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Around 2014, as Stephen (Steve) J. Lukasik proceeded well into his 80s, he began to consider ways to capture the enormous sweep of activities and history in which he was a key figure. Indeed, that sweep was so broad and often compartmentalized, and his output so prolific, that even his closest associates only knew of slices of his accomplishments. So he began sorting through his career and produced this autobiographical essay on his accomplishments at ARPA that is being made posthumously available now.
In the run-up to the 14th Internet Governance Forum in Berlin, Germany, 25 to 29 November, different groups are discussing best practices pertaining to specific internet governance policy questions. These groups are open and thrive on your input and experiences. Their findings will be presented at the IGF and published shortly after. The IGF Best Practice Forums intend to inform internet governance policy debates by drawing on the immense and diverse range of experience and expertise...
The UN Panel on Digital Cooperation presented last week in New York its final report, and an old question is back on the international agenda: Could the global Internet be ordered by a reasonable arrangement among stakeholders which would maximize the digital opportunities and minimize the cyber risks by keeping the network free, open and safe?
The European Space Agency (ESA) reported that as of January 2019 there were about 5,000 satellites in space and 1,950 of them are still functioning. Hopefully, those functioning satellites have fuel and thrusters that will enable them to de-orbit and (mostly) burn up in the atmosphere when their useful life is finished. The remaining 3,050 are slowly drifting, along with a lot of debris. The ESA estimates that there have been over 500 break-ups, explosions, collisions, or anomalous events...
In a previous post, I spoke of Amazon's use of customer and market data in restraint of trade, but they are not alone. For example, leaked internal documents show that plans to sell access to user data were discussed for years and received support from Facebook's most senior executives. Facebook gave Amazon extended access to user data because Amazon was spending money on advertising and partnered with them on the launch of the Fire smartphone.
India's recently published Draft National e-Commerce Policy, prepared by the Indian Commerce Ministry think-tank, can be read like the script of a four-act Bollywood drama... They were the dream couple: Princess India and Prince IT. She was full of cultural richness and diversity, with beauty, mystique and natural resources. She also a dark side. She harbored the world's largest number of impoverished people, with little infrastructure, and facing sparse economic prospects.
The anniversaries of these milestones remind us of the economic and social returns we have seen from ambitious Federal research and development programs. These events were milestones... the manned spaceflight program and the development of digital telecommunication networks from Morse's telegraph to early electronic digital computers and telemetry experiments, the SAGE early-warning system and eventually the ARPANET and the Internet.
Telesat will use Google's network operating system. Telesat is making progress. Within the last month, they announced a launch contract with Blue Origin, a successful antenna test with Ball Aerospace and completion of system requirements reviews, but perhaps more interesting is an agreement to use the software defined network (SDN) platform Google has developed for their Project Loon.
My involvement in the ICT industry over the last 40 years has always been to look at the strategic advantages that new technologies have to offer. I entered the industry through a proto-internet development called videotext. I looked at this technology, at what organisations could do with it, and assisted, for example, in the 1980s when the Commonwealth Bank introduced the world's first national online banking service called Telebank.
What says the "Crystal Ball" for the Internet Governance Ecosystem in 2019? In a best case scenario, we will take three steps to Cyber-Heaven. In the worst case scenario we will take three steps to Cyber-Hell. The middle way is no "digital big bang", but some small "digital goodies" and some small "digital disasters". Stumbling further forward into the digital cyberworld. However, 2019 could also go into the history books as the year of "digital wisdom".
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