I really did fall out of the habit of writing these things! I realised that I messed up the dates of the last post I made, suggesting that it was the previous week rather than the week it really was. Oops. Iāve corrected it now.
I guess it is a bit of a symptom of what I was discussing in that writing. How I felt a little tired and overwhelmed by events around the world. Sadly, things havenāt slowed down and, if anything, have become even more urgent and critical.
I order not to make this a weekly moan, I will endeavour to write a few positive things too, but I donāt think it is appropriate to ignore and shy away from the very real issues in the digital world.
Thatās pretty much the structure that I wanted to explore todayā¦
I mentioned Caribbean Digital Compass, a joint adventure I have embarked upon with Michele Marius from ICT Pulse. We soft launched a couple of articles over the last few days.
Iād be grateful if youād have a read, share and subscribe to the newsletter. It will become a paid newsletter at some point, but for the moment it is going to stay free to read until we get the momentum going, so take advantage now of the free access and enjoy.
Itās more focused on businesses in the region that need reliable, factual and helpful analysis of the digital world, rather than these longer opinion pieces. Weāre trying to keep them at about 800 to a 1000 words or so.
The first two articles cover Generative AI and the Auditing, and an analysis of 5G.
More to come!
https://caribbeandigitalcompass.com/
Geopolitics and the Internet
When Grateful Dead musician, John Perry Barlow, wrote what has become a universally recognised treatise for the Internet (A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace), he rather foolishly didnāt factor in that governments would eventually impose themselves upon the governance of a tool that became the plumbing for much of what we do in our lives today. The Global Digital Compact and the discussions leading up to that have shown a remarkable difference in attitude and attention to the Internet since his writing. Governments were largely hands-off until recently, now the strategic importance of the Internet has been laid bare in many ways.
The basic premise of the text was to say to the governments of the world, stay out of Internet business, this is the digital world, and it has nothing to do with the physical world. That turned out to be not only false, but highly immature, given the fact that more and more of physical life is being integrated with digital life, from online communications to filing government taxes and any number of private and public services.
This is such an issue, that we even have whole NGOs dedicated to bringing the Internet have-nots online and closing the ādigital divideā. Locally, I see more and more businesses digitalising operations and providing public-facing interfaces mediated through digital tools and less and less through human interaction. To hell with those that donāt have smartphones seems to become the norm. Those, being the handicapped, the poor and many others that canāt or wonāt have digital tools.
Which brings me to where we are today. At a crossroads is how Iād put it. A crossroads that could lead us to a better online existence, but more likely a crossroads that will lead us to a more fractured and divided Internet.
Iām particularly concerned about the currant administration in the United States of America that has spared no time dismantling important institutions, that, despite their expense, provide real value for money when you look at the results in their whole. Institutions like USAID that I have previously mentioned and worked for in the past, to things that should set off alarm bells around the world. This administration recently called on the U.S. Cyber Command to stand down, signalling to the world that they are now a soft target. Whether or not that is objectively true, the signal is significant. Coupled with its stance on reneging on aid for foreign countries, leaving a vacuum in the Caribbean that will almost certainly be filled by actors that might be less favourable to the region now that they have no competition or pushback, one has to consider whether the USA is now a rogue state or not. Not the kind of question I had on my bingo card for 2025!
But hereās the real issue when I think about the Internet. Many of the organisations that are responsible for the inner workings are located in the US. Iām seriously asking myself the question about their independence being maintained or how they might be affected going forward, if the current administration continues down this path of destruction. If I were part of the leadership, Iād be keeping a very close eye on whatās happening and starting to think about mitigation strategies to protect the Internet as we know it.
Again, Iām not trying to be melodramatic, simply facing up to what could be a very real possibility of a whole scale attack on the very inner institution of the Internet and what the repercussions could be.
Sorry. It was all doom and gloom in the end. šµāš«
I promise to find something positive to write next time.
Reading
A couple of articles that caught my attention this week.
Analysts Warn of AI Cooling with Microsoft Cancellation of AI Datacenter Leases
This may or may not be a turning point in the hype surrounding generative AI. Expenditure on datacenters, model training and deploying half-baked apps to users is starting to add up, with little return seen on that investment. The fact that every single prompt costs Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and any number of companies in this business should be a worry.
Youāre getting it free or at less-than-cost because it is being subsidised.
That wonāt last forever.
Inside the Taliban’s surveillance network monitoring millions
Is this what we can expect from our own democratic governments?
I think it is worth asking that question.
If Iām honest, Iām not completely resolved on where I stand on surveillance and legitimate access to private communications. Total secrecy for individuals or total openness for the police seem to me to be two extremes that I am not comfortable with.
Iām still working this out.
The impact on the African continent of Meta scrapping its fact-checking program
The collapse of fact-checking by Meta and other online platforms has real-world consequences.
People will die as a direct result of this handwashing. It is time for something to be done.
Iām sure itāll be fine in the end. Have a lovely week.
