INTRODUCTION

Welcome to our Summer 2023 edition of The Lamwyk Journal, which is here to provide brain food and to enhance perspectives. So much content is dull regurgitation so we aim to offer thoughtful insights that are pertinent and thought-provoking. In the land of grey tedium we are making a difference. We hope you relish this edition and look forward to keeping you even better informed.

Edward Goodchild Publisher

A Word From Tom

It gives me immense pleasure to edit this Summer 2023 edition of the Lamwyk Journal. This would not have been possible without the support of our brilliant Lamwyk team. Lamwyk began as a series of illuminating roundtable think-tank sessions convening leaders in business, scientific and civic spaces.

Our members enjoyed illuminating discussions where these experts offered solutions to some of the most daunting issues facing us all. The reinvigorated Lamwyk Journal continues in that vein.

This edition celebrates some of the smart-thinking offering solutions to a whole range of technological, botanical and economic growth challenges. We hope you enjoy reading!

Tom O’Brien Editor

Creative Design - Tiggy Gambarini

Front Cover Illistration - Angela Chick www.angelachick.com

Tick-Tock: Is time running out for non-Western apps in the UK?

TikTok currently captures the attention of at least 17 million people in the UK for over an hour a day. With global downloads soaring into the billions, TikTok has posed an unprecedented challenge to the market dominance of Silicon Valley’s products. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of competition between thriving businesses.

However, for Western governments there’s an enormous problem with an app hoovering up troves of detailed data about their young people. These governments are hugely concerned that the data collected heads straight to their counterparts in Beijing. TikTok’s owner ByteDance strenuously denies all allegations of connections to the Chinese government.

However, Western security services are not so convinced. London is particularly concerned about the extraction of UK citizens’ data through the app. TikTok collects everything from users’ exact locations to their keyboard typing rhythms. As a result, TikTok is now banned on all of the UK government’s corporate devices. It is also now impossible to access TikTok in Westminster through the Parliamentary Estate’s Wi-Fi network.

There is even speculation of an eventual total banning of TikTok across the UK, US, EU, Canada and Australia. Such a blanket ban already exists in India. The desire to avoid any risk of Beijing hoovering up our next generation’s most sensitive data and shaping their political opinions is completely understandable.

However, restricting access to something is always the easiest part of any policy response. The tricky bit comes in deciding what replaces it. As much needed international agreement on global tech standards becomes an ever more distant hope, the risk of tech splintering into different geopolitical blocs is increasing significantly. Many say that this splintering has already begun.

Rather than saying what we don’t want out of tech, it seems much more constructive to outline what we do want. Where are the UK-based competitors to TikTok? How is the government supporting their growth?

The Chinese app has not only captured the hearts of its many users, but also of its 600 employees in the UK and Ireland. The best way to attract both users and talented staff away from the app is to create something better at home.

Simply banning TikTok could just lead to people trying to access their favourite videos on the app in different ways. Besides, how does it look if nations that spread ideals of freedom, innovation and democracy globally say that these values can only be consumed on specific video platforms?

Unfortunately, TikTok seems like it’s here to stay. It doesn’t have to retain its market share forever though. If we’re approaching an era of much more sovereign tech, we may as well seize the opportunity to create some of the world’s most exciting social media platforms in the UK and Ireland.