Making sense of our connected world
Same same but (not so) different
Anonymization is advertised as a solution for privacy concerns, while machine learning is portrayed as dangerous and evil – but those operations have more in common than widely assumed. We want to find out what, and more importantly, why that is.
Don’t break up Facebook, make it more transparent
The fever pitch over Big Tech’s market dominance culminated with a contentious US Congressional hearing a few months ago. While Google, Apple and Amazon may require new onerous regulation, Facebook’s just desserts are something it fears more than divesting itself from its strategic purchases or having to jump through insane regulatory hoops: mandated transparency.
Making Technology Great Again: How to Use Ethics to Save Digitalisation
Can your refrigerator order milk for you but refuse to give you a second ice cream? Should your self-driven car drive with you into a tree instead of over a…
European AI and IoT – First roundtable in cooperation with the Represenation of the European Commission in Germany
The first Roundtable of HIIG’s AI & Society Lab hosted in cooperation with the Representation of the European Commission in Germany was our kick-off for an exchange on European AI…
Owning platforms – cooperatives in the digital economy
Digital trading platforms like Amazon or Uber generate billions in turnover, yet their success has been overshadowed by their drawbacks for platform users. Could cooperative models ameliorate the flaws of…
The coronavirus pandemic and its impact on cybersecurity
The coronavirus pandemic has impacted cybersecurity in several ways. The challenges range from the infrastructure of the internet itself to the spread of disinformation online. Nevertheless, not all is lost,…
Surveillance
The state monitors its citizens, Internet companies monitor their users – and finally we monitor ourselves and each other. Who is monitoring whom and why? What positive effects can surveillance have and when does it become a danger for a democratic society? Questions like these were posed by students of the Humboldt University of Berlin in the seminar “Tracing Surveillance – On the Trace of Surveillance” led by HIIG researcher Thomas Christian Bächle. In the contributions to this dossier they discuss their views on state and economic power and surveillance technologies.
How COVID-19 impacts digital technologies
The current lockdown is boosting online activity – everything is increasingly shifting to the digital sphere. In this dossier we ask if, how and why the Corona pandemic will affect key subjects of digital technologies. What does this mean for the regulation of content on digital platforms? How is Covid-19 activating the digital society? How does it transform our online culture? How safe are tracing apps? What lessons can be learned regarding cyber security? Busy times for our researchers!
