Dr. Mayowa Awe, the newly appointed Executive Director of the National Science and Technology Medals Foundation, expressed her views on the impact of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (NMTI).

“The National Medal of Technology and Innovation stands as a testament to the transformative power of innovation and its profound impact on society. It not only honors the brilliant minds behind groundbreaking advancements but also serves as a beacon of inspiration for future generations. By recognizing those who push the boundaries of technology, the medal reinforces the critical role of innovation in addressing the world’s most pressing challenges. As we celebrate these achievements, we are reminded that true progress is a collective endeavor fueled by an unwavering commitment to create a brighter future for humanity.”

The President recognized 2013 Marconi Fellow, Martin Cooper, and Marconi Society Board Member, Victor B. Lawrence with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation .

We had the opportunity to connect with Martin and Victor, as well as past laureates, about receiving the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. They shared their thoughts on expected breakthroughs and impactful emerging technologies for the coming years.

Martin Cooper

2013 Marconi Fellow

2024 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

“Technologies are only meaningful in the context of how they improve the human experience and address the important societal challenges.”

As one of the 2024 NMTI recipients, Marty Cooper reflects on the transformative potential of future advancements, particularly in education and healthcare, and on efforts to reduce global poverty.

“I believe the major impact of technology on people in the future will be in education and healthcare, as well as continuing to reduce the number of people in the world who live in severe poverty,” Cooper shared. “Smartphones now provide every person access to all the knowledge in the world. They already have had an important impact on poverty. The smartphone will become an even more powerful tool for humanity as it includes artificial intelligence with the potential of eliminating poverty, eliminating disease, and transforming our education system. The latter is necessary and crucial.

“We’re approaching the ability to perform complete physical examinations, not just once a year, but every minute. This capability will enable us to detect and cure diseases even before they occur.

“The education community must adapt to the reality that students now have full-time access to all the world’s information. They no longer need to be taught facts, but rather how to access and assess all that information. New approaches to teaching promise to ultimately make students smarter than ever and equip them to solve our biggest problems.

“These advancements will result in a significant boost in productivity driven by new technologies, which will, in turn, help eliminate poverty.”

Cooper also reflected on his personal experience receiving the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, which provided a unique opportunity to connect with other trailblazers.

“The most valuable experience the Medal offered me was the opportunity to meet with the other awardees. It would take far too long to reflect on the few hours spent with the 30 or so recipients, but one moment that stood out was meeting Feng Zhang. He was awarded the National Medal of Science (NMS) for developing a groundbreaking drug that cures sickle cell disease using gene modification through CRISPR. The future is happening now.”

Victor B. Lawrence

Marconi Society Board Member

2024 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

“You have to stand on somebody’s shoulder to see far, but I also hope my shoulders are strong enough for the next generation to be able to stand on and see far.”

As a 2024 NMTI recipient, Victor B. Lawrence reflects on the significance of the award. He described the experience as both an honor and an inspiration.

He shared his thoughts on advancements he anticipates this year and the emerging technologies poised to have the most profound impact in the years ahead.

“I see significant breakthroughs on the horizon in AI agents, robotaxis and autonomous delivery, and the use of AR/VR headsets and immersive technologies,” Lawrence explained. “AI agents will soon act autonomously to solve complex tasks and optimize workflows without human prompts, collaborating with both humans and other AI systems. These advancements will address challenges in areas such as medicine, finance, and customer service.”

Lawrence also envisions a future where autonomous vehicles become integral to urban life. “Robotaxis and autonomous delivery systems will soon be a part of daily life in more cities as public trust grows and regulations adapt. This evolution will redefine urban mobility and logistics, improving the efficiency of last-mile delivery with self-driving vehicles and drones.”

Turning to immersive technologies, Lawrence highlighted their expanding role beyond entertainment: “As AR/VR devices become more comfortable and affordable, we’ll see them increasingly used in industrial settings, paired with digital twins to simulate and optimize physical environments. These tools will revolutionize manufacturing, construction, and healthcare, enabling predictive maintenance and better decision-making.”

Views from Marconi Fellows who have received the National Medals in past years

Vint Cerf

1998 Marconi Fellow

1997 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

“Artificial intelligence is the hyperbolic topic of the day, but there is substance as well. Experts are learning how to make smaller, specialized models that can be activated by other large language models (LLMs) for particular purposes. These interactions are also reflected in the emergence of agentic AI models that can carry out tasks by interacting with other online systems, including other LLMs. Standards for syntactic and semantic interaction are likely to emerge to allow agents to interact even if they have not interacted before. There are risks, of course, that there will be ‘misunderstandings’ that lead to errors and failure. The implementers of these systems will need to work on risk mitigation.” 

