Digital charter bill will do little to protect Canadians' personal data

Bill C-27 is a welcome sign that the government is taking Big Data seriously, but it needs some serious finessing before it’ll do more than reinforce the status quo - Kean Birch The federal government has tabled Bill C-27, the digital charter implementation act, which covers consumer privacy, data protection tribunal processes and the regulation

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The changing dynamics of innovation in technoscientific capitalism

Kasra Babashahiashtiani is a geography MA student under the supervision of Dr. Kean Birch, with whom he examines the economic geography of Canada’s AI ecosystem as part of an SSHRC-funded project titled “The changing dynamics of innovation in technoscientific capitalism”.  In 2017, the Government of Canada announced the Pan-Canadian National AI strategy and pledged $125

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Kean Birch: Big Tech poses challenges our outdated competition laws were not designed to address

Those who think competition law does not need to be updated to address the harms caused by Big Tech fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the high-tech giants Author of the article: Kean Birch, Special to National Post Publishing date: Nov 29, 2021 Everywhere we look around the world, competition policy and laws are being redrawn

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Kean Birch

Associate Professor Co-Editor, Science as Culture Director, Institute for Technoscience & Society Series Editor, Technoscience & Society Book Series, University of Toronto Press Credentials PhD Planning, Oxford Brooks UniversityMSc Technology Studies, University of EdinburghMA (Honours) Sociology, University of Edinburgh Research Keywords Innovation; Technoscientific capitalism; Assets, assetization & rentiership; Digital & data economies; Big Tech; Finance

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Exploring how personal data is accounted for, governed, and valued by Big Tech firms

by DT Cochrane When I began my post-doctoral work with Professor Kean Birch, I was excited to engage with the faculty and students of the Faculty of Environmental & Urban Change. With an academic background in economics, and a PhD from York’s Graduate Program in Social & Political Thought, I thought I had much both

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This is how Canada should deal with Big Tech

By Kean Birch Big Tech was in the policy spotlight again recently with another U.S. Congressional hearing on Oct. 1, this time focused on “Proposals to Strengthen the Antitrust Laws and Restore Competition Online.” The hearing was the culmination of a long Congressional investigation into Big Tech — defined as Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google/Alphabet, and

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This is how Canada should deal with Big Tech

By Kean BirchContributor Tue., Oct. 13, 2020timer3 min. read updateArticle was updated Oct. 09, 2020 Big Tech was in the policy spotlight again recently with another U.S. Congressional hearing on Oct. 1, this time focused on “Proposals to Strengthen the Antitrust Laws and Restore Competition Online.” The hearing was the culmination of a long Congressional investigation into

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From Entrepreneurship to Rentiership? The Changing Dynamics of Innovation in Technoscientific Capitalism

Principal Investigator: Kean Birch. Funding: SSHRC Insight Grant. Term: 2018-2023. This project examines the extent, manifestation, and policy implications of ‘rentiership’ in contemporary, technoscientific capitalism. Rentiership is defined as the capture of value from the ownership and/or control of assets, rather than the production of new goods and services. It involves fieldwork on the following

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What can Canada learn from the U.S. Congressional hearing on Big Tech monopolies?

In late July, the U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on Antitrust held an important hearing on the monopolistic power of Big Tech — Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. I recommend watching the hearing; it’s long but worth it if you want insight into what we need to do to avoid damaging our economy and society further. Big

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