In early April this year, I was invited to deliver a keynote address at the inaugural Build Peace conference, held at MIT Media Lab. My presentation was given, almost to the day, twenty years after the Rwandan genocide. Just before I went on stage, we all observed a minute's silence to remember the victims. The genocide wasn't on my mind when I made the slides for the presentation, but brought into sharp focus the thrust of my submission, which was to look ten to fifteen years into the future, and how information and communications technologies (ICTs) would feature in both the genesis and inflammation of complex political emergencies (CPEs) - in other words, violent conflict - as well as aid in peacebuilding and conflict transformation.

1. ICT4Peace
future conflict and its transformation
Sanjana Hattotuwa
!
TED Fellow
Special Advisor, ICT4Peace Foundation

2. my past accidental activist

3. see differently interrogating trauma
through technology

4. the future never comes as we expect it

5. the present is what we choose to see

6. concepts frameworks for peaceful change

7. radical inclusion hearing everybody’s voice

8. Nimalaruban’s mother | Murder with impunity
http://groundviews.org/2012/07/31/ganesan-nimalaruban-a-damning-murder-funeral-and-silence/

9. The disappeared | Abducted, erased and voiceless
5,676+, second only to Iraq

10. IDPs | Without land or shelter
Those who survive but aren’t counted, http://www.ceylontoday.lk/59-13681-news-detail-relocated-to-nowhere.html

11. inclusion of everyone,
selection around a process,
managing exclusion

12. algorithms The math of discrimination?

13. bespoke web what’s beyond & behind
the tailoring?

14. Selection bias as the new
objective
how to critically question?

15. power and discrimination
written into algorithms,
rendered invisible, become
the new norm

16. corporate bias conflated
with corporate benevolence

17. implications of convenience
over privacy

18. internet of things when your fridge knows
more than mom

19. watch dogs: CTOS as the future of urban life?
http://us.playstation.com/ps4/games/watch-dogs-ps4.html

20. when does intelligence turn into surveillance?
how to maintain control over privacy within ecosystem of competing owners, location sensors, proxy indicators,
sentient nodes, ambient observation, pervasive automation

21. who controls “smart”
& “intelligent” things?
• a new violence around graded
eco-systems of services, with
luxury being defined by access,
in turn based on the digitisation
of discrimination
• IP conflict & governance -
complexity requires giving up
direct oversight & control. Have
we imagined conflict resolution
mechanisms for the Internet of
Things?
• cascading conflict from
ubiquitous inter-connections

22. privatisation of information paying more basic rights

23. expedient profit over principles
https://no-spyware-for-dictators.eu

24. corporations know more
than governments

25. shareholders as primus inter
pares

26. the negotiation of exclusion
outside of franchise &
democracy

27. tech innovation & conflict towards endogenous answers

28. Those who can innovate in the Global South, want to be the next Zuckerberg.
Those who can innovate in the Global North, write themselves in as enduring saviours.

29. JFK with first cohort of Peace Corps, Aug. 1962.
South to South Peace Tech Corps, 2015?

30. Incubators around ICTs for peace
From surrogate projects to more organic development

31. future peace processes challenges & opportunities

32. How will radical transparency & pervasive technology impact closed door,
high-level negotiations? What is the future of Chatham House Rule?

33. Vint Cerf flags how a DDoS attack can be mounted by fridges against the
Bank of America in the future. Impact on a peace process with similar attack?

34. How can the Internet of Things (smart TVs and fridges) be used creatively in a peace process?
Can we reach out to the ‘Other’ interactively using family recipes and bad reality shows?

35. How will millions of lifestreams, freely accessibly on the web, impact in real time negotiations
around identity & resources? How will lifestreams from negotiations impact fragile societies?

36. big data on the granular digital smoke signals on key issues

37. big data for context beyond the event driven, underlying
drivers of peace & violent conflict

38. justice & reconciliation what will it mean for for digital natives?

39. ict4peace for whom? focus & intent matters

40. dignity

41. ethics

42. our reach should exceed our
grasp - or what’s peace
building for?
!
with apologies to Robert Browning

43. thank you
sanjanahattotuwa@ict4peace.org