Cerf also emphasized the need for sustainable digital preservation. “Digital content is not eternal,” he warned. “Deliberate steps must be taken to ensure accessibility over decades, even centuries. I believe there will be some progress made along these lines during 2025. There are legal, technical, and financial hurdles to overcome to reach sustainability in digital preservation.”

Reflecting on his 1997 Medal, shared with Robert Kahn, Cerf acknowledged the collective effort behind the Internet’s success. “It was a very gratifying experience, but I was conscious then and now that the success of the Internet was the consequence of a countless number of engineers and entrepreneurs who saw the potential of the idea of such a global network and contributed to its viability and utility.” With that he also shared the implications of the Internet. “Now we see what happens when 2/3 of the world has access to the Internet and the World Wide Web,” he said. “There are powerful uses and, sadly, abuses of this amplifier of human endeavor. It is the abuse we now have to cope with, while trying to preserve the demonstrated utility of a global network linking people and computers in a collaborative setting.  

Robert Metcalfe

2003 Marconi Fellow

2003 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and recipient of the 2023 Turing Award, shared insights from his current work as a computational engineer at MIT. His focus on geothermal energy harvesting promises breakthroughs in cost reduction and fusion energy.

“The big breakthrough this year will be a tenfold reduction in drilling costs,” he shared. “Geothermal harvesting could rival traditional energy sources, offering clean, reliable, and abundant energy.”

Metcalfe also pointed to advancements in fusion energy and artificial intelligence, particularly efforts to improve AI’s accuracy by reducing hallucinations.

Federico Faggin

1988 Marconi Fellow

2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

Faggin emphasizes the transformative potential of understanding consciousness, which he describes as “the master technology of the future.”

“The most important technology emerging now is based on the growing scientific evidence that we are more than biological machines,” Faggin explained. “Accordingly, we are conscious quantum fields with free will. We are independent of our physical body, and we exist in a deeper reality than space-time. In other words, each of us is like a quantum field controlling a very sophisticated ‘drone,’ our physical body, for the deeper purpose of experiencing and knowing itself as a field.”

Faggin states this realization will fundamentally reshape our approach to technology and society: “Cooperation rather than competition is the way forward! And the technology of the future is the master technology that will teach us how to develop and use all the other technologies for the good of all. This is the technology of human transformation that recognizes our deeper spiritual nature, incomparable and yet integral with the physical nature of our bodies.”

Faggin explores these ideas further in his book, IRREDUCIBLE: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature (2024, Essentia).

John Cioffi

2006 Marconi Fellow

2022 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

Known as the “father of DSL,” John Cioffi shared a lighthearted moment from his award ceremony with President Biden. “He jokingly blamed me for his granddaughter’s excessive use of social media,” Cioffi recalled. “I responded, ‘I just make the links run faster, Mr. President; it’s you who provides the messages.’”

Cioffi discussed advancements in the communication field, emphasizing security and sustainability. “Security is not just encryption but protection against theft, disruption, etc.  AI methods will be stressed to support such security.” He also noted the increasing interdependence of AI and communication systems, stating, “There is also an increasingly important support of AI by communication, as the interchange of information between distributed processors supporting AI computation will become AI’s main limitation to advance. The two areas necessarily are codependent for progress.”

Andrew Viterbi (1990 Marconi Fellow / 2007 NMTI), Irwin Jacobs (2011 Marconi Fellow / 1994 NMTI), Robert Kahn (1994 Marconi Fellow / 1997 NMTI), and Arun Netravali (2017 Marconi Fellow / 2001 NMTI) were among other Marconi Fellows who also received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Their impactful contributions continue to inspire future engineers and shape the Marconi Society’s mission.

The 2025 National Medal of Technology and Innovation laureates show that technological progress aims to create a sustainable, connected, and innovative world. The Marconi Society recognizes the achievements and dedication of individuals using technology to benefit society.

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Teresa Meng is being recognized for her fundamental technical contributions to and commercial leadership in all-CMOS Wi-Fi technology, leading to its widespread use in practice. Meng’s groundbreaking research, engineering, and entrepreneurial vision have made Wi-Fi technology faster, more energy-efficient, and cost-effective so that it can be a critical part of everyday life.

Teresa Meng is the Reid Weaver Dennis Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emerita, at Stanford University, joining the faculty in 1988.  Meng dedicated the initial decade of her work to research in low-power circuit and system design, video signal processing, and wireless communications. In 1998, she briefly left Stanford to establish Atheros Communications, Inc., focusing on semiconductor system solutions for wireless networks.

Returning in 2000, Meng continued teaching and research, shifting her focus to biomedical engineering. Collaborating with Professor Krishna Shenoy, she explored neural signal processing and prosthetic systems, alongside leading research into wireless power transfer and implantable biomedical devices.

