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Announce

The Open Revolution: rewriting the rules of the information age

Rufus Pollock, the Founder of Open Knowledge, is delighted to announce the launch of his new book on how we can revolutionize information ownership and access in the digital economy.

About the book

Forget everything you think you know about the digital age. It's not about privacy, surveillance, AI or blockchain – it's about ownership. In this urgent and provocative new book, Rufus Pollock presents a new diagnosis for the ills of the digital age and charts a path to a more equitable, innovative and profitable future.

Pollock exposes the myths that cloud the digital debate. Looking beneath the surface, into the basic rules of the digital economy, he offers a simple solution. The answer is not technological but political: a choice between making information Open, shared by all, or making it Closed, exclusively owned and controlled. Today in a Closed world we find ourselves at the mercy of digital dictators. What would a more Open future look like?

About the author

Dr Rufus Pollock is a researcher, entrepreneur and technologist working to make the information economy work for everyone. He is the founder of Open Knowledge International and formerly the Mead Fellow in Economics at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. He has been the recipient of a $1m Shuttleworth Fellowship and is currently an Ashoka Fellow and Fellow of the RSA.

Synopses

One sentence

In The Open Revolution: rewriting the rules of the information age, Rufus Pollock points to today’s “Closed” economics as the cause of many societal problems, and he charts a path to a more “Open” future that works for everyone.

One paragraph

Forget everything you think you know about the digital age. It’s not about technology; it’s about ownership. Because, information is power and who owns information controls the future. In this urgent and provocative book, Rufus Pollock shows how today’s “Closed” digital economy is the source of problems ranging from growing inequality, to unaffordable medicines, to the power of a handful of tech monopolies to control how we think and vote. He charts a path to a more equitable, innovative and profitable future for all.

Tech-y

Will the digital revolution give us digital dictatorships or digital democracies? Forget everything you think you know about the digital age. It’s not about privacy, surveillance, AI or blockchain—it’s about ownership. In this urgent and provocative book, Rufus Pollock presents a new diagnosis for the ills of the digital age and charts a path to a more equitable, innovative and profitable futu

Long

Will the digital revolution give us digital dictatorships or digital democracies? Forget everything you think you know about the digital age. It’s not about privacy, surveillance, AI or blockchain—it’s about ownership. Because, in a digital age, who owns information controls the future.

Today, information is everywhere. From your DNA to the latest blockbusters, from lifesaving drugs to the app on your phone, from big data to algorithms. Our entire global economy is built on it and the rules around information affect us all every day.

As information continues to move into the digital domain, it can be copied and distributed with ease, making access and control even more important. But the rules we have made for it, derived from how we manage physical property, are hopelessly maladapted to the digital world.

In this urgent and provocative book, Rufus Pollock shows that we must make a choice between making information Open, shared by all, or making it Closed, exclusively owned and controlled, and how today’s Closed digital economy is the source of problems ranging from growing inequality, to unaffordable medicines, to the power of a handful of tech monopolies to control how we think and vote.

Choosing Open is the path to a more equitable, innovative and profitable future for all.

Bio

1 Sentence

Dr Rufus Pollock is a researcher, entrepreneur and technologist and the founder of the international non-profit Open Knowledge.

Short

Dr Rufus Pollock is a researcher, entrepreneur and technologist. He is the founder of the international non-profit Open Knowledge and formerly the Mead Fellow in Economics at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge.

Medium

Dr Rufus Pollock is a researcher, technologist and entrepreneur. He has been a pioneer in the global Open Data movement, advising national governments, international organisations and industry on how to succeed in the digital world. He is the founder of Open Knowledge, a leading NGO with a presence in over 35 countries, empowering people and organizations with access to information so they can create insight and drive change. Formerly, he was the Mead Fellow in Economics at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. He has been the recipient of a $1m Shuttleworth Fellowship and is currently an Ashoka Fellow and Fellow of the RSA. He holds a PhD in Economics and a double first in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge.

Long

Dr Rufus Pollock is a researcher, technologist and entrepreneur working to make an information economy that works for everyone. He has been a pioneer in the global Open Data movement, advising national governments, NGOs, international organisations and industry on how to succeed in the digital world.

He is the founder of Open Knowledge a leading NGO which is present in over 35 countries, empowering people and organization to access information so that they can create insight and drive change.

Formerly, Pollock was the Mead Fellow in Economics at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. He has been the recipient of a $1m Shuttleworth Fellowship and is currently an Ashoka Fellow and Fellow of the RSA.

He holds a PhD in Economics and a double first in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge. He is the author of The Value of the Public Domain published by IPPR (the Institute for Public Policy Research) and the lead economist on the “Economic and Social Impact of the Public Domain” funded by the European Commission.