There has been an evolution of ownership from physical objects to digital assets - despite the limitations of digital ownership. Flow, a new blockchain technology, and Cadence, a programming language, together may enable true ownership of digital assets, in a way that mirrors physical ownership.

We can have a new international approach to data governance that draws inspiration from the Bretton Woods Agreement. This would call for the creation of a global alliance with a commitment to data protection as well as a Data Stability Board to coordinate regulatory dialogue, aiming for harmonization and interoperability in global data governance.

There are divergent approaches to data regulation across the US, China, and Europe. The US has a laissez-faire approach, China tends to be oriented towards state-centric control, and Europe is overtly rights-based. The growing schisms between these approaches are causing fragmentation, leading to a call for a common ground in global data governance.

The success of innovation doesn’t correlate directly with statutory or structural impediments, but rather depends on timing and the right set of circumstances. Creating environments conducive to serendipitous connections across unconnected disciplines can foster innovation.

Francis Fukuyama coined the term “vetocracy” to describe a gridlocked decision-making system where individuals can prevent policy implementation through vetoes. But while the physical world may suffer from excessive vetocracy, the digital sphere often leans towards autocracy. We need a balance between these two extremes and that is even more important in the context of India’s digital infrastructure. Vetocratic processes can be used to protect core principles, while maintaining flexibility to foster innovation.

The Indian Supreme Court’s struggle to decipher a convoluted legal order highlights a broader issue of intentional incomprehensibility in legal language. This complexity often makes laws inaccessible to laypersons. We need plain language reforms, comprehensive lists of laws, explainers for every law, and measures to ease the compliance burdens if we are to make the legal systems more accessible and democratic.

Everyone I know has a story about how their phone is spying on them. This usually has to do with how they started seeing ads in their news feed that pertain to something that they said or did offline that was somehow being picked up by our devices and used to target advertising at us. But if you think about it there is no way in which telephone companies can do that - or will even want to. It costs too much and is not worth the effort. What seems like personalised surveillance always has another explanation.

Science funding requires patient capital. The NRF should follow 3 principles as it disburses its funding. (i) projects should get long term funding commitments that are protected against political change, (ii) they need operational autonomy so that researchers can follow their own paths and (iii) the NRF should no longer fund government laboratories but focus on finding academia.

Any attempt to change the beliefs of vaccine skeptics using facts is bound to fail. Thanks to the backfire effect they will take the facts presented to them and bend them to fit with their beliefs rather than allow new facts to convince them that their beliefs were wrong.

The design of digital data sharing infrastructure must be federated. Where there is a need for data availability beyond the duration that data fiduciaries will retain it we need to build data storage alternatives that data principals can use. We should resist the temptation of getting the government to build these data stores as a public good because the role of the government is to govern - and it should not get into the business of data storage and data management. Instead we should take a market approach and encourage private data storage providers to offer federated, inter-operable solutions.