Featured Policy Areas
Cyber Issues: Jonah Force Hill, MPP '12, on internet fragmentation.
Health Care: ICTPP's Ashish Jha on electronic health records.
Education: Harvard's Eric Mazur & "Peer Instruction"/active learning in Saudi Arabia.
FEATURED PUBLICATIONS
Winter 2012
"Toward a Common Wireless Market"
Issues in Science and Technology
By Tolu Odumosu, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program and Venkatesh "Venky" Narayanamurti, Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology and Public Policy; Professor of Physics, Harvard; Director, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program; Co-Principal Investigator, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
"With different policies and a focus on interoperability, the FCC can move the wireless industry toward a single interoperable market in which consumers have real choice and flexibility. This truly competitive market is achievable in the near future, and it can be reached with minimal financial and logistical impact on mobile wireless operators...."
AP Photo
April 2, 2012
"Viral By Design: Teams in the Networked World"
Harvard Business Review
By Zachary Tumin, Special Assistant to the Director and Faculty Chair, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program and William Bratton
"The recent Kony2012 viral video offers proof that something special is happening as a result of all this connectedness: digital collaboration has come of age. Garnering 100 million YouTube views in six days — the fastest ever to reach that mark — Kony2012 demonstrated that digital collaboration can create astounding effects not possible just five years ago. Achieving those effects is no accident. While much is made of "emergent collaboration," Kony2012 went viral by design. The Invisible Children, Inc. team that masterminded the campaign comprised veteran media activists and fundraisers pursuing a common enough goal (a criminal's arrest), but using skills and means unique to the digital age...."
April 2012
Digital Teaching Platforms: Customizing Classroom Learning for Each Student
By Chris Dede, Faculty Affiliate, Information and Communications Technology and Public Policy Project and John Richards
The Digital Teaching Platform (DTP) brings the power of interactive technology to teaching and learning in classrooms. In this authoritative book, top researchers in the field of learning science and educational technology examine the current state of design and research on DTPs, the principles for evaluating them, and their likely evolution as a dominant medium for educational improvement.
February 2012
"Falling Prey to Cybercrime: Implications for Business and the Economy"
By Melissa Hathaway, Senior Advisor, Explorations in Cyber International Relations
As American businesses, inventors, and artists market, sell, and distribute their products worldwide via the Internet, the threat from criminals and criminal organizations who want to profit illegally from their hard work grows. The threat from other nations wanting to jump start their industries without making the intellectual investment is even more disturbing. This fleecing of America must stop. We can no longer afford complacency and silence—we must find and use as many market levers as possible to change the path we are on.
AP Photo
April 2, 2012
"How China Steals Our Secrets"
New York Times
By Richard Clarke, Faculty Affiliate, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Under Customs authority, the Department of Homeland Security could inspect what enters and exits the United States in cyberspace. Customs already looks online for child pornography crossing our virtual borders. And under the Intelligence Act, the president could issue a finding that would authorize agencies to scan Internet traffic outside the United States and seize sensitive files stolen from within our borders."
February 2012
"Cloud and Mobile Privacy: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act"
By Vivek Mohan, Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program/Information and Communications Technology and Public Policy Project
Consumer expectations of online and mobile privacy have in recent years diverged significantly from reality. In certain circumstances, the United States government has the ability to access a consumer's cloud-based email, location data gathered from their mobile phones, and information about what calls a user places on a mobile device—without a warrant. While a broad coalition is spearheading reform efforts in Washington, providers of these services should take proactive steps to bring consumer understanding of their privacy more in line with reality.
February 2012
"New Threats, Old Technology: Vulnerabilities in Undersea Communication Cable Network Management Systems"
By Michael Sechrist, Associate, Explorations in Cyber International Relations
This paper explores the vulnerabilities to cyber attacks of infrastructure that today carries nearly all the world's data and voice traffic: undersea communications cables. Long-standing physical vulnerabilities in cable infrastructure have been compounded by new risk found in the network management systems that monitor and control cable operations. Unlike an attack on a water treatment plant's control systems, however, an attack on the cables' control systems could devastate the world's economies — presenting a different kind of Internet "kill switch" altogether — shutting down world commerce, and doing it all with the click of a mouse.
