Selling the Cloud Sublime - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 107

of a larger-than-life character, Information Technology, that offers the
world the magic of hyperconnectivity. The myth turns on the drama
of whether we will adapt ourselves and our societies suficiently to the
needs of technology, by creating, for example, those business-friendly
policies that encourage, as the report puts it, “high levels of ICT uptake.”
The body of the WEF document details the promise of information
technology to deliver ever greater levels of progress to the world's people.
Like most myths, however complex the story appears, it is fundamentally
a simple narrative: the more IT, the more progress. But the WEF report
is more than a promotional blurb for “the next new thing.” This is dem-
onstrated in its willingness to admit to challenges that can get in the way
of, and perhaps even slow down, the arrival of the inevitable progress that
IT delivers. Since it is intended for a knowledgeable readership, the report
cannot simply dismiss problems. Rather, it redeines them in a way that
delates their power and their signiicance.
Consider privacy, a central issue in debates over information technol-
ogy and the cloud. While not going so far as to see it in quite this way,
the report does name privacy among the issues facing a hyperconnected
world (ibid., 4). However, from the standpoint of promoting IT, the key
is to rethink privacy to minimize, if not completely eviscerate, it as an
issue worthy of careful policy attention. Interestingly, this is made clear
in a discussion of what some would see as the central place where privacy
matters—the collection, storage, processing, and use of health data: “Is
privacy a concern? It certainly has to be front and center with respect to
virtually any effort connected to healthcare data. However, some experts
are gradually adopting a somewhat contrarian view on this topic, believ-
ing that our society must move past the fear of data and privacy breaches.
Many technological innovations that have revolutionized medicine might
not have been possible without sharing data. Any data—electronic or
paper-based—are vulnerable. But here, too, hyperconnectivity will enable
new tools to ight crime, fraud, and abuse” (ibid., 99). In essence, privacy
is a concern, but not really. Speciically, irst, get over it. Second, if you
want medical progress, then your data must be shared. Third, all data,
including paper-based, are vulnerable. Finally, technology, in the form of
a hyperconnected IT world, will ind solutions to problems presented by
privacy breaches. This is a version of what Evgeny Morozov (2013b) calls
“solutionism,” the view that problems and solutions will be deined and