Retiring from Stanford in 2013, Meng has served on the board of Ambarella and is currently on the Alliance Cultural Foundation International’s board, while advising Atmosic Technologies.

Meng is the first female recipient of the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal.  She holds a B. Sc. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University and MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

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A replay of this webinar is available here.

Vehicles are safer than ever. Yet in 2021, over 42,000 people were killed on American roads, the highest number in 16 years. Pedestrian fatalities surged to 40-year highs. Cyclist deaths reached levels not seen since 1990.

What’s behind this deadly trend and how can we stop it? Abhi teed up the issue by observing that while drunk driving is illegal, distracted driving is not and has surged in recent years. The solution to making roads safer lies at the intersection of technology, policy and economics. She then turned to each of the panelists for their perspective. 

Hari further illustrated the current state of road safety by noting that over the one-hour duration of the panel session, 150 people will die and about six thousand will be injured on roads worldwide. This is indicative of a worsening trend tied to the increasing use of smartphones, which Hari termed “weapons of mass distraction.” And while cars have become safer, they are also filled with more distracting and confusing features.

Public infrastructure has not kept pace with these changes. Bright spots exist, however, in the areas of incentivization and public policy, supported by telematics technology and large-scale analyses of driving data

Amanda offered an insurer’s perspective, emphasizing how Travelers and other insurers continuously measure data to manage risk. The increase in the post-pandemic fatality rate for crashes in the US is a key concern, reaching a sixteen-year high in 2021. While it’s not possible to pinpoint a single root cause, the deadly combination of greater levels of distraction with increasing driving speeds certainly contributes to this trend. This is occurring despite more built-in safety features in vehicles than ever.

Precious provided a view beyond the US, speaking from her experience with Discovery Insure in South Africa. At 22 deaths per 100,000, the fatality rate there is one of the worst in the world. She pointed to driver behavior as a major factor, accounting for 60% of crashes. To counter this, they have introduced an incentive program in 40 markets, effectively gamifying good behavior with a point system. Recognizing the importance of loss aversion in behavioral economics, drivers start each day with points they can retain or lose depending on their driving behavior. As they bank their daily points over time, they can raise their status and earn rewards. This has proven more effective than offering insurance premium discounts to good drivers.

As a trauma center physician, Kit sees a lot of crash victims in his work. He continued the theme of driver behavior, observing that the impulse to pick up a pinging phone is one people find hard to resist. He went on to describe research supported by the Federal Highway Administration and performed in partnership with an insurer that confirms the power of loss aversion in encouraging drivers to limit their phone use. They further discovered that adding a competitive element to the program helped ingrain the desired change in behavior to persist beyond the end of the program.

Shifting the focus to policy, Steve described the work of the Kiefer Foundation, founded after his son was killed by a distracted driver seven years ago. While US highway safety statistics indicate 30 people per day are killed by distracted drivers, most experts say the actual number is closer to 50. Hands-free laws that make it illegal to hold a phone while driving exist in 29 states and have led to reductions of 10-20% in crashes and fatalities. Their goal is to see hands-free laws established in all 50 states. Drawing an analogy to drunk-driving laws, he looks forward to distracted driving being seen as socially unacceptable as driving intoxicated is today.

Todd brought his experience as an educator into the conversation, describing his work with computer science students. He has witnessed students’ drive to develop relevant, socially impactful apps. Once they become aware of a problem, students are highly engaged when their work is part of the solution. As an example, his students created an app to address distracted driving, providing feedback on elements of safe driving to young drivers in the DC area. They are now looking forward to making the app widely available. 

The panel continued to discuss measures to improve driver behavior, supported by telematics technology. In addition to considering the efficacy of various approaches, they also addressed the opportunities for growth, including public awareness.

For the rest of this conversation and the panel’s responses to questions from the audience, follow this link to the webinar recording.

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“We are just entering what may be called ‘the field of vibrations,’ a field in which we may find more wonders than the mind can conceive of.” 

Guglielmo Marconi

When Guglielmo Marconi successfully sent a radio signal in 1895 near his home at Villa Griffone outside of Bologna, who could know that he would lay the foundation for a completely different world?

The Marconi Society is proud to honor the emerging and established innovators that continue to personify Marconi’s technical excellence, entrepreneurial spirit, creativity and commitment to humanity.

The Marconi Prize honors scientists and engineers whose work has improved the lives of millions around the world by bringing the opportunities of connectivity to them.  Sometimes called the “Nobel Prize of Communications,” the Marconi Prize honors significant technical, practical, entrepreneurial and humanitarian achievements.

The Paul Baran Young Scholar Awards recognize the world’s leading young researchers who showcase the talent and mindset to be the next Guglielmo Marconi.  The Young Scholar Award can make careers and provides inspiration and support for emerging innovators.

