2013
Dossier Digital
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This magazine contains a collection of work that the Alpbach Media Academy did on digital topics 10. - 31.08.2013
PUBLICATION: European Forum Alpbach, Alpbach Media Academy, A-6236 Alpbach in Tirol, Tel. 05336/600-702, mediaacademy@alpbach.org EDITORS: Michael Fleischhacker, Georg Renner EDITORIAL: Habib Msallem, Katrin Nussmayr, Tatiana Tilly, Sarah Schmidt, Peter Techèt, Conor McMahon, Matteo Colombo, Katerina Vaskovka, Miloš Tomic, Christian Jensen, Florian Peschl, Jennifer McDonald, Levin Wotke, Eleanor Ward, Maialen Torres LAYOUT, GRAPHICS AND CONCEPT: Willem van der Vlugt, Lukas Wagner PHOTO: Philipp Naderer, Luiza Puiu PRODUCTION: Christian Steinbrecher
EDITORIAL
Michael Fleischhacker Head of the Alpbach Media Academy
Talking about the „digital world“, we still tend to think of this world existing in the future. Various sessions and working groups throughout the seminar week and all the symposia made clear that this is not the case. The world we are living in is a digital world already, and this world is promising and scaring at the same time. New digital technologies promise to make our life easier and more entertaining at the price of losing control over data and privacy. Cyber crime arises as an issue of international politics and military planning. At the same time some of the speakers at the EFA 2013 made clear that there is no such thing as a cyber war and that the issue is – for whatever reasons – highly overrated. There still seems to be a lack of information about how digital technologies affect our daily lifes privately as well as in the field of politics and economy. All the presentations and discussions made clear, that the question of whether our experiences in the digital world will change the values we established during the „Gutenberg Galaxis“ that is coming to an end right now, or if our long-established values will be able to shape the framework oft the digital world won’t give one single answer.
“Sweden has intelligence operators far beyond what the NSA is allowed” “Expert circles have always presumed that these things were going on, sometimes we would know because we worked in government; intelligence agencies would do intelligence, that’s what they do”, says Alexander Klimburg, who is not surprised at all by the recently revealed NSA programs on surveillance. The unconstitutional performance of these intelligence organisations is what worries most citizens. But the NSA is not unique: “Sweden for instance has intelligence operators and abilities that are far beyond what the NSA is allowed to do, way beyond. The main difference is that they set up a body that the NSA has, but in the public point of view, for instance courts. What Americans don’t have is supervisory bodies and Sweden has a lot of them, they even have an ombudsman who you can approach as a foreigner and say ‘I want to know if you have been tracking me in this and this context.’ The certain right to be involved, even as a foreigner, is the key difference for me.”
These systems are 100 per cent legal, and this is the difference between a whistleblower and leak activity, you might consider one unethical, but it is legal? Is it undemocratic and does it have adequate supervision? Supervision is a term that differs for each different government. A MULTI-STAKEHOLDER SOCIETY “Liberal democracies try to say that the multi-stakeholder society is very important as it is the civil society approach, and that is something that defines us. The ones that are against this idea don’t like anything being above government. Government is the top and that’s it,” says Klimburg. Our multi-stakeholder society is divided in three sectors: Government, private sector and the civil society. Effectively the government is the least important actor, because the NSA can only look at the data, but they can’t control the internet. It’s controlled by non-state actors who write the code and companies who effectively run the code, either by for instance building networks or
Alexander Klimburg (second left), Senior Advi Austrian Institute for International Affairs, ta Peschl, Christian Jensen and Katerina Vaskov
maintaining companies, such as Google and Facebook. There are of course other nonstate actors, such as hacktivist collectives like Anonymous. According to Alexander Klimburg, Anonymous is not part of the civil society. Unless they connect themselves with more established groups, such as the Chaos Computer Club, the oldest hacktivist collective in Germany, which is advising the German government on cyber issues. WHISTLEBLOWER LEGISLATION “Whistleblower legislation for me is the most important law that democracy has, because it basically gives legal protection to somebody who is breaking the law. So it says you are breaking the law but it’s for a bigger public good and therefore you are pro-
The issue of governance versus individuals and the right of access to internet is a big issue. “One of the big discussions that happened in December last year at an International Telecommunications Union (ITU) conference was that the Iranians, for instance, tried to postulate that the individual right of access is exactly the same as right of access of states, and that was pretty amazing because it was an attempt to compare human and state rights, which is of course not the same,” says Klimburg. THE CORE OF CYBER SECURITY
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tected. In Austria we were going to go so far as not to only give you protection if you reveal state secrets, but also private secrets such as company or individual secrets.
should be written into international law. What most people are really afraid of is if it suddenly disappears, as we saw in the Middle East during the Arab Spring.
