Feel Free Read Citizen Joe Does Data Democracy: A short design fiction story on personal data. Kindle
This is a personal view by Alec Robertson, frsa, independent Design Futures Philosopher. It is a shoot-from-the-hip rationale for his question - “Is there a need for ‘data fair-trade’ legislation to support citizens in the 21st Century?In May 2018 the UK adopted the EU ‘General Data Protection Regulations’. The GDPR set a high standard for consent but is there an elephant in the room with the lack of data ‘fair trade’ guidelines?For example, the issue of gratuitous uploading of original personal content and data by UK citizens to social media platforms owned by trans-national global Corporations, and the collection and exploitation of this data by such Corporations is an important topic related to fair trade and exploitation of citizens.Provocatively, this short article focuses upon the developing situation of what can be referred to as ‘digital feudalism’, and even ‘data slavery’ in some circumstances. The contention is that people are being unwittingly seduced into ‘human data farms’ through the temptations of being better digitally connected at little or usually no cost to them. Personal content and data are uploaded to, for example, ‘social media platforms’, and in the future this will include data upload within the ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’, where everything will be connected.Although not alone in the view, Alec Robertson advocates that people need to solely ‘own’ any data derived from them rather than the ‘collector’. This would require the introduction of data fair-trade legislation to complement and enhance the GDPR in the UK and Europe. He proposes that all Terms & Conditions of Use for digital services should have to have a data-fair trade ‘clause’. He adds as well, that there is a need for a new category of intellectual property of Design Registration for 4D Designs, covering ‘activity having both an economic and cultural value’ Alec Robertson uses a somewhat tongue-in-cheek design-fiction story of his to illustrate a future scenario in the ‘digital economy’. It is about an ordinary citizen, called Joe, who was formerly part of London’s long-term unemployed. Joe walks his dog called Rover in the local park as today, but in this future he is data savvy and uses a new kind of computer platform called a ‘Personal Data Platform” (PDP). This enables Joe to earn a living through trading data as a data-entrepreneur. Joe represents a new creative industry called ‘Citizen Performance’. Alec Robertson concludes with his radical wish list on ‘Policy Action’ to support data-fair-trade associated with the digital world."A slave in the cotton fields used to sing and talk to others while filling their owner’s basket. Today users of social media post photos and chat with ‘friends’ while filling the Corporate databanks with free data."
