NetGain Challenge

access to knowledge, big data, inequality, journalism, transparency

Access to public information must not only be published online informción but such data are accessible on software that hold the majority. The database must be opened in programs easily accessible. Furthermore, mechanisms should be created so that people are not fooled with false information. Training must be done on databases and big data for all citizens.

Darwin Borja 120

inequality, democratic participation, big data, privacy

As a next generation, online civil rights organization born out of a single email to just 1,000 people, ColorOfChange.org understands the power of technology to amplify the voices of marginalized communities, leverage systemic change, and strengthen our democracy. However, technology exploited for the purpose of unchecked surveillance could have a crippling effect on any movement for social justice. As our data becomes more readily available, philanthropic organizations have a great opportunity to work with social justice organizations to ensure that our privacy is protected, and that corporations and our government are held accountable for how they use that information.

Our ability to be heard, counted, and visible in a 21st century global economy and increasingly connected world depends not just on our ability to access, but our ability to have an unfiltered voice -- powerful enough to hold government and institutions accountable.

Rashad Robinson 18

organizing, secure communications, community media, big data, information ecology + economy

As civil society groups come to rely more and more on data from social media and other online outlets to see what the public is talking about and how they feel, it is critical for us to create and hold space for the ideas not already captured by online currents. Unfortunately, the internet isn’t a safe space for many, but campaigners and organizers can identify emerging or unaddressed issues across diverse communities by listening. When people cannot or will not come forward online with asks, civil society groups like 18MillionRising continue to serve the same people, despite dim awareness that there are others whose lives could be transformed through our advocacy.

How do we foster safer spaces online to build dialogue and relationships? How do groups who work online build trust with marginalized constituents? How can we avoid the trap of only listening “big” for ideas to gain momentum on their own, while we have the capacity to start the snowball ourselves, if we listen “small”?

Cayden Mak 4

civic engagement, civic participation, knowledge sharing, networks, organizing, social movements

As digitalness engulfs the world, the future promises an increasing depth and spread of all things electronic, connected and data-rich. Nation-states, industries, religions and markets are driven and rewarded to operate on both globally and intimately invasive scales. The biggest threat in this digital future is that in both scale and tempo, problem creators are outpacing good people’s capacity to keep them in check. The future of successful movements – and the digital future itself – depends on those who can build and access high-capacity advocacy networks. Yet, network capacity building is out of sync with current donors, organizational-centric growth interests and philanthropic priorities. We must align civic infrastructure, focus, incentives and rewards so that future leaders can also effectively wield the power of a connected world to bend the arc of history toward justice.

Marty Kearns 20

privacy, access to knowledge

As mobile and social technologies collapse the remaining distinctions between our online and offline identities, security and privacy are not in opposition: they are necessary to preserve one another. We need to build privacy into systems and infrastructure by design and create encryption that is as easy to use as sliding open your smartphone. These approaches will be crucial to the next billion people who are coming online, many of whom may have no other option than to log on to a limited set of "zero-rated" services through Internet.org or similar approaches. Providing these users with other options to log on to the full World Wide Web through libraries and schools will be critical to ensuring equal access to the world's knowledge, as will providing people with the literacies required to make the most of it, but it won't be free.

Alexander Howard 13

civic engagement, civic participation, civil society, cultural exchange, dialogue, education, knowledge sharing, journalism, dissent, privacy, organizing, social movements, public service media, democratic participation

At this point, many of us have seen the true nature of the internet today; we understand that there are issues with privacy, transparency, and abuse of power, we have seen horrifying potential for them to get worse, and we have begun movements to solve them. Yet, as Ethan Zuckerman points out, only a small fraction of those who understand the issues are concentrating on solving them. Admittedly, those few are making great gains for a free and open internet, but they are still only a minority. So, in light of this we have tried to spread the word: we have exposed the surveillance efforts of governments, we have taught of the hostile forces hidden in the internet’s design, and we have built tools to make a free and open internet possible. But still the efforts and successes are restricted to a hard-working few. There will of course always be more to be done to spread the word further and motivate more to join the fight, but there remains a vast majority who, upon hearing of such violations as the NSA’s collection of America’s phone records or Facebook’s manipulation of its user’s emotions, appear to shrug off any concern with a “so what?” We see this in the many who continue to use services which they know to be abusive, and in those who give up their privacy for either more safety or increased convenience. This continued simultaneous acceptance and denial of the pressing issues of the internet echoes the doublethink which subjugated a civilization to “Big Brother” in the Orwellian 1984. In our time, the oppression has not yet reached the scale of Big Brother’s, but already the majority of netizens seem to be resigned to an internet which is closed and oppressive by default; an internet where user’s data is both sold to the highest bidder and surveilled for any incriminating word. There is much to be done to solve all the issues of the web, but until we free the many trapped in the acceptance of a closed internet, all efforts by the few will be subverted by the paralyzing apathy of the many. This, therefore, is the challenge: we must go beyond merely presenting the issues and producing the tools to solve them, and find means to not only make clear the severe implications of today’s problems, but also to take the responsibility of creating an open internet out of the hands of a stagnant populace. Only then will we be able to both raise concerns about the issues and ensure those concerns are reflected in a free and open internet.

Mckenna Cisler 2

usability, secure communications, tools

Attempts to use programs that block tracking or unwanted pop-ups, or malware, have the added effect of preventing me from viewing content, especially videos and images. So I usually try to use a different browser (I'm on Chrome typically) -- Safari or Firefox. However, those browsers, without the protections on Chrome, have become so riddled with popups and malware so as to make using them impossible. It's really difficult to be a layperson and use these programs--they purport to allow you to selectively inhibit their protections so that on a case by case basis, you can halt them and view a video. But it's too hard and I can't figure it out.

THE CHALLENGE IS HOW TO HELP A LAYPERSON LIKE ME WHO IS MOTIVATED BUT NOT SO MUCH THAT I'M GOING TO GO DOWN WORMHOLES OF RESEARCH, PROTECT MY BROWSING ENVIRONMENT /EXPERIENCE YET LET IT BE AS FULL AS POSSIBLE.

Anna Van Lenten 0

democratic participation, governance, social movements, access to knowledge, big data

Because the Internet makes it so much easier to have voice, we are now all experiencing the collapse of collective attention. The current battle for attention--which every progressive cause needs to win in order to make progress--ironically pits all against all. Emotional hyper-spectacles are the only things that truly "win" in this environment. Giving advocacy organizations better media and technology training only puts a band-aid on the problem. Instead of arming groups to fight better for their sliver of attention, we need movement-wide big listening resources and brand-agnostic networked campaigns on behalf of causes, not organizations. We need to name the problem of collective attention and measure its fluctuations in order to start to fix it. And we need to invest in a new generation of tools for democratic deliberation and decision-making, so the Internet can help us get better not just at saying "stop" but also at agreeing on "go."