The Marconi Society’s awards are by nomination only.  Please consider your colleagues, students, professors, mentors and others who are creating our connected world and share this opportunity widely with others.

Nominations are open through May 15, 2023.  Please email us at info@marconisociety.org with any questions.

The post Honoring the Innovators Who are Bringing our Connected World to Everyone appeared first on The Marconi Society.

Our expert panel discussed the technical details and policy ramifications of defining broadband. Here are a few highlights from this informative panel.

“Who does the measuring? …  It’s the people. Do you have what you need to get your health care, to get your education, to do your job?”

Mei Lin Fung, People-Centered Internet

Vint: What is broadband and how do we know if we have it?

Christophe: My experience has been with Internet measurement. Measurement is a difficult task. It’s not only a matter of speed – you want to measure service. Can you access a service with decent quality and how can you compare providers? Today the speed test just gives you the bandwidth but whether you do the measurement from a tablet, phone, or laptop makes a difference. Whether you use Wi-Fi, internet connectivity, or cellular it makes a difference. The location of the provider’s servers and the time of day also make a difference. 

People want measurements against services and to understand what they can do and what services they can access. If we want to measure the Internet to understand what real service and customer experience people have to a fair comparison between the different service providers, then we need to standardize the technique. We need to define precisely how to measure in a way that cannot be tricked by anyone and that can be compared.  

Vint: Thinking of those communities that have real economic challenges. What kinds of targets as a provider of Internet service are you setting yourself for the cost of service and are they achievable? 

Matthew: The money that’s coming through the federal government today, though it’s not enough to solve the problem, is enough to lay a strong foundation in Indian Country. We are seeing tribes pulling away from what we call the Tribal Digital Village Network to stand alone independently and potentially build out their fiber to the home because there is funding for individual tribes to be able to do this.

So we’re in a bit of a quandary. We have a broadband speed that we’re trying to hit that’s defined by the Federal Communications Commission. We have new broadband speeds that are being projected that are four times greater than what was previously required. We have densification in some of the reservation neighborhoods that don’t allow us to do that wirelessly anymore because of the lack of available spectrum to distribute that connection with that level of throughput. 

We are trying network redesign, some refocus, and figuring out how to distribute our network with fiber closer to the home. But the end user in a non-economically advantaged tribe is a mix of people who have a career, people who work minimum wage, and people who are on subsistence. We are fighting a battle to keep our pricing affordable because we know that service is so valuable for them to get a better job, to get further educated, and to get employed if they’re not employed. But at the same time how do you sustain a model of its magnitude?

I have to give credit to the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association where they have not forced the network to make back all of its losses. They have allowed several of us to participate in multiple job duties throughout the corporation and not draw the most expensive salaries and requirements from the network itself so that it may sustain under its weight. I think that’s very forward-thinking in the Tribal Chairmen’s vision of this project and it allows us to do as much as we can for those that are on a limited income.

Vint: The topic of this conversation started as how do we define broadband? Maybe what we should be trying to do is to figure out what it is that people need for a particular application. Can we supply it to them and, if not, can we give them any recommendations about how to adjust the system to achieve what they need, even if it doesn’t necessarily require super-high speeds?

Mei Lin: Who does the measuring? I was asked this question at the Global AI Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They asked, “Is it an NGO? Is it philanthropy? Is it the government?” They said the answer is clear. It’s the people. Do you have what you need to get your health care, get your education, to do the job?

We have conversational AI to get these answers from the people themselves. We don’t have to have someone else’s interpretation of it. Of course, they need to have access to a phone to answer. It is a biased survey in that if you don’t have a phone, your voice is not heard. But a lot of people have phones. So we should measure by asking people can you get the job done, can you get your health care, and can you get your education? 

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“We are at the beginning of a new digital society and we have the opportunity to fix the sins of the past by including people who have not been included.”

A replay of this conversation is available here.

Sir David Payne set the context for the conversation by defining digital equity as the conditions necessary for all individuals to have the information capacity for full participation in society and the economy.  The three pillars of digital equity are Internet access, devices and digital literacy.  This last is a major component of what we will be talking about today.  Knowing how to operate the Internet gives us access to essential services such as healthcare, employment, and lifelong learning.  This panel asks the question of how can tomorrow’s technology help to bring digital equity across the world?    We know that 99% of the Internet’s traffic travels on optical fiber underwater, over mountains and across land masses and the entire traffic of the Internet could be carried on one single fiber today.  So backbone capacity is not the issue.  We have a dream team of experts to help us answer that question with expertise in networking, security and applications and decades of combined thinking about digital equity.

