A couple of days ago, I attended the presentation of Charles Leadbeater's "Cloud Culture: the future of global cultural relations" at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and I have to say that it was one of the more interesting debates I followed in the past couple of months.
The Cloud Culture pamphlet discusses the fact that with the ubiquitousness of the Internet, we see more and more of our data (and life?) moving to the "cloud". Think about our music, our documents, our private profile data, our pictures, our books, etc. This is a very interesting evolution to see but Charles argues that there is a potential threat here as well: who will own that cloud? Or differently said, will the cloud enabling companies "turn evil" one day?
I'd like to invite you to a 2-minute interview where he summarises his thesis:
While Charlie mainly focused on the cloud (which actually refers more to the Internet/WWW revolution, rather than the technical delivery model), I argue that this debate is applicable to a far broader domain.
Institutions fighting for self-preservation
Somehow the whole discussion that evening vaguely reminded me a bit of one of the statements in Clay Shirky's excellent book "Here comes everybody". Already back in 2005, Clay argued that often the first goal of established institutions is self-preservation, whilst the initial stated goal of that institution suddenly becomes a secondary priority.
When you loosely link that to my earlier blog post "Do you want to succeed or survive?" where I challenge certain decades-old business models that are in danger of becoming obsolete, one can only wonder whether the "fear" towards the cloud is also a fight for self-preservation?
Could it be that the fight between book authors and book publishers on the one hand and Google's Book project on the other hand, is a fight for self-preservation of the book industry? Or can we take this broader and say that it's between mankind's fight for its heritage and culture versus "cloud capital" or "commercial cloud"?
There is a big fear amongst many people that Google's Book project (but the problem is far more broadly than only this particular project) means that one commercial company is basically going to own, dominate and regulate access to mankind's books. The fear is that one day Google will charge everyone that wants to access their library and that they can do whatever they want with that.
"Weird, or just different?"
Before you continue reading, I'd like you to watch this funny but very eye-opening 2-minute video on TED. Why? Because I want you to be very open minded for what's coming and Derek Sivers kind of made his point that opposite opinions or views might be right as well.
So, to get back to the discussion of the Google Books project. What if I'd say that there is a chance that Google has done far more to preserve and promote mankind's culture and heritage than a lot of governments on this planet? Isn't Google kind of saving our culture by digitizing every book on earth? Isn't Google opening up and giving access to special and rare books so that you and me (that are not part of some sort of elite academia) can read them as well?
Even more, because they are driven by commercial interest, they will probably execute this project in a far more efficient way (resource/time/money-wise) than any government on this planet. The French government has announced that they want to keep the French books in France and thus going to start their own book digitization project. Well, I only fear how much money this will cost for the French taxpayer. Especially, given the fact that they are basically duplicating Google's work.
Déjà vue
The whole point I'm trying to make here, and I'm very grateful for Charlie to have bootstrapped the debate, is that technological inventions have a big impact on our society. This applies for the Internet, for cloud computing, cellphones, social media and many others and that they provide both a big opportunity but also a potential danger.
However, whether it is an opportunity or a danger that depends on how you look at it. We've seen many cases where for instance the Internet has disrupted (and destroyed?) whole industries. Executives that were used to run a business for 20-30 years, all of a sudden found out that their tried and tested methods don't work anymore.
So if you are an old-skool music executive you will probably see the Internet as a big danger, but some young artists and record labels have already embraced the Internet and regard it as an opportunity to get more easy and cheaper access to the market.
But let's be honest, how much different is this than for instance the switch from coal to oil? The switch from horses to cars? The switch from cruise boats to planes? Our whole history is full with examples where one innovation destroyed a whole industry, well this is exactly the same thing here with the Internet and the cloud. Whether we want or not, it is happening.
Government as regulator and enabler instead of solutions provider
But how do we deal with the dangers (if there are any?). How do we ensure that Google does not "become evil" as many fear?
Well, rather than the government being a solutions provider (as the French government that wants to spend loads of tax money on the book project), I'd like to see them more as a regulator and solutions enabler.
I'm quite liberal, but I am realistic enough that the whole invisible hand theory is rather a textbook theory than the ideal market philosophy so yes there is a role for the government here.
It should be a watchdog to the industry to assure that companies don't become evil. It should supply research grants to these companies and force them to develop open (industry) standards. And yes, if the industry would become evil one day, then I don't have a problem with the government stepping in and take measures.
And as my final thought: how bad is it actually if Google would charge us for instance 25 Pounds, Dollars or Euro per year for accessing their library? Don't you think that we'd pay per person far more tax money to have a government project with the similar size and reach?
Just think about it: every opportunity can be seen as a danger, and vice versa.
Footnote
My thanks to Charles Leadbeater, the Counterpoint think tank and the British Council for enabling this much necessary debate!