Brookings

[Commentary] The federal government should focus on how cities are likely to be the primary government jurisdictions on the leading edge of using new technology to transform the public sphere. The fall campaign should set an agenda for how the next administration can move the country forward by helping the cities that want to lead in this century’s city-led, global information economy. Some might argue that how cities use technology should not be a subject of a presidential election but rather be left to local campaigns. This argument is wrong for a number of reasons, including that the economic and social health of cities is the leading driver of the economic and social health of the nation. American leadership in many sectors requires world-class cities in which to work and live.

Further, cities face a subtle economic barrier to adoption of new technologies. The history of technology cost curves predicts these investments will eventually pay for themselves in service improvements. Cities, however, unlike businesses, have a limited first-user advantage for such new infrastructure, making it more difficult to obtain the critical mass of users that lowers costs in ways that accelerate adoption. If wealthier communities like Austin (TX) can figure out how to use technology to improve how it delivers education, health, transportation, and social services, those practices can be adopted by lower-income communities like Detroit (MI). The federal government has a vital interest in accelerating the improvement of municipal public services by all cities. The best way to drive such improvements is to seed early efforts that provide replicable examples.

[Levin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Metropolitan Policy Program. This is the second in a series of three blogs on cities, technology, the next generation of urban development, and the next administration.]

[Commentary] Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton recently laid out her technology plan. A number of the ideas represent the continuation and expansion of current Obama Administration strategies of increased broadband deployment and adoption. Others call for reinvigorated efforts for education and training related to technology and innovation in government. From a political perspective, the most significant policy is probably the call to protect the FCC’s decision to reclassify internet service providers as Title II common carriers, as that is one technology issue where the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has taken a clear and contrary point of view.

From the perspective of cities, however, the most significant policy may be Clinton’s endorsement of the civic Internet of Things. In a section entitled “Foster a Civic Internet of Things through Public Investments,” her plan states that her administration will invest federal research funding to testbedding, field trials, and other public-private endeavors to speed the deployment of next generation wireless networks and a civic Internet of Things. She also commits to using advances in wireless communications and data analytics to improve public safety, health care, environmental management, traffic congestion, and social welfare services. Why is this proposal so significant? The civic Internet of Things is this generation’s opportunity to recreate the commons at the heart of all cities.

[Levin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Metropolitan Policy Program. This is the first in a series of three blogs on cities, technology, the next generation of urban development, and the next administration.]

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission in 2015 redefined broadband as connections with 25 megabits per second (Mbps) download speeds and 4 Mbps upload speeds. This is more than six times the previous standard of 4 Mbps download, allowing for multiple simultaneous video streams. According to the FCC’s 2016 Broadband Progress Report, 10 percent of Americans lack access to broadband by this definition. This number, however, fails to illustrate the stark contrast between rural and urban access to broadband. Rural areas have significantly slower Internet access, with 39 percent lacking access to broadband of 25/4 Mbps, compared to only 4 percent for urban areas. This rural/urban “digital divide” in access severely limits rural populations from taking advantage of a critical component of modern life.

The FCC has been responsible for universal service of telecommunications since its inception in 1934, creating equal access to communications like phone service. In 2007, the Joint Board of the FCC redefined the concept of universal service to include broadband. Coupled with the recent network neutrality decision, the FCC wields a powerful precedent to create equal access to broadband. To fulfill its role, the FCC must do more as a regulatory body to ensure equal access to this public utility. It has made efforts in recent years to expand the Connect America Fund, providing funding to create broadband access for over 7 million consumers over the next 6 years. However, the FCC must expand access alongside advances in technology rather than after the fact, satisfying increased demands for faster internet with infrastructure growth. Otherwise, rural communities will continue to play catch up with their urban counterparts and the US will remain digitally divided.

By the end of the decade, the fifth-generation (5G) network is expected to support 50 billion connected devices with speeds of more than 100 megabits per second. 5G’s connectivity, computing power, and virtual system architecture will soon expand the mobile Internet of things (IoT). The connection of billions of digital devices through IoT will pave the way for innovation across industries and markets; in particular, connected medicine has the potential to transform health care through imaging, diagnostics, and treatment improvements, among other groundbreaking new possibilities.

