Future. Future! Future? Technology worldwide – between utopia and dystopia (en)

05/10/17 • 56 min

In what kind of a world do we want to live in? How should our future look like in 10 or 15 years? Digital transformation is changing the way we live and work in Germany as well as in developing and emerging countries. Between Sci-Fi, 1984 and utopia everything seems possible. In our futuristic journey, we want to look at questions such as: What is the role of information and communication technologies and digital trends for people in our partner countries today and in the future? Thomas Silberhorn, Parliamentary State Secretary to the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, highlights these questions together with exciting guests.

Thomas Silberhorn
Puno Selesho
Kamau Gachigi
Wolfgang Fengler
Ahmad Mobayed
Joana Breidenbach
Melanie Stein

The digital transformation oscillates between the extremes: hate speech, surveillance, automation in the world of work on the one hand. On the other hand - access to education online, drones as suppliers in remote areas, transparency and participation. The reality and our future are somewhere in between. But how do we achieve a balance in a globalized world? In a world in which the realities of people could not be more different. The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development is asking itself precisely this question.

In this session, we highlight various future scenarios. What kind of digital technologies are going to prevail and determine our lives in the year 2030? What kind of digital technologies might take hold in developing and emerging countries in the long run?

We invited exciting guests who will present their insights and do a ‘reality check’ with us to see what is really possible.

Thomas Silberhorn
Puno Selesho
Kamau Gachigi
Wolfgang Fengler
Ahmad Mobayed
Joana Breidenbach
Melanie Stein

We invited exciting guests who will present their insights and do a ‘reality check’ with us to see what is really possible.

Next Episode

History of DDoS: from digital civil disobedience to online censorship (en)

Deflect has been at the forefront protecting human rights and independent media organizations from Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks. We will give a brief history of DDoS, from digital civil disobedience, to inter-state aggression, retaliatory hacker operations, and online censorship. Leaning on real-life cases we will describe the problems posed to civil society by DDoS actions today. We will involve the audience to share their experience of DDoS and propose community driven solutions.

Floriana Pagano
Donncha O Cearbhaill

During this session we will offer a short history of DDoS – from the Zapatistas’ use of Floodnet and the “Netstrikes” and “Virtual Sit-Ins” at the turn of the millennium, to Anonymous’ campaigns and political actions against Estonia, Georgia and Ukraine, up to more recent and disruptive episodes like the attacks against Krebs on Security and Dyn. A description of 3 case studies reported by Deflect Labs in 2016 – targeting an independent news site in Ukraine, the website of the Palestinian global campaign BDS Movement and the official website of Black Lives Matter – will illustrate how DDoS is being used by governments, local authorities and hacker crews alike to censor critical voices online. Beyond the hype generated by Mirai and other software for managing botnets, launching a DDoS attack is becoming easier and cheaper by the day, and the risk of a “democratization of online censorship”, as Brian Krebs has called it, is growing.

Even if websites of independent media and civil society organizations can be protected by free DDoS mitigation infrastructures like Deflect.ca, the protection measures these services can offer have their limits, and it’s important to explore solutions based on community action.

This session will aim at starting a conversation with groups that are particularly vulnerable to DDoS attacks, to find common ground in solidarity against the threat of DDoS-based censorship. How big are the risks? What are our needs before, during and after the attacks? How can we defend ourselves and band together to do so more effectively?

During the second part of the session the public will be invited to share their experiences of DDoS attacks, those at risk of attack to discuss their needs, and those in a position to help to consider how we can collaborate.

The purpose of this session is to gather information on our community’s needs and capabilities and to start developing standards for threat-intelligence sharing among peers and participants of re:publica.