Siavash Alamouti, Executive Chairman of the Board, mimik

Right now, I am working on cloud decentralization, which is key to my passion for bringing affordable connectivity to everyone.  We are still very challenged when it comes to cellular connections due to the high cost of building networks. The hardware cost is not there to get high data rates in all parts of the world.  We need to close that cost gap on the cellular front as this is a key driver for digital inclusion.  With the mobile internet, people became the producers of content and this changed the way data travels by creating more uplinks traffic and more Internet of Things (IoT) demand. Our systems were not designed for so much information and so much upload traffic and our architecture needs to change.  This really needs to be considered in countries where networks are being built now so that we can fix the problem of sending data long distances and introducing latency.

I see big data as an enabler for internet affordability.  As the fuel for our hyperconnected world, data is being scraped and stolen.  People should be able to monetize their data since  hardware, equipment, standards, internet business models and ownership of data are all critical parts of digital equity.

In the next ten years, I believe we will expand network capacity with the growing needs of the hyperconnected world.  There will be more wired than wireless due to traffic density.  Our network will be heterogeneous, including wifi, 5G, 6G and fiber backhaul.  Governments will subsidize backhaul infrastructure.  Most of all, the business models have to change from the current eyeball-grabbing, ad-driven options we have today to subscription and revenue-sharing models – and models we have not even thought about.  We built the internet to give truth and right now it’s dominated by mis-information which leads to polarization and negativity.  While we cannot limit freedom of speech, we need a mechanism to differentiate beliefs, truth and opinion.

Aakanksha Chowdhery, Staff Software Engineer, Google

Wireless has been the key to connectivity in India and satellite has accelerated to cover the country.  Since most content on the Internet is in English, access to content is limited and there is a growing divide in India between those that speak English vs those that don’t.  If you only have cell phone access, you have connectivity, but you do not have access to the full set of education and resources that lead to economic mobility.  

I think about digital equity and the future of the Internet from an  application layer perspective.  There are tremendous advances in artificial intelligence (AI) sourced from the data on the Internet.  We have language models that can generate text and image models to generate images.  The internet will not just be an amalgamation of human-generated content – it will include both human and AI-generate content.  Using these models to generate multilingual content can be a good thing and can help bridge the digital divide by providing education and economic opportunities.  AI advances can enable digital equity if we are thoughtful about how we use it

One of the challenges is that a lot of applications are designed on phones that are hard for older people to operate.  AI is moving in a direction where consumers will be able to talk with devices in natural language.  Human computer interaction is a field set for disruption in the age and accessibility divides.

Martin Cooper, Co-Founder and Chairman, Dyna, LLC

I am focused on the digital divide in education.  To achieve a complete education today, a modern student must have full-time access to the Internet and neither cable nor satellite provides enough bandwidth.  In addition, schools have not kept up with the need for digital literacy.  While students have access to more content than anyone could teach, they must learn to distinguish information from misinformation.  

There is already a dedicated Internet for the legal profession.  Why don’t we consider a dedicated Internet for education and a dedicated Internet for languages that are spoken by smaller numbers of people?  If we had a dedicated Internet for education, we might have fewer worries about safety and content.

To solve the digital divide from a networking perspective in areas of the US and other countries that have inadequate coverage, we need to introduce tools to determine where the people are and where the networks are.  There is no reason why we cannot economically cover every part of the country.  Kids need to be educated.  If we do not solve the educational divide, we’ll have an even deeper divide between those who have had a technology-informed education and those who have not.

When I think about the next ten years – and I focus on the last mile – I believe that people will realize that the emphasis on 5G and 6G is on millimeter waves.  They are talking about terahertz.  The real problem is in rural areas and the same technology that makes millimeter and terahertz possible in urban areas also can work in rural areas.  This can help us get universal coverage.  Every cell phone measures its coverage area.  If we accumulate that information, we will know coverage of wireless.  I believe we have technology that can solve the wireless coverage problem for less than $5 per month per user.

In terms of digital literacy and usability, engineers should not create user interfaces.  We need designers to do this and need to recognize that everyone is different so that the interface can be right for everyone.

Taher Elgamal, CTO Security, Salesforce

We are at the beginning of a new digital society and we have the opportunity to fix the sins of the past by including people who have not been included.  We are making amazing progress and when we leave people behind, the impact is even more profound.  As a citizen of the world who has traveled everywhere, I know that the ability to picture ourselves in other people’s shoes in different parts of the world with limited resources is a very powerful thing.

I have been in the security world for a long time.  I focus on the word “trust.”  Technology will allow people to reach the Internet and get connected.  It is difficult to trust what you get from the Internet.  While the mainstream will succeed in providing trusted information and connectivity to most people, in some places people will not get the information that we want them to get.   It’s very easy to poison the information that people receive and to create unsafe areas on the Internet.  If we’re in a city, we are trained to understand what the dangerous parts of the city look like.  This is difficult to do on the internet because we don’t know what the dangerous areas look like.  In ten years, we will help people understand what is trusted and not trusted and help people obtain the truth.  