Micah Sifry 50

social movements, equity

Build capacity for a social movement to address negative effects of technology and discriminatory data practices on democracy and social justice, particularly effects on increasing inequality and cumulative disadvantage. As the future is already upon us, we need to counter these trends and lay the foundation for a social movement that aims to preserve and advance democratic ideals and values and that will ask the question whether the advances of these technologies and data practices are worth the costs. A new strategic communications frame is needed to put forward a compelling critique of the ‘efficiency and consumption above all’ paradigm. We need to foster a social discourse that analyzes the (private and public sector) surveillance society in a broader context, thereby moving Americans and citizens of the world away from individualistic toward systemic solutions.

Anonymous 5

governance, inequality, public interest technology

Can we preserve civil liberties privacy while also responsibly ensuring security and taking advantage of the convenience of Netflix recommendations? Can we improve access to critical digital information infrastructure without handing over the public culture to private corporations? Can we democratize the governing of the Internet without ceding it to forces of repression? Too often these questions are left beneath the surface or, worse still, perceived as null. But neither willful blindness nor fatalism will allow us to choose a positive future, where technology accelerates equity, participation and human thriving. We must work from a vision of equity, with the digital age fostering equity rather than destroying it further.

Helen Brunner 89

internet access, networks

Challenge ISPs to tell customers how to setup their own server. Shame ISPs that supposedly provide internet access when they do not allow online home servers.

Anonymous 0

civic engagement, accountability, governance

Closing of feedback loops remains a significant challenge in giving a good outcome to the energy and capabilities that the Internet and mobile phones have brought to the people. Online tools and platforms have empowered citizens to express themselves, report on governments, and essentially put in crucial checks and balances to strengthen the overall democratic system. However, holding governments accountable to respond to the data, make use of the data in rectifying policy, and analyze the gaps identified to build better processes, is most often a hit-and-miss affair. Laws similar to the Freedom of Information/Right to Information are required, which mandate the authorities to respond to questions being asked of them based on hard data.

Aaditeshwar Seth 3

access to knowledge, networks, local organizing

Community Media Archive is a collection at Internet Archive that is building and sharing local community media programming across the USA. http://accesshumboldt.net/wiki/index.php?title=Community_media_archive

As a necessary component for a healthy community information eco-system, local media archives provide context, transparency and accountability at the community level connecting people who live together on the ground, over time.

How can we build the future archive to serve local communities as well as regional and global interests?

Anonymous 5

journalism, civic engagement, democratic participation, accountability, news we can trust

Connect journalism to activism. Journalism is great at getting people mad as hell. It's not so great at telling them how to act on it. Every day, countless moments of "I should do something" go to waste. What's missing is an easy way for journalists who write about issues that matter to people to end their stories with an "If you care, here's what you can do." Upset at farm labor practices you just read about? Here's which producers to boycott. Want to help campaign for clean energy? Here's who's looking for volunteers. Want to probe your elected representatives' finances? These are the online tools and how to use them. What creates the link between journalism and activism might be a network, a website, a widget, an API. Whatever it is, it would aim to bridge the gap that so many of our good intentions fall into.

Gideon Lichfield 16

social movements

Create a software program that collects together ideas of how to best improve our world issues. People vote on who they think has the best ideas and the leading thinkers are invited to weigh in on the solutions. From education, to sanitation, to climate change, to economics. Categories could be determined. I would think that algorithms could be written to create possible resolutions and a consensus could be decided upon.

Renae Millwee 2

digital democracy, democratic participation, trust

Critical democracy infrastructure is an apt framing for the processes and technology of elections administration, whether such is delivered via the Internet or not. Yet, a great challenge in the digital age is that voting technology remains a backwater of government IT. This is because governments have little budget for the innovations required to ensure elections processes are verifiable, accurate, secure and transparent. Therefore, commercial interests have little incentive to provide such innovations. The result is a critical component of democracy infrastructure remains at risk for compromise. This lowers confidence in elections and their outcomes, reduces participation, and risks the integrity of democracy. It’s imperative that election administration technology be publicly owned, and open source in design, development, and distribution. This is an important challenge well suited to philanthropic solution with several efforts already underway worthy of consideration.

Gregory Miller John Sebes 3

access to knowledge, democratic participation, environmentalism, inequality, organizing, privacy, public interest technology, social movements, surveillance

Crowd-sourcing logical thinking to solve complex global problems. The current global set of political systems has proved itself incapable of adequately addressing critically important and urgent global challenges, such as: 1) limiting greenhousse gas emissions, 2) effectively protecting the privacy of digital information and ending mass surveillance, 3) ending the trend of ever-increasing economic inequality where an ever-decreasing percentage of people control an ever-increasing percentage of the global wealth.

We need to re-invigorate democratic governance processes by making good and reliable logical thinking on these processes available to parliaments. I propose that this can be done by means of crowd-sourcing logical thinking to analyze the problems and solution proposals. This can be done by means of the logic tree methods which have emerged from Eli Goldratt's Theory of Constraints, which combine tools for logical analysis and discourse with a method for complexity management.

Norbert Bollow 3

inequality

Current philanthropic foundations are all born out of inequality, when extremely wealthy individuals and corporations donate money to found them. Does this structurally inhibit foundations from responding effectively to growing inequality of wealth? Could crowd funding or other networked organizing strategies be used to foment a more democratic charitable infrastructure?

Charlie DeTar 27

digital democracy

Data is a cornerstone asset and key to governance in the digital age. It’s essential to make all data related to governing 100% open and transparent. The open government data vision has been slow to materialize because government is limited in its ability to create and use technology required to make its data open and accessible. When government budgets are constrained, commercial incentive to innovate declines. Worse: bureaucracy, cost overruns and politics derail the best of intentions. However, breakthrough innovations occur when commercial mandates are absent. There are numerous non-profit efforts underway or on the drawing board to do so. The challenge is catalyzing philanthropic support of digital innovation. It’s a new kind of asset management that philanthropists are less familiar with: shepherding the creation of intangible assets, principally software. This must be solved, because society must look to non-profit digital innovation to enable transparency in government.

Gregory Miller 0

transparency in governance, open data, open government, open source

Data is a cornerstone asset to governance. But real transparency requires knowledge. There is a difference between civic data mash-ups and robust knowledge services. Much has been achieved for mash-ups; little so far for knowledge management. Governments must expose data but they don’t have and can’t afford tools to do so. The technology is not just about extraction and display, but standardizing and consolidation. That’s required for data to transform into knowledge. Analytics will drive that transformation, but challenges also lie in effective structured data search. When this matures, and if there results broad open government data structured to be transformed into knowledge, then a wealth of information will exist to drive transparency, thanks to commercial innovations emerging in search, analytics, and data science. Meanwhile, the 1st challenge toward transparency in governance is making the data available in an agreed-to open standardized structure, sequence, and organization.

