>> Pearse O'Donohue : We will continue with our second keynote speaker of the morning.
Sally from ISOC.
You have the floor.
(applause)
>> Sally Shipman Wentworth : Good morning, everyone.
Thanks for coming out for this conversation, and thanks to Pearse.
I think the presentations that you'll see from the Commission and from the Internet
Society have a lot in common, and also I think a lot that we can learn and share from one
another.
So I appreciate that.
I know the Internet Society's Kathy Brown was in Brussels yesterday for that event.
So there's a lot talk going on about the future.
So this is, I think, a good moment.
I think a number of us have reached the conclusion that, as you said, this is the time to look
up, look out, look into the future, and think carefully about the kind of internet that
we want over the next five to ten years.
I was asked here to walk you through a project that the Internet Society has taken on, beginning
last year in 2016, to think through many of the issues that Pearse raised as well.
About: What are the things that are driving the future of the internet?
What are the values that we hold dear, and what are the things that we all collectively
need to do to bring about the kind of future that we want?
And so we are reaching a point in this project where we are approaching some conclusions
or at least a report that we can give to the community, and so I wanted to give you a little
bit of a preview in terms of some of the things that we're finding.
And so I have slides, which I suppose is unfortunate, but there we go.
I think it's important, when we look at the future of the internet, this is not about
saying we have a crystal ball that we can predict the future.
But rather, particularly at the Internet Society, this is our 25th anniversary.
I'm supposed to do the shameless plug, so there we go.
We have some history as a community to draw on.
We have some background in how the internet developed.
We have some ideas about what has made it successful, and I think as a community, we
can draw on that basis of information, and look to the future, and project into the future
some of the things that we think are either concerning to us or the opportunities that
we want to preserve.
So as I said, in 2016, we launched this effort, the internet Futures Project, at the Internet
Society.
And many organizations do things like scenario planning.
It's a tool that's often used to get people in a room to think big, to think differently,
to think creatively, about what the future might hold.
And then make some decisions about how their organization or company or government might
act in light of that.
We decided to turn that on its head a little bit at the Internet Society, and do this effort
as a global community.
For those of you who are familiar with the Internet Society, we have chapters and members
all over the world.
We interact with people like yourselves and communities everywhere.
And so we thought we would really take advantage of that to get input from our community over
the course of the last 18 months, on where what they believe are the things that are
driving the future of the internet.
So we did this through a number of roundtables with interviews, with surveys.
The surveys keep going.
So I think some of these numbers might be a little out of date.
But the idea is that through all of this, we've gotten a lot of very interesting information
from our community, in terms of the things -- from where they sit in the ecosystem, whether
it's a business person in Africa or a civil society person in the United States, or an
academic in India -- what are the things that they believe are driving the future?
This will culminate in September, in our global internet report, and will then be the basis
of our annual meeting at the Internet Society, which will take place largely online, as a
meeting that goes around the globe in mid-September.
So as I said, the goal here is to understand the forces of change.
What do we think will drive the future of the internet?
Get a global perspective on what that trajectory looks like, and then importantly, I think,
try to make some recommendations with a dose of humility, but make some recommendations
on what we think different stakeholders -- including the Internet Society -- might do to shape
that future that we want.
So this is what our community has come forward with.
And I'll just walk you through this a little bit.
Rather than doing just four scenarios about the future, which is how this works -- you
get in a little quadrant, and you plan the future -- what we found in our community is
that people are focused on about 6 different areas that they think are driving the future.
And I'll just walk through these, briefly.
This notion -- and this is not gonna be a surprise to many of you in this room -- how
the internet interacts with the physical world.
The deployment of IoT that's ongoing now, that's only going to accelerate -- that will
have an impact on how the internet rolls out.
Obviously the internet economy.
Consolidation or competition.
Can somebody start the next new big thing, or will the big players kind of close out
future opportunities for entrepreneurship?
The role of government.
I think it's very clear that government is playing a bigger and bigger role in the internet.
How that role takes shape, the kinds of interventions that governments make in the marketplace,
the reactions to security, the reactions to rights and freedoms -- these are the sorts
of things that are gonna change the future of the internet and the minds of our community.
Obviously things related to cyberthreats.
We know that cybercrime, cyberattacks, cyberterrorism, cyberwar -- these are all things that are
on the minds of many of us.
We see it often.
We know it's only going to accelerate.