It would be about public interest, but the thing is that the part of legislation which is really important nearly got killed and it´s now on ice because of the Wikileaks thing. And I don’t want to even start on the people who were actively, physically harmed and killed because of Wikileaks, one who I know personally.”
Klimburg says this idea is a bit exaggerated: “In Egypt they switched off the internet for a little bit, it was only 87 percent, they had to retain some of it, and don’t forget, if you had a pure connection directly connected somewhere you still had internet access.”
ACCESS TO THE INTERNET IS A HUMAN RIGHT The current situation shows us that a lot of people are now afraid of what they are seeing. The internet has often been called a human right and some people are now saying this right
There was theoretically the possibility, through different tricks and backdoors, to still have access to the world-wide internet which is in fact what is happening in Syria right now, so even though the Syrian internet has been shut down on mass, areas on the border still have some internet.
“The core of cyber security is to try to achieve a state that is largely free of harm for the user. This includes disruptions as well as destroying data or redoing data, manipulating data or misusing data”, says Alexander Klimburg. In conclusion, he means that cyber security users generally want to protect three things: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability of Data. According to the advisor to the Austrian government, cyber security goes beyond just internet security. He divides cyberspace into four levels: At the deepest end is the physical hardware, above that a logic layer which includes coding and then a data layer where we find services such as YouTube and Facebook. The last and most important one is the social layer, where the outcome of the other three, such as emails or bank accounts, is stored. Every cyber-attack is directed to the social layer, everything else is a detour to impact the social layer.
THE
N
DEEP DARK
ot many people can say they have ever required the services of an assassin. However, there is a dark, relatively unknown corner of the Internet that is ready to cater to the needs of such people for just a few thousand Euros. The term Darknet first appeared in the early 2000s after it emerged as a potentially multimillion dollar marketplace for the sale of anything from illegal drugs to automatic weapons. The Darknet was established by governmental organisations to help people living under oppressive regimes communicate online without fear of political reprisal. “Unfortunately, the majority of today’s Darknet users operate in a criminal way,
including dealing with illegal weapons, drugs or pornography. The hurdles for investigators are enormous,” says Peter Gridling, Director of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Austrian Constitution. According to a recent study by the Guardian newspaper, just 0.03% of the web can be accessed through traditional search engines like Google. The other 99.97% is referred to as the Deep Web,
“Sinister services, sparking a cyber war” while the even more anonymous section is called the Darknet. Any web page that has no incoming links and can only be accessed directly
FACEBOOK, EMAILS AND NEWS WEBSITES: Typically used by 2.4 billion people who have access to the Internet. 78% of North Americans have Internet access. Europe is the third biggest net user with a penetration of 63%. Facebook is the most known social media platform: postings are liked 2.7 billion times per day.
is part of the Deep Web. The Deep Web represents the layer beneath the classical surface web and is not accessible through search engines. The Darknet, also known as Dark Web, is unsearchable and can only be reached through browsers that encrypt web traffic by bouncing it around thousands of computers across the world. “On the one hand, those networks receive more support because they help people under threat to express their opinion. On the other hand, this leads to more agency ambition to survey networks,” says Alexander Klimburg, cyber expert and Fellow of the Austrian Institute for International Affairs. Since its inception the controversy surrounding the Darknet and its capac-
TWITTER: Twitter accounts worldwide number 500 milion. Since it was founded, 163 billion tweets have been sent.
THE OCEAN OF THE INTERNET It is calculated that 99.97% of the web cannot be accessed through Google. This is the Dark Web, a term that includes many and different sides of the Internet, from cyber dissidence to the drug market. We plunged into the depths of the web to find out what lies twenty thousand leagues under the Internet sea.
