Our News/Views section features three forms of content and engagement with the global Internet and Society community:
Think is a series featuring insights and provocations from a guest expert
Speakeasy captures freewheeling interviews and conversations in our virtual salon
Field Trips documents observations from our team and wider network, showcasing events they attended in the region
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group – the company that had caught the attention of the global media with its historical IPO of $25 billion in 2014 – once again grabbed the headlines recently due to a standout $1 billion deal in April for a controlling stake of Lazada, an e-commerce company that operates across six[…]
The extraordinary recent growth of the mobile internet across Asia and the Pacific carries the promise of a more inclusive digital economy, accessible to everyone with a cheap smartphone. A low-cost, mobile internet could reconfigure the provision of health and education, open new economic opportunities, and expand cultural, civic and political engagement. But as we[…]
It took only weeks for Pokemon GO to become the world’s most viral mobile app of all time. Developed by Niantic Labs, and with over 550 million downloads in 80 days, the augmented reality (AR) game has mainstreamed and altered how handheld technology allows users to interact with their immediate surroundings. Taiwan’s rare Pokémon stampedes[…]
On October 2, the Bangladeshi government inaugurated Smart National ID cards (NID) as part of their Digital Bangladesh initiative, aiming to distribute the cards to 100 million people in Bangladesh. The NID cards replace existing laminated cards used by the Election Commission, but they have many other functions. Banking, passport details, driving licenses, trade licenses, tax[…]
South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Act (“PIPA”), promulgated in 2011 and subsequently amended, has been described as the “most innovative” and “toughest” data privacy law in Asia. PIPA is designed to ensure individual agency over personal information, bring transparency to data collection practices, and empower regulators and the courts to hold collectors and users of[…]
There has never been a greater need for critical discussion of technology and society in Asia. Everything from ethics in artificial intelligence, to consolidating social platform dynamics, to smart cities development and mobile penetration, to local start up innovation and global governance and policy issues—these trends all pose opportunities and challenges to the way we[…]
In March 2014, the US Government committed to ending its contract with ICANN to run the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and also announced that it would hand over control to the “global multistakeholder community”. The conditions for this handover were that the changes must be developed by stakeholders across the globe, with broad community[…]
I’ve become fascinated as of late by the manufacturing culture in Shenzhen and, having studied different aspects of Chinese Internet meme culture, I was interested specifically in the role of the Internet in the context of manufacturing. This interest is both academic and pragmatic—as a software product manager myself, I was also interested in what[…]
In a salutation to the newly-named Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and a salute to the new and old members of the community, co-founder and Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain asked his audience during a talk last week, “Why does the internet matter?” The answer, it seems, quite fittingly parallels the history,[…]
In February 2014, Facebook purchased WhatsApp for a whooping $19 billion. This deal came under scrutiny from various privacy advocates. They questioned if the standards of privacy and security of communication on WhatsApp would be maintained post acquisition. WhatsApp reassured users of its commitment to privacy through a blog post titled ‘Setting the record straight’.[…]