The climate consensus is rapidly unravelling. With the developing world consistently failing to make the level of commitment required to prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, we need to think differently about achieving sustainable development. Could we apply DPI Thinking to this problem?
Content moderation is a wicked problem - that calls on us to balance the fundamental right to speech and expression with the need to prevent the spread of harmful content. This is a fine balance that we need to strike with careful attention to constitutional principles.
All we need to do to address our food insecurity is learn to better preserve food after it has been harvested. However, the technology we rely on to do that comes at a great cost. We need to find an alternative approach - one that prevents spoilage without harming the environment.
The challenge with regulating technology is that laws always lag behind the technologies they regulate. One way to address this is to adopt a philosophy of incremental regulation that follows in lockstep with technological evolution. This requires a theoretical understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of technology.
Since data allows us to price risk more accurately and, at the same time allows us to offer incentives for appropriate behaviour, it is a very useful tool for insurers looking to achieve optimal risk pooling. However, if we take it too far we risk ending up in a surveillance society.
The introduction of the term Consent Manager in the Digital Personal Data Protection Act gave rise to considerable speculation. No other data protection law had anything like it, and the law itself was unclear as to what role these entities played. Now that the Rules are with us, things are a little clearer.
There is an urgent need to re-design our energy grid to take better advantage of all that digital has to offer. A recent paper describes how we can add a digital layer to existing infrastructure and use this digital energy grid to unlock greater efficiencies. But in order to realise this goal we will need a shift in our regulatory mindset.
Even though the number of users online has steadily increased over the years, conversations have grown increasingly stilted and subdued. This is the Fermi’s Paradox of the online world - even though there are so many of us are online we chose to keep our heads down, knowing that if we don’t, we run the risk of becoming a target for trolls.
Last week the UIDAI initiated a process by which private-sector access to the authentication infrastructure would be restored. I have every hope that this will create a new ecosystem of identity service providers that will enable a range of different services - in particular in relation to obligations under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act.
Narrowly targeting laws to specific countries or companies can have unintended consequences. They can push customers in different directions or serve as an unanticipated impetus for entrepreneurs to think of new and innovative approaches. In both instances, the outcomes are unexpected.