How those things -- how these kinds of cyberattacks take hold, the ability of the community to
address them, is going to shape the future of the internet.
Interestingly, issues related to artificial intelligence came up across the board.
This was an area that people are really thinking about.
They're not really sure how it's going to affect them.
But they're very focused on this issue of artificial intelligence and what it means
for the future.
And then finally, network standards and interoperability.
Can the network and the standards that support it evolve and change to meet the demands of
the future?
There's a real question about whether open standards will continue to be accepted or
whether we'll see a move to proprietary networks.
Whether there will be the right incentives to do the things at the network layer that
many of us don't look at every day, but that will allow the network to grow in scale.
So those six areas are interesting.
I think.
But what we found was even more interesting was that our community was looking at the
interactions between these drivers.
They're not just saying IoT is gonna shape the future and that's it.
But rather they're looking at what is the -- what are the interactions between things
like the deployment of IoT and how the marketplace unfolds.
Or the role of government in reaction to cyberthreats.
But even more important than that, I think, to us, is this -- this group of issues that
we call impact areas.
The community is very focused on three main areas, in terms of the future of the internet.
The first being the future of personal rights and freedoms.
What is the implication of marketplace consolidation or competition on my ability to speak freely,
going forward?
My ability to create the next big thing?
The evolution of the digital divide.
We hear a lot that it's not going to be in the future -- it's not going to be about who
has access to technology, and who doesn't.
But I think this is something similar to what you said.
Is: What will my ability be to do something with that access?
Will I be able to benefit from the opportunities of the internet?
So it's not just about being online or offline.
But do I have access to the benefits itself?
There's also something that we're starting to see, in terms of the digital divide shaping
around security.
People who have the capacity or access to security technologies or the ability to protect
themselves, versus people who don't.
And the divides that that might bring about.
And then finally the implications of all of this for media, culture, and society.
So, again, going back to these drivers, what does it mean -- and I think this is a conversation
that will happen in the next panel -- but what does the deployment of artificial intelligence
mean for society?
We hear a lot about the loss of human agency.
The ability of people to make decisions for themselves.
And what does that mean for society at large?
As you have displacement of industries and disruption in the marketplace?
So these are things that people are interested in.
But the thing that I would emphasize, that we are taking away from this, is that none
of these things acts in isolation, but that there's these interactions between them.
And I'll just go very quickly through the rest of this.
The way we'll shape the report is to try to take some quotes from the community, from
the interviews, as well as some of the data from the surveys.
And I think one here that we found was particularly interesting is this idea that the economy
is changing far faster than the rules that are governing it.
The system we have in place to regulate business is stuck in a 20th century notion of how the
economy works.
So this idea that we -- do we have the tools, the policy tools to deal with the technology
that's coming before us?
And what do we have to do today to make that possible?
We do hear a lot of worry from our community about the role that regulation will play and
whether the regulation and the regulatory tools we have today are up to the task.
On artificial intelligence -- this is a quote that I love -- this is from one of the Internet
Hall of Fame experts.
You have the uncertainty of what the inputs are.
The magic of what the process is doing and driving at a conclusion which are for our
good -- and that is a terrifying prospect in my mind, because we have no idea what's
going on.
This is from somebody who helped create the internet from the earliest days, who's still
thinking about the deployment of artificial intelligence and really wondering what does
this mean for humanity.
And so on the one hand, people see artificial intelligence as a huge opportunity space,
a huge new direction -- or some people would say we've been heading in this direction for
many years.
On the other hand, people don't understand how that's going to affect them as human beings.
And I won't go too much -- I'll stop here.
As I said, we're gonna be making some recommendations as a result of this.
I think one of the conclusions that's interesting is in all of these drivers and in all of these
impact areas, the thing that comes out over and over again is people are thinking about:
What is the role of civil society, going forward?
And they're not sure if civil society will still have a seat at the table.
So I think we as a community need to be thinking very carefully to make sure that end user
voices, the voices of civil society, are still part of the model.
And I know everybody is reticent to talk about the multistakeholder model, but people draw
on that to ensure that they have a seat in the table, that they have a part in the discussion.
So I think we need to be really focused on that.
So I will stop there.
We hope that you will participate in all of this.
I think there's a lot in common with what the commission is doing.
And I think Renalia will hand it over to you in your group to continue the discussion.
Thank you.
>> Pearse O'Donohue : Thank you very much, Sally.
Thank you.