Archive for 2013

JOURN-O-LIST UPDATE: Ezra Klein and Josh Marshall, Who Got a VIP Briefing at the White House Yesterday, Are Curiously on the Same Page Today. “What I glean from this is that the previous White House position — nothing more needs be done, this is all a ‘partisan fishing expedition’ — is now inoperative, and a new defense — fire Lois Lerner and then claim that nothing more needs be done, this is all now just a partisan fishing expedition, again — is now in effect.”

INTEL FUELS A REBELLION AROUND YOUR DATA.

Intel is a $53-billion-a-year company that enjoys a near monopoly on the computer chips that go into PCs. But when it comes to the data underlying big companies like Facebook and Google, it says it wants to “return power to the people.”

Intel Labs, the company’s R&D arm, is launching an initiative around what it calls the “data economy”—how consumers might capture more of the value of their personal information, like digital records of their their location or work history. To make this possible, Intel is funding hackathons to urge developers to explore novel uses of personal data. It has also paid for a rebellious-sounding website called We the Data, featuring raised fists and stories comparing Facebook to Exxon Mobil.

Intel’s effort to stir a debate around “your data” is just one example of how some companies—and society more broadly—are grappling with a basic economic asymmetry of the big data age: they’ve got the data, and we don’t.

It is that way.