Access Rules: Freeing Data from Big Tech for a Better FutureMayer-Schönberger and Ramge focus on hundreds of real-world examples of uses and abuses of data accumulation. Consider AT&T and its Bell Labs whose most important invention was the transistor in 1947. “It is quite literally the foundation for the entire information revolution…In some ways, Bell Labs and AT&T were the equivalent of all of Silicon Valley compressed into one corporation.” The US government sued AT&Tfor abusing its monopoly position. The government settled with “Ma Bell” in 1956. One result was that all the patents awarded to Bell Labs — about 8,000 — became available to any US company…for free.
“The case of Bell Labs is important and revealing in at least three ways. First, it demonstrates the positive impact such an open Access division can have on the wider economy — and to the dynamic of innovation…Second, the case offers evidence that companies which have to open access to others aren’t becoming less creative or inventive…Third, the United States has successfully used open access mandates to spur innovation with significant economic and social benefits.”
Then and now, not everyone agrees with Mayer-Schönberger and Ramge. And they duly acknowledge that open access to data will not solve all of the problems or even address all of the issues which now exist in a global business world today that is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time that I can recall.
Is that an idealistic utopia or a feasible vision? “Benjamin Franklin’s answer was clear: access to information is the most important basis for democratic discourse, economic development, and political justice — the point of departure and the driving force of the American Revolution.”
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