BITCOINS: A Bitcoin is a crytocurrency where the creation and transfer of Bitcoins is based on an open-source cryptograpic protocol that is independent of any central authority. They can be used in both legal and illegal online market.
DOWNLOADING PIRATE MUSIC OR MOVIE: More than 75% of computers have at least one downloaded illegal applications or file. It is calculated that pirate websites had around 53 billion visits a year and that 95% of music was downloaded illegally in 2011.
STEALING DATA FOR MONEY: Much of the data stolen through computer hacking - including stolen credit card numbers and Social Security numbers - will end up on a network of illegal trading sites where hackers and criminals from around the world will openly buy and sell large amounts of personal data for profit. The Shadowcrew network was believed to have more than 4,000 active members who made more than $5 million in less than two years trading 1 .5 million stolen credit cards before it was shut down. CYBER DISSIDENTS/TOR ACCOUNTS: According to Reporters without Borders, there are 13 countries in which information and news is filtered. It is estimated that Tor, a software which changes the I.P. of the user, is used by about 600,000 people a day for communicating anonymously.
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SIDE OF THE WEB ity to be used for illegal activities – in particular illicit trade – has grown. An underground economy has been created through the use of digital currencies like Bitcoins, a digital currency with no hard currency to back it up. “Bitcoins are a scientific experiment, totally legal,” says Mr Klimburg. As the Darknet becomes increasingly mainstream, with step-by-step guides showing you how to access encrypted websites through anonymous servers, it’s the marketplaces that have received media attention. Most famous of these is the Silk Road, a haven for anyone wishing to peddle drugs or to conduct various kinds of illegal business. Trading with Bitcoins, anonymous users can buy, for example, marijuana from other anonymous users
who then send the drugs by mail. With no guaranteed way of detecting these illegal substances, postal seizures are rare. Copycat markets are cropping up
“Traders send the illegal drugs in the post” in other areas of the Darknet, offering even more sinister services and sparking somewhat of a turf war. While trading arms and offering to assassinate people may seem like a dangerous facet to the worldwide web, Mr Klimburg believes that a few seedy traders do not pose any real danger. “I think that the Darknet could be a dangerous threat in the future but at
POLICE: The FBI and specialized police groups work tirelessly to infiltrate the `crimes` of the dark web. However, this proves to be a difficult task due to anonymous users and the vast amount of data which circulates. The FBI has been successful in shutting down some illegal websites in the past after posing as users undercover.
HARVESTING DATA: e are companies which are cialized in collecting large ounts of data from online users. This data is suped spontaneously by the dividuals without being cessible to private users.
WEAPONS: extremely deadly weapons via the hing more than money and a little e skill. Some websites like om offer weapons without identity of the consumers. An rnalist found out how easy it is to ns for a 20-person militia.
the moment there are a lot more serious dangers lurking in cyber space.” Nevertheless, trading illicit materials is still a matter that governments are trying to address. Leopold Löschl, cyber crime expert from the Criminal Intelligence Service Austria, says, “Nowadays we detect an increasing trend of people trading child pornography. We still have to improve our know-how about computer and network criminality.” Mr Klimburg says, “What I call the Darknet is the ability to build up a parallel Internet. That is a future danger. People who establish such networks mostly have no criminal intention. They simply want to be anonymous, like activists in Syria or Iran. But it paves the way for criminal activity.”
GOOGLE: In 2012, there were 1,873,910,000,000 searches on Google. On December 2012, there were 634 million websites worldwide.
THE SURFACE WEB: Websites that can be accessed through Google make up only a small part of the web. In this group, there are very popular websites such as Facebook, Yahoo, Youtube, Amazon and Twitter.
PRIVACY: In some dictatorial states this is the only space for accessing hidden news and information and for communicating freely. In free countries, this can be done openly but an increasing number of people still prefer to surf the web anonymously because they don’t want big companies to sell their data for commercial purposes.
DEEP WEB:
This is a part of the Internet below the surface. Activities in this area include illegal downloading of music and films, data hacking and so on.
DRUGS: In a hidden corner of the dark web, drugs are bought from illegal marketplaces via websites such as Silk Road. Silk Road earns $1.9m per month. Silk Road is estimated to traffic $22 million in drugs annually.
