We’re living in an era of digital feudalism. Here’s how to take your data and identity back

A longer version of this article was posted on Quartz. Join Don Tapscott and Quartz Ideas editor Georgia Frances King at 11am EST on Monday Sept. 16 to discuss the perils of providing Big Tech with unfettered access to your personal data, and what you can do to take your data back.

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We’re over two decades into an era of digital feudalism.

Feudalism is a centuries-old concept. In medieval times, the nobility owned vast amounts of land. Serfs worked the land to create value, but most of that value was confiscated by the landlord.

Instead of farm produce, today the new asset class is data—created by us, but captured by digital landlords such as social-media companies, search engines, online retailers, governments, and banks. 

All this data constitutes a “virtual you.” The digital crumbs that you leave in daily life create a mirror image that knows more about you than you do. You probably can’t remember dozens of your personal identifiers: Your driver’s licence details, credit-card numbers, government information. But you definitely don’t know your exact location a year ago; what you bought or what amount of money you transacted; what you said online; or what medication you took or diagnosis you received.

The trouble is that the virtual you is not owned by you. We create the asset: The big internet companies expropriate it. 

There are problems with this new form of feudalism:

• First, we can’t use our own data to plan our lives. It’s stored in other people’s silos, which we can’t access—but third parties like Cambridge Analytica can, often without our knowledge.
• Second, we enjoy none of the rewards of this third-party data usage, yet we bear most of the risk and responsibility for its clean up, should they lose or abuse our data.
• Third, these elites are invading our privacy and telling us to “get over it,” when they know full well that privacy is the foundation of freedom; just look at the Chinese social credit scoring
• Fourth, we can’t monetize these data assets for ourselves, resulting in a bifurcation of wealth and all its discontents.

The serfs are starting to get mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore.  

The self-sovereign identity

State-run internet-based systems are problematic. In the last ten years, at least 48 government databases have been breached, exposing the data of 1.44 billion people—and that number doesn’t include hacks to government-managed health-care and education records. The reality of a government-sourced and -sanctioned identity is untenable—both administratively and philosophically. Why should any government get to rubber-stamp who we are? 

What each of us needs is a self-sovereign and inalienable digital identity, one that is neither bestowed nor revocable by any central administrator and is enforceable in any context, in person and online, anywhere in the world.

As Alex Tapscott and I argue in Blockchain Revolution, the means now exist to assert what developer Moxie Marlinspike calls “sovereign source authority”: Identity is not simply endowed at birth; it is endowed by birth.

The ultimate solution must exist independent of any corporation, government, or other third party, and should not be subject to the agency risk of executives or political parties. It must interoperate with these institutions, even as it outlasts them. In fact, it must be built to outlive its users and enforce their right to be forgotten. This would mean separating data rights from the actual data, so that the rights holder could delete it. To be inclusive, it must be user-friendly with a low-tech mobile interface and low-cost dispute resolution.

This transition will take time. However, self-sovereign identity is one the pillars of a new social contract for the digital economy, and will be critical to the transformation to a more open, inclusive, and private economy.

About the Author:

Don Tapscott is co-author of the bestselling book, Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World. He is also the Executive Chairman of the Blockchain Research Institute, a global think-tank convening the world’s top researchers to undertake ground-breaking research on blockchain technology.