• The instinctual BS-meter is not enough.
• The next version of the ‘BS-meter’ will need to be technologically based.
• The tricks of misinformation have far outstripped the ability of people to reliably tell whether they are receiving BS or not

• lawyer, Moses & Singer LLP
  • not to mention that it requires a constant state of vigilance that’s exhausting to maintain.
• I think that the ability and usefulness of the web to enable positive grassroots civic communication will be harnessed,
  • moving beyond mailing lists and fairly static one-way websites.

• I believe we are arriving at multiple simultaneous breaking points.
• The most obvious is of course the climate crisis, but also consider the mounting levels of
  • inequality,
  • of pollution and of
  • despicable charlatanry exhibited by those in positions of power.
• These simply cannot go on if we are to survive as a civilization.
• Since civilization is resilient, the odds are that we develop tools to support a saner society and bring those tools to bear.
• I’m not prescient enough to enumerate them, but it seems that the single most useful technology would be one that
  • clearly distinguishes
    • verifiable truth from
    • agitprop
  • in an unavoidable and unambiguous way.
• This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making progress on any of the key issues we face.

• executive director, People-Centered Internet Coalition

• Health care is an area that will likely see many innovations. -There are already multiple research prototypes underway looking at monitoring of one’s
  • physical and
  • mental health.
• Some of my colleagues (and myself as well) are also looking at
  • social behaviors, and how those behaviors
    • not only impact one’s health but also
    • how innovations spread through one’s social network.

• We lived in a relatively unregulated digital world until now.
• It was great until the public realized that a few companies wield too much power today in our lives.
• We will see significant changes in areas like
  • privacy,
  • data protection,
  • algorithm and
  • architecture design guidelines, and
  • platform accountability, etc.
• which should reduce the pervasiveness of
  • misinformation,
  • hate and visceral content
• over the internet.
• These steps will also reduce the power wielded by digital giants.
• Beyond these immediate effects, it is difficult to say if these social innovations will create a more participative and healthy society.
• These broader effects are driven by deeper underlying factors, like
  • history,
  • diversity,
  • cohesiveness and
  • social capital, and also
  • political climate and
  • institutions.
• In other words,
  • just as digital world is shaping the physical world,
  • physical world shapes our digital world as well.

• assistant professor in strategy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore

quote

• Much social and civic innovation is possible if the GAAF platform monopolies (Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) are broken up or regulated appropriately.
• I believe that will happen, and I hope it will happen in appropriate ways.
• Done right, it will release a torrent of innovation, including social and civic changes.
• I trust that the general level of competence is growing among digital citizens.
• So, I am modestly hopeful we can sort out the helpful from the harmful changes for a net positive gain.

author: Warren Yoder

• Director of Public Policy Center of Mississipi

• Our first attempts at building community online have had both good and bad outcomes.
• We know them all. But would we have expected otherwise?
• We are new at digital communities and are inventing them as we move forward.
• Of course we aren’t going to get it right the first time. But the key question is whether these technologies help us form social bonds or not.
• Anyone who has posted a question in a forum and received an answer from a stranger knows firsthand that they bring us together.

• futurist
• author of "The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers and the Future of Humanity"

• I do expect new social platforms to emerge that focus on privacy and ‘fake-free’ information, or at least they will claim to be so.
• Proving that to a jaded public will be a challenge.
• Resisting the temptation to exploit all that data will be extremely hard.
• And how to pay for it all?
• If it is subscriber-paid, then only the wealthy will be able to afford it.

• 24 year IBM veteran -senior research scientist in AI at RTI International working on national scale knowledge graphs for global good

• his comment about exploiting all that data is based on an assumption
  • a centralized, server data model

• Will members-only, perhaps subscription-based ‘online communities’ reemerge instead of
• ‘post and we’ll sell your data’ forms of social media?
• I hope so, but at this point a giant investment would be needed to counter the mega-billions of companies like Facebook!

• Extreme bad behaviour from governments and private companies – GAFAs [Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon] and the like in China – will create a social and civic innovation to compensate and/or to contribute to an innovation jump. I hope for development of human cooperative brain networks.

• strategic consultant

• Technology’s greatest contribution to social and civic innovation in the next decade
• will be to provide
  • accurate, user-friendly context and
  • honest assessment of
    • issues,
    • problems and
    • potential solutions / comment - indyweb /
• We are facing greater accelerations of
  • climate change,
  • social mobility,
  • pollution,
  • immigration and
  • resource issues.
• Our problems have gone from complicated to wicked.
• We need
  • clear answers and
  • discussions that are
    • cogent,
    • relevant and
    • true to facts.
• Technology must guard against becoming a platform to enable targeted chaos,
• that is, using technology as a means to
  • obfuscate and
  • manipulate.
• We are all now living in Sim City:
• The digital world is showing us a sim,
  • or digital mirror,
• of each aspect of reality.
• The most successful social and civic innovation I expect to see by 2030
• is a massive restructuring of our educational systems based on new and emerging mirror digital worlds. / comment: This bodes well for Indyweb for education/
• We will then need to expand our information presentations to include
  • verifiable factfulness that ensures any digital presentation faithfully and
  • accurately matches the physical realities.
• Just as medicine went from
  • bloodletting and leeches and lobotomies to
  • open-heart surgery and artificial limbs,
• technology will begin to modernize information flows around core issues: urgent need, future implications, accurate assessment.
• Technology can play a crucial role to move humanity
  • from blame fantasies
  • to focused attention and working solutions.”

• We need mass innovation in design of social tools that help us
  • bridge fragmentation and polarization,
  • bring diversity into our media landscapes and
  • help find common ground between disparate groups.
• With these as conscious design goals,
  • technology could be a powerful positive force for civic change.
• If we don’t take this challenge seriously and assume that we’re stuck with mass-market tools,
  • we won’t see positive civic outcomes from technological tools.”

• Ethan Zuckerman
  • director of MIT’s Center for Civic Media and
  • co-founder of Global Voices