Issue #30

March 18th, 2021

BIGtech - taking the globe by storm

THIS week's Zoomed webinar - Friday March 19th 4:00PM MST

COPY THIS -> https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82909644522

Join us: share and network, discover and learn. To view former webinars CLICK HERE

We are weathering a global storm of historical proportions, the impact of which may require future generations to calculate. This storm of digital and social media influences is unlike anything ever experienced by mankind before - a reshaping of the human experience and an existential threat to...well read on, join us Friday, and judge for yourself.

Let's start with the impact of digital and social media - the BigTech global giants, transforming media and the publishing industry. Only now are government regulators in Europe and Australia, the US and possibly Canada, acknowledging the impacts, the liabilities, and intervening to try and negotiate fair-play and the industry's go-forward compensation.

The KEI Network webinar this Friday March 19th 4PM MST will be co-hosted with Troy Media and moderated by Gary Slywchuk. We will weigh in on the implications of allowing digital and social media unfettered access to news, unregulated free usage, and ever-increasing influence in shaping the future of the media and publishing industries. Continued below...

THE PRESENTERS

Doug Firby

Doug is a lifelong journalist, adventurer, conservationist, and bicycling enthusiast. After investing more than three decades writing for and editing newspapers, magazines and online publications in Canada, Doug became president of Troy Media Digital Solutions and publisher of Troy Media. He and his partner Lisa also operate Big Tree Communications, a boutique company that leverages their vast editorial experience.

Doug Lacombe

Doug Lacombe, MBA is president and founder of Communicatto Inc., a digital marketing agency. Drawing on almost 30 years of experience in media, web publishing and technology; Doug and his team work with organizations to integrate traditional and digital communications, with a focus on content marketing, advertising, and social media.

Senator Paula Simons

Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Paula Simons earned a B.A. Honours degree in English Literature from the University of Alberta, and a Master’s degree in Journalism from Stanford University, before spending time as a fellow at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

She has been a radio documentary-maker, a playwright, a television pundit, a magazine writer, a podcaster, and an author of popular history, but she is best known for her work as a political columnist and investigative journalist with the Edmonton Journal.

She sits as an independent senator representing Alberta in the Senate of Canada, and is part of the Independent Senators Group caucus.

The storm of digital and social media manipulation via the internet continues unabated and goes well beyond just the media. It has been aided recently by a pandemic that forced the isolation/ disconnection of people from their families, communities and traditional sources of service and supply. Together the pandemic accelerated arrival of the digital economy and the restructuring of supply chains for shopping, travelling, entertaining, even praying. Each have been transformed through the internet and the introduction of apps allowing the application of data analytics to anticipate, aide and even control choice. Thank you Zoom and Amazon and Google, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. The disruption may be just the beginning of an even broader transformation.

As commercial use of the internet has matured, eEverything has increased concerns with how to manage fraud and fakery and regulate unfettered competition. Civic trust is at stake. The internet has created a market enabling the client and suppliers to interact freely without regulation - other than "the buyer beware". The governments have not kept up and there is no apparent consensus on it's role and/or what to do.

Consider the impact of the freedom of access to knowledge, the historical domain of the professions - the foundation of the knowledge economy. That access has been the primary role of education and the professions. Public trust has been established and maintained as government protected the public from knowledge fakery among the professions by granting exclusive rights of practice to professions on the condition that the professions agree to regulate their practitioners. The regulatory role of the state has been fundamental to establishing "trust" in the distribution of knowledge through the professions including education AND the media.

Today the professions are feeling the winds of change as apps are introduced with access to troves of data and interpretive algorithms. These apps adopted as aides by the professions and are accessible to clients who now - as consumers, shop for information. But think ahead. These algorithms that fuel the apps are not passive; they are engaged in continuous learning improvement. Ultimately the apps will become so "knowledgeable" as to compete with their owners, earn the trust of their clients, and displace those who once prospered as the exclusive purveyors of knowledge. Some fear the loss of jobs, the future of work, and the need for meaning beyond work.

Others view these winds of change as warm and welcoming, heralding the merits of the Digital Age as the by-product of progress - innovation and improved market efficiency, effectiveness, and economy. A utopian gain - a new future, where humans voluntarily give up their privacy in the interest of gaining personalized services. This - the consequence of our faith in technology that is shaping our future, our evolution.

Still others fear the threat of the Digital Age as one of anarchy, where the BigTech oligarchs gain influence - and ultimately gain control, over human decision-making in every facet of our lives. First as an aide to shopping and ultimately in the shaping of elections or even displacing the need for governance altogether, the libertarian form of anarchy. In the extreme - unfettered, they point to surveillance capitalism advancing a future of Orwellian "mind control".

What to do? Already threats to break up the BigTech oligopoly and regulate the algorithms have been confronted by civil rights, free speech, and innovation advocates. Their argument is that freedom is fundamental to preserving democracy. Their influence is substantial, EXCEPT where democratic principles are subservient to state/ party power.

The ruling party in China is an example with no reservation to employing the power of the storm - elements of the Digital Age: data analytics, facial recognition, sensor towers, for identifying, evaluating, and containing socially inappropriate behavior. China's rapid adoption of AI and the Digital Age contrasts with the slower moving, confused democracies where the storm is allowed to rage longer, and the algorithms more time to adapt.

A more close to home examples include open data access and collection such as the Canada-wide municipal interest in establishing SMART Cities. The program involves installing data capture sensors throughout the community to regulate for example congestion in transportation. Then there is facial recognition sensors as are distributed throughout the UK. Other examples already in place include credit card and banking data swapping/ analytics in the interest of fraud detection detection of shopping patterns.

Is there a compromise, an approach to the gathering and usage of data the would bridge the appetite for growth and preserve democratic values? That is, is it possible to separate and license the usage of algorithms from the gathering and distribution of data?

Friday's webinar will weigh in on the implications of allowing digital and social media unfettered access to news, unregulated free usage, and ever-increasing influence over the future of the media and publishing industry.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82909644522

Stay tuned the digital storm should be viewed as an existential threat; yes - even to governments.

The Future

Regulating Social Media

HERE

Government is waking up

HERE

What role the humanities? - Thank you Kelly

Robotic Manufacturing

HERE

Challenges 2021

Predictions 2021

HERE

Ontario Accelerator

Uncertainty

Risk Mitigation for SMEs

HERE

How MARs does it

WD Can Help

HERE

Innovating? Wanting to grow?

Overcoming Doubt

HERE

Canadian Achieves $1B Sale

MESSAGING

Do you have something to share?

LET US KNOW

Can Democracy survive BIGtech?- Thank you Kelly O'Neill

The rise of mis-and dis-information, the deepening of political polarization, and the amplification of extremist content and incitements to violence, have spurred governments around the world to explore legislative action to regulate online platforms and the internet more broadly”. FOR MORE