Thursday, September 13, 2018

New Book "The Open Revolution: Rewriting the Rules of the Information Age"

The Open Revolution: Rewriting the Rules of the Information Age
by Rufus Pollock, A/E/T Press, June 2018, ISBN: 9781789263428.

About the Book: Will the digital revolution give 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 a digital age, who owns information controls the future. Today, information is everywhere. From your DNA to the latest blockbusters, from lifesaving drugs 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 all every day. As information continues to move into the digital domain, it can be copied and distributed with ease, making access and control even more important. But the rules we have made for it, derived from how we manage physical property, are hopelessly maladapted to the digital world. In this urgent and provocative book, Rufus Pollock shows that we must make a choice between making information Open, shared by all, or making it Closed, exclusively owned and controlled, and how today's Closed digital economy is the source of problems ranging from growing inequality, to 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 more equitable, innovative and profitable future for all.

About the Author: Dr Rufus Pollock is a researcher, technologist and entrepreneur. He has been a pioneer in the global Open Data movement, advising national governments, international organisations and industry on how to succeed in the digital world. He is the founder of Open Knowledge, a leading NGO with a presence in over 35 countries, empowering people and organizations with access to information so they can create insight and drive change. Formerly, he was the Mead Fellow in Economics at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. He has been the recipient of a $1m Shuttleworth Fellowship and is currently an Ashoka Fellow and Fellow of the RSA. He holds a PhD in Economics and a double first in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents
1 Prologue: Monopolies of Attention
2 An Open World
3 Defining Information and Openness
4 Patents and Copyright as "Intellectual Property"
5 Face to Face with Power
6 Triumph over Closed Minds: The Internet
7 Music to our Ears
8 How the Secret of Life Almost Stayed Secret
9 Meet Jamie Love
10 Openness: The Best Medicine
11 Making an Open World
12 Help us Make it Happen
13 Coda: The Original Copyfight

No comments: