The growing powers and influence of Internet monopolies during the ongoing digital transformation threatens democratic societies - WE HAVE TO ACT.

In the course of the ongoing digital transformation data owners will become part of the value chain - our data are valuable - we have to charge for their use!

Data are Entering Blue and White Collar Work

Digital transformation processes, as we know them from the first Internet hype in the year 2000, are entering more and more areas of our society. You find them in the ongoing industrial automation (Industry 4.0), automated driving of cars (autonomous vehicles) and the overall influence of information technology (IT) on mobility (integrated traffic management), or the automation of energy production and its distribution in the optimization of energy use.

in4comstands for "Industrial Integration In Information and Communications" - the notion dates back to the turn of the century when 3G was widely introduced, UMTS blinked on the horizon, and a tremendous hype around communications and the integration with information technologies started off. As we know now, this was just the initial hype of many more which followed.  The need for an industrial approach to the use of IT and communications has never been bigger than today - we assume in 10 years from now this will still be true.

Think about it - the Internet has grown from a tool of a bunch of nerds into a world-wide available infrastructure, which is used by billions of people, on a professional as well as on personel level.

For each item in the real world, we all profit from a legal framework which allows us to move (more or less) safely about. But what about the digital world? To me this looks much more like Wild West than anything else. In many ways we depend upon the goodwill of international players who confront us with usage regulations 20 pages long before allowing us to use our smartphone which we have paid for!