As a corollary to the comment here a few weeks back on Tim Berners-Lee’s ideas for shifting the power balance of the web away from data-exploiting conglomerates and back towards individuals, this post is a good clear-headed account of why his goal – however laudable – may be hard to achieve in practice.
What makes it striking and powerful is that it is not written from the perspective of somebody critical of the approach. On the contrary, it is by a long-standing advocate of redecentralising the internet, but who has a hard-headed appreciation of what would be involved. It is a good critique, for example addressing the need to recognise that data does not perfectly map to individuals (and therefore what data counts as mine is nowhere near as straightforward as might be thought) and that for many purposes the attributes of the data, including the authority with which it is asserted, can be as important at the data itself.
One response to that and other problems could be to give up on the ambition for change in this area, and leave control (and thus power) with the incumbents. Instead, the post takes the more radical approach of challenging current assumptions about data ownership and control at a deeper level, arguing that governments should be providing the common, open infrastructure which would allow very different models of data control to emerge and flourish.