Do Humans Have Rights in the Digital Age?
A Transatlantic Dialogue
AI, autonomous robots, social scoring, mass surveillance, and concentrations of power among corporate platforms and political states. Digital technologies have created huge challenges to our democratic rights, freedoms and values. Must we sacrifice these to "progress"?
Europe has been at the forefront of efforts to regulate internet-based platform companies and their use of our private data. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has become a model for other countries or states, such as California’s own Consumer Privacy Act.
Now, a group of renowned German net activists, civil society experts, lawyers and politicians has drafted a "Charter of Fundamental Digital Rights." Like a "Bill of Rights” for the Digital Age, it is based on the principle that “Human dignity shall be inviolable” (here's a link in English). The Charter has been widely discussed in Germany and the European Parliament. Could this proposal shape our digital future for the better? How would you regulate our digital future?
Come join this dialogue between US and German leaders, and be prepared to offer your own ideas about digital rights and the challenges to ensure that society benefits from technology and innovation.
More information on the project and the full Charter text: www.digitalcharter.eu
Speakers:
Lenny Mendonca, Chief Economic and Business Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom of California, and Director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development. He is a Senior Partner Emeritus of McKinsey & Company and a lecturer on inequality at the Stanford Business School.
Tim O’Reilly, founder, CEO, and Chairman of O’Reilly Media, a technology learning company that inspires innovators through books, articles, conferences, and online learning. He is a partner at early stage venture firm O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), and is the author of WTF? What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us.
Dr. Jeanette Hofmann, director of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (in Berlin), head of the research group Politics of Digitalization at the Berlin Social Science Center, and Principal Investigator of the research group “Democracy and digitalization”, Weizenbaum-Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin.
Rebecca MacKinnon, director of Ranking Digital Rights at New America in Washington DC, advancing global standards and incentives for companies to respect and protect users’ digital rights. A 2019-2020 University of California Free Speech and Civic Engagement Fellow, she is the author of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom,and was previously CNN’s bureau chief in Beijing and Tokyo.
Dr. Heinz Bude is one of Germany’s most renowned sociologists. He holds the chair of Macrosociology at the University of Kassel, and he has received the Prize for Outstanding Achievements in the Field of Public Sociology by the German Sociological Society. Two of his books were recently published in English, “Society of Fear” and “The Mood of the World.” Dr. Bude is one of the co-authors of the Charter for Fundamental Digital Rights.
Moderator: Katharina Borchert is Chief Innovation Officer at Mozilla, and former CEO at Spiegel Online, one of Europe’s most influential magazines.
Please register here.
The evening will be hosted by the ZEIT Foundation based in Hamburg/Germany in cooperation with HanaHaus Palo Alto.
The non-profit Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius supports projects in the fields of research and science, art and culture as well as education and society. It was established in 1971 by the publisher Gerd Bucerius, who co-founded the weekly newspaper "Die ZEIT".