The Portulans Institute supported the conduct of an Oxford Forum on ‘The Implications of the Russian War in Ukraine for Global Information, Communication, and Cybersecurity’, which was held on 26 January 2024 in a Board Room of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII). It was conceived, organized, and chaired by an OII DPhil Candidate, Elizaveta (Lisa) … Continue reading Information, Communication, and Innovation Aspects of the War on Ukraine: A Meeting of Early Career Researchers
Social Issues
Social Issues of the Internet
The Societal Costs of Attention Deficits
The attention of a goldfish?
Cyber Insecurity
If I tell friends and colleagues that I am working on a ‘cybersecurity project’, I can see them mentally move along to other topics. In sounds technical and only technical. Arguably, most internet users and ordinary people generally see cybersecurity as a technical field – one that is likely to be impenetrable or uninteresting … Continue reading Cyber Insecurity
A London Forum on Histories of the Internet
AIT Forum on the Histories of the Internet: Call for Papers Archives of IT (AIT) is organising a one-day academic-practitioner forum on the Histories of the Internet in January 2024. The forum is designed to: foster more critical, multidisciplinary perspectives on the history of computers, telecommunications, the internet, and related digital media; illuminate how people, … Continue reading A London Forum on Histories of the Internet
AI Hype
AI HYPE: A Commentary by A. Michael Noll March 29, 2023 Copyright © 2023 A. Michael Noll The 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick frighten us with the computer “HAL” that reads lips, makes decisions, kills, and ultimately goes berserk. Decades later around 2011, IBM introduced its “Watson” … Continue reading AI Hype
The Myth of an AI Leisure Class?
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is real and significant. But AI is not new albeit in 2023 it is more focused on machine learning than programming. On a recent trip to Singapore, the rise of robots was clear, cleaning the floors of the airport and moving trays around restaurants, for instance. That said, the … Continue reading The Myth of an AI Leisure Class?
Social Media and the Post Office Scandal
Social Media Might Have Saved Many from the Post Office Horizon Scandal From 2000 to 2014, Post Office Ltd, a publicly owned company, accused over 700 hundred sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses, the individuals running small local post office operations in the UK, of false accounting and theft of revenues. An inquiry has determined that the evidence … Continue reading Social Media and the Post Office Scandal
Robots: Commentary by A. Michael Noll
REIN IN THE CLOUD REJOICE IN THE ROBOTS [The following commentary is authored by A. Michael Noll, and posted with the permission of the author. It illustrates the disagreement among experts on the social implications of new technologies, such as robotics, AI, cloud computing, and the Internet, demonstrating the value of continued research on the … Continue reading Robots: Commentary by A. Michael Noll
Get Back to the Classroom
Get Back to the Classroom Given continuing uncertainties about the COVID pandemic and its variants, it is understandable that many universities are not in a position as yet to commit to in-person, face-to-face, teaching and a return to normality on college and university campuses. This is particularly the case for those individuals – teachers and … Continue reading Get Back to the Classroom
Participating in an Advisory Board: Five Principles
Having created and served on advisory boards in a number of organisations and countries, I've begun to see some principles that can guide others serving on an advisory board. I am not a management consultant nor an expert on advisory boards, but as I try to think through my own experiences on boards, I thought … Continue reading Participating in an Advisory Board: Five Principles