook Pivots to Privacy. Why? By John Battelle (cross posted from Searchblog ) I’ll never forget a meal I had with a senior executive at Facebook many years ago, back when I was just starting to question the motives of the burgeoning startup’s ambition. I asked whether the company would ever support publishers across the rest of the web” – perhaps through an advertising system competitive with Google’s AdSense. The executive’s response was startling and immediate. Everything anyone ever needs to do – including publishing – can and should be done on Facebook. The rest of the Internet was a sideshow. It’s just easier if everything is on one platform, I was told. And Facebook’s goal was to be that platform. Those words still ring in my ears as we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the web today. And they certainly should inform our perspective as we continue to digest Facebook’s latest self-involved epiphany. Read More Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Posted on March 12, 2019 November 12, 2021 John Battelle Tags Amazon , Apple , Facebook , Google , Internet , Policy , Politics , Privacy , Technology , web30 Leave a comment on Facebook Pivots to Privacy. Why? The Internet Must Change. To Get There, Start With the Data. By John Battelle This is an edited version of a series of talks I first gave in New York over the past week, outlining my work at Columbia. Many thanks to Reinvent, Pete Leyden, Cap Gemini, Columbia University, Cossette/Vision7, and the New York Times for hosting and helping me. Cross posted from Searchblog . Prelude. I have spent 30-plus years in the tech and media industries, mainly as a journalist, observer, and founder of companies that either make or support journalism and storytelling. When it comes to many of the things I am going to talk about here, I am not an expert. If I am expert at anything at all, it’s asking questions of technology, and of the media and marketing platforms created by technology. In that spirit I offer the questions I am currently pursuing, in the hope of sparking a dialog with this esteemed audience to further better answers. Some context: Since 1986, I’ve spent my life chasing one story: The impact of technology on society. For whatever reason, I did this by founding or co-founding companies. Wired was kind of a first album, as it were, and it focused on the story broadly told. The Industry Standard focused on the business of the Internet, as did my conference Web 2 . Federated Media was a tech and advertising platform for high quality conversational” publishers, built with the idea that our social discourse was undergoing a fundamental shift, and that publishers and their audiences needed to be empowered to have a new kind of conversation. Sovrn , a company I still chair, has a similar mission, but with a serious data and tech focus. NewCo , my last company (well, I’ve got another one in the works, perhaps we can talk about that during Q&A) seeks to illuminate the impact of companies on society. It’s Broke. Let’s Fix It. And it is that impact that has led me to the work I am doing now, here in New York. I moved here just last Fall, seeking a change in the conversation. To be honest, the Valley was starting to feel a bit…cloistered. A huge story – the very same story, just expanded – is once again rising. Only it’s just … more urgent. 25 years after the launch of Wired , the wildest dreams of its pages have come true. Back in 1992 we asked ourselves: What would happen to the world when technology becomes the most fundamental driver of our society? Today, we are living in the answer. Turns out, we don’t always like the result. Most of my career has been spent evangelizing the power of technology to positively transform business, education, and politics. But five or so years ago, that job started to get harder. The externalities of technology’s grip on society were showing through the shiny optimism of the Wired era. Two years ago, in the aftermath of an election that I believe will prove to be the political equivalent of the Black Sox scandal , the world began to wake up to the same thing. So it’s time to ask ourselves a simple question: What can we do to fix this? Let’s start with some context. My current work is split between two projects: One has to do with data governance, the other political media. How might they be connected? I hope by the end of this talk, it’ll make sense. So let’s go. In my work at Columbia, I’m currently obsessed with two things. First, Data. How much have you thought about that word in the past two years? Given how much it’s been in the news lately, likely quite a lot. Big data, data breaches, data mining, data science…Today, we’re all about the data. And second…. Governance . When was the last time you thought about that word? Government – well for sure, I’d wager that’s increased given who’s been running the country these past two years. But Governance? Maybe not as much. But how often have you put the two words together? Data Governance. Likely not quite as much. It’s time to fix that. Why? Because we have slouched our way into an architecture of data governance that is broken, that severely retards economic and cultural innovation, and that harms society as a whole. Let’s unpack that and define our terms. We’ll start with Governance. What is governance? It’s an … Architecture of control A regulatory framework that manages how a system works. The word is most often used in relation to political governance – which we care about a lot for the purposes of this talk – but the word applies to all systems, and in particular to corporations, which is also a key point in the research we’re doing. Governance in corporate context isthe system of rules, practices and processes by which a firm is directed and controlled. ” But in my work, when I refer to governance, I am referring to the the system of rules, practices and processes by which a firm controls its relationship to its community .” Who’s that community? You, me, developers and partners in the ecosystem, for the most part. More on that soon. Now, what is data? I like to think of it as… Unrefined Information. I’m not in love with this phrase, but again, this is a first draft of what I hope will grow to more refined ( ha ) work. Data is the core commodity from which information is created, or processed. Data has many attributes, not all of which are agreed upon. But I think it’s inarguable that the difference between data and information is … Human meaning . That’s Socrates, who thought about this shit, a lot. Information is data that means something to us (and possibly the entire universe, as it relates to the second law of thermodynamics . But physics is not the focus of this talk, nor is a possible fourth law of thermodynamics….). As we’ve learned – the hard way – over the past decade, there are a few very large companies which have purview over a massive catalog of meaningful data, meaningful not only to us, but to society at large. And it’s this societal aspect that, until recently, we’ve actively overlooked. We’re in the midst of a grand data renaissance, which if history remotely echoes, I fervently hope will give rise to … A (Data) Enlightenment That’s John Locke, an Enlightenment philosopher. Allow me to pull back for second and attempt to lay some context for the work I hope to advance in the next few years. It starts with the Enlightenment , a great leap forward in human...