This week onwards How success happens, I spoke with Frank McCourt Jr., executive chairman and founder of Project Liberty and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He has had a successful career in construction and infrastructure projects but, more recently, he has turned his attention to a new infrastructure project: the Internet. I was curious to learn more about McCourt’s plans to build a safer Internet and his book, Our greatest battle: reclaiming freedom and humanity in the digital age.
You can listen to our full conversation above, and I’ve come up with three key points below.
Innovation is the key to changing our current Internet culture
“The current architecture of the Internet is destroying society,” McCourt says. “This is a solvable problem. We need an Internet that protects our children, makes our democracy stronger, and allows us to build great businesses and share the wealth so it doesn’t end up in the hands of five big corporations. We can innovate our way forward and solve this problem.
Timestamp: 10:30
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Find out where your data goes
“As we entered the app age, technology originally designed to create opportunity and connectivity became a race to reclaim our data,” McCourt says. “Big tech companies are hoarding our data and mapping everything about us. And then they control that data. Facebook won the race for social, Amazon for commerce, and Google for search, but they’re all doing the same thing : Scrape our social graphs and turn that data into a profit.”
Timestamp: 26:25
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Today’s struggle bears notable similarities to historical struggles
“I was inspired to write Our greatest battle because today’s Big Tech companies are the richest and most powerful companies that have ever existed,” says McCourt. “In 1775, Thomas Paine wrote Common sense and explained that colonists could choose whether to remain subjects of the British monarchy or become citizens of a new government. We are faced with a similar choice. We are allowing Big Tech to surveil us 24/7, collect our data, and know everything about us, simply so we can use the Internet. When enough is enough. We can solve this problem together.”
Timestamp: 54:37
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