Who Owns the Future?
Who Owns the Future? is a 2013 book in which Jaron Lanier argues that large digital platforms — which he calls 'Siren Servers' — collect and aggregate ordinary people's data, photos, and translations at effectively no cost, then convert that pooled information into concentrated wealth for a small number of companies. He contends this arrangement is linked to shrinking middle-class opportunity in fields that digital networks touch, from journalism to photography, because the people who generate the underlying content are rarely paid for it. As a remedy, Lanier proposes 'micropayments' that would compensate people whenever their data or content is used commercially. TechKids Foundation cites this book as Lanier's core economic argument for why platform business models are associated with a growing gap between everyday content creators and the platforms that profit from their work.
Lanier, Jaron. Who Owns the Future? Simon & Schuster, 2013.
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