Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society: Audio Fishbowl

This book talk features Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, a co-author of the recently published book Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil. The book explores how reframing some of the world's most challenging problems, particularly when it comes to technology, can create new opportunities and better outcomes for humans to not just survive but thrive in a world increasingly dominated by technology. Joining Viktor as discussants are Malavika Jayaram, the Executive Director of Digital Asia Hub, and Sabelo Mhlambi, founder of Bantucracy, who provide their own insights about the book.

The global information economy has provided freedom-enhancing affordances for previously marginalized groups, but has also enabled extractive practices in the form of digital imperialism, or as others term it, data colonialism. For so-called “periphery” countries such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, the information economy represents an opportunity to chase the long-elusive quest for industrialization, now dubbed “digital industrialization”, “digital development” or “data for development.” Despite the optimism represented in the digital development policy discourse, the limits and potentials of any kind of development are heavily constrained by background conditions rooted in past global power imbalances and a colonial legacy of non-contextual laws and institutions. This panel examines questions of unequal power in the global digital economy (through U.S corporations, China, and Brussels (i.e. dominance through legal rules), and the ways in which this manifests itself in developing countries in Africa.

Even before the storming of the US Capitol, mistrust in institutions like the press and the federal government was challenging the civic fabric of America. In Ethan Zuckerman's new book, "Mistrust", he explores the deep roots of this mistrustful moment and examines ways individuals can make social change whether or not they have faith in institutions. In conversation with legal scholar and human rights expert Martha Minow, the discussion considers how movements like Black Lives Matter and Me Too are forcing changes in institutions that may lead to rebuilding trust.

Governments around the world failed to contain COVID-19, with more than 3.2 million deaths and counting. Even before the pandemic, the United States was questioning its commitments to global health, its leadership role, and a system of progressive prices for medicines whereby the rich pay more to subsidize access for the poor. The pandemic is far from over: cases are surging today in India, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Poland, Ukraine. Now, with the unprecedented pace of effective vaccine development and a new Administration in Washington, the US is called upon to lead again. Beth Cameron (US National Security Council) and Loyce Pace (US Department of Health and Human Services) discuss plans to restore US leadership for global health.

Can humanitarian actors play a more intentional role in designing just and equitable digital futures? Could we, in fact, design worlds that don't imagine some figures, particularly populations that we serve in the global south, to merely be passive beneficiaries and outside of the borders of expertise we seek? Instead of looking at digital governance in terms of control, weaving in feminist and decolonial approaches might help liberate our digital futures so that it is a space of safety and of humanity, and through this design new forms of digital humanism. Anasuya Sengupta, Sabelo Mhlambi, Andrew Zolli, and Aarathi Krishnan discuss how humanitarian actors can play a more intentional role in designing just and equitable digital futures.

The past few years have highlighted the range of problems that social media seems to amplify: harassment, hate speech, hoaxes, violent extremism, and more. Through traditional governing and research spaces (i.e., governments, academia, NGOs, and corporations), the default response is a focus on content moderation. However, this talk by Sahar Massachi, with Kathy Pham as a respondent, explores what it might be like to think about social media as a city. In this model, how can we rethink our approaches to these issues besides hiring more police to react to the problem? The conversation explores the use of integrity design to more meaningfully consider the underlying structures and how to more holistically address them.

What would the Internet look like if it was designed by sex workers? Taking a sex worker lens to tech ethics envisions a radically different online space. Sex workers hold unique insights into the real world impacts of platform capitalism, carceral politics, digital surveillance, and sexual gentrification. Yet sex workers face significant structural barriers to inclusion in both tech and academic spaces. This panel elevates sex worker expertise and offers new ways for regulators, ethicists, policy-makers, and technologists to think about community standards, technologies of violence, data privacy, online safety, and virtual intimacies, and explores how we might code sex worker ethics into future design.

In the first pandemic of the datafied society, the disempowered were denied a voice in the heavily quantified mainstream narrative. Diego Cerna Aragón, Shyam Krishna, Silvia Masiero, Stefania Milan, Irene Poetranto, and Emiliano Treré invited participants to explore the pandemic from the perspective of communities and individuals at the margins in the Global South and beyond. It introduces the editorial project of the same title. Learn more: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/covid-19-margins

Since the federal stimulus bill has been signed, one of our nation’s major goals is to safely and rapidly reopen schools using funds allocated to State Departments of Education. This session focuses on some of the more complicated response measures necessary to make schools COVID-safe environments as they reopen: improving indoor ventilation and air quality and rolling out screening testing for staff and students. Implementation experts discuss how to tackle these complex issues in this session, co-hosted by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School’s Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change, and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

We are still in the early days of the Internet, but there is a growing sense that it's creating more problems than it’s solving. This wasn’t always the case. There was a time when we shared an overriding optimism in the Internet's capacity to make the world a better place. Creator platforms and social media platforms saw us migrate our social lives to the Internet. While allowing us to share and interact with people we never could have before, it also fragmented our experiences and relationships. There's an endless list of unintended consequences. Today's platforms were inspired by the many that preceded them — but along the way, we started to go astray. How can we make sense of where we are today? What can we understand about the decisions that were made and the structures we had in place? And, most importantly, how can the builders of new platforms that also intend to "bring the world closer together", "give everyone the power to create" or "organize the world's information" do it better? Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr, David Bohnett, founder of Geocities, and Nancy Baym, Sr. Principal Research Manager, Microsoft Research, reflect on the current state of creator platforms and social media as part of a long lineage and series of decisions that have made the Internet what it is today and discuss what today's builders should consider in the next iteration of the web. This conversation is moderated by BKC fellow Jad Esber.

