You can still watch the interviews here

By Katja Bego, principal investigator NGI Forward Today, we are launching our new report Towards Public Digital Infrastructure: A proposed governance model. You can read more about earlier iterations of this work in our NGI Forward vision paper, and blog on open strategic autonomy. On today’s internet, power is concentrated in the hands of a […]

contributing to the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative by participating in two consecutive NGI projects: NGI Egineroom (2017-2019) and NGI Forward (2019-2021). This has been quite a journey, with many exciting results and project outputs that we hope will remain useful and relevant. Let us briefly summarise what we have been up to!

Blog by Mireia Roura and Leandro NavarroWe are incredibly excited to launch the report “Bridging the Digital Divide” by the Reuse network, one of our Policy-in-Practice grantees. Learn more about the findings of the project in the blog below, and the detailed report. Computers are important for social and economic development. They are key to […]

Today, we proudly announce the publication of our new report about generative interoperability. To launch the report officially, we will host a live event on the 22nd of March at 3pm (CET).

For the past three years we at Edgeryders have been working on a large-scale ethnography of the Next Generation Internet (NGI), under the aegis of the NGI Forward project. This turned out to be quite challenging, but also very rewarding in its own way. Ethnography evolved to study the culture of well-defined human groups, and was first deployed in the context of anthropological research on indigenous communities. Definining rigorously those groups has its own challenges, but defining the contours of “the NGI community” can be daunting.

From Beijing to Brussels, Washington to London, tech sovereignty has become the buzzword of the moment in capitals around the world. With the internet now one of the main theatres of rising political tension, it is no surprise that governments are seeking to maximise their influence over its future. But clawing back control over the […]

We must change our approach to smartphones to achieve our environmental goals.

Artists, academics, writers, and civil society activists are ringing the alarm bell over our lost powers in the age of the internet. Yet, there is hope for optimism. New technologies have given us a wealth of opportunities. They have also made our world smaller. They have allowed us to spend more time with our families […]

The 'platformisation' of the games industry is posing some serious challenges for Europe and the internet at large.

We've got some ideas to extend smartphone lifetimes and we invited some experts to put them under the microscope.

16:30 -18:00 CET Dark Patterns and the ePrivacy Regulation: Putting the spotlight on the current proposals’ blind spot.

11:00 -12:30 and 14:00-15:00 CET This workshop has two parts. A webinar with short presentations (60 min) and a general discussion on Big Blue Button for participants to contribute (60 min). The topic is online trust, based on Self Sovereign Identity frameworks funded in NGI projects. International interest in digital identity management and SSI is […]

11:00 CET Primavera De Filippi will address self-sovereign identity, the challenges it faces in order to guarantee both unicity (no more than one user per identifier) and singularity (no more than one identifier per user), the way in which these challenges have been addressed by Kiva and WFP through the use of biometrics, and then […]

A European standard for public procurement of AI and algorithmic systems will help make transparency more practical.

We are very excited to announce the four projects receiving funding from the Next Generation Internet Policy-in-Practice Fund.

Leandro Navarro from eReuse answers a few of our questions to give us some insight into the project and what it will achieve.

Lianne Kerlin from the BBC answers a few of our eager questions to give us some insight into the project and what it will achieve.

Sophie Bloemen and Thomas de Groot from Commons Network, and Paul Keller and Alek Tarkowski from Open Future, answer a few of our questions to give us some insight into their project and what it will achieve.

Manon den Dunnen from the Dutch National Police answers a few of our burning questions to give us some insight into the project and what it hopes to achieve.

Can we make our devices last longer for the environment?

The NGI Policy Summit hosted a series of policy-in-practice workshops, and below is a report of the session held by NGI Atlantic, written by Amelia Hassoun, Leonie Schulte and Kate J. Sim.

The NGI Policy Summit hosted a series of policy-in-practice workshops, and below is a report of the session held by NGI Atlantic.

