Part 63: If the Internet is Broken, How Can Libraries Help Fix it?
Channel: Libraries In Response
Date: 2022-07-09

Speakers 

Ben Tarnoff, writer and co-founder of the magazine Logic and the author of the forthcoming book “Internet for the People”; technical writer and product manager.

Richard Whitt, President, NetsEdge LLC; fmr. Corporate Director for Strategic Initiatives, Google Inc; Ethical Data Governance for Web Companies: The Virtual Trust Layer

Robin Wilton, Director - Internet Trust, Internet Society; 35 years of experience in the IT industry, centred around identity and privacy, IT security; Policy Brief: Principles for Responsible Data Handling

Says Ben: 
• "The root is simple: The internet is broken because the internet is a business. While the issues are various and complex, they are inextricable from the fact that the internet is owned by private firms and is run for profit."
• "To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized — not with an eye toward making markets work better, but toward making them matter less."
• "Fortunately, there is another strategy: deprivatization. - What would a day on the deprivatized internet look like? You wake up, grab coffee, and sit down at your computer. Your first stop is a social-media site run by your local library. The other users are your neighbors, your co-workers, or residents of your county." -(extracts from NYT article)

How does one even measure the state of the highly dynamic internet? With its obvious flaws and increasing hazards blended among new services and conveniences, is deprivatization an answer? What does that mean and is it possible? Tune in to hear from three people who look at these and related issues like trust, identity and privacy, IT security full time. Might increasingly powerful AI tools help or hurt and whom?

Could libraries expand their existing role as helping hands and points of open information /communications access to assume any new private &/or public services delivered over the internet? How might libraries help restore a measure of trust to the online world?

How exactly is the internet governed anyway? Is anyone in charge? Or does it run like the world at large through a massively complex set of overlapping treaties, laws and business contracts atop the widest range of histories, cultures and customs? Does this now critical global infrastructure all somehow run with no central controlling authority?!

Big questions and more. Join in!