John Sebes, CTO 3

civil society

Democracies rely on thriving civil societies where individuals and communities can express themselves outside of markets and government. We need a transition plan that will enable civil society to thrive in a digital age, where the infrastructure is commercially owned and surveilled by both governments and companies. This transition plan needs three kinds of codes - new software code, new organizational codes, and (probably) new legal codes to protect this independent space. New software code that will power digital tools that default to the values of free and private association and free expression. New organizational codes that guide foundations, nonprofits and civic organizations to act ethically, safely, securely, and effectively. New legal codes - for new forms of governance, data security and destruction, and informed consent that protect the voluntary nature of civil society.

Lucy Bernholz 14

secure communications, public interest technology, democratic participation

Democracy exists when power is distributed. Military power. The American Revolution was made possible only by the cheap ubiquity of the personal firearm. When every citizen is well-armed, tyranny is checked. But on the Internet, power now concentrates in the hands of government and corporations. If democracy is to continue, that power must be re-distributed. Defensive solutions--encryption tools, anonymity tools--are not enough. If someone threatens you with a gun, the solution is not to buy a bulletproof vest, but to buy a gun yourself. Thus is power checked. The challenge: Build a distributed offensive cyberweapon easy enough for the average citizen to use. Give it to 100 million people. What technology dictates, the law transcribes. If you want to win the policy fight, you must win the technology fight first.

J.M. Porup 69

21st century philanthropy, censorship, networks, open data, privacy

Don’t be yourself. Activism and change are always about potential. The Web used to be about potential, too. Role-playing and anonymity were central to early Web culture (to the point of megalomania!). But political and commercial pressures led in the other direction, toward one verifiable identity per person. This is a gradual process of control and inhibition. The commercial Web is becoming about finding new ways to charge for old things; the political Web is becoming about new ways for states (and not just states) to enforce old politics. These trends haven’t won the day but they are strong. Perhaps philanthropy could find ways to revive and extend that early Web culture of playful inventiveness and potential identities. That’s where the openness can renew itself.

Scott Malcomson 7

education, public interest technology, networks

Freedom of the press goes to people who have one. The single best thing we can do to improve the flow of new ideas on the net is to teach anyone who wants to learn, how to run their own server. It's a lot easier than learning how to code, and a lot more useful -- and it gives people a reason to learn how to create software, to customize their servers. It's not hard to do, especially if you design server software to be easy to set up and run (which I am <a href="https://github.com/scripting/pagepark">doing</a>).

Dave Winer 16

big data, surveillance, censorship, journalism, civil society

Fund little data. Big data is mediated by governments and companies with a vested interest in surveillance or marketing, but we also need metrics to challenge them. We need to count people who are silenced and the agents that are silencing them. But journalists and NGOs who provide the little data and oversee the agents with power are bleeding money.

Madeline Earp 13

privacy, secure communications

Governments and security agencies may think about the security and privacy as opposing priorities, but for individuals the exact opposite can be true. For victims of domestic violence, online harassment, and human trafficking, and activists evading oppressive governments,
privacy can be life-saving. The internet and web technologies are empowering people to organize
and advocate for their rights. Mobile technologies help people to document and put a spotlight on the worst corruption and abuses. As the next billion internet users come online, strong net neutrality protections, and equal, secure access to networks are critical to ensuring that everyone, not just powerful corporations and governments, continue to have a real voice.

Allyson Kapin 7

education, digital jobs, civic engagement

Growing numbers of people with a humanities Ph.D. are seeking employment, and meaningful work, outside of traditional academic positions. Many of them are, or aspire to be, publicly-engaged scholars who want to apply their work to the needs of real people in challenged communities, and who are seeking and experimenting with more mutual, participatory, community-engaged methods of research and interpretation. There are opportunities for grad students or recent grads to receive training in digital tools and apply digital technologies to their work. But these tend to be short-term, poorly-paid, postdoctoral positions -- and there are few opportunities for mid-career academics to re-tool or relaunch their careers in a more digitally-skilled, publicly-engaged direction. Could there be an effort to provide low-cost or no-cost training opportunities and/or more secure, better paid positions for the kind of community-applied, publicly-oriented, digital humanities research and interpretation many of us long to do?

Julie D. 1

access to knowledge, local organizing

How can people create and share digital media content that is locally relevant and timely, in a way that will contribute more diverse voices to the future archive?

Sean McLaughlin 1

How can robust, productive, problem-solving dialogue across differences in worldview be better fostered on the web? What are the best existing examples where this is taking place and what can be learned from them about the design principles that might stimulate and support such dialogue at a significant scale given the web's culture and social dynamics? What experiments are worth trying in order to learn more and promote progress on divisive issues?

William Friedman 0

civil society, local organizing, 21st century philanthropy, access to knowledge

How do we expand the constituency that won the right to communicate? Net neutrality captured the minds of millions because of how personal our relationship is with the internet. We need it to work, learn, love and to change the world. In the United States, our access to the internet is almost always mediated by America's richest and most powerful cable and telecom companies - Comcast, Verizon, AT&T. In half of the cities in the United States, we still negotiate our contracts with those companies - "franchise agreements" - to serve our cities, counties, and towns. We can bring the netroots into the streets and City Halls if we make huge, dizzying demands of our City Councils and Mayors when they negotiate and vote on franchises – deals that often last for a generation or more. If we want workers, low income communities, local technologists, pastors, and others to work for a just internet, we must show them how powerful we can be when we demand internet justice on our home turf.

Hannah Sassaman 18

news we can trust, accountability

How do we reward news organizations and journalists for trustworthy reporting, per ethical codes and accountability to this codes?

Craig Newmark 11

internet access

I challenge the leadership to adopt policies that connect and engage with the world around us, creating challenges and opportunities in every area of contemporary life. We all know that the Internet can be used to foster enlightenment and learning, and to promote justice. It can also be used to exert control, stifle legitimate discourse, and concentrate power in the hands of a few. The web’s ubiquitous nature and power demands that we work together to ensure that it serves the common good.

Harley Christensen 1

access to knowledge, networks, public service media

In recent years, there's been a new narrative advanced by some that the internet, especially access to reliable, high speed quality internet, should be considered a public good, in the same vein as other public utilities. This argument has played out in different ways around the world. At the international level, the UN has put forth several new ideas for Sustainable Development Goals, access to the internet as a human right is among them, as is access to information, and within the framework for the post-2015 SDGs there are also underpinnings that freedom of expression is an enabling right needed to achieve the other development goals.

Challenge: There is an urgent need for scholars, activists, NGOs, members of government, and business to articulate and instill a new public service orientation of content and access in the highly fragmented, complex and unstable media environment of the 21st century.

Susan Abbott, Gregory Ferrell Lowe, Minna Horowitz 8

free speech, censorship, access to knowledge, governance, transparency

Increasingly, state actors are effective at asserting various levels of information sovereignty, or, authoritative control over information flows, within their territories. Well known are heavy handed attempts towards censorship, but less documented are the ways in which policy makers, in cooperation with the private sector, build architectures of control into the technologies we use to communicate. These controls range, but are justified by a desire for greater: political/social control, security, IP protections, cultural protections, or law enforcement capabilities. As international norms shifts further away from a free flow of information, and a right to access information, towards information sovereignty, informational rights of global netizens are jeopardized. Existing research is ad hoc and segmented, and a comprehensive, systematic and integrated analysis is needed to map how all governments are enacting regimes of control. We need a global, all-encompassing transparency report.

Shawn Powers 116

digital jobs, public interest technology

Infrastructure for the public good is no longer a priority. Roads, bridges, energy pipelines, traffic and power grids, and other essential public resources are planned and built according to the needs of corporations. In the search for space to maximize profit, neighborhoods are neglected or completely razed. The results are crumbling highways, poisoned water, and power and sewer systems cobbled together from decades-old, environmentally dangerous systems. In the meantime, industry is planning connected cars and automated devices, furthering the gap between classes while the young cannot find sustainable wage jobs. Why not solve the problems of infrastructure and unemployment simultaneously? Large public works projects can re-enable or wholly create up to date, future-prepared, digitally connected systems on open standards while putting the growing population of millenials to work re-configuring the physical network . We cannot get to a better world if there are no roads to stand on.

Michelle Tackabery 5

governance, censorship, social movements, surveillance

Internet shutdowns are the unspoken threat to digital and human rights around the world. From Belarus to China to the Democratic Republic of Congo, governments have demanded telcos to cut off their services in the face of legitimate dissent—and the telcos frequently comply. These shutdowns often precede human rights violations and feed impunity by state and non-state actors. There is no remedy for shutdowns, no compensation for victims, and no regulatory oversight. As the next billion come online, shutdowns will affect increasing of people across a widening range of devices and services, including mobile phones, broadband, and VoIP. Philanthropy can help us to respond to shutdowns through a coordinated strategy. We need 1. support to urgently establish policy norms to de-normalize shutdowns. 2. technical solutions that can be rapidly deployed like mesh networks/satellite 3) advocacy infrastructure to expose and respond to shutdowns - the lowest form of censorship.

Brett Solomon 10

government, democratic participation

It has become commonplace to see our systems of representative government create laws and polices explicitly in the interests of large corporations while simultaneously trampling on the interests and rights of the majority of citizens. A Princeton study confirmed what Americans know intuitively - that they have virtually no influence on the workings of their governments. Today there is potential to create an electronic democracy system that could help shift some power back to the people. The e-democracy system must be easy and fun to use, secure while verifying one person = one vote. It should also be flexible to allow people to participate with varying time commitments by allowing them to delegate their vote on a set of issues to a proxy whose opinions they trust. This system could also serve as a needed forum for debate and communication about political topics. Currently much of this communication happens through Facebook which controls the flow of messages in an opaque way.

Benjamin Abrams 0

equity, civic engagement, democratic participation

Let's move beyond #civictech based on technocratic ways & its hyper-rationalist assumptions and myths. Instead of teams with techbros, design fetishists, and technocrat & policy wonks, let's build teams from these skills: Science & Technology cultural studies, Anthropology, Media Ecology, Peace & Conflict studies, existing Wisdom traditions, and solid Human-Centered and Lean software design, and Agile development experience. Just sayin'!

Daniel Latorre 11

inequality, surveillance, big data

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.” While some tout the visible benefits of predictive policing as crime prevention, the invisible harms criminalize dissent and result in high-tech racial profiling. Legal and policy advocates have focused on the threat of mass surveillance to civil liberties. But activists in the Black Lives Matter movement against anti-Black policing and the Not One More movement against mass deportation are concerned with targeted surveillance in which the indiscriminate collection of private data leads to racial profiling, racially discriminatory treatment, and disparate outcomes. To the degree the Internet is democratized, it can be where 21st century social movements are born or where they die. Whether expanding mass incarceration, driving mass deportation, or criminalizing movements—the surveillance technologies of predictive policing are quickly becoming the tools of racial bias, and should not be ignored.

Malkia Cyril 32

21st century philanthropy

Massive amounts of new 21st century wealth has been created places like Silicon Valley and elsewhere where digital technologies have taken hold. Much of this wealth has fallen into the hands of individuals much younger than their forbearers who have yet to recognize their philanthropic identity or mission. At the same time long standing philanthropic institutions, many created from 20th century wealth, struggle to understand how to recognize, invest, and measure digitally designed social benefit initiatives and the entrepreneurs who create them. We need new mechanisms that draw funding from the newly rich and bring them together with the experience of existing philanthropic community to invest in a new generation of digitally inspired social change agents, projects, and platforms.

Andrew Rasiej 10

civic engagement, public interest technology, mobile

Mobile phones do something the Internet doesn’t – connect everyone. There are more than 7b mobile connections worldwide – reaching billions of people the Internet (& smart phones) doesn’t, even in the US and Europe. When we choose digital platforms for social and civic engagement, we are also deciding who gets to participate in our society. The cracks between platforms are not just technological, they're social and economic - and by only focusing on the Internet, we're excluding billions from our shared future. Messaging platforms, and particularly SMS, bridge that gap right now, reaching the people that the Internet does not – like minorities, young people, and the poor. This challenge is to prioritize and support digital access over approach – prioritized by the volume of people who use it, not the platform itself. Focus on who is falling through the cracks in adoption. If we're going to build a truly public digital world, we're going to need more than one tool.

Sean McDonald 41

government, skills

Modern governments and public institutions mostly cannot and do not employ staff with appropriate skills for the digital age. The barriers to such recruitment exist on both the demand and supply sides. On the demand side few governments know why they even need new skills, let alone how to get them without making terrible mistakes. And on the supply side, Higher Education establishments are not producing graduates who are as comfortable with digital issues as they are with law and politics. This grand challenge is to identify and scope the key interventions that will be required before governments regularly employ the people that society needs them to.

Tom Steinberg 9

equality, human rights

Most significant new areas of human endeavour eventually develop major institutions that serve to protect and promote the public interest. From NPR in the media sector to public universities in the education sector, it seems that any significant new sector eventually develop large and enduring institutions that that compensate for market failures, and which symbolise our shared hopes for a better world. The internet today lacks any such public interest institutions, except for those that represent policing and anti-terrorism concerns (and these are, of course, highly controversial). My grand challenge is to design blueprints for major new institutions that will serve the public interest in areas that exist solely because of the power and scale of the internet.

Tom Steinberg 4

civic participation

Net Gain community foundations learn about and share local Civic Innovation (Technology and Connector Social Productivity) Ordinances and related training programs for public bodies and community anchor institutions in Local zones (planning, zip, tif) and wider Community college areas (linked with university, healthcare, public safety, subregional planning areas). Purposes include developing and sharing local models and training materials (linked databases of small-to-large community anchor institutions, hotspot in a box tools and tax incentives, community business intelligence plans for virtual infrastructure and services), community service quality assemblies, data exchanges (zip, 911, 311, IOT), community ignite partnerships with community colleges/universities and social productivity indicators for planning decision making of human, and natural built environment. One community college/university and local innovation ordinance model in development in Illinois.

Layton Olson 0

energy, technology, internet access, access to knowledge

No ones mentioned Energy! Without an integrated and systemic approach that converges energy, technology and connectivity together, we will not make the last mile of bridging the digital and energy divide. Thus, we need a new approach to deliver energy, connectivity and their associated benefits in an affordable fashion. We need to unlock the power of shared resources, and enable e-Everything! This is where start-up DABADDO, a step-change, for-profit, shared value company is trying to make an impact. Their Connectivity Centers support lights, computers and Internet equipment, recharging station for battery devices and lights, fans, projector, water purification, refrigerator, and general point of sale. Their footprint allows room for SME’s to construct locations within their facility to benefit from access to electricity and the Internet. This provides most of the electrical and internet items required to cover the basics at a village level, without yet directly creating a grid.

Chad Maxwell 0

democratic participation, networks, censorship, access to knowledge, freedom of assembly

One of the most democratizing aspects of the networked digital age is the ability of people to easily organize and communicate in groups online. The freedom of expression becomes powerful if we can easily connect in groups be it on popular but commercially controlled social media platforms because we use the same hashtag to online groups where we trade the ease of recruiting new members on a name brand platform in exchange for accepting the loss of an "export members" option. Whether it is protection from government censors or legal limits on our assembly online or group assembly that is threatened by commercial prerogatives or threats from extremist groups using intimidation, a fundamental challenge is ensuring that those seeking to assemble online can do so without fear of retribution and viably attract members independently beyond being practically forced to use name-brand online tools in order to be visible and accessible online. More: http://kng.ht/1gxTtB8

Steven Clift 16

information ecology + economy

Our greatest local-global ‘Grand Challenge’ is to develop ‘an ecological unified field theory’, to move our intents and actions towards a most important goal of our networked contemporary society: ‘demosophia’ (people wisdom). We cannot address the critical issues of changing climate, water, energy, food, health, economics or politics, without better understanding of our dynamically integrated matter-energy-information environment, and of our need to think differently, by taking “steps toward an ecology of mind”. While we understand a great deal about material ecosystems, we have barely applied understandings of ecology to information, and therefore to an integrated, whole-systems understanding of ecology. This will have evermore troubling consequences as local-global societies increasingly tune into, develop, monetize, manipulate and live in the information environment, realizing that informational processes determine the dynamic course of social evolution.

Richard Lowenberg 4

media literacy

Our world is not only inundated by media but formed by it. People feel like they cannot get a break from all the messages coming at them, but what they often don't realize is that media shape our entire view of the world. They shape how we see ourselves, they shape how we see others. Every single person needs to learn how to access, evaluate, create and critique all forms of media. By gaining a critical awareness of media, misinformation like the current hysteria with vaccinations or around Ebola doesn’t have the lasting impact and endurance they currently have. By gaining an understanding of who owns media and how they frame the messages they deliver to us, we are not as susceptible and responsive to “click-baiting” and celebrity gossip. By becoming fluent in all media forms, we become more engaged in our world, our culture, our elections. By addressing our media consumption habits, we reduce the amount of coal-produced energy we use to keep our smartphones constantly charged.

D.C. Vito 5

big data

People need control of their data, without being excluded from the powerful technologies it enables. Technology providers are currently able to set undemocratic, take-it-or-leave-it conditions for access to users' data. Envision and implement equitable systems for negotiating data access. How can users specify fine-grained control over their data? Is it possible to provide data-based services without direct access to data? And how can providers be persuaded to relinquish their control?

Edward Platt 12

inequality, equity

Perhaps net gain can only be realized when we let the entire world play. When we synchronize global access to technology that allows everyone something else to do (N Gershenfeld), many existing technologies, policies, securities, identities, titles, wars, impossibilities .. become irrelevant. When we offer everyone the means, the luxury, to do whatever they want (the thing they can’t not do), we’ll gain the simplicity/freedom we need for the dance to dance. Interconnectedness rides on an all-of-us ness.
I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. (MLK)

monika hardy 0

public interest technology

Philanthropy needs to understand technology (and its adjacencies - data, networks, etc.) not simply as a set of discrete tools, but a whole new form of societal infrastructure. So long as that infrastructure is 100% proprietary and commercial, it will be used to create a wedge of inequity into society, benefiting some as the expense of others. Like all major forms of infrastructure, technology is already and will increasingly disrupt every sector - industry, government, civil society - and community. Philanthropy must 1) recognize that technology will disrupt every program it has; and 2) help shape the development of the technology infrastructure to benefit society as a whole and drive the changes it's attempting to make in various programs.

danah boyd 100

net neutrality

Regular Panels: A Net Neutrality Report Card

Philanthropy can:
1. Rate/grade ISPs on their actions a) connecting public schools within their regions; b) connectivity of rural communities within their regions; c) grade ISPs for speed/costs (comparisons to best practices globally to inform American public where they stand vis a vis other communities globally); d) track throttling/disruptions in service.
2. Commission reports on innovations or improvements to quality of life due to an open internet.
3. Host REGULAR State of the Web events pulling in bigwigs but also grassroots activists, tech entrepreneurs, students to discuss how best to maintain Net Neutrality (similar to your #NetGain held yesterday). In NYC, I would welcome and would gladly attend the Ford Foundation hosting MONTHLY panels.

Carlos D. 5

access to knowledge, education, open data, inequality

Sharing and preserving scholarship is imperative for the advancement of research, just as openness is central to new modes of teaching and learning. Deep structural changes to the scholarly communication system are needed not only to respond to the funding crises in higher education and the emerging forms of scholarship in the digital age, but also to foster and deepen the connections between the academy and the wider public. Providing wider access to research helps citizens make informed decisions about their health care, enables small businesses to innovate, improves the effectiveness of NGOs, and challenges students at under-resourced schools. Current inequities in access to research obstructs researchers and limits international and collaborative efforts to solve society’s most intractable problems. Restricting access to research benefits no one and runs counter to the stated mission of educational and not-for-profit research institutions.

Lisa Norberg 32

skills, 21st century philanthropy, public interest technology, open data, access to knowledge, civic engagement, education, community media, organizing

Skillbuilding and hands-on learning opportunities are needed to scale any new innovation and keep it working smoothly. Who is leading an integrated effort to connect devices, hands-on media, appropriate experiences, resources and access to accelerate skillbuilding in remote regions? Expertise may be lost or disconnected until a field expert collects those resources and shares them: these resources are freely available throughout the web yet they are often delivered in the wrong form or media such as text in a foreign language or high-bandwidth streaming. By visually mapping paths to learn any skill and delivering media, courses and experiential content in easier ways we can provide alternates to school for ongoing mastery & development. Investing in an integrated approach to universal access, free skillbuilding tools and devices delivering personalized media can bridge a huge gap in development while growing new opportunities.

Evonne Heyning 4

government, mobile, public interest technology, open data, skills

Smartphones provide an incredible platform for putting research into practice. However, most researchers still conclude their work with traditional static journal-style publications, which are: expensive to access, require significant expertise to understand, very difficult to accurately apply, and provide only a snapshot of their data’s value. By incorporating research on the best programs & practices into the design of mobile applications, we can remove many of the greatest barriers to putting research into practice. Imagine simply using an app, and knowing that you are applying the research. No need to study articles or attend trainings. All you need is an app update for the latest research. Making this vision a reality is the challenge. It will require: 1) a shift in the way we conceive and conduct research; 2) new skills to design and develop research-based mobile apps; and, 3) technical support and validation to ensure the applications continue to work and follow the research.

Dave McClure 7

civic engagement, access to knowledge, information ecology + economy, infrastructure, public interest technology, open data, social entrepreneurship

Social Entrepreneurs work toward a double-bottom line: financial profits & pro-social value. Profits lend themselves nicely to metrics, and the internet has done fantastic things to connect this information with opportunities for the public to invest in businesses with financial value. Let’s do the same thing for pro-social value. Let’s use the power of the internet, data generation, and evaluation methods to create an e-trades for both the financial and social value that these businesses produce. These outcomes are incredibly diverse and difficult to measure, so the challenge is to create the infrastructure that allows social value to factor into people’s investment decisions as easily as financial value.

Dave McClure 14

decolonization, civil society, equity, education

Societies around the world continue to struggle with the aftermath of European colonization, whether from the after-effects of extractive colonial regimes in Africa or from the ongoing manifestations of settler colonialism in places like the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Northern Ireland. Colonialism divides peoples, marginalizes indigenous populations, entrenches inequities, encodes hierarchies, damages ecosystems, and distorts historical memory in ways that reverberate across generations. It constricts social possibilities for indigenous, settler, and migrant populations alike. How might digital tools and technologies be mobilized in ways that work to decolonize contemporary societies?

Julie D. 1

digital jobs, information ecology + economy, disruption

Technology and Internet both create, displace and nullify jobs. It appears the pace of job destruction so far is higher than that of creation. What's to do? Do we make a concerted effort for voluntarily sustaining jobs? Should we adopt a cash disbursement approach that bypasses jobs? How do support low and emerging digital economies in developing countries in looking beyond outsourcing and in creating co-sourcing, in-sourcing jobs?

Richard Seshie 5

democratic participation, accountability, social movements, social entrepreneurship, inequality

Technology design processes too often replicate existing power inequalities. Let's reimagine communities not as (solely) consumers or test subjects, but as co-designers, co-authors, and co-owners of the next generation of civic tech. NetGain has an opportunity to shift investment away from tech-centric solutionism towards deeply rooted strategies for social transformation, where the 'Net is seen as one key tool within a broader social movement framework. NetGain could encourage, or require, grantees to use a codesign process. Codesign means community inclusion in iterative stages of project ideation, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation, as well as shared ownership of the technologies, products, and platforms that result. We can unlock the liberatory potential of the 'Net if we invest in innovation grounded in real-world community organizing. It's high time to learn from the slogan of the Disability Justice movement: "Nothing About Us, Without Us!"

Sasha Costanza-Chock 9

public interest technology

The best foundations and philanthropies exist to address market failure, working to solve problems that business and government ignore or make worse. Now it's time for our major foundations and philanthropists to address an impending new failure. They can help save the kinds of open, decentralized systems that gave us personal computing and the internet. First, help the public understand. On issue after issue, major media tend to reflect corporate and governmental values, not the public's. Work to persuade traditional media, but also use newer forms of media, including social media. Help parents and educators teach children be critical thinkers and to trust liberty over control. Second, fund research and development of open technologies and services. Help re-create an infrastructure for tech liberty. Don't pick winners. Pick possibilities, and reinvest in what works. Projects should be decentralized; designed for users' control and personal security; and open-source.

Dan Gillmor 14

diversity, internet access, mobile, access to knowledge, civic participation, exclusion

The debate shaping the social contract, and the services it affords, are increasingly experienced and influenced through digital channels. But our public, civic and interpersonal digital tools, networks and spaces are still largely white, privileged, able-bodied, English-speaking, literate, cisgendered, and male.

Marginalized individuals and communities, excluded from such platforms and encountering other power imbalances, are effectively silenced in our digital debates and prevented from accessing services and social goods, entrenching and exacerbating inequalities. We must recognize and seek to address these increasingly important structural exclusions if we are to avoid perpetuating or colluding in them.

We must build visual, aural, inclusive, multiplatform and multilingual channels - in-person meetings, radio, text messaging and mobile-first design must complement high-tech to reflect our society fairly and make our public square a bold and brilliant universal marketplace of ideas.

Laura Walker McDonald 3

trust, accountability, organizing, social movements

The existing harms of social scripts we ran while in smaller, geographically-constrained groups are being amplified due to network effect. Tiny unchecked errors, scaled, become large harms as people find ways to exploit them, in life just as in software. There was a time when the hacker and academic circles I run in had the default assumption of “it’s better to have your idea broken by your friends than by someone else.” The implicit assumption being that we’d build even better ideas, together. It is a tractable problem that loving dissent has disappeared from the internet, and we can choose to instead cause it to spread.

Willow Brugh 7

surveillance, social movements

The forces of repression have evolved to survive and thrive in a networked world. Philanthropy’s response must similarly evolve to meet the threat. Today, Internet-empowered civil society is under fierce attack on all continents. Those who control the means of physical violence have grown skillful at counter-manipulation of technology, law, and media. Democracies are not immune. In pursuit of security and self-interest, citizens and consumers unwittingly consent to their own repression. Politicians seek quick fixes to win elections. Companies rushing to meet market demand can be blind to collateral damage on legal and technical architectures that keep information systems – and by extension social and political systems – open and accountable. Let’s map out where abuses of power are occurring within the world’s information ecosystems. Pinpoint where accountability mechanisms fail and where they are completely absent. Then put together a strategy to hold power accountable in the Internet age.

Rebecca MacKinnon 63

democratic participation, organizing

The greatest challenge changemakers face on the Internet might be the same one they’ve got offline: organizing. We’ve just scratched the surface of the Internet’s potential to bring people together around the most pressing social and political issues – including the future of the Internet itself. But powerful government and corporate forces across the globe want to monitor, censor and control what we do online. Some may be able to hack around these problems, but the vast majority of Internet users will only be protected by better policies and the political will needed to implement them. That makes this not just a technical but a political fight. And the only way positive reform will happen is through mobilizing the public and proving to our leaders that the Internet is a bread-and-butter issue that requires broad input. And that means organizing – in new ways, sure, but some old-fashioned ones, too. If we can get the people who tweet into the streets (and vice versa), transformative change can happen.

Craig Aaron 21

surveillance, secure communications, social movements

The greatest challenge is the ability to communicate and organize safely, securely, and without fear of censorship. Governments and corporations around the world are engaged in mass surveillance of the Internet in ways that are unhealthy for democracy. Such surveillance chills the speech, and in many cases, threatens the lives of activists whose only mission is to positively change the lives of the world's citizens. Meanwhile, creators and developers of secure communications tools face a two-front uphill battle: they have to compete with a $5 billion a year surveillance industry that's trying to break its products, and they have to compete with Silicon Valley, which hires away much-needed developers at obscenely high rates, so that open-source projects cannot compete. Bridging the usability gap between highly secure communications tools built by experts and apps that millions of ordinary people use every day is the key to solving many of the problems related to mass surveillance.

Trevor Timm 27

democratic participation, inequality, civil society

The Internet has been hailed as a liberation technology that would enable underrepresented citizens to have their voice heard by participating in digital political or civic actions. However, despite increasing Internet penetration and Internet usage, civic and political engagement on the Internet is still strongly determined by citizens’ (high) socio economic status. Societal power dynamics are reproduced online and social exclusion as well as inequality are further perpetuated. Hence, the question remains as to how citizens who are already using the Internet can be encouraged to harness its participatory potential, to join the public sphere. In other words, how can the Internet advance social inclusion through digital citizen engagement? Is a focus on Internet governance or design the right approach? Or do we rather need to step offline to encourage more people to act online, promoting community programs that raise awareness for and lower the thresholds to engage in digital civic and political activities.

Sandy Schumann 10

trust, education, cultural exchange

The Internet has literally connected the world, but has it connected people in it? Each man or woman is a unique personality, but behavior of people and their perception of the world are still predetermined by their upbringing and their culture. And it is easy for a man or a woman to communicate with people of their own culture, because good attitude to "my folks", and hostility to "their folks", to "other", were natural in the early stage of human development, and in some cases it is still here in many different forms. And even in the era of globalization there are not few people who prefer to communicate in their small community of any kind. How many people are lost for global activism and for global connection, because they fear the "other"? Now it is a challenge for the Internet to help cultural exchange between members of different communities and to teach them to trust each other. There must be more platforms for conversation, starting with those for children and teens.

Anna S. 3

access to knowledge, public interest technology, networks

The potential of universal access to information as a democratizing force has never been more promising. However this potential is seen by incumbent institutions of government and commerce as a major threat that needs to controlled if not entirely blocked. Making sure every citizen has equal access to affordable and secure information resources is the prerequisite cornerstone for a fair and equitable society. The cable and telecom industries in consort with paid their political allies have monopolized the landscape to the point of severely discouraging new private investment or public incentives to address the growing disparity for those not equally connected. The world needs a new visionary philanthropic commitment to invest in a new generation of projects, organizations, institutions, and activists who will create new wired and wireless networks that will challenge the status quo, and by their very existence support the creation of entirely new civic fabric of public trust and hope.

Andrew Rasiej 12

democratic participation, organizing, social movements

The SOPA/PIPA and Network Neutrality debates have clearly shown that the public is interested in Internet public policy. In both cases however, these efforts were not led organically by a grassroots organization but by industry and the mass media respectively. This needs to change. The NRA and the AARP are two highly successful organizations who represent the interests of 2nd amendment supporters and people over the age of 50. Internet users outnumber both of these groups. A hypothetical Association of Internet Users (AIU) could potentially be a ground up public policy voice on Internet issues. Unlike these organizations, the AIU would be built around mobile technologies and its positions would reflect the sense of the community. It would not be built around policy; it would advance members' policy positions. Internet policy decisions are increasing in frequency and it is time that Internet users made their own voice heard.

John Laprise 8

news we can trust, access to knowledge, free speech, media literacy, journalism, privacy, tools, trust

The spread of Internet access and mobile technology means that more of us are able to document events happening around us and share our realities with others. Citizen journalists and the media they create have the potential to shape how news and justice are delivered in the future – but only if we are prepared to support them. To do so, we must push for policies that allow citizens to freely document the events around them and provide them with guidance on how to do so safely, ethically, and effectively. We must give the people documenting and distributing media the tools they need to protect themselves, their data, and the identities of those they capture on video; develop devices and platforms that incorporate metadata and other tools to make citizen media more trustworthy; and help creators reach the right audiences by fighting censorship, highlighting important content so that it does not get lost in the flood of online content, and providing unfettered access.

Yvette Alberdingk Thijm 4

accountability, equality, human rights

The tech industry has and continues to develop astonishingly powerful invasive capacity driven by the desires of the end user/data mining industry over members of society at large--especially but not exclusive to women, children, and minority communities. We as a society must recognize the human rights of individuals affected by invasive technologies. I challenge the tech industry to develop a uniform and transparent standard of privacy, security and human rights protection as integral to the product development cycle. Accountability for safe design/manufacture is fundamental to consumer protection--protection that extends beyond the buyer and user, but to the public at large. It's glaringly absent from the technology industry, and we witness on a daily basis the often lethal consequences of that failure. Let's fix this.

Sandra Garossino 2

civic engagement, inclusion, open data, privacy, surveillance, trust, usability, accessibility, personal data, citizen-centric

The ultimate digital challenge is developing and maintaining a sustainable Internet that can help resolve society’s bigger and broader challenges. Sustainability – the health and resilience of living systems – requires individual agency, diversity, and distributed networks to facilitate the emergence of collective intelligence, and it’s these qualities that our digital technologies must then enable and encourage. We must therefore:

> Solve personal data & privacy – removing the vulnerability, real and perceived, of personal data

> Transform accessibility & digital inclusion – adapt to unique individual needs
> Secure a citizen-centric Internet – curtailing centralizing power and mediation.

Philip Sheldrake 42

gendered harassment, safer internet, privacy, online harassment

The vicious targeting of women who speak up online has reached crisis levels. Examples of the impact these attacks are having on women’s lives are everywhere. Women of color, queer women, trans women, fat women, young women, and other oppressed groups of women are especially targeted and abused. A recent Pew research study found that fully 25 percent of young women online have been sexually harassed online and 26 percent have experienced stalking. Pew found that women overall are disproportionately targeted by the most severe forms of online abuse. It's up to us to work together to create solutions that make the internet safer for all of our voices.

Jamia Wilson 21

trust, inequality, knowledge sharing, transparency

The world has become a small village thanks to internet but so far its "villagers" are still either disconnected or have poor collaboration experience (history) for various reasons. There is a great need to create free and accessible channels, instruments and resources to network and collaborate accross various platforms, networks, cultures and languages.
This will accelerate cross-sharing, learning and innovation leading to social changes accross countries and continents.

azat Israilov 6

free speech, dissent, social movements

Those who use our digital tools to uncover corruption and expose power, to open knowledge and promote a critical society should be encouraged and supported rather than repressed. The avant-garde activism we see emerging should be embraced rather than criminalised, supported rather than marginalised and no double standards should apply for dissidents of the North and of the South. The last five years both liberal states and those countries where liberties are constrained have witnessed a shift in power and have reacted to it moving towards a more closed society. We need courageous philanthropy to support a change of direction. We need a safe net to guarantee that the future thinkers and revolutionaries of our times do not end up silenced, in jail or exile.

Renata Avila 15

inequality, exclusion, internet access

Though, internet said to be a great liberation technology, access to this liberation was restricted socially excluded communities. Social exclusion - a process by which certain groups are systematically disadvantaged because they are discriminated against on the basis of their social location such as caste. Though there are number of studies available on Dalit's (Dalits – officially known as ‘Scheduled Castes’ in India) access to education and health and so, details are not available about Dalit's access to internet. but it can be assume that it will not be better, in-terms of access to internet, about a population's literacy levels remains at less than 60% and school dropout rate among Dalit children aged between 6-15 is near to 70%. Unless special measures and concentrated effort based on equity and inclusion, about 260 million Dalits across South Asia remain excluded in the digital world.

AJAYKUMAR VB 3

technology, gendered harassment, free speech, information ecology + economy

Today, it is estimated that 200 million more men than women are online. This gap reflects historic imbalances in education, resources, technology definition/creation/implementation and more. In addition, the gap both reflects and exacerbates off-line violence against women, further widening the divide online. Online harassment is gendered and women are more likely to experience sustained, sexual harassment and gendered abuse (revenge porn, cybermobs, rape extortion, etc.) that affects their ability or desire to engage, work and freely express themselves in equal measure. This violence, online and off, is not traditionally thought of as a major suppressant of women's free speech or their ability to pursue education or economic opportunities, which it clearly is. The challenge is - how do we address this gap so that girls and women around the world can participate in this new commons and so that it does not grow exponentially over time.

Soraya C. 7

21st century philanthropy, civil society, equity, governance, information ecology + economy

Today, people have access to a dizzying array of information sources. This array is amazing and I’m not pining for a return to the sparse information options of yesteryear. However, I sense a significant deterioration of the public interest as many of the most pervasive services are operated by for-profit companies. Who watches out for the interests of the public in the digital society? Now the array of options also enables the public to become information producers and disseminators a la the rise of the blogosphere. It also raises the bar for users of information to separate the wheat from the chaff. So what to do? We need to radically improve the digital literacy of the general population. Work with industry to encourage them to incorporate public needs more explicitly (and commend those companies already actively engaged in this way). And explore possibilities for new forms of institutions that place the public interest first. We have libraries, so we should be supportive of their evolution in the digital society. What about other (new?) institutions?

Alan Inouye 3

trust, privacy, networks, infrastructure, public interest technology

Trust, identity, privacy and information commerce were not on the agenda when academia and the defense industry created the Internet. A non-stock, public-benefit collaboration of news, academic, entertainment, financial and technology companies could specify protocols and enforceable business rules on data-sharing, user authentication and payment services. Members might include foundations, universities, banks, telecoms, publishers, tech and entertainment companies -- and the public. Such an effort could “help shape the development of technology infrastructure to benefit society as a whole” (Danah Boyd). It could “put together a strategy to hold power accountable in the Internet age.” (Rebecca MacKinnon) . It could provide checks and balances over “automated user profiling platforms capable of identifying and targeting a person in real time . . . . ” (Jeff Chester). It could reduce the “massive concentration of these platforms in a small number of companies.” (Ethan Zuckerman). To help shape the idea, see http://bit.ly/17GNmh8

Bill Densmore 0

knowledge sharing, access to knowledge, open government, open data, social movements, journalism, disaster relief, 21st century philanthropy, education, public interest technology

Universal Access + Resource Mapping + Personalized Media/Experience Delivery can provide guidance from experts around the world to areas where schools, teachers and learning centers are difficult to reach. Who is leading an integrated effort to connect media, experiences, resources and access? At least 10% of the global population has not finished school....some are displaced or live in remote regions, others are slaves or trafficked away from home where opportunities may be hard to find. We rarely see the people hidden away making our products. Participatory media, games and play can bridge gaps once people are provided with a way in the door. Devices and universal access offer a starting place, with software and learning maps providing tools and navigation to follow new paths to progress. By visually mapping paths and delivering media, courses and experiential content in easier ways we can provide alternatives for skillbuilding, ongoing mastery and learning & development for all people.

Evonne Heyning 9

language, translation, diversity

Universal language translation will be a fundamental tech breakthrough. Imagine conversing with anyone in the world. You speak English, your Russian friend hears and replies in Russian, and you hear English, all facilitated by software on your mobile device. Innovations are near real-time, continuous translation, but prototypes (i.e. Skype Translator) are limited. There are 6,500 spoken languages, and 2,000 have less than 1,000 speakers. This challenge proposes a universal translator for the 3,000 most popular languages. The bottleneck for LVCSR (large vocabulary, continuous speech recognition) and MT (machine translation) is collecting large amounts of high-quality data to train statistical models. We propose an open source Wikipedia-like platform to crowdsource data. A DIY toolkit can collect clean speech samples and source even obscure languages from speakers and scientists. This challenge connects humanity while preserving a precious and endangered resource: language diversity.

Neil Patel 13

inequality, public interest technology, governance

We are standing at a crossroads in the early decades of the 21st century. The choices we make now about how to manage digital technology and communication rights will impact our future in fundamental ways we can hardly imagine. The potential for digital communications technology to promote equity and progress is not inevitable. Navigating the complicated political, technological and social environment is essential to answering in the affirmative broader questions about the future of equality and democracy.

Helen Brunner 99

civic engagement, open data, open government

We have a huge opportunity to turn individuals' and communities' political ideas into open, structured public data. So much everyday political time and energy is spent on closed social media services, such as Facebook and Twitter, and on commercial petition platforms that don't enable real peer-to-peer organizing. An alternative model is 311, the open protocol for reporting place-based issues to government entities towards a resolution and public sharing. Services such as SeeClickFix have justifiably become popular in civic tech for connecting residents and closing the feedback loop with local government. This model can exist for other human interactions with governments - not just potholes, but public priorities. An expanded "X11" open data standard for political information can carry more ideas into government systems: petition signatures, questions, volunteer offers, expertise, feelings - even hashtag activism on Facebook & Twitter, bringing solidarity into networked public sphere.

David Moore 14

big data, surveillance, social movements