Governments, "Net-States" & Digital Nations
EP. 07 | THE INNOVATION COOKBOOK
Andrew speaks with Alexis Wichowski, the Deputy Chief Technology Officer of Innovation for the City of New York, and author of The Information Trade: How Big Tech Conquers Countries, Challenges our Rights, and Transforms our World. She’s also an associate professor at Columbia University, where she teaches media, government, & technology.
SHOW NOTES
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Alexis highlights how Google makes you feel like a superhero: you have all world’s knowledge at your fingertips. This is where technology shines: through applications that can enhance people’s natural abilities.
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She thinks governments are really good at thinking how technology companies should protect people’s rights but when it comes down to the specifics of how a certain technology works, it has to be a kind of conversation between users and companies.
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Not through user testing, but through user understanding, companies can come out with better guard rails.
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Andrew asks how should tech companies regulate what the message is that you’re trying to mobilize people around ? Alexis would like to see tech companies build better tech tools.
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Alexis talks about Estonia as a digital nation, you can become an e-resident of their nation, it gives you the right to do business, open a bank account, offering the structure and services for digital nomads.
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We love tackling real life puzzles like the future of cities.
“We need to make sure that we’re not leaving folks behind. The bigger the gap gets now, the worse it’s going to be 5 years from now. So we need to do whatever we can to sort of leap frog the traditional barriers to access to technology and get people up to speed.”