A replay of this conversation is available here.
In the discussion the panel’s use of the term Internet applied to both wired broadband connection and mobile devices. Here are a few highlights from the informative panel.
Amy: If you were in charge of all the technology in the world, what change would you make to create a safer internet for everyone?
Sherri: My change would be to build a menu driven system to bring control of what actually happens behind the scenes to the forefront. The user can control the kind of access any part of the internet has to their own computer and that it would be more transparent and less mysterious than when people simply click on an url.
Karen: If I were in charge I would start looking at things the way we do in the physical world, where we put in ramps and we make sure that folks are taken care of regardless of their physical abilities. We need to start looking at folks who cannot focus as well in the cyber realm. Lizzie Coles-Kemp at Royal Holloway University coined the term Cyber Divide which recognizes that some of us can participate in the connected world and others can’t. Those who cannot yet are really vulnerable at the moment.
Yvette: One thing I would do if I had control in this space is toy ban surveillance advertising. Any click, any link that people go to is building a profile to then provide advertising and this could be really dangerous and damaging for our kids. It is especially disturbing as we want to build curious learners and thinkers in a space where a profile is being made for them to be really targeted for dangerous advertising.
Roy: I’m going to take the mobile Internet perspective and one of the things I think is very important is that emergency responders can find you in a crisis. Obviously, this is something which I personally work on and we cannot provide the level of accuracy needed right now. It’s not available in the majority of the world. It turns out that we’ve had the ability to find or to locate a person within about one meter for ten years now and the standards have been in place by the IEEE for about five years. That technology has not rolled out to the majority of the world. Obviously, location is a double-edged sword but when you are in a crisis it’s important that you’re found because there could be a fire or an earthquake and your building has partially collapsed. Or perhaps there is an active shooter and you are hiding in a closet somewhere. You need emergency services teams to be able to find you.
Amy: What has been the benefit of efforts to protect society from disinformation?
Karen: People need to do their own research and cannot necessarily trust the news. Go and figure it out ourselves.
Yvette: We are building more critical thinkers in this space. We are ensuring that we have to double-check what we’re doing and we’re putting that responsibility on the end user and so more checks are happening. I think we are also creating a more inclusive environment online by being able to look at this misinformation/ disinformation and allowing more voices at the table and maybe voices that weren’t necessarily at that space with the different communities. I do think it is providing an opportunity for both more critical thinking and more open space for inclusivity.
Amy: What is the responsibility of policymakers to ensure access to information for all while establishing standards to hold platforms responsible for the information that they post?
Sheri: I believe that in the US, if technology companies get too cozy with policymakers, they are going to trip over our founding documents and so there really isn’t a place for policy here. I think people are free to congregate with whom they wish. So I would say the farther policymakers stay away from it except in the very most extreme cases it would be better for society and the internet.
Roy: I think that accessibility to information, even if you perhaps don’t agree with it, is extremely important. Maybe a way of dealing with it is to provide commentary labels beside certain sources. This could happen through the portals themselves.You don’t censor the information but you may provide some tag that says there is some concern about this information and here are some alternative links. It’s certainly the case that I would like all general sources of information for education to be available.
But these days you can get a pretty good, almost a degree level of education by just looking around the Internet and finding online courses with universities. We’ve never been in a situation like that before where suddenly a remote part of the world can access such detailed and accurate information and sometimes from the top universities. So this is also the great side of this, we’ve focused a lot on some of the downsides but the upside is that what a time we’re living in where somebody could get into a statistical analysis who is in a part of the world that doesn’t have access to a general university but has an internet connection.
