Book talk 'Cloud Empires: How Digital Platforms Are Overtaking the State and How We Can Regain Control' with Prof Vili Lehdonvirta

07 February 2023

Portrait of Professor Carl Benedikt Frey

with Professor Carl Benedikt Frey
Director

Carl-Benedikt Frey is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI & Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and a Fellow of Mansfield College, University of Oxford. He is also Director of the Future of Work Programme and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow ...

The early Internet was a lawless place, populated by scam artists who made buying or selling anything online risky business.

Then Amazon, eBay, Upwork, and Apple established secure digital platforms for selling physical goods, crowdsourcing labour, and downloading apps. These tech giants have gone on to rule the Internet like autocrats. How did this happen? How did users and workers become the hapless subjects of online economic empires? The Internet was supposed to liberate us from powerful institutions. In this talk, digital economy expert Vili Lehdonvirta will explore the rise of the platform economy into statelike dominance over our lives and propose a new way forward.

This is a joint event with the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Work.