CHILD PORNOGRAPHY: Approximately 20 percent of all Internet pornography involves children. It is a growing industry with a profit of 3 billion USD per year. A quarter of websites offering child pornography have images of babies and children under 3 years of age and more than 80 percent had images ofchildren between ages 6 to 12. Since 2002, 80 million child pornography images have been identified. Pedophiles often try to get in touch with minors via chatrooms concealing their real ages.
DARKNET:
This is the underbelly of the Internet. In this area, illegal marketplaces for drug, child pornography, weapons and data from stolen credit cards can be found.
“Data is like a It can build a house or h There is a big debate about what open data is. So could you please explain what kind of information we are talking about? It is data that anyone can use, re-use (that means change or build on) or give to others, redistribute. Obviously, that is non-personal data. We’re not talking about your health records, we’re talking about things like maps, or statistics, or data on what the government spends its money on. Something people are very preoccupied about is private data. They don’t want it to be openly shared, they want to have control – they want to keep it private, unless they choose to share it. And I think that a lot of people, when they think of data at the moment, they think about personal data that is being involuntarily shared. Whether it is with the NSA or whether it’s with your supermarket. What I would call open data is non-personal data: What are the patterns of what we buy – not about me individually, but in total? What’s our energy consumption? At the moment, that data is anonymous, not personal, but it’s controlled by a company. And think that we should be controlling how that data is used and shared. How does the Open Knowledge Foundation work? The OKF is a foundation that is dedicated to building a community and a network to advocate an open knowledge society. One of the interesting things is that you can’t make human rights. If you are advocating for better human rights treatment, you’re essentially advocating. Whereas, in the case of information, no-one can really advocate for how governments behave or corporations behave, but we can actually make, we can build tools. We can build technologies. We can create insights from data. We can write news stories. We can use information ourselves and we curate information ourselves. So I think the movement we are trying to create is both one of talkers, but also doers. The OKF is an international movement to push for an open knowledge society through talking and advocating and doing.
Rufus Pollock is the founder and director of the Open Knowledge F in Alpbach doing a seminar on Open Data, Open Government and O Katerina Vaskovska, Katrin Nussmayr and Christian Jensen caugh after one lesson to ask if open data can really make the world a bet
In history, we have also had misuse of open data: We have had riots in Mumbai and New Delhi when they found out which ethnic groups live in different areas. Would you say that you believe in people’s conscience not misusing open data? Is there a way to prevent the misuse of open data?
a hammer: hit you on the head”
Foundation – he’s Open Society. t up with him tter place.
Information itself is not good or bad. Information, data, or even knowledge is like a hammer. I can build a house using them which is very positive, or I can hit you in the head, which is not so positive. So it is not just about opening up data, it is fundamental that we also build the capabilities to use information positively. At the same time I feel that
people who are opening up the information can’t be responsible for the consequences of it. It is important to use the innovations and perhaps explain how to use the statistic, but also we have to rely on human nature. At the OKF, we do want to build communities, to make people use information in a constructive way, but we cannot force nor
control it. Sadly, I am sure that humans will use information badly as well, because there is good and bad in all of us. Which brings us to the talk about NSA, Snowden, Wikileaks… In fact, it is very much closed information they misuse. Obviously, the question about NSA is debatable. Is it a bad use? Not everyone thinks that. But I think that there is a connection between open data, which ultimately is really about nonpersonal data, and private data about you. The connection is: Who controls sharing? Who determines when private information is shared with states? I think the trouble her is that the government has not been honest about it. You can at least your citizens if they are happy with you sharing their information in this way. And that is the key point I think. One of the problems at the moment is the lack of control about how private information is being shared. So, do you think there should be more initiatives to promote the free use of non-personal information, but regulations concerning private information? Exactly. What do you think is the biggest fear for countries, governments regarding the open data? Why don’t they do as much as they should? One is control. I understand governments. Just like we do not like to share our private information, there is an instinct of ‘not-to-share’ when you might get into trouble. To be fair with civil servants and governments, it is quite easy to get in trouble for some stupid things. The risk of opening governments’ data is releasing some information people don’t like. There is a variety of other things that governments come up with, but I think the key ones are about costs. Governments and politicians have a lot to do and they are conservative, so there is a tendency of “We are not doing it now – why should we do it?” So, why should they? What are your top 3 arguments for governments to open up data? The top 3 are basically:
Jobs and growth. Start-ups and existing companies that can use data. Let´s say I have a truck company. Even if I don’t have much to do with data, I use data. I care about whether there’s road traffic, whether there are traffic jams, I care about what maps are like, I care about better reading information. So if open data makes it cheaper to get that information or makes me more efficient, that’s delivering social and economic value. Efficiency, transparency and accountability in government. Often governments are doing a good job actually, and they are not appreciated by their citizens. Just put that information out there! Information technology is helping us cope with the growing social complexity. A lot of that involves putting together data sets. Creating these insights allows us to tackle climate change, traffic
receive. That aspect of open data is maybe only 5 per cent of a problem – but of a huge problem, and one that we can address really cheaply. But open data is not enough. To turn it into knowledge, to turn knowledge into action, it requires people and tools. And we have to be very focused on building the capacity, the ability of individuals to understand data and use it, but also on the activist groups, the CSOs, the NGOs, to then take that and drive change. How would you see the world changing in the next 5 years, and how would you hope it would change? I think today most people have not heard about open data. They might have heard of data, or big data – which is actually just data. I worry that people just end up associating data with private data, and misunderstand that open data is about non-personal data. So the next five years could have a very bad effect, that people don’t want anything to be shared. The positive (effect) would be that people understand and take control of their own data and push governments to release the data they have collected. My other hope for the next five years is that we build this kind of movement. I think we can have a world of collaboration and sharing, of distributed control, of decentralisation. I don’t think it can happen within the next five years but there can be a move towards that. The OKF and other groups work in this area – We have Greenpeace, we have WWF. The OKF is a similar thing. congestion, an aging population data. Data is going to be the key aspect. Can you give us any examples of how open data could help us cope with global problems? There’s an incredible organisation in India that went around investigating the fact that there was supposed be a government subsidy for people unemployed. And they wrote it on the walls of the village: This is what you’re supposed to receive. MKSS – They’re an incredible organisation. And it was some kind of open data they used, it was freedom of information, and that really assisted in driving better accountability and reducing waste and corruption there. And it meant that poor people received the money they were supposed to
So would you think it’s just as important? I think so. I think it’s just as important. I mean it’s difficult. I don’t think open data is more important than someone being tortured – no, I don’t think that. It’s in a sense of overall improvements of human life: If the world is going to be built around knowledge, and we say that knowledge is power, we don’t want that the few are powerful and the many are disempowered. I think open knowledge is empowerment. In a world that is knowledgebased, I think it is essential that “open” is at the heart of that knowledge society. And I think it will be as big as sustainability. It will feed into all of these areas, just as sustainability feeds into many areas of our world now.
Ian Brown is Associate Director of Oxford University’s Cyber Security Centre, and Senior Research Fellow at the OII. His research is focused on information security, privacy-enhancing technologies, and Internet regulation. He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist and BCS Chartered Fellow.
“Cyber war is not a realistic threat” Cyber war, cyber terrorism – these are terms that might be mentioned in a discussion about the threats society could face in the future. According to cyber security expert Ian Brown, horror scenarios such as terrorists taking over the financial system or taking control of infrastructure are highly unlikely to happen. He points out that the EU has been in peace for decades and that there is no actual risk of cyber war or cyber terrorism. Neither cyber war nor cyber terror has been able to cause casualties or loss of territory. “You can think of all sorts of extreme threats, but it is completely unrealistic for governments to make their day-to-day plans based on those extreme scenarios,” he says, stressing that governments should be concentrating on more realistic threats. THE REAL THREATS: CYBER CRIME AND FRAUD According to Brown, the biggest cyber threats society is facing at the moment are cybercrime and fraud against individuals. While governments and big businesses usually have the resources and capacities to protect their own systems, individuals – especially those who do not belong to the generation of digital natives – are not very familiar with the risks of the internet. These people could be taught security skills such as picking a good password or taking care while doing online banking. “That’s a role governments should be playing: thinking about how to protect more vulnerable people in the population,” Brown says.
