In this episode, Elina Noor surveys the landscape of Brazil’s and Latin America’s digital priorities and challenges with Virgilio Almeida, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University.

Virgilio talks about the paradox of an expanding social media space for Brazil’s vulnerable communities but a shrinking public space for discussions on digital policies. Drawing parallels between the environmental and digital commons, he stresses the importance of a multi-disciplinary approach to digital governance to avoid applying familiar – and perhaps, outdated – mechanisms to new problems.

References:

Urs Gasser and Virgilio Almeida, “Futures of Digital Governance,” Communications of the ACM, March 2022, Vol. 65 No. 3, Pages 30-32, https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2022/3/258905-futures-of-digital-governance/fulltext.

Beyond the North-South Fork on the Road to AI Governance: An Action Plan for Democratic & Distributive Integrity, https://digitalrights.ai/report/