Research database

A new and unhoped-for capital transforms into value what was once pure loss, i.e., consumption, human’s forms of life, recorded by the web and transformed into data, i.e., into a new capital. This capital is first of all NEW, because although the acts and consumption it records date back to the origin of the human species, until now they had not been documented and thus transformed into data, i.e., into potential capital. Moreover, the new capital is RICH, because it does not document us on money or securities, but on the thoughts, words and deeds, dislikes and antipathies of humans, which at every moment enrich the archive from which artificial intelligence draws. Thirdly, it is a RENEWABLE asset, since the ownership of data has the characteristic of the publicity of ideas: unlike tangible assets, data can be transferred without the owner having to deprive himself of it. Finally, and above all, it is an EQUITABLE capital, i.e., one that is constructed not by the always problematic and disputable phenomenon of merit, but by the inexhaustible and egalitarian function of need, which is then what makes all human beings equal. This new capital, the patrimony of humanity, can now be intercepted, valorised, and redistributed to those parts of humanity that need it, implementing, for the first time in world history, a primacy of need over the tyranny of merit. This is the goal of WEBFARE.