Can the older generations catch up with the younger ones?  Are we handing generations a trusted medium?  The younger generation will understand what we’re giving them and how to manage it and the generational technology divide will always exist.  The older generation usually protects the younger generation.  In the case of technology, the younger generation learns fast, but can make big mistakes along the way.  There are always 80-90% of people who want the right things to happen.  New generations who continue to build this society will improve the trust in it.

Henry Samueli, Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer, and Chairman of the Board of Broadcom

Right now, 40% of the population is unconnected and the rate of connectivity year over year is growing rapidly.  There are 300M new connections to the Internet each year, bringing us  another 3B connections in the next 10 years.  We are not that far from being able to connect anyone who wants to be connected.  We are making great progress from a technology  perspective by driving prices down. The issues around digital inclusion are really around equity, safety and the like.

I believe the Internet will evolve as a heterogeneous network and be more evolutionary than revolutionary.  There will be a large variety of last mile connections (wired over copper, fiber to the home; satellite for rural) with a cellular overlay over everything.  We need to continue driving costs down, which happens with hardware businesses.  The Internet will not look that different, but it will function differently.  Software, protocols, security, regulation will change as society demands that the Internet operates differently.

From a policy perspective, when you have lack of control, you have bad actors.  When you have too much control, the government controls content.  I am not sure we will ever find a solution that everyone is happy with – the wild west is not good, but neither is walling off information from people.  We need some government regulation that leans to open, but not so open that the Internet becomes dangerous.

There is clearly an age divide which will self-correct over time.  The key is ensuring equity so that the Internet is not only the people with the means and capacity to have technology.  Focusing on accessibility to the Internet will help people start careers.  Kids want this now and it’s a matter of training teachers. 

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“Building an inclusive economy is a cornerstone for peace and prosperity.”

Shamina Singh, Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth

Whether we are connected or not, we are all part of the digital world and the digital economy.  While the financial sector has been digital for a long time, more than 1.7B people do not participate in the formal financial system and the majority of those are women.  Including small businesses, women and others who are marginalized is critical for global prosperity.

Vint and Shamina shared their insights and financial inclusion, the Internet and the future with our audience.

How do we think about an economy that is equitable to everyone?

Shamina:

The first part of that question is a binary one – is a person connected or not?  From there we move on to access, usage and growth in the digital economy.  The top level is capacity building around the digital economy and this is where we really get to the idea of inclusive growth.  

Vint:

I am very optimistic about our opportunities for an inclusive economy.  Everyone is in the digital economy, whether they like it or not, and the financial sector has been digital for a long time. 

Mastercard has an important role to play in taking the temperature of the global economy or of economies in areas that are recovering from natural disasters or other disruptive situations.  Mastercard knows where and when buying activity is happening, areas where spending is ramping up and where supply chains are opening.  This intelligence provides an important perspective for policy makers and those working on economic recovery.

What is the current state of digital equity?

Shamina:

The Internet has an unparalleled ability to unlock potential – it is a blank slate.  The private and social sectors, as well as philanthropies, all have roles to play.

Wage digitization is a very useful example.  People in emerging countries are typically paid in cash.  When people are paid in cash, they often do not have a use case for saving their wages.  When we digitize paychecks, it allows women to save part of their wages and to use their digital payments in shops that offer digital transactions.   They can see what they are spending and what they are saving and how close they are to their goals.

Vint:

I believe that 65% of the world has access to the Internet, though many may not have the  stable, fast, affordable access they require.  Even at these levels, we are quite far from getting everyone online.  While the Internet is 50 years old in concept, it’s still young in terms of the possibilities it provides. 

The private sector has a real opportunity around digital equity.  The pandemic has shown us how people can make a living in a different way.  In India, for example, the Internet offers people the opportunity to be employed anywhere in the world.  In order to make these opportunities available, the private sector needs policies that helps shape competition and encourage investment by business

The Internet has been great for a lot of things and has been blamed for some not positive things.  During the pandemic, it was said that the Internet passed the test and human beings failed.  How do you feel about the role of the Internet in health care, education, mis- and dis- information during the pandemic?  

Shamina:

Digitization has created more data and a world of data haves and have nots.  We need to bridge the information inequality gap.  Every social sector organization and person on the planet will have to figure out what their role and needs are as it pertains to data and data analytics.  

We are creating a field of data science for social impact and we need to make sure we do not miss the mark when it comes to data inequality. That’s why we’re working in partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation on data.org, an effort to use the power of data to tackle society’s greatest challenges and improve lives across the globe. Please visit the website – we need engagement from scientists and practitioners around the world.

Vint:

The pandemic taught us that many of us can work remotely, despite resistance from the private sector.  We also are now experiencing a new divide because not everyone can work remotely.  We learned that our supply chain is fragile, particularly as it depends on people working on location.  

While we could do education remotely, teachers and students were not prepared.  Higher ed was closer than K-12 and we still need more infrastructure throughout our communities – at school and home – to realize the full benefits of remote learning.

Extreme weather will increase and the ability of Mastercard and others to see economic activity in disaster areas will help us understand where and when recovery is happening.  Using digital technology as a sensor and early warning system is critical.

The post Building an Inclusive Economy appeared first on The Marconi Society.

Our complimentary virtual Symposium will be held November 2-3, 2022. Register here for a keynote session with Marconi Society Fellows and Young Scholars and much more!

The Decade of Digital Inclusion is hosted in partnership with the Institute for Business and Social Impact (IBSI) and Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ubiquitous affordable access to the Internet and the World Wide Web is now an essential ingredient for a modern education. This is becoming true for health care, as well and for other parts of our everyday lives. 

To help students achieve the educational goals that will open worlds of opportunity to them, we must solve for the unique needs of the education. For example, ubiquitous home access for an elementary school student must be reliable, but we may be able to forgo low latency and extremely high download and upload speeds. While it would be wonderful to provide all students with the highest levels of service against every parameter, the objective of digital inclusion is access for all students. I estimate that service cost would have to be on the order of $5 per month in developed countries like the U.S. to achieve universal service.

The technology is available to provide the service levels and pricing suggested here. The only issue is prioritization.

As technology evolves, the minimum standards for specific applications like education will also evolve. Download speeds of 10 or 20 Mb/sec may be useful today but totally inadequate when augmented and virtual reality become common educational tools.

A curated version of the World Wide Web will eventually become necessary for students and digital newbies. There is already a wide variety of educational tools available today, but there is also skill involved in discriminating between useful tools and false information. Curation can be a difficult problem but ultimately some form will be necessary. If we can have specialized information networks like LEXUS or public radio and TV, why not a curated World Wide Web dedicated to education?

Fewer than half of today’s students have adequate and affordable Internet access, whether because of lack of coverage or because the cost is too high. Technology and political resolve can solve this problem at minimal cost to society.

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Our complimentary virtual Symposium will be held November 2-3, 2022. Register here for a keynote session with Marconi Society Fellows and Young Scholars and much more!

The Decade of Digital Inclusion is hosted in partnership with the Institute for Business and Social Impact (IBSI) and Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) at the University of California, Berkeley.

In advance of the Symposium, several of our Marconi Fellows shared their thoughts on bringing digital equity into tomorrow’s technology.

By Siavash Alamouti, 2022 Marconi Fellow; Vint Cerf, 1998 Marconi Fellow; and Taher Elgamal, 2019 Marconi Fellow

Achieving true digital equity over the next decade will require interdisciplinary progress in technology, policy and user behavior. We will need to work together across disciplines to successfully drive change. That is why we are looking forward to our November 3 panel at The Decade of Digital Inclusion: Bringing Digital Equity Into Tomorrow’s Technologies.

Here are ten areas that we believe deserve our focus and attention:

1. Improved security at all levels in the architecture of the Internet and World Wide Web

A truly cross functional challenge, the technology that supports this critical work must be informed by social science and the user perspective to arrive at the right balance of security and usability. Ideally, policy makers will weigh in with a light hand to protect consumers online.

2. Counter the amplification of misinformation, disinformation, ransomware, malware, scams in email (spam), social media, web pages

Though tied to the point above, the polarization and threats to civil society posed by deliberate misuse of our communications channels is an issue unto itself. This is very much a social and behavioral science challenge and a place where new business models may be very useful. It is also an issue where the right regulatory touch can provide both a carrot for good business models and a stick for bad behavior.

3. Fragmentation of the connectivity and data sharing capacity of the Internet as a consequence of national policies

The power and benefits of the Internet are diluted when nations make it inaccessible to their residents either as a routine matter or as a consequence of social unrest. Moreover, countries that demand that data be confined to in-country servers diminish the resilience of data replication across data centers in other countries. Free global flow of information facilitated the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We must develop global policy to keep the Internet open and available for all.

4. Increased use of the Internet for surveillance purposes

Between social network applications, mobile phone tracking and Internet of Things monitoring and surveillance, privacy is at great risk. The use of Internet applications often produces “digital exhaust” that facilitates tracking of Internet use and attribution to individuals. Methods and policies that protect personal privacy are needed but must be moderated by the need to hold people accountable for their online behaviors. 

5. Advancing digital inclusion by making the Internet more available, accessible, affordable, sustainable, reliable and useful

As we work to connect the 40% of the planet that does not yet have access to the Internet, the technology to close the gap is there. In the U.S., significant funding is also available. Our focus must be on the mapping and analytics to identify unconnected or inadequately served areas, as well as the policies and economic models that create affordable service at speeds and latencies that support remote learning, work, telehealth and other connected services that improve quality of life. 

