Tehran(Bazaar): Professor Glenn Parry in interview with Bazaar news agency said: Important factors in any economy are depend to a certain extent on political viewpoint: open markets, open borders, taxation that is fair, growth that is unconstrained, etc.
On the other hand, he believes security and investment challenge are among the factors that are important in accelerate digital economy.
Following is the full text of the interview:
Bazaar: What are important factors in the digital economy?
Parry: First, what do you understand to be the digital economy? I argue that the economy is the digital economy as most business has some online presence and most phone calls are now digital. Important factors in any economy are therefore relevant and depend to a certain extent on political viewpoint: open markets, open borders, taxation that is fair, growth that is unconstrained, etc. all become salient questions. Particular issues for digital could be data protection regulations e.g. GDPR, and the interpretation of IP law.
Bazaar: How does the digital economy impact business and improve various industries?
Parry: Digital impacts on all business through ability to communicate and the speed of that communications. Visibility of firm data is much greater, allowing trends to be spotted and action taken to exploit opportunities or address failures.
Bazaar: What are the challenges in accelerating the digital economy?
Parry: Investment is a challenge – we are dominated by US and China. They invest in firms more readily than in UK and EU, in the US this is mainly due to tax laws that rewards investors for firm growth. This allows for much greater levels of innovation.
China has some advantages as they have digitized so much of their society they can use their population to train AI. Getting sufficiently large training sets for data is key in future competitive advantage. Consider healthcare analysis – access to large datasets in the UK or EU requires multiple permissions and therefore becomes difficult, hindering innovation. However, healthcare data is sensitive and individuals rightly don’t want to give that data to firms. We need to consider how this can be done. I believe there may be an argument for giving people royalty payments if their data is used to develop a system that subsequently creates wealth – much like how musicians are paid royalties when their music is used.
Technical updates are always a challenge as we have such complexity in our systems. This often leaves systems open to hacking and malicious actors.
Supply Chain Resilience – as can be seen in current global supply, the system is broken. It was too fragile – everything outsourced to a different person and run as ‘lean’ as it could be. There was no systems recovery plan and now the whole global system is struggling to recover.
Digital security is a future challenge for all that needs to be address to secure growth.
Of particular challenge is the issue of free speech and freedom of expression, upon which much of the internet was developed. We are in an age of extensive online abuse, fake news and misinformation that is potentially harmful to individuals e.g. anti vaccination rhetoric. Whilst it is important to allow challenging debate, individuals must also recognize they are accountable for what they say. Too often online abuse, fake news and the like is not challenged and individuals begin to believe such behavior is acceptable. How to address this without losing the benefits of anonymity and freedom of expression is a particular challenge.
Bazaar: What are emerging technologies for improving the digital economy?
Parry: IoT and DLT are likely near-term evolving solutions that I would expect to see growth in as they begin to mature.
Longer term the mobile and edge technologies are likely to be more powerful as 5G and 6G role out.
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