Evening Standard comment: Tech changes everything, as politics is discovering

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Big tech met big politics yesterday — and came off best.

Swapping his usual grey T-shirt for a sober suit and tidy blue tie, Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg spent five hours giving evidence to the US Congress about the data scandal that has hit his business.

Even for a billionaire it was an intimidating event. But as he spoke, his company’s share price climbed and that more than anything else revealed the final score.

Senators tried to put him under pressure. Some of their questions were good ones; others were not.

It would be easy to mock the senator who asked how Facebook made money — apparently unaware of its vast revenues from advertising and data.

But mockery would be the wrong response.

Governments, courts and parliaments all over the world are struggling to respond to the vast and rapid changes to politics, society and economics being brought by businesses such as Facebook.

Would British MPs have asked better questions than the senators? No.

Do they have the knowledge and the tools to respond to the power of social media? No.

Do our regulators or our courts? No.

Digital technology is no longer just one industry among many others: it is a fundamental dynamic in almost every part of modern life and its power is only going to become greater.

The established ways of business, politics and Government can no longer deal with this adequately — as everything from the influence of fake social media in the US presidential election to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, to the epidemic of gang violence on London’s streets shows.

So the big question we should all be asking is: what needs to change? And how do we make it happen?

The wrong response would be to fear technology or to try to contain its impact.

It is improving lives fundamentally but our governments, parliaments and courts need to make a systematic attempt to understand its consequences so they can better regulate it, support it and improve it.

As Congress has just found out, ignorance isn’t bliss.

China’s Big Bang

Barriers seem to be going up in the world. So it’s particularly good news when they come down. And even better news when London leads the way in making it happen.

Today we report a significant move by Chinese regulators: they have announced that restrictions on the foreign ownership of financial institutions in China are to be eased.

That should mean fairer treatment for foreign investors in the country, including allowing them to own up to 51 per cent of shares in things such as funds and life-insurance joint ventures.

That was expected but what’s new is the speed of change. It is being hailed as the Asian “big bang” market reform, going much faster than most predicted.

On top of this, the London Stock Exchange has just given its backing to a new direct tie-up between the London and Shanghai markets which means investors in each country will be able access the other far more easily.

It’s a huge opportunity and one that Britain has been working towards for a while. It’s also a welcome sign that London remains at the heart of the world financial system.

Open borders and global links like these are what make our economy strong.

Getting wet, wet, wet

Pity poor Mike Bushell.

This morning the BBC presenter stood in the shallow end of a pool at the Commonwealth Games in Australia to interview a group of English swimming competitors — only to stumble and go swimming himself.

“I’m going to be careful because I’ve got a sound pack on,” he said, as he lowered himself in.

But not, it turned out, careful enough.

Even as he tumbled he will have known that he would become the stuff of a thousand YouTube clips.

On live TV, it’s when things go wrong that we tune in.

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