“It is very easy to get distracted by dramatic but unlikely threats like cyber terrorism and cyber warfare,” he says. While he agrees that governments should plan ahead and prepare for future threats, he warns from getting too excited about cyber threats: “You are likely to spend very large amounts of money in preparing for a threat that will be very unlikely to materialise. And also, you are very likely to do a lot of damage to civil liberties.” He advises governments to focus on protecting citizens against more realistic threats like cybercrime and fraud and thereby also reduce the risk of the extreme scenarios. SURVEILLANCE AND PRIVACY VIOLATION Being asked about his opinion on surveillance, as it is being exercised by the NSA, Brown warns from privacy infringement and demands stricter rules. According to him, the NSA and GCHQ argue that monitoring everything is not surveillance, as long as there are strict rules about how the collected data can be processed. “That’s the wrong way of looking at the question,” he says, arguing that as citizens, we cannot be sure whether these rules are being obeyed. “It is very tempting if you are an intelligence agency. If you have lots and lots of data, you start looking at a small amount, but you can do your job better if you look at larger amounts of it.” Brown demands stricter regulations about which data can be collected in the first place. He warns from privacy violation: “Personally, I think that would be dangerous for democracy on the long run.”
THE FUTURE: FA
A
lpbach is all about future solutions, but the one most associated with ideas that challenge our view of the world around us and invokes images of science fiction must be the Technology Forum. On this page we have listed five of the previous visionaries which have presented groundbreaking technology at Alpbach, most of them five—10 years ahead of
TIMELINE: 21st century science, the real and the make-believe
their time. Modern science shares a symbiotic relationship with science fiction, inspiring and shaping each other. But technology doesn’t always move as fast as writers envision our society will evolve. To illustrate there are five examples of fiction set in the near future, which have a distinctly more futuristic feel than our society. To compare, we´ve listed some of the innovations science predicts will
hit us within the decade. But science has also overturned science fiction on several accounts, making ideas such as cell phones, the Internet, atom bombs, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, 3D-printing and waterbeds a reality. Last week´s seminar guests had the chance to learn about synthetic biology and the coming weeks will offer equally mind boggling opportunities. A new “magic” material, Graphene, a
VIRTUAL REALITY – EARLY 21ST CENTURY The Matrix trilogy envisioned a virtual reality so convincing that the human mind would rebel being dragged out of it. Programmed by machines, it perfectly mimicked human society by directly interfacing with our brains.
CLEAN ENERGY - 2000 In 2000 Nebojsa Nakicenovic from the of Institute of Power Systems and Energy Economics at Vienna University of Technol ogy talked about renewable energy sources, especially water for agriculture, industry and drinking.
NANOTECHNOLOGY - 2005 Nanotechnology deals with the production of structures a few to about one hundred nanometres big Hubert Brückl, Head of the Business Unit “Nano Systems”’ at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH said in 2005.
CLOUD COMPUTING - 2011 Tackling the emerging challenges and opportunities of information technology in 2011, Gerhard Eschelbeck from the Institute for Information Processing and Microprocessor Technology, Johannes Kepler University Linz; was one of the first to explore cloud computing.
2000 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - 2001 In 2001, A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrik cemented the idea of evil Artificial Intelligences, when Hal, the onboard computer system of a spaceship rebelled against the astronauts he was supposed to protect.
Man/machine interface - 2004 In 2004 Manfred TSCHELIGI from the Center for Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies & Society (ICT&S) at University of Salzburg described our current evolution towards the Ambient Intelligence Society of the future.
LEGEND Alpbach: Emerging technologies covered at the European Forum
SECOND LIFE - 2007 After Second Life reached seven million users in 2007, Christopher SCHLÄFFER, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, T-Mobile Austria asked: Is the parallel world of “Second Life” also a preview to the world wide web of the future or will it only be a passing hype?