In this paper, Darrell West discusses the unique capabilities of the 5G era, explores applications of IoT technology in medicine, and recommends policies for making these new care delivery systems a reality. 5G technology has the potential to increase patient access to treatment options, reduce hospital visits, and create a flexible network of telehealth, in addition to reducing overall medical costs. West argues that work needs to be done to facilitate an end-to-end system. Fully realizing the potential of the health IoT will require investments in digital infrastructure and changes in reimbursement policy, privacy protection, and research data. Devices must connect to networks and the cloud in ways that are interoperable and secure. That will enable health providers and patients to receive the benefits of digital innovation for wellness and health care. By overcoming these barriers, both health care consumers and providers will see substantial advances in medical treatment.

[Commentary] What are the implications of Brexit for democracy? Arguably, Brexit represents the first major casualty of the ascent of digital democracy over representative democracy. This claim deserves an explanation.

Many technology optimists have assumed that globalization would lead to the democratization of information and decision-making, and also greater cosmopolitanism. Citizens would be better informed, less likely to be silenced, and able to communicate their views more effectively to their leaders. They would also have greater empathy and understanding of other peoples the more they lived next to them, visited their countries, read their news, communicated, and did business with them. Or so the thinking went. But there has been little to justify such panglossianism. There is some evidence for a correlation between greater information, political democratization and economic progress, in that all three have advanced steadily, if at different paces, over the past two decades. But that correlation is weak. Instead, digital democracy -- the ability to receive information in almost real time through mass media and to make one's voice heard through social media -- has contributed to polarization, gridlock, dissatisfaction and misinformation. This is as equally applicable to the countries in which modern democracy took root -- in the United States and Europe -- as it is to India, the biggest and most complex democracy in the developing world.

[Commentary] We live in an age of Information Overload, with over 2 billion Internet users and the rise of social media, there is far more information than we can possibly process.

Governments should consider engaging more actively in the “marketing” and image making of its policies, taking advantage of emerging image and video-oriented communication technologies instead of solely adhering to its traditional ways of communication.

Tailoring government strategy to our current information-rich environment will be critical to successful policy implementation.

[Ahn is Assistant Professor, Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, McCormack Graduate School, Governance Studies]

Software application developers earn large salaries in the United States, $96,260 a year on average. But in metropolitan San Jose they earn $131,270, the highest in the country.

There are many partial explanations for this -- local cost of living, differences in education levels, experience, and industry -- but none of them quite account for it.

So what distinguishes San Jose software developers? It turns out that developers living in San Jose have acquired the specific skills most valued by employers.

The mass digitization by Google of millions of books made available to it by various libraries remains a matter of legal contention.

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will be reviewing a decision in 2013 where the US District Court in New York entered judgment in favor of Google based on a “fair use” defense under the Copyright Act of 1976.

The lower court found Google’s use was “highly transformative” because Google had converted the books’ text into digital form, creating a full text search capability that made existing works more accessible to users, and enabling new forms of research. The case underscores the increasing significance of “transformative use” in evaluating a fair use defense.

[Commentary] A popular water cooler topic in the policy and technology communities is something called the Privacy Paradox. Recently, EMC Corporation, a leading enterprise cloud-based services company, released its inaugural EMC Privacy Index.

This study was commissioned by the company to better understand consumer perceptions about the need to protect personal privacy online and how that ranks as a consumer priority against the benefits of convenient online commerce and social media sharing, alongside other priorities such as the use of data analytics to prevent terrorist attacks and protect national security. Its data reflects survey responses from 15,000 consumers in 15 countries, including the United States.

The vast majority of respondents in all surveyed countries (91 percent) indicated they value the benefit of “easier access to information and knowledge” that digital technology affords. Yet 81 percent also expected privacy to erode over the next five years, and 59 percent said they have less privacy than a year ago. Less than half of all respondents (45 percent) also indicated they were willing to trade some of their privacy for easier access.

[Commentary] In a new Brookings paper, James Klurfeld and Howard Schneider provide a detailed view of an innovative Stony Brook University program that teaches students to do more of the critical vetting of information that professional journalism has traditionally provided.

Today’s problem is that the business model which once supported newsroom journalism is disintegrating. Moreover, much of the public recognizes no difference, even in principle, between what (say) The New York Times does and what Daily Kos does.

If professionals are less and less able to vet information, perhaps consumers can do it themselves. Perhaps, in any case, they’ll have to, because no one else will.

Teaching young people how to evaluate information sources, think critically, and check before retweeting makes sense for all kinds of reasons. What news literacy cannot do -- and, of course, does not pretend to do -- is make professional newsrooms and journalists stop disappearing at an alarming rate. And the sad truth is that enlightened amateurism, whether on the part of consumers or producers, is no substitute for dedicated professionalism.