Control over knowledge a key source of power, says Brock professor

NEWS RELEASE
BROCK UNIVERSITY
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Control over knowledge has become a key source of power in the global political economy, says data governance expert Blayne Haggart.

The Associate Professor in Brock’s Department of Political Science, along with regulatory scholar Natasha Tusikov of York University, has co-authored a new book about how governments and companies battle for control over knowledge, especially in the forms of data and intellectual property, which they call “the twin engines of the knowledge economy.”

The New Knowledge: Information, Data and the Remaking of Global Power is the culmination of more than a decade’s worth of analysis of digital governance and tech regulation that touches on topics from the Internet of Things to governments using automated decision-making to deliver public programs.

“Everybody has to understand these issues, and it’s only becoming increasingly important,” Haggart says. “When knowledge moves to the forefront of our society and the global economy, it means that the biggest, most important policy issues revolve around who is able to exert control over knowledge, such as governments or companies, and also the limits of this control.”

While knowledge has always been important, he says the control of knowledge — particularly data and intellectual property — has become a dominant force in shaping society and the economy.

“It’s a change that predates the mainstreaming of the internet. It first shows up in a big way with respect to pharmaceutical drug patents, which allowed the commodification of life-saving drugs that in turn means only wealthy nations can access them,” he says. “Commodified knowledge is now omnipresent in our data-driven world.”

The book breaks down several crucial topics related to knowledge and who controls it, such as:

• the right-to-repair movement, which comes as a response to manufacturers retaining control over everything from household appliances to tractors through their operating software;
• issues of privacy and data-sharing that crop up when governments turn to tech firms to solve pressing social problems, such as contact-tracing in a pandemic, using proprietary digital technologies; and
• global value chains that enable those who own the intellectual property rights over knowledge to accrue wealth, rather than those who actually manufacture goods, among many others.

In order to address these and other challenges, the authors argue for “knowledge decommodification,” a principle designed to ensure that knowledge is not treated primarily as a commodity to be bought and sold.

“Instead, knowledge must be used in ways that respect the interests and needs of the people and communities from whom the data was collected, while also limiting overly strong intellectual property rights that impair, rather than encourage, innovation and human development,” Haggart says.

The New Knowledge is available traditionally or as an open-access resource from Rowman & Littlefield under the Features tab on the book’s website.

Haggart and Tusikov will also share their research findings as part of a free virtual symposium, Digital Regulation in the Public Interest: Surveying the Field, alongside other scholars, on Tuesday, Nov. 7.

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