Interview: Dame Wendy Hall
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 12/04/2017
Jeremy Fernandez speaks to professor of computer science at the
University of Southampton Dame Wendy Hall about the influence of
government and big business on the internet.
Transcript
It comes amid an ongoing discussion about the extent to which governments should be allowed to access and control personal data.
From tomorrow, all telecommunications companies must comply with data retention laws in Australia. Personal data will be retained for up to two years. This includes storing phone records, emails and internet search histories.
For more on the influence of governments and big business on the internet, I was joined earlier by the web pioneer, Dame Wendy Hall. She's a professor of computer science at the University of Southampton and was a member of the UK Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, as well as a member for Global Commission on Internet Governance.
Professor Dame Wendy Hall is in Australia as part of the Brave Conversations Website's conference in Canberra.
Professor Dame Wendy Hall, thank you for joining us on Lateline.
WENDY HALL, DBE, PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON: Pleasure to be here.
Now, you were contributed to a recent report by the Global Commission on Internet Governance that says the internet is at a crossroads. How so?
WENDY HALL: Well, there's so many pressures on it. What started off as something that was open and free for everyone to use has got a lot of pressures from commercial forces - not that there's anything wrong in making money on the internet - but companies have a different agenda to people: just us consumers or pro-consumers.
Governments suddenly - almost suddenly - are realising this is a major policy issue. Some governments want to use it to control. Some governments want to use it to protect and keep open, but at the same time are well aware of the threats that it poses.
And then you've got us, the people. It is ours, really. We make it. We put the content on. And it's because we use it that it grows.
JEREMY FERNANDEZ: Who is it up to, to foster that spirit of openness that the internet was created with?
WENDY HALL: Well, that's what's so ironic, really. It was started by the likes - the internet was started by, effectively, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. And then Tim Berners-Lee built the web - the protocols for the web - on top of that.
And they all had the same idea: that the standards and the protocols would be open and free and universal. And that is what has enabled it to grow, as it has grown across the world, because wherever you are in the world you can use the same technical standards to access it and you don't have to pay anybody a licence or buy any software to do that.
JEREMY FERNANDEZ: Are you barking up the wrong tree if you go to a government or go to a commercial organisation and say, "Hey, help us keep the internet free and open?"
WENDY HALL: Well, if you take the example of Facebook: they don't want to keep the internet free and open. They would like everybody just to use Facebook. Right? And they've tried that in parts of the world where they say, "Here, have a mini version of Facebook and we'll give you free access to the" - in quotes - "'internet'."
So they don't really have a vested interest in keeping it open and free. Some governments do have and other governments don't have. And some companies do have.
I mean, I would say Google, for example, really needs an open internet to work, because we all have to use their search engine for them to get the information about us.
JEREMY FERNANDEZ: You talk about buying and selling things on the internet and the commercial imperative of keeping the internet alive. Increasingly our personal data is commoditised. Do you think people have an appreciation of just to what degree their personal data is held out of sight and used without their knowledge?
WENDY HALL: No. I think generally people don't. I'm not sure how much - what the feeling is in Australia.
In the UK there is definitely a groundswell: that they worry about how much governments know about us and what data the governments store about us.
But, actually, the commercial companies store even more and probably know more about us in their own silos.
And we don't seem to question that at all. We use loyalty cards. We happily use our credit cards and our phones everywhere, buy anything everywhere. That's what we like about it.
So here the irony is: we enjoy the benefits of the fact that people own a lot of data about us.
JEREMY FERNANDEZ: Malicious activity is named as one of the greatest threats to the future of the internet. What goes through your mind when you see media organisations and social media corporations scrambling for a solution to the spread of so-called fake news?
WENDY HALL: The thing about the internet is: it reflects everything about society. So all the good and bad stuff in society is writ large in the internet. And it feels so dangerous because it seems to happen very quickly and it scales very quickly.
But actually, of course, there's always been fake news. There's always been propaganda. There's always been people that have wanted to twist the news to their own ends. It's just that we've got a new way of doing that now.
And it's partly about education. It's about questioning the provenance of the information. You know, who generated that video? Who generated that story? What is the provenance of the... Where is the data that says that story is true?
And that's what we've got to learn to check. I mean, we used to with newspapers. You know, you had to check where the story came from and the difference between a good newspaper and a bad newspaper is that they checked the story before they printed it.
And it's the same sort of thing on the web. It's just: it all happens so much faster.
JEREMY FERNANDEZ: For those people who do lack digital or numeracy skills and literacy skills, what is the future for them when computers are becoming more and more intelligent and more and more sophisticated and taking over those functions that would have once been performed by humans?
WENDY HALL: Yeah. This is a big issue. I think with all technological revolutions - and this is a huge one that we're just, you know, as everyone says we're just at the leading edge of it, we're nowhere near arrived at what will be the steady state, if there ever is one - there will be a loss of jobs.
But history tells us that more jobs will be created as a result. It's just that when you're going through it, there are going to be people who will lose the jobs they have today and they don't have the skills for the jobs that will be created.
And so it does all come back to education. And this is where governments play a major part.
I mean, I know this is why the UK Government has launched the AI review that I'm co-chairing. It's that very issue of: where are the new jobs going to be? And how do we get people into a position where they can take advantage of new jobs?
JEREMY FERNANDEZ: And you have a very optimistic view about the ability of AI to actually bridge some of those gaps in literacy?
WENDY HALL: Ever since computers have been invented, people have talked about how they can help us learn and that's what got me into computing in the first place.
I do believe we're at a point where people will be able to sit down and have customised learning programs, where the machine actually guides them through the information.
We're not quite there yet and we still have a major role for human tutors in the loop. But I do think that more and more people will be able to learn online, yeah.
JEREMY FERNANDEZ: Professor Dame Wendy Hall, it's terrific to have you on the program. Thanks for joining us.
WENDY HALL: Oh, thank you very much.
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