Charlotte Henry

In March 2018, Singapore-based Bloomberg journalist Yoolim Lee ordered a lift via ride-hailing service Grab. She was heading to her daughter’s kindergarten. She never made it. There was an accident, and her driver fled the scene, with Ms. Lee trapped in the vehicle. She was freed but severely injured.   After recovering, Ms. Lee looked into services like Grab and even confronted the driver who picked her up that day. She told the moving and eye-opening story in Bloomberg Business Week.

After I returned to work in May, I began digging into the licensing process. Before July 2017, the government had allowed drivers who applied for a new mandatory vocational license a one-year grace period during which they could take the course and pass a written test. But of the 42,900 private-hire car drivers in this category, only 22,000 had managed to get a full license within a year. The implication, to me anyway, is that roughly half of these drivers shouldn’t have been on the road in the first place.

We all know of the web’s many ills, but what are the solutions? Richard Whitt, head of the GLIA Foundation, thinks he has the answer – give the internet back to the users. Writing for Fast Company, Mr. Whitt says that change could be brought about by using existing technologies and business practices to advocate on behalf of the user.

On this better, more user-driven web, each of us would be in control of our digital lives. For example, we could have our personal information (browsing history, past purchases, content preferences) curated and stored, in a localized repository we control. We users then could choose to share or withhold our personal profile, including some or all of that data, as we see fit, in exchange for specific services from internet companies. Moreover, on this new web, users also could dispatch a personal AI avatar to act as a virtual envoy, both online and offline.