The NGI Policy Summit hosted a series of policy-in-practice workshops, and below is a report of the session held by Nesta Italia and Impactscool, written by Giacomo Mariotti and Cristina Pozzi.
The NGI Policy Summit was a great opportunity for policymakers, innovators and researchers to come together to start laying out a European vision for the future internet and elaborate the policy interventions and technical solutions that can help get us there.
As part of the Summit, Nesta Italia and Impactscool hosted a futures workshop exploring the key design choices for the future internet. It was a participative and thought-provoking session. Here we take a look at how it went.
Our aims
The discussion about the internet of the future is very complex and it touches on many challenges that our societies are facing today. Topics like Data sovereignty, Safety, Privacy, Sustainability, Fairness, just to name a few, as well as the implications of new technologies such as AI and Blockchain, and areas of concern around them, such as Ethics and Accessibility.
In order to define and build the next generation internet, we need to make a series of design choices guided by the European values we want our internet to radiate. However, moving from principles to implementation is really hard. In fact, we face the added complexity coming from the interaction between all these areas and the trade-offs that design choices force us to make.
Our workshop’s goal was to bring to life some of the difficult decisions and trade-offs we need to consider when we design the internet of the future, in order to help us reflect on the implications and interaction of the choices we make today.
How we did it
The workshop was an immersive simulation about the future in which we asked the participants to make some key choices about the design of the future internet and then deep dived into possible future scenarios emerging from these choices.
The idea is that it is impossible to know exactly what the future holds, but we can explore different models and be open to many different possibilities, which can help us navigate the future and make more responsible and robust choices today.
In practice, we presented the participants with the following 4 challenges in the form of binary dilemmas and asked them to vote for their preferred choice with a poll:
- Data privacy: protection of personal data vs data sharing for the greater good
- Algorithms: efficiency vs ethics
- Systems: centralisation vs decentralisation
- Information: content moderation vs absolute freedom
For each of the 16 combinations of binary choices we prepared a short description of a possible future scenario, which considered the interactions between the four design areas and aimed at encouraging reflection and discussion.
Based on the majority votes we then presented the corresponding future scenario and discussed it with the participants, highlighting the interactions between the choices and exploring how things might have panned out had we chosen a different path.
What emerged
Individual-centric Internet
| Data privacy |
Protection of personal data 84% |
Data sharing for the greater good 16% |
| Algorithms | Efficiency 41% |
Ethics 59% |
| Systems |
Centralisation 12% |
Decentralisation 88% |
| Information |
Content moderation 41% |
Absolute freedom 59% |
The table above summarises the choices made by the participants during the workshop, which led to the following scenario.
|
Individual-centric Internet Decentralized and distributed points of access to the internet make it easier for individuals to manage their data and the information they are willing to share online. Everything that is shared is protected and can be used only following strict ethical principles. People can communicate without relying on big companies that collect data for profit. Information is totally free and everyone can share anything online with no filters. |
Not so one-sided
Interesting perspectives emerged when we asked contrarian opinions on the more one-sided questions, which demonstrated how middle-ground and context-aware solutions are required in most cases when dealing with complex topics as those analysed.
We discussed how
certain non-privacy-sensitive data can genuinely contribute to the benefit of
society, with minimum concern on the side of the individual if they are shared in anonymised
form. Two examples that emerged from the discussion were transport management and
research.
In discussing the (de)centralisation debate, we discussed how
decentralisation could result in a diffusion of responsibility and lack of
accountability. “If everyone’s responsible, nobody is responsible”. We mentioned how this
risk could be mitigated thanks to tools like Public-Private-People collaboration and
data cooperatives, combined with clear institutional responsibility.