We’re a quarter of a century into an era of digital feudalism.
The feudal system is a medieval construct: serfs work the land to create value, and landlords confiscate most of that value.
Today, instead of farm produce, the asset class is data—created by us, but captured by digital landlords such as social media and other Web2 applications. “Surfing the internet” has become “surfing the internet,” with users yielding intimate details of their lives for the internet lordships to aggregate, expropriate, and monetize.
This is important, because personal data isn’t just the by-product of your labor. It is the stuff of your identity in the digital age. It constitutes a digital version of you, that remembers everything you did online, everyone you interacted with.
There are obvious problems with this arrangement. Notably, we can’t we can’t use our own data to plan our lives. It’s stored in other people’s silos, which we can’t access—but third parties like Cambridge Analytica can, often without our knowledge. Meanwhile, we enjoy none of the rewards of this third-party data usage, yet bear most of the risk and responsibility for its clean up in the event our digital lords lose or abuse our data. And finally, we can’t make money from the data ourselves, but are forced to watch as companies get rich from these valuable assets.
Continue reading: https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/01/how-to-take-back-our-identities-in-a-web3-world/
The feudal system is a medieval construct: serfs work the land to create value, and landlords confiscate most of that value.
Today, instead of farm produce, the asset class is data—created by us, but captured by digital landlords such as social media and other Web2 applications. “Surfing the internet” has become “surfing the internet,” with users yielding intimate details of their lives for the internet lordships to aggregate, expropriate, and monetize.
This is important, because personal data isn’t just the by-product of your labor. It is the stuff of your identity in the digital age. It constitutes a digital version of you, that remembers everything you did online, everyone you interacted with.
There are obvious problems with this arrangement. Notably, we can’t we can’t use our own data to plan our lives. It’s stored in other people’s silos, which we can’t access—but third parties like Cambridge Analytica can, often without our knowledge. Meanwhile, we enjoy none of the rewards of this third-party data usage, yet bear most of the risk and responsibility for its clean up in the event our digital lords lose or abuse our data. And finally, we can’t make money from the data ourselves, but are forced to watch as companies get rich from these valuable assets.
Continue reading: https://fortune.com/crypto/2022/11/01/how-to-take-back-our-identities-in-a-web3-world/