The NGI Policy Summit hosted a series of policy-in-practice workshops, and below is a report of the session held by ONTOCHAIN. Today, digital life is an extension of our physical world and it demands the same critical, moral and ethical thinking. However, from the current standpoint and when it comes to exchange of knowledge and […]

The NGI Policy Summit hosted a series of policy-in-practice workshops, and below is a report of the session held by Redecentralize.org.

As part of the Summit, Nesta Italia and Impactscool hosted a futures workshop exploring the key design choices for the future internet.

Sander Veenhof, Augmented reality artist and Leonieke Verhoog, Program Manager at PublicSpaces took their session attendees on a trip to the future.

We debated the use of facial recognition in cities with the policymakers and law enforcement officials who actually use it.

At the Next Generation Internet Summit, Dutch media artist Tijmen Schep revealed his latest work - an online interactive documentary called 'How Normal Am I?'.

The NGI Policy Summit hosted a series of policy-in-practice workshops, and below is a report of the session held by the Coalition of Cities for Digital Rights, written by Beatriz Benitez and Malcolm Bain.

The Next Generation Internet Policy Summit has gone off with a bang. Find out how it went here.

I was thrilled to address this year’s Next Generation Internet Policy Summit on behalf of the NGI Initiative, addressing key issues for the future of the internet and our digital economy and society.

As part of an international campaign to lift the lid on data privacy violations, The Privacy Collective is asking some of the UK’s leading experts why online privacy matters…

This longread summarises the main conclusions and recommendations of our Vision for the Future Internet working paper.

Read our new working paper, setting out NGI Forward's ambitious vision for the future of the internet.

The internet’s environmental impact is increasing at a staggering rate and it is time for Europe to act. This report lays out a plan to clean up the internet.

How can Europe play a leading role in building a more sustainable internet?

NGI Forward's advisory board held its inaugural meeting in late July, discussing the project's priorities and ambitions. To promote transparency, we publish written summaries of our meetings.

As president of Estonia from 2006 to 2016, Toomas Hendrik Ilves pushed for digital transformation, ultimately leading Forbes to label him “the architect of the most digitally savvy country on earth”. Every day, e-Estonia allows citizens to interact with the state via the internet. Here, Ilves discusses why other governments might be slower with such […]

Marleen Stikker is an internet pioneer who co-founded The Digital City, a non-profit internet provider and community for Dutch people, in 1994. She is now director of Waag, a cultural innovation centre in Amsterdam. Here, she explores the early beginnings of the internet, explains what went wrong, and ponders the future of online life. Marleen […]

Our work requires the support and guidance of a broad community of experts and practitioners, and to help us achieve this we are excited to announce the establishment of our Advisory Board.

We’re on a roll with these newsletters now and I can’t wait for you to see what’s coming up this month. Data, data everywhere When technology perpetuates racism: Charlton McIlwain writes for MIT Technology Review about the fascinating origins of criminal justice information systems in the United States. Drawing parallels to the use of technology to trace […]

As part of the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative, the NGI Forward consortium aims to set out a vision for a more human-centric internet. This blog identifies eight key objectives that can get us there and inform our policy and technology research.

Oh, hello! Thanks for joining the latest issue of Net Partiality. It’s lovely to have you.  This month we’ve got more COVID-19 reflections, with a sprinkle of big data and several cookies to chew on. As always, get in touch if you have tips or suggestions for this newsletter. The Great Unwinding? Charting post-COVID-19 futures […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it an ‘infodemic’, flooding society with myriads of conflicting ideas and opinions. To help cut through the noise, we applied some of our data tools to map recent developments and understand how technology is being used and discussed during the crisis.

Katja Bego, Principal Researcher, NestaMay 16, 2020 The world has perhaps never been more globalised than under this current lockdown. For billions, the internet – in many ways globalisation’s greatest triumph – has become their sole remaining window into the world. Having a Zoom meeting with team members holed up in their apartments three streets […]

Here’s the latest issue of our newsletter of great reads about the internet. Send us any suggestions for content and please do share your feedback.

