News

The Swiss Confederation E-ID Public Sandbox Trust Infrastructure

Switzerland’s E-ID journey so far In 2021, the Swiss E-ID law proposition was rejected by a public referendum. The reason for the refusal was due to privacy concerns in the implementation and management of that system. In a nutshell, the idea that a private entity would be in control of…
News type : Blog posts

Exploring the Digital Chessboard: The US, China, and EU’s Approaches to Privacy and Security Governance

By Melanie Kolbe-Guyot, Head of Policy, C4DT   It is no secret that we are in the midst of an intense technological rivalry among the great powers of the United States, China, and the European Union; a rivalry that encompasses economic, security, and geopolitical dimensions. The development, control, and weaponization…
News type : Blog posts

Trace(r)s on the web – Julia Rebstein

Julia Rebstein, a student from the GