Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Digital Common Law

On May 30 and 31 I attended a meeting in Washington, the Rights and Bytes: Law and Big Data Workshop. The workshop explored progress in developing effective, legally sound, software-based solutions for the management of digital identities and for the protection and sharing of sensitive data.  It was  sponsored by ID³, a recently organized multidisciplinary non-profit institution with close ties to MIT’s Media Lab.  ID³’s principal focus is to develop architectural frameworks and open source software solutions that embody the necessary policy principles for managing critical personal information so that it can be tested, verified, improved and scaled. 

For the past few hundred years, governments around the world have developed laws, policies and practices to help us better get along with each other as we conduct the many transactions and interactions that are part of our everyday lives.  But, as as Internet and digital technologies are increasingly integrated into just about all aspects of our lives, the laws, policies  and institutions we developed for the physical world are way too impractical for our fast moving, fast changing digital world.  We must somehow bring with us and adapt our policies and regulations from the physical to the digital world.

Is this even feasible?  Yes, argues John Clippinger, ID³’s Executive Director and CEO, and policy strategist and writer David Bollier in an excellent working paper Digital Common Law: Brief on Trust Frameworks and Self-Governance which they wrote for the workshop.

Fifty Years of Memories

On June 1 and 2 I was in Chicago to participate in the 50th high school reunion of the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools Class of 1962.  I have not attended previous class reunions, and was not sure I would attend the 50th reunion either when I first heard that it was being planned.  But, as it turned out, this became an event that I’ve been looking forward to for the last six months.  And, the actual reunion surpassed my expectations, turning out to be a very positive experience. 

The U of C Lab Schools was, and still is, one of the top private schools in the country.  Almost all its graduates go on to college.  Our class had an interesting mix of very sharp students, including children of faculty members and others associated with the U of C; kids from nearby fairly well-to-do, mostly Jewish neighborhoods; and other students throughout the Chicago area attracted by the Lab School’s academic reputation.  The school has long been known for the diversity of its student population, being the first private school in Chicago to admit African American students.  Our class included a number of black students, mostly from middle/upper-middle class families.  In this mix, a Cuban-born, Jewish kid fit right in.

The Untethered, Hyperconnected Enterprise

A few weeks ago I attended the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium.  The theme of this year’s Symposium was Piloting the Untethered Enterprise:  “In today's world of mobile, big data and the cloud, how does a CIO successfully pilot his organization towards its goals?” 

After listening to a number of talks and panels throughout the day, I came away with a few key impressions.  Pretty much everyone agrees that we are in transition from the tethered, connected world of PCs, browsers and classic data centers to the untethered, hyperconnected world of smart mobile devices and cloud computing.  The emergence of the untethered enterprise will have major implications for IT, for business and for society in general.  But lots of questions remain as to what those implications might be.  This is to be expected in the early stages of such a major transition. 

Two back-to-back panels explored what it takes to successfully transition to the untethered enterprise, one consisting of academics, and one of CIOs.  Not surprisingly, each of these panels viewed the opportunities and challenges through somewhat different lenses.

An Emerging Platform for Digital, Inclusive Innovation

The Internet era was born in the mid 1990s.  On August 9, 1995, Netscape’s IPO caught the world by storm.  It marked the passage of the Internet from a network primarily used by universities, research labs and geeks in general, to a platform with a vastly expanded reach and connectivity.  Anyone with a personal computer and Web browser, was now able to access all kinds of content, communicate with people all over the world, and conduct a variety of transactions over the Internet.  

The Internet became an incredible platform for innovation, enabling startups, large institutions, and everyone in between to quickly develop and bring to market many new digital products and services.   Its reach and connectivity led to the creation of all kinds of innovative, digital applications.  It enabled individual and institutions to do all the things they did much, much better.  It transformed all kinds of every day activities, including the way we work, shop, learn, bank, listen to music, watch films and deal with government.

But, getting online and being able to access the Web and the many applications built around it required a personal computer and an Internet account.  And, e-commerce transactions required a credit card or bank account.  So, while the Internet was truly empowering for those with the means to use it, it led to serious concerns about the growing digital divide both within countries and across the world. 

The reach and connectivity we were all so excited about in this initial phase of the Internet era was in reality not so inclusive.   As our economy was becoming increasingly digital, major new inequalities were now arising because so many around the world could neither afford a PC or an Internet account and had no bank relationship or credit card.  It was disconcerting to have a digital revolution and new information-based economy that left out the majority of the world’s population.