Hannane Ferdjani, Nana Mgbechikwere Nwachukwu, and Dr. Allissa Richardson explore how young Black people around the world are utilizing tech tools to track and circumvent oppressive policies by repressive governments. The conversation includes how Black people of Nigeria, Uganda, and the United States are leveraging social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Clubhouse for artistic expressions on political and social issues in their countries. The panel also considers how young digital activists highlight the importance and place of the digital civic space to rights and freedoms offline. Finally, the discussion will address some of the limitations of digital tools in holding repressive governments and institutional bodies accountable. This event was moderated by Ellery Roberts Biddle.

People who have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease, or have become infected with it, need to quarantine or isolate from others so that they don’t spread the disease to others. However, staying away from others for weeks at a time is difficult for many people.  This seminar addresses how US state and local public health leaders can better organize wraparound services so people can successfully complete periods of isolation or quarantine. Specifically, it will cover the types of services typically needed, how to organize support programs, how to budget for them, and the costs of inaction. The seminar was co-hosted by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, the National Governors Association, Harvard Medical School’s Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change, and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The seminar addresses:  - How quarantine and isolation practices can help stem the COVID crisis - What services people need in order to successfully complete periods of quarantine and isolation - How providing services to people in quarantine and isolation can address inequities in COVID response - What types of quarantine and isolation support programs already exist and what we have learned from them Estimating the costs of wraparound quarantine and isolation services programs versus the costs of inaction.

Dr. Margaret Bourdeaux, Professor Jonathan Zittrain, and Dr. Vanessa Kerry discuss vaccine roll-out and the impact of new COVID strains from both a domestic and global perspective.

Increasingly, marginalized women are opting against calling the police in response to intimate partner violence (IPV). Many report going to faith communities and online platforms to seek help — especially since COVID-19 policies were implemented. This event brings together practitioners and experts in law, psychology, technology, religion, communication, and ethics to discuss the concerns specific to intimate partner violence. Is there potential for a public sphere online that can assist victims in surviving their unique suffering?

Dr. Apryl A. Williams and Dr. Allissa V. Richardson address the long-standing history of White vigilante-style surveillance of Black people in public spaces, exploring the role of White women in extending the power of the state to surveil and regulate the movement of Black people in public – tying in Karen actors with historical examples such as Emmitt Till and others. They discuss how memes and other digital artifacts contribute to collective action that responds to this surveillance. Learn more about this event: https://cyber.harvard.edu/events/white-surveillance-and-black-digital-publics

Jonathan Zittrain delivers part one of the 2020 Clare Hall Tanner Lectures on Human Values – Between Suffocation and Abdication: Three Eras of Governing Digital Platforms, exploring the tension between free speech and public health online, and the three eras of Internet governance.

Dr. Margaret Bourdeaux and Professor Jonathan Zittrain, co-chairs of the Berkman Klein Center’s Digital Pandemic Response Working Group, reflect on 2020 and look ahead to 2021. Bourdeaux and Zittrain are joined by Renée DiResta, technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory, to discuss vaccine disinformation that has been proliferating online.

Professors Khaled Beydoun and Justin Hansford join IfRFA Director Kendra Albert for a discussion of the way in which First Amendment work could better engage with critical race theory. This event highlights Professor Beydoun’s work on surveillance of Muslims, Justin Hansford’s work on the freedom of assembly as a racial project, as well as discussing how the Initiative for a Representative First Amendment creates space for these conversations (and more!)

Tracking the spread of COVID-19 has proved critical to efforts to contain the virus, but to do so, public health officials need to collect and utilize large amounts of data. Tarah Wheeler, Cyber Project Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University‘s Kennedy School of Government, joins Dr. Margaret Bourdeaux and Professor Jonathan Zittrain, co-chairs of the Berkman Klein Center’s Digital Pandemic Response Working Group, to investigate how the United States Public Health System can do this differently and responsibly.

Jacqueline Patterson, Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program, and Dr. Michelle Morse, Founding Co-Director of EqualHealth, Hospitalist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and social medicine course director at Harvard Medical School, join Dr. Margaret Bourdeaux and Professor Jonathan Zittrain, co-chairs of the Berkman Klein Center’s Digital Pandemic Response Working Group, to discuss how environmental injustice and racism have contributed to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic.