The Digital World in 2025: Socio-Political AspectsAuthor: EIF online (27.April.2009)Online mass collaboration has the potential to trigger and shape significant changes in the way future societies will work. What are the implications of an improved empowerment and engagement of individuals, groups and communities? Three speakers shared their vision on this subject: Mr. Ziga Turk (Secretary General of the European Council "Reflection Group on the Future of Europe"), Mr. Henri Serres (Managing Director of Information Systems and Communication at the French Ministry of Defence) and Mr. Ajit Jaokar, Founder and CEO of Futuretext. Mr. Turk kicked off the dinner debate by talking about the role of Government in the Digital Society by 2025. He started by explaining that we are moving into a conceptual economy where function is overtaken by meaning. The function of a concept or product ("thirst quenching") becomes less important than its meaning ("is it the original Coca Cola?"). Talent creates this meaning, and the current communications revolution stimulates a kind of mass collaboration that allows more people than ever before to share their talent with the world via web 2.0 platforms. Political systems follow these new communication technologies. The better the communication technology, the more people get involved into the process of democracy. Milton Friedman said "government should decide when people do not have information to decide for themselves" which today is of course a no brainer: information is literally all around us. This will impact the role of government strongly. The portion of educated people working for the states keeps decreasing and "the majority of smart people is outside the government." The key question will become: how can governments, states and business make use of all those smart people, with all the information and knowledge available to them with a few mouse clicks? The answer to this is to stimulate open innovation and to reinvent government in a web 2.0 way. Government will become a platform for people so that they can add value. Government as such becomes a place in the middle instead of at the top of a pyramid, not a decision making body but a coordination platform among stakeholders. What the government should do is to empower talent, and to gather talent around its structure. At another level governments will also need to ensure net neutrality and provide law and order specifically when it comes to security and safety, but also in terms of property rights. The issue of property rights will become a big one because new property is often not tangible but in the realm of (intangible) ideas and the sharing of these ideas. The central question about this kind of property is what the most productive way is for governments to handle them. Cyber Security Aspects in the Digital Society by 2025 Another vital element of the socio-political dimension is cyber security. Mr. Henri Serres painted an intriguing picture about this subject. We all know that today there are intentional attacks on computer networks. Even the home pc has to be protected by antivirus software to not get infected. With the whole world being computerized and ICT being the true nervous system of our western economies there is a big potential for destabilization. Think of disrupting power plants by attacking their ICT or so-called "denial of access" attacks that make a network simply unavailable. Such attacks can also have a negative impact on the military capability of a country. Reality is that society is ill prepared for such attacks. This is because cyberspace is fundamentally different from physical space, it is in a place where there are no frontiers and people can be anonymous. What types of attacks are governments expecting? Anything from the physical destruction of satellites, neutralization of computer systems, data theft, or tampering with data, to hostile control of systems such as your own pc. It will be the role of the state to develop a fighting capacity in this space and to define the rules of engagement. Cyber warfare strategies will be developed with the help of hackers. Of course these will not be government employees but let’s call them state sponsored hackers. Security is however a concern for all parties. Businesses rely on secure networks and privacy as do ordinary consumers. The answers cannot be only of a technical nature. We need a strong government response. At the same time, companies need to reduce the vulnerability of transactions and individuals must ensure that they do not become part of a bot network by attacks on their own pc. Trust is the word to look out for and it should be addressed globally. It will not be sufficient to only create these efforts in Europe alone. The 3rd speaker, Mr. Ajit Jaokar talked about the Economic and Social Aspects of Blogs in the Digital Society 2025. Mr. Jaokar kicked off his speech by asking the audience what their most trusted news source is. He himself switched from The Economist to YouTube as he outlined that with a channel like YouTube you get all the perspectives, you can look at everything and use your own brain without any editorial control being enforced on that process. Then here comes the question: what is the most trusted blog? But in fact you should never trust a single blog. If you are not looking at many blogs together you are risking of going back to watching tv in a way. Blogs are personal perspectives that you subscribe to. In that sense newspapers should start carrying a health warning according to Mr. Jaokar. "This newspaper is left wing" for instance. Mr. Jaokar predicts a bright future for journalists because they are in essence bloggers. This also makes the newspaper model more and more difficult to sustain, to keep together all these bloggers under a single umbrella of a newspaper. People often ask what a good blog consists of and the answer to it could be summarized as follows: in the UK in Hyde Park there is a speakers corner that you stand up in and talk about anything. If you can stand there and get an audience then you have a good blog. The future of the blog will be a social artefact. The sculpture of the thinker. In 2025 we will be thinkers, we will all be forced to think and to make choices. For more information on this event click here | 
