dialogues

Jim Poisant is the Secretary General of The World Innovation Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA). A consortium of associations from the information and communications technology industry around the world

Who are the stakeholders in and related to the global IT industry? What is the major stakeholder at large? How to engage with all these? And how to align as a global industry? Where digital technology has outstripped societal and legal frameworks, how to close the gap? Will the IT industry as a relatively ‘young’ industry settle down and find its place in the global arena taking into account as many perspectives as possible? What real societal challenges can be addressed with IT in a useful way? How to uphold accountability on a global scale? How to help ones own community with accountability? Could it hold their own community members accountable? These and other key topics are addressed in this Dialogue.

Marco Magnano is Comms Director at XR Safety Initiative. This dialogue is hosted by guest host Richard Foster-Flecher, founder of MKAI.

How is trust and being worthy of trust established in the physical world? Would that be the same online, and otherwise in the Digital Age? When adding immersive technology to the equation such as VR and AR, what does change, is augmented – or worsened – even more? Will data harvesting and other collection decrease or increase? Are we mere data points, and do we need to consider new notions about privacy and personal data? Can democratisation and related decentralisation and distribution methodologies and technologies perhaps help out? What should we do as individuals and society? This Dialogue covers all these important queries.

Nathalia Foditsch is a Senior Policy and Regulatory Specialist, with the Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) part of the Web Foundation. In this dialogue she discusses the recent report the A4AI produced on the status of the Universal Service and Access Funds for the Latin American and Caribbean Countries.

How to make internet connectivity and access possible and available in an affordable way? What does meaningful connectivity and accessibility mean? What does affordable internet mean? How to foster that? And, to which (parts of the) the open internet? What are universal service and access funds? Why are those needed? Who has access to those funds? What can one do with it? What are success stories? What obstacles and challenges? What can local and regional policy makers and societies learn from the latest advocacy report? This Dialogue dives into these and related important matters.

She also brings up the topic of the need for meaningful connectivity.You can find a link to the A4AI report here.

What is the future of domain names? Why is attention to our digital fundamental infrastructure so important? Where did the internet protocol start, and what is IPv6? What brings it to the table regarding accountability? Is transparency seen as a friend or seen as a foe? Why is the implementation relatively difficult? Where certain necessary global transitions are relatively slow, why not start locally? Next to understanding, appreciation and financial investments, what are furthermore prerequisites? How to involve the mid and low income countries? How to leave nobody behind?

Rosa Maria Delgado is an independent expert in IPv6. She discusses the need for nations and organizations to move to IPv6 as a fundamental layer for digital transition.