Technology Policy

I have been working in technology and technology policy for over two decades. I strayed into this topic through an earlier interest in economic development, which I studied as an undergraduate (including some life-changing classes with Amartya Sen). My doctoral research (at Oxford, in Law) was focused on policies and regulations to bridge the digital divide in rural India. Through that work, I got involved in a range of issues related to telecoms policy, content, and Internet governance (especially related to ICANN).

The field has changed dramatically since the turn of the millennium. Back then, it felt pretty arcane, and tangential to the main currents of life. It was hard to get excited about DNS and TLD (top-level domains, for those who don’t remember) management. But now tech policy is so much broader, and encompasses virtually every aspect of our economic, social, political, and cultural lives. I really believe that so many of our seemingly most intractable problems—polarization, inequality, climate—run through tech policy. So my work these days encompasses a much more diverse set of areas.

So my work these days encompasses a much more diverse set of areas.

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Areas of Work

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), and its potential for inclusion and innovation, especially in the Global South. This strand of research takes place at Princeton, where I’m part of a DPI initiative at the Chadha Center for Global India. I also taught a course on DPI at Princeton. (Contact me if you’d like to see the syllabus).
Artificial Intelligence (AI), also at Princeton, focuses primarily on the intersections of AI+DPI, and the evolving notion of public AI. I’m interested in the social and economic impact of AI, and on ways to maximize the public interest benefits of AI. I’m currently working on a paper about the “enshittification of AI”—what it would look like, how to avoid it—with Professor Arvind Narayanan at Princeton.
Technology and development, and especially artificial intelligence in the Global South. I’m working on these issues at Princeton and New America’s.
Data ethics, including open data, data sharing, and the tradeoffs between privacy and public good. I do much of this work at the GovLab, based within NYU and Northeastern University.
Internet governance, including the geopolitics of tech policy, and the growing valence-and, in my views, perils-of digital sovereignty.
More broadly, I’m interested in what I think of as the search for a better, next-gen Internet. I’m thinking about missing layers, the role of trust, and the potential (and risks) of digital identity. I may be working on a book about all of this. More details soon.

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Recent Writings

Could DPI make a better Internet? An article in Foreign Policy
“From Digital Sovereignty to Digital Agency,” New America policy brief.
New Yorker article on Internet governance and the search for a better Internet (including a section on DPI).
Article in Foreign Policy on the new American doctrine of “digital solidarity.”
Article in the Wall Street Journal Week in Review about the growing risk of digital nationalism (now known as digital sovereignty).
A blog post from New America on the contextual factors driving the rapid adoption of DPI.
A primer I wrote for UNDP on Internet governance.
An article in the Economist on bridging the digital divide.

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