Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In earlier blogs, we saw the US and European policies on data. Coming to India, Rahul Matthan (in The Third Way ) points out it is one of those rare countries which has collected a huge amount of digital data before it became rich. This is entirely because of the combo of smartphone + cheap Internet plans. Even those of us who lived through this phase forget how quick it was – in 2014, just 15% of the population had a smartphone, by 2022 over 65% had one.   There is one element of the data equation on which India is unique, namely that its gathering was facilitated by deliberate government policies and protocols, not by private players. Yes, DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure) , which includes everything from UPI to eKYC to DigiYatra to DigiLocker and more. It ensures “interoperable digital architectures” (contrast that with the silos of Google or Facebook in the West; Alibaba or WeChat in China). Does the Indian approach provide any benefits and opportunities? Yes, on 3 front...

Alex Danco made a very interesting point about how technology is shifting us away from a world where we owned things to a world where we access things. As we demanded 24x7 access to all our content, sure enough, technological solutions propped up: “Everything under the hood just gets magic-ed away, and provided for us as a service. No files, no updates, no maintenance; just access.” We don’t buy music anymore, we stream it on our apps. Nobody buys maps because there’s Google Maps.   But that anytime, anywhere access comes with a price: “The more you can access, the less it’s yours.” Huh? Take Uber, for example. It has led many to stop driving their own cars: “You just push the Uber button and somebody comes and picks you up. But it’s also not funny, because we’ve all experienced the particularly modern frustration of seeing the Uber drive in the opposite direction, spin around 4 times, then cancel. Access feels like the real thing, until it’s taken away from you .”...