Data, cyber capitalism and the Brave New World

Graham Brown-martin is the author of the upcoming book, "Learning {re}imagined, how the connected powering is transforming Learning". His writing on medium a new solution to Facebook's motives for acquiring WHATSAPP.

February 20, 2014, social networking giant Facebook bought WHATSAPP at a stunning $19 billion trillion price. Many people think that, like the acquisition of Instagram, this is due to Facebook's fear of being abandoned by the mobile internet, but Graham is looking at the problem in a higher perspective-data.

Graham thinks the data are new oil and the world's currency, and giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are new online capitalist oligarchs.

The acquisition of WHATSAPP is not only about Facebook's fear of rivals, but also because new user groups and user behavior occur in the mobile and mobile social sectors. 42 of dollars of user access to price is the value of these user data.

From this perspective, Facebook is keen to popularize the Internet in developing countries, as well as to acquire data for the ultimate purpose of acquiring Titan Aerospace, an unmanned aircraft manufacturer, to provide Internet connections in remote areas-for the simple reason that Master the user's Internet access also has mastered the user's all data. The same is true of Google's fiber-optic access and Google Project Whye.

If we simplify the model of the Internet to cloud (service/application) + tube (Access) + END (terminal), then the strategy of analyzing the Giants ' seemingly unrelated to their main business is to find their striking agreement-everything is data, because digital data must and only flow through these three places. Amazon is making hardware to better grasp the user's consumer data, Apple is expected to enter the wearable market is also data, Google's acquisition of Nest is also to develop new data oil territory-home.

Our problem, Graham points out, is that we don't think of any other value for our data other than the convenience of exchanging communication with friends and enjoying the benefits of Google apps. We use our own data in exchange for the internet giant's convenient service.

And after the Giants have mastered the big data, coupled with its increasingly sophisticated algorithm, supplemented by exponential growth in computing power, can be very small granularity to understand the user's behavior, habits, hobbies-in the business world, understand the user also means to master the ability to monetization, even control users. Graham argues that cyber-capitalism will reshape education, health, science, media, recruitment, entertainment and even government in Cuikulaxiu.

But Graham's attitude towards such a future is dystopian. He believes that, as the Snowden incident shows, Orwell ("1984") fears that what we hate will destroy us, and that the future that the Internet giant is creating for us will be like Huxley's brave New world-what would our favorite ruin us?

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)