The Death of Info Slaves with Shiv Malik

My guest today is Shiv Malik, CEO, and Co-Founder of the Pool Foundation. The Pool Foundation is the company behind Pool Data, a platform and associated services to support Data Unions to develop, scale, and monetize. They have studied existing Data Union frameworks in the Web3 space, seeking to simplify the complex technology required to scale. The pool is not only generating products and a technology offering for Data Unions but also the fabric by which the entities are connected to aggregate data and data buyers. To do this, the ecosystem must become more mature by enabling new Data Union companies and integrating existing businesses into the Data Union model of governance and payment. They aim to accelerate this process by creating the materials, education, and mentorship necessary to establish Data Unions, grow their user bases, and sell their data through our real-time marketplace. Shiv Malik is a technologist, award-nominated broadcaster, author of two books, former Guardian investigative journalist, and co-founder of the Intergenerational Foundation think tank. He joined the Web3 space in mid-2017 as an adviser to the Golem project and subsequently as Head of Growth for Streamr and co-creator of their Data Unions framework. In 2021 he co-founded Pool and currently leads the organization on its mission to bring Data Unions to the world and ensure that people have control of their data and a genuine stake in the digital economy. We discuss various topics in our conversation, including the importance of Data, Data-opolies, Data Unions, Data Emancipation, and much more. We begin our discussion by discussing Shiv’s background before joining the Web3 space. Shiv shares how he was an investigative journalist and war correspondent. Shiv explains how his experiences helped prepare him for founding a startup. We transition our conversation to discuss why Data emancipation is essential. We discuss how the current surveillance capitalist model works and how tech companies can profit from our data. We define the term data-opolies and how Web3 offers an alternative system to the status quo. Shiv explains why he is so passionate about Data and Data Emancipation. We transition our conversation to discuss Pool and Data Unions. Shiv explains how Pool is building the infrastructure for Data Unions. We discuss in detail what data unions are and why they are essential in the quest to disrupt these Data-opolies. We transition to discuss advertising. Shiv explains how Data is used in advertising and how things need to change because of public sentiments toward data collection and government and corporate regulation. We discuss how Data Unions can help power the next revolution in marketing and advertising. Our final topic centered around the Intergenerational Foundation think tank. We discuss how we can reimagine the future and the importance of optimizing for time preference. Please enjoy my conversation with Shiv Malik. -- This podcast is powered by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at https://blockworks.co