‘The Solution To Big Tech Problems Is More Engineering, Not Less'

Lord John Browne, former CEO of British Petroleum, speaks about the business of oil in the age of climate change, his new book on the future of civilisation, and living his life in the closet

- Pankti Mehta Kadakia

John Browne, formally known as Lord Browne of Madingley, served as the CEO of oil and gas major British Petroleum (BP) until 2007, when he turned in an untimely resignation after his sexuality was outed by a newspaper. Browne was in the closet until the age of 60, and kept the secret also because his mother, who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, had advised him to stay quiet, to “never be part of a minority group”. Browne, who also serves as the chairman of the board for Huawei UK, has written five books, some of which deal with corporate life in the closet. In India to promote his latest, Make. Think. Imagine: Engineering the Future of Civilisation, Browne delves into issues of privacy, technophobia and big tech, and takes a hard look at the role of engineering in the modern day. Edited excerpts from an interview with Forbes India:

Q Based on your experience, and in the context of this book, how do you react to the phrase ‘data is the new oil’?

Partly, I think it’s wrong. Oil is part of energy, and energy is the world’s biggest business. In order to do anything with anything, we need energy; it enables the growth of people, their wealth, happiness, health. But I understand the meaning of the phrase, and that data has become dynamic. There’s so much more you can get out of data. Now that we have the super gigantic hardware infrastructure—which people think is the cloud, but is actually huge data centres with powerful computers—we can find interesting things from data to objectives we set. So it transforms many things we do, whether it’s medicine, health care, traffic control, how we manufacture, and so on. Everything can be made better optimised, and indeed, sometimes brand new things can be done with data.

Q Many see that as cause for concern…