How technology can fail us
When 19th century inventor and electrical pioneer Michael Faraday demonstrated the technology of electricity to the British chancellor of the exchequer (minister of finance) he was asked what would be the utility of his invention. To this, Faraday is supposed to have replied, “Sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it”. The history of scientific and technological inventions seems to have come full circle since then. Faraday may have foreseen that his invention would be regulated and taxed, but if the same question is posed to an innovator of the digital age, he or she would probably say “this is the technology that regulators would never be able to catch up with and tax”.
Regulation has been laggard when it comes to dealing with technology, particularly information and communication technologies of the 21st century. Satellite television, satellite telephony, satellite-based navigation systems, internet protocol (IP) telephony, IP television and radio, electronic commerce, online distribution of music and other media products have all not only disrupted traditional business models but have also cocked a snook at respective regulations. Many of the applications or apps that run on mobile operating software like Android and iOS fall in the category of regulation-proof disruptive technologies.
Ride sharing apps like Uber, SideCar, Hailo and Lyft are not taxi services in the traditional brick-and-mortar sense. They don’t own fleets of cars and have drivers on their rolls. These apps are just software designed to put drivers and potential riders together and make money in the process. Anyone, not just professional drivers, can offer a ride and become a “transportation entrepreneur”.
By using a ride sharing app, you can offer empty seats to riders for a fee while travelling from one city to another, instead of giving a ride to hitch-hikers. Such shared paid rides booked via phone apps have become the cheapest mode of inter-city transport in many European countries. Car pooling apps too are available. All such apps are disrupting trillion dollar transportation business in the West.
The rape involving an Uber driver, however, has exposed loopholes in the apps-based business model. The loop of service applications that originate in the virtual world gets completed in the real world. It is the intersection of virtual and real worlds that is posing surfeit of uneasy questions relating to women’s safety, regulation, taxation, national boundaries, personal freedom, consumer rights, privacy issues and so on.
If apps are just pieces of software, can there be a law to regulate them? Who is accountable to consumers – platforms (Apple App Store, Google Play or Samsung Apps Store which hawk mobile apps), phone manufacturers (they supply devices on which apps are available), app developers, service providers behind apps or carriers like phone companies? All of them may shirk responsibility when something like the Delhi rape happens, but the fact is that they all have a huge stake in the fast growing business of mobile apps, estimated to rake in revenues worth 25 billion dollars a year. And unlike Faraday, none of them want to be regulated.