Das Digital – Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data

A new series of seminars on the effect of the Digital Revolution on International Relations

Guests

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation, Oxford Internet Institute (OII), and Co-Author of “Das Digital”

Chaired by

Mark Leonard, Co-Founder and Director, ECFR

International Relations in the Digital Age is a new series launched by ECFR in 2018 to examine how the digital revolution is redefining international relations. The series will explore how technological changes will affect democracy, economics, identity and war, as well as how DR will change deterrence, international regimes, state and non-state actors.

A clever, but less-than-ideal solution – that’s what Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge call the price mechanism that determines supply on conventional markets. They also call it a “fundamental weakness” in our age. Big data and artificial intelligence might soon enable us to match supply and demand, preferences and availability, and supersede the allocation mechanism contemporary economics view as most efficient. It would be a change as profound as the industrial revolution for the way we do business. And it begs the question of whether a big data-enhanced planned economy might soon outperform the free market.

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (@Viktor_MS) is the Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute and co-author of the new book “Das Digital.”

Mark Leonard (@markhleonard) is Co-Founder and Director at ECFR.