AGRICULTUR The Robotics an predict that by 2 in agriculture. Th able to pick
Futurology: Predictions of future innovations by the science community Sci-Fi: Technologies Hollywood imagined would be here by now
MEDICAL ROBOTS
SPACE TOURISM AND THE FIRST STEP ON MARS
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES AND ANDROIDS
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VIRTUA REALITY
ACT OR FICTION the idea of Hyperloops, a new transport method that can send people from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 35 minutes. Green, wireless energy for public use is currently being experimented on and transhumanism proposes that the first immortal human being has already been born. Artificially grown meat and technopathic machine control is now a reality, albeit still too expensive for wide-spread use.
wafer-thin layer of pure carbon, will be presented by Nobel Prize winner Konstantin Novoselov. Bleeding edge quantum mechanics, green tech and space flight proposals will also be highlighted in the coming days. But according to futurology, and particularly Moore´s Law of exponential technological growth, the 21st century will have many more wonders to offer. Entrepreneur Elon Musk has presented
SPACE TOURISM - 2015 The organisation, Techcast, predict that in 2015, space tourism and private space flight will be introduced, meaning that instead of heading to Spain during the summer months, people could start taking trips into outer space, although perhaps only the very wealthy!
MEDICAL ROBOTS - 2017 By 2017, it is predicted that medical robots will be able to perform low invasive surgery. Machines will allow surgeons to perform movements associated with surgery whilst the robotic arms performing actual surgery on the patient. This leads to the possibility of remote controlled surgery.
IMPLANTABLE BRAIN CHIPS - 2009 In 2009, Intel predicted that by 2020, implantable brain chips will let humans control electronic devices through brain waves.
ANDROIDS - 2019 Released in 1982, Bladerunner is a science fiction thriller which is set in Los Angeles in 2019. The film predicts that by 2019, corporations around the world will be manufacturing genetically engineered organic robots, called androids.
2020
RAL ROBOTS - 2014 nd Automation Society 2014, robots will be used hey will, for example, be fruit in large fields.
AL Y
Technology is also spreading into hitherto less touched areas such as politics and education with E-democracy and I-learning. But what may be most interesting is human interaction with the new progressive opportunities. Very few science fiction authors imagined every one of us able to contact each other instantaneously, across the globe or having the entirety of human knowledge in our palm.
HOVERBOARD - 2015 Hoverboards were the preferred method of transport used in the film Back to the Future, which was set in 2015. They resemble skateboards without wheels and allow the characters to fly from place to place.
SELF-DRIVING CARS - 2018 The company, General Motors, has conducted research and predicts that self-driving cars, which are also known as robotic cars, will be commercially available by 2018. They will be capable of sensing their environment and navigating themselves without human input.
FIRST STEPS ON MARS - 2020 In the science-fiction blockbuster ‘Mission to Mars’, which was released in 2000 but which is set in 2020, a team of astronauts land on Mars. If the Hollywood film makers are correct, it will be just six and a half years until the real-life Mars landing takes place!
SECOND LIFE
AGRICULTURE ROBOTS
HOVERBOARDS
IMPLANTABLE BRAIN CHIPS
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CLEAN ENERGY
Cyber Security: “Most citizens are not aware – or they don’t care” Melissa Hathaway is an internationally renowned cyber security guru. She laid the groundwork for the biggest cyber security initiative ever seen by the US Government and now works with governments around the world to help them create effective cyber security programmes. Talking to Sarah Schmidt and Eleanor Ward, Hathaway explains that cyber security must be accepted as an international issue and condemns whistle-blowers, Manning and Snowden. Is it fair to say that cyber warfare can be considered a new military phenomenon or as a concept has it been exaggerated? I believe that there really is no specific area that would be considered cyber warfare. There is warfare in which tools are used through cyberspace and from cyberspace to deliver or meet an object that could support warfare. But I don’t believe that there is anything that can be declared as just specifically cyber warfare. Having taken part in a panel
discussion, are there any important aspects related to cyber security that you feel the Forum has not given enough attention to? I think that from a cyber perspective that there is not enough conversation about the damage and the effect that some cyber activities have on the economy and that people are losing jobs, or don’t have the opportunity to even get jobs because the underground economy is profiting so much and because of the intellectual property theft that is occurring. We are more focussed on military issues and warfare, and not the economics and our future health and well-being as a country and as citizens. Should cyber security be dealt with internationally, for example with some sort of international treaty, or is it down to each nation’s priorities? I think that cyber space is international in all aspects. Every country and citizen is dependent upon cyber space. There are only a few international institutions that could be used to begin the dialogue. And I personally
Melissa Hathaway was born before 1969 (but j herself as a digital immigrant, as opposed to a theless, she has certainly integrated well into
would start with the G20. The G20 is the only group that includes Brazil, Russia, China, India and South Africa at the same table as the US, the United Kingdom, the EU and Germany. You want to have a meeting that is inclusive enough but also small enough so that you can achieve something. Can you understand the concern, especially among European countries, that the US is working independently, with Prism for example? Every single one of our countries conducts espionage and collects the intentions and conversations
do you think it is still possible to communicate privately over digital channels? It is very difficult. It requires inscription and mechanisms that most citizens won’t use. Honestly, I think most citizens are either not aware or they don’t care. Many people use Google, many people use Gmail, many people use Facebook, or they use something which is perceived to be free, but actually it is not free because it costs you your privacy to obtain that service. Companies like Google and Facebook are collecting whole dossiers of each of us as people, or really as consumers, of what we are buying so that they can predict the market for marketing. It is not only companies monitoring everyday movements, but also states. Can you understand this feeling, particularly visible in Europe, that they do not want to live in a world of constant surveillance?
