The year 2020 has seen a Pandemic affect the majority of the citizens in the world.
The COVID19 virus has spread from a single city to nearly every country around the planet, throwing our industrial and commercial way of life into a brand new territory. Confinement used to isolate and end the propagation of the virus has only been possible due to the extra-ordinary nature of the Internet in connecting people for work, leisure and communications. Traffic patterns changed dramatically due to teleworking and conference call participation, using email and IP based telecommunication services instead of physical office space. Whilst the “immediate death of the net” was predicted with doomsday scenarios publicising a potential collapse of the Internet’s backbone infrastructure, the network of networks has shown extra-ordinary resiliency in being able to adapt to different traffic patterns. Apart from a few small scale failures at local level, the Internet has shown good resilience and the actual Internet backbone including its DNS infrastructure and Root Servers have performed well even in the face of a sustained wave of new cyber attacks.
- With de-confinement time approaching in many countries around the world, are we set to go back to our old way, or is this increased notch on the scale of chaos the new normal?
- How did the Governance and Administration of the Internet cope with the crisis? Does it need to change?
- Is the 40 year old technology and its open, multi-stakeholder governance model fit for purpose in today’s new world?
- How has the current pandemic crisis has provided an opportunity for deeper reflection of what are/should be the key priorities for Internet Governance in the coming years?
- Are proposals for the replacement of today’s Internet with a more advanced set of protocols and a new governance that is touted as being more robust for what are now critical resources likely to succeed? Indeed, are they needed?
- How we can envision a post-pandemic Internet?
- What does the so-called “new normal” in Internet governance look like?
- What will any of this signify for democracy and our everyday lives?
Kicking off a series of Webinars about the topic, Nigel Hickson (ISOC UK Chapter) who is a participant of the 2020 Chapter Training Programme, will, as part of the Programme, be hosting a session on Thursday, 21st May at 16.00hrs UTC (17:00 BST) on “Internet Governance post Crisis – A new normal?” . He will address the current impasse of views on the governance of the Internet and how the current reliance on Internet services during the Covid-19 crisis may have affected this. The Session will be interactive in nature and thought provoking.
The next week, Louise Marie Hurel (LSE and ISOC UK Chapter) will Chair a multi stakeholder Panel of expert panellists to discuss and build on the scene set by Nigel Hickson.
Nigel Hickson’s Bio can be found on: https://linkedin.com/in/nigel-hickson-9899545
Topic: ISOC UK Webinar: Internet Governance post Crisis – A new normal?
Time: Thursday, May 21, 2020 17:00 London
Time: 16:00 UTC
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