UGC NET CS 2018 DEC Paper-1

Today, in the digital age, who owns information owns the future. In this digital world, we face a fundamental choice between open and closed. In an open world information is shared by all freely available to everyone. In a closed world information is exclusively owned and controlled by a few. Today, we live in a closed world of extraordinary and growing concentrations in power and wealth. A world where innovation is held back and distorted by the dead hand of monopoly; where essential medicines are affordable only to the rich, where freedom is threatened by manipulation, exclusion and exploitation; and each click you make,
every step you take, they will be watching you. By contrast, in an open world all of us would be enriched by the freedom to use, enjoy and build on everything from statistics and research to newspaper stories and books, from software and films to music and medical formulae. In an open world, we would pay innovators and creators more and more fairly, using market driven remuneration rights in place of intellectual property monopoly rights. As they have improved, digital technologies have taken on ever more of the tasks that humans used to do from manufacturing cars to scheduling appointments. And in the next few decades, artificial
intelligence may well be not only driving our cars for us but drafting legal contracts and performing surgery. On the face of it, we have much to gain if machines can spare us tedious or routine tasks and perform them with greater accuracy. The danger, though, is that robots run on information-software, data algorithms and at present the ownership of this sort of information is
unequal. And because it is protected by our closed system of intellectual property rights.

How will an open world function ?