The Open Revolution: rewriting the rules of the information age

Economist and open data advocate Rufus Pollock’s new book, “The Open Revolution: Rewriting the Rules of the Information Age”, reimagines ownership in the digital age and is now available online at openrevolution.net.

Will the digital revolution bring us digital dictatorships or digital democracies? Forget everything you think you know about the digital age. It’s not about privacy, surveillance, AI or blockchain – it’s about ownership. Because in the digital age, whoever owns information controls the future.

Information is everywhere today. From your DNA to the latest blockbusters, from life-saving medicines to the app on your phone, from big data to algorithms. Our entire global economy is built on it, and the rules around information affect us every day.

As information increasingly moves into the digital realm, it can be copied and distributed with ease, which makes access and control all the more important. But the rules we have set up for it, derived from the way we deal with physical property, are hopelessly unsuited to the digital world.

In this urgent and provocative book, Rufus Pollock shows that we must choose whether to keep information open, shared by all, or closed, exclusively owned and controlled, and how today’s closed digital economy is the source of problems ranging from growing inequality and unaffordable medicines to the power of a handful of tech monopolies to control how we think and vote.

Choosing open is the path to a fairer, more innovative and more prosperous future for all.

Get the book and find out more at openrevolution.net.

Rufus Pollock engages regularly with the Swiss community, next with his keynote at Opendata.ch/2018 – 3 July