Taking Back Collective Data

I am often so busy documenting the way that technological development is currently functioning, that you don’t get to hear much about my thoughts on how technological development should ACTUALLY be done; or at least, my thoughts as to what that could be and what it could look like. We move away from a model where they are USING us, where they are TAKING from us, giving us NOTHING in return, all in pursuit of THEIR aims, which they hold above the aims of us all. Them them them them them. What about us? 

Far from Marc Andreessen’s assertion that critics of venture capital technological development simply hate technology, it is I who have loved it far more. Marc has sacrificed nothing (except his own humanity) and only gained, and I have sacrificed my entire life to do so, and will until I am relieved of duty. There are many people who work in the industry, and those outside of it, who love technology very much. I was on the internet as a child basically from the second that the browser became available to me, thanks for stealing that shit Marc, and thus time is a flat circle. I loved working in Silicon Valley, I loved databases, I loved my stupid hustling friends, I liked the rush of the startup, I liked how fast I could climb, I liked to use my mind on these interesting problems, systems, systems everywhere. But broken. I tracked that down to the source and there was venture capital. I don’t hate technology. I hate the people who are in control of it. And that is what most people experience too, even if they don’t know enough to think on those turns. 

We are currently in a situation where all of the collective data of humanity has been stolen through blunt-force tactics, manipulation, market fixing, establishment and defense of monopolies, lies and trickery, broken promises, extortion and profiteering, wealth hoarding and scheming; the basest violations of collective production. OpenAI is just a layer in between us and all the shit that they have stolen from us, but now administered by them, controlled by them, determined by them, and theirs to sell away to whomever they please. OpenAI is selling its tech and thus, the data underneath it — ours — to an ecosystem of startups that they also own and control. The amount of human labor, love, expression, relations, toil, the emotion that they have stolen for their use; the incredible feats of the human mind in the arts and the sciences, all gone to a grinder and parceled out according to what is best for them. NOT us. In fact, you will notice a curious absence of care for US, the binding thread of their activities.  

As long as any data collection is going on, there will be collective data. Our main problem right now is that our collective data is being harvested, stolen, and held hostage, and the determinants of its destiny, are fascists and intelligence agencies. For technology to be truly for the people and to truly serve them, collective data must be collectively owned, and we must figure out a way as a people, how to use that data for us. 

I will speak for a moment on the transformative power of collective data, of what could be available to us. We barely know its capabilities because what is available to us of it, is so incredibly limited and fragmented, centralized, hidden, sold behind our backs in hundreds of thousands of deals with corporations. While we have created massive stores of data, the people who have created it, are not getting any benefits. For example, how much of the data ABOUT YOU is even available TO YOU as it lives on forever in the datacenters of the enemy? 

Indeed, the closest we get to this kind of insight, is in things like Spotify Wrapped, which is fucking awesome. But they know everything about us, they are able to crunch and mash that data in a million ways, none of which we have access to, and none of which we have any set of reasonable analytical tools to use. So the first site of collective data is actually providing that data and analytical tooling for it to the individuals who produced it. This suggests a model where personal data is fundamentally owned by individuals, who are then free to combine it with that of others, to participate with consent in projects of collective data, OPTING IN to participation in collective data, to use a suite of analytical tools on it — tracking their own moods, changes to their lifestyles, analysis of their knowledge base, health indicators, writing, reading, all the shit they are taking from us. These tools should be provided by a non-fascist technology ecosystem that must have PERMISSION to access the data *in order for the individual and collective* to then bring to bear tools of their choosing, on their own data. This means that WE willingly contribute to collective data and we control it. 

This suggests decoupling data storage from data analytics. As is, they do both. Facebook collects all of your data AND shreds it in their algorithms. OpenAI collects your data, collects how you use it, AND shreds it in their algorithm. There should be a decoupling of data storage — in which data is secure and not tampered with, pristine— and data analytics, would should be consent-based tools that individuals can use or that entities they have opt-ed into can use. This also cuts off the ability and incentive for data storage providers to additionally mash and crunch it up for sale to outside entities, while NOT even making the vast data it collects -on individuals - over decades, available or useful to them. With individual and collective control over data, we can build consent into the process and create collective data that is generative to the human cause, and not VC profits. 

This, in fact, is not a new idea, and software developers have fought for it in various incarnations over time. This is important because it highlights the fact that OTHER VISIONS for software development, analytics and data, have absolutely existed, and been built on. Take Locker, a very interesting project from the last bubble: 

“The Locker project was an open source software project for users to record that was called a "digital wake": the sites they visit, the purchases they make, and other activities… Locker was free software under a BSD license on GitHub. It was intended that users would be able to control which parts of their locker they share with their social network and companies they interact with. Developers could write connectors to pipe data in from a website such as Flickr, or a local application such as a web browser. Alternatively, they can write Synclets, which are a more lightweight alternative to connectors. The Locker development team started writing code to use the TeleHash protocol… to distribute data directly between contacts in a peer-to-peer manner, without the need for centralized servers.” 

The Locker project was ultimately sunsetted, like so many projects that offered a different picture of software development, data, and user consent and freedom. In an environment of voracious, greedy venture capital who worked consistently to blight any kind of independent software development and any kind of new models for data usage and consent-based data models, many of these projects were eventually snuffed out. But it is important for people outside of the industry to understand, that the way things are being done now, are far from foregone conclusions.  

As is, venture capitalists control who gets our data, what is done with it, what is shown to us of it. The goal is to take that power away from venture capital and give it to the people to whom it belongs. This allows PEOPLE to determine their own destiny with technology, and makes it incumbent on outside entities who want access to the data, to provide a sufficient value proposition in return. This also makes it possible for people to WILLINGLY participate in large scale data projects, such as projects of social justice, health studies, economic studies, political and academic studies, even art and music projects, and so on. Of course, opting-in creates a constraint on some such projects, but these are also constraints that the medical field deals with all the time, in creating and evaluating subject pools, and is nothing new from a research perspective, even medically. 

Venture capitalists love to talk about the transformative power of artificial intelligence, but what about the transformative power of allowing US to choose who and what causes should have our data, and empowering us to create and own collective data with our fellow humanity, and giving it to those bodies which *we choose* and can be evaluated publicly, and not in a black box scenario; where access can be withdrawn, where access can even be a source of income for US. If they want our data so bad, they should be paying us. We should get a piece of the pie that all them are eating. Where the human project is so significant - major healthcare efforts come to mind - we can all elect to contribute to a pool of collective data for that cause. It is my belief that this will flood the world with data — no longer held down and constrained by venture capital — and produce transformations in the world. *WE* are the AI. We don’t need them. 

Venture capitalists pretend that this is an impossible paradigm shift, as we are so used to others managing our data, collecting it, doing things to it, without us doing anything; as if we are lazy and stupid, rather than forced into this model of software since we were young, and thus know of no different approaches. The complexity that users have to deal with as software has become the substrate of our lives, the level of technical literacy that now exists, makes it utterly possible for us to use this model. In my mind, this also pushes data storage into commodity, pushes analytical tools into commodity, and severely curtails the power that any one entity can have over data. 

I think the results would be pretty incredible, pretty fucking incredible indeed. And it is no easy feat, but neither is all the jumping through hoops that they are doing to keep our data locked up tight, that makes them the arbiter and the seller of collective data, its dealer and keeper. 

It’s ours. It belongs to us. We should be able to decide what to do with it.