Supernova2007: Denise Caruso on risk

Denise Caruso of the hybrid Vigor Institute.

On risks of innovation.

Book: Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet

Can’t calculate the risk probability of something that is brand new. The most important thing are the assumptions that you use to assess risk.

Examples of oops:

• Nuclear energy ran into the human factor.
• DDT and antibiotics: too much of a good thing, which killed good and bad bugs, but the bad bugs became resistant
• Genetic engineering: genes are networks, not Legos. But our risk assessments assumed more like building blocks.
• SGI-Time Warner: ‘full service network’… not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but settop boxes that melted on people’s TV sets…..

Internet: assumption that you need freedom to operate. But:

• One big hackathon, id theft, spam, etc
• Copyright and privacy battles
• Net neutrality and spectrum conflicts

How to anticipate: have a conversation.

NRC said in 1996

• Convene experts and stakeholders
• Ask what are all the possible outcomes that matter to you?
• Investigate how deplying would affect each of these
• Then decide together how to proceed

Google could have neutralized a lot of the bad publicity around Street View this way

Potential benefits are huge:

• Break through products, like the Xerox Star
• Better and safer decisions and investments; there was a bill saying checmical weapons had to be destroyed in Oregon, and the govt was going to incinerate them. Enviro groups protested, and did the research, and came up with a way to dispose of the weapons that was safer, cheaper, and not as dangerous.
• Inform decision makers.
• Cooperation lubricates markets.

What stops people from doing this?

• Fear of losing power or advantage
• Fear of unwated oversight
• Extra cost
• Showing their hand

But Internet culture exacerbates the problem.

Targeted search means no serendipity. Blogs give comments, not conversation. Social networks are people like us (homogeneity).

This is not social media, it is anti-social media, in terms of avoiding risks.

Potential dealbreakers for the future of the net:

• Copyright law vs social media
• Privacy vs surveillance society
• Private vs public networks

So we need to hink about how to resocialize the Net.

‘The nature of our society strongly affects the nature of our technology’ – Bruce Sterling

But the opposite is true as well.

We need to automate serendipity, and build socisl networks of people who are not like us.