Team NGI Forward has got off to a cracking start in the new world of online conferences, with our debut session at IAM Weekend. Run by a collective of artists, technologists and activists, IAM brought together hundreds of attendees from across the globe to discuss The Weirdness of Interdependencies. We had a great time joining […]

NGI Forward is offering grants of up to €25,000 to ideas that could help empower governments to build a more resilient internet and tackle today's major challenges

...and build a better internet along the way!

Significant developments of internet technologies are being made across a wide range of fields – breakthroughs that will undoubtedly have a profound impact on society and be highly disruptive in nature. Given the importance of these technological developments, insights into emerging technology trends can be of great value for governments and policy-makers to be able […]

Introduction As part of the NGI Forward project, DELab UW is supporting the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet initiative with identifying emerging technologies and social issues related to the Internet. Our team has been experimenting with various natural language processing methods to discover trends and hidden patterns in different types of online media. You may find our tools and presentations at https://fwd.delabapps.eu. […]

On November 13th, the NGI Forward project (the NGI’s initiative’s Policy Lab) held an expert workshop on the topic of search and discovery in the Atelier de Tanneurs in Brussels.  This workshop brought together over 30 invited experts from across Europe to reflect on the future of internet search, and help shape the European Commission’s […]

Regulatory systems are increasingly struggling to cope with the nature and speed of technological change. In this report we show how, through changes in practice, regulators and governments can become more anticipatory in their approach to disruptive emerging technologies and innovation. Download the report here Adopting these principles may require regulators to develop, or further […]

Trustmarks are a well-established mechanism which help consumers make more informed decisions about the goods and services they buy. We all know the fairtrade stamp on our bananas, trust environmental certifications, and value Better Business Bureau stickers. Where we haven’t seen the trustmark used much yet, or at least not very effectively, is within the […]

Nesta have developed a Collective Intelligence playbook to help you design and deliver a collective intelligence project. Collective intelligence is created when people work together, often with the help of technology, to mobilise a wider range of information, ideas and insights to address a social challenge. Although people have been working together since the dawn […]

Collective intelligence (CI) has emerged in the last few years as a new field, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organisations and societies to harness the intelligence of many people, and things, on a huge scale. It is a rapidly evolving area, encompassing everything from citizen science to open […]

In 2014, Audrey Tang was a software programmer dedicated to reforming the Taiwanese government as part of the Sunflower Movement. Now Taiwan’s digital minister, for more than two years Tang has introduced digital governance to the country, allowing citizens to crowdsource laws via the online platform vTaiwan. Here, Tang – a self-described “conservative anarchist” – speaks about the future of democracy, radically transparent governments, and fact-checking robots.

Olivier Bringer is Head of Unit at the European Commission, and in charge of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative. Here, he talks about the initiative’s vision for a human-centric internet, the balance between regulation and innovation, and his predictions for the future.

Innovation always has a deep impact on society, new processes or technologies can completely transform existing systems and ways of working. But how can we ensure that innovation has a positive impact on today’s society? How can we make sure we achieve the revolutionary promises offered by emerging technologies? How do we identify real opportunities […]

Technological developments play an important role in shaping virtually all aspects of life, from work and leisure to democracy and social cohesion. As technologies like AI grow in importance, and impact, even small issues can create huge challenges: from algorithmic biases to the collection of personal data, negative externalities can easily reach a critical scale. […]

Europe could lead the way in creating a regulatory regime that stimulates innovation

Everybody who’s professionally involved in technology in cities and communities agrees that the debate on digital rights has moved beyond the implementation of smart technologies. The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) turned ‘Privacy’ into a hot topic, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal catapulted the debate on ethical use of data high up the political […]

A look at the ten key challenges that form the basis for our vision for a more inclusive, democratic and resilient internet.