The New Knowledge: Information, Data and the Remaking of Global Power

• Department of Law

The EUI Law of Information Society Working Group hosts a roundtable event featuring a presentation by the authors, as well as contributions from Roxana Vatanparast (Capital University Law School), Gijs van Maanen (Tilburg University), Cristiana Lauri (EUI), Emmanouil Bougiakiotis (EUI), Tommaso Fia (EUI), Sara Guidi (EUI), and Lola Montero Santos (EUI).

Abstract:

From the global geopolitical arena to the smart city, control over knowledge — particularly over data and intellectual property — has become a key battleground for the exercise of economic and political power. For companies and governments alike, control over knowledge — what scholar Susan Strange calls the knowledge structure — has become a goal unto itself.

The rising dominance of the knowledge structure is leading to a massive redistribution of power, including from individuals to companies and states. Strong intellectual property rights have concentrated economic benefits in a smaller number of hands, while the internet of things is reshaping basic notions of property, ownership, and control. In the scramble to create and control data and intellectual property, governments and companies alike are engaging in ever-more surveillance. 

The New Knowledge: Information, Data and the Remaking of Global Power (Rowman & Littlefield 2023) by Blayne Haggart and Natasha Tusikov is a guide to and analysis of these unparalleled changes, and of the emerging phenomenon of the knowledge-driven society. It highlights how the pursuit of the control over knowledge has become its own ideology, with its own set of experts drawn from those with the ability to collect and manipulate digital data. Haggart and Tusikov propose a workable path.