6. Improving skills needed to take advantage of Internet access

In addition to supporting the organizations and people that do the on-the-ground work of digital literacy, we look to new business models and community platforms to help drive solutions at scale. Infrastructure funding in the U.S. will ideally push our progress toward this goal forward.

7. Establishing an Internet data economy that ensures data monetization by their rightful owners and broad financial inclusion – nearly half of the people in the world still do not have access to the Internet and to the opportunities it brings. Bringing everyone’s voices and contributions into our networked world requires new business models that put people’s data under their control to create a financially inclusive world.

8. Ensuring the correct identities when needed while maintaining anonymity when required – business models and changing and policy debates are raging around user control of personal data. Both public services and organizational networks must become more flexible to identify and authenticate when necessary and let users select their level of anonymity when possible.

9. Increase collaboration between connected entities to improve the trustworthiness of the fabric. These entities do not have to “fully” trust each other. Just as collaboration in everyday work improves outcomes and creates a more frictionless environment, collaboration between networks can help improve interactions without requiring complete trusted network status.  We will identify more and more use cases and requirements for these collaborations over the next decade.

10. Maintaining the utility of the Internet and World Wide Web despite the challenges above – although there are many challenges with our connected world, the Internet and the World Wide Web continue to underpin the most transformative opportunities of our time. The governance of these assets continues to be paramount and worthy of our support.

We look forward to seeing everyone on November 3, 2022, at The Decade of Digital Inclusion.

The post Ten Considerations for Digitally Equitable Technology appeared first on The Marconi Society.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your company.

In 1998, when I was a professor of applied mathematics at MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science (now called the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory), my graduate student, Danny Lewin, and I founded a company called Akamai to solve what people back then called the “world wide wait.”  Akamai was a pioneer in content delivery, which means that we delivered web content on behalf of major web sites to users all around the world. Since then, the company has evolved into one of the most essential and trusted cloud delivery and cybersecurity platforms. Many of the world’s best brands and enterprises use our massively distributed global platform to build, accelerate and secure their digital experiences. Our mission is to power and protect life online. And our purpose in doing that is to make life better for billions of people, billions of times a day. For the first 14 years of Akamai’s history, I served as chief scientist. For the last 10 years, I’ve been the company’s CEO. Both roles have given me a great opportunity to help guide innovation at a very innovative company, one that is full of brilliant and highly talented engineers from all over the world.

2. What is your history with the Marconi Society?

In 2018, the Marconi Society honored me with the Marconi Prize for contributions to technology and the establishment of content delivery networks. It was a special honor for me personally, having worked in the field for as long as I have and knowing so much about the accomplishments of previous Marconi Prize winners. Since then, I’ve had the privilege to become more involved in the Society’s activities, which are helping to shape the future of communication and our lives.  

3. Why is digital equity important to you?

When you look at the demographic of people employed in tech, you can’t help but see that we have a long way to go as an industry, and as a society, to open the doors of opportunity to everyone. Equal opportunity is fundamentally important. As a teacher who has had the privilege to teach so many brilliant students over the years, I believe that individual talent is precious, and that people of diverse backgrounds can make substantial contributions to our industry and our lives if we give them the opportunity. That’s why we created something called the Akamai Technical Academy. It’s an in-house educational program that trains non-technical professionals from populations that are underrepresented in the tech industry to prepare them for technical careers. The success we have had with the program demonstrates what people are capable of achieving if given a chance.

4. What inspired you to donate to the Marconi Society?

The Marconi Society connects and supports innovators who are connecting the world. At a time when the world is under threat from the challenges of climate change, war, disease, cyber attacks and inequality, we need better ways to stay connected, and to help the next generation inherit a better world.

5. How do you hope to impact the world through philanthropy? 

I’ve been personally committed to increasing and inspiring the pipeline of students pursuing STEM careers, first as a mathematics professor at MIT and now in my role at Akamai. I try to encourage the next generation of technology innovators by supporting STEM education, with a focus on the pursuit of excellence in mathematics in grades K-12, whether through efforts such as The Akamai Foundation, The Center for Excellence in Education, the Society for Science and the Public (which sponsors the Regeneron Science Search), The Mathematical Association of America (which sponsors the Math Olympiad), the Math Competition for Girls, and Girls Who Code (which we host every summer at Akamai). Math programs that reach students at a young age can inspire them to embrace math and realize that math can be magical and fun. This can later lead to exciting careers dedicated to solving problems in ways that, ultimately, can make life better for millions, if not billions, of people on our planet. My passion is really about encouraging the next generation of innovators that can make our world a better place for all.

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