just a little), therefore she would describe a digital native (those born after 1985). Neverthe new environment of the World Wide Web
and capabilities against other countries. Here in Europe there are many countries that do the same thing and work together. I don’t see this is anything new; this is just something that has become public knowledge or more public than it once was. During the time you worked for the United States Government, you set up the groundwork for a huge cyber security initiative, was it difficult to leave your groundwork to be taken up by others? I think it is always difficult to watch something you create transform into other things, but I
still help my government and the private sector move things forward. Returning to the private sector, I feel that now I am still making an impact, it’s just in a different way. I also feel that I have the freedom now to help many other governments think through this problem. I am doing a lot of work here in Europe to help the different countries think about different strategies, looking at the successes of the United States and also the failures. After Edward Snowden showed that almost every activity on the internet can be monitored and observed,
I absolutely can understand it. It makes Americans just as uncomfortable as Europeans. One should not believe that your governments are not surveying you and one should absolutely expect these companies which are giving you a perceived free service, are also conducting surveillance, it is just a question of what their motive is. Working in cyber security, do you use social media sites and Google searches? I don’t use Facebook or any of the other social networking platforms. However I do use Google searches and I have bought things online. Then I get
targeted ads and other targeted things and I do not like that. I believe that Google probably has a really good dossier on me, maybe better than the Russian Intelligence Service and that is alarming. Referring back to Manning and Snowden, can you explain why in the US they are seen as traitors, but in the European countries more as heroes of a free and more transparent society? I think that all comes down to individual perspective. I hear much concern among your leaders here in Europe about the Pirate Party, so I would argue that it is the same regarding the transparency and the threat. But I would also argue that in the specific cases of Manning and Snowden, the individuals had signed documents agreeing to
protect the United States at all costs, and if they did not, or if they disclose information, they knew that they would be prosecuted and sent to jail. They knowingly broke the law which is a little bit different to protesting in the streets and bringing transparency in the same way as a private party. When you purposely disclose information and bring harm to the state, knowing that you are breaking the law, is a little different. Would you have acted similarly if you had access to similar information? I would never do that. It is completely against the law. I believe we are a nation of laws and I believe that they caused harm to the United States, both of them. Moving on to another issue, there has been a lot of debate
about gender equality in Alpbach so we were wondering about your experience as a woman in a very senior position in both the public and private sectors. Throughout my career there have not been many female leaders. Women do not necessarily have the same visibility at a Forum like this. I have a 10 per cent rule. There should be at least 10 per cent participation of women in senior roles. Of course it should be more than that, but it should definitely be at least that. When it is under ten per cent then I get concerned that there is not a diversity of views and that people may not actually listen to the diverse voice because the voice is so small in the cacophony of voices. I would like to see it be more. I hope that I have provided an example of leadership to follow.
“Your phone will be able to recognise faces” There is a close relationship between the construction of values and the development of technique. A few years ago, it would have been unacceptable for the majority of us to share personal data about our lives with a private company for free, now there are more than one billion people who are doing it while they access Facebook. The data industry is growing fast and the case of Edward Snowden demonstrates that the private sector is not the only one interested in knowing about the information we spontaneously spread on the internet and that these make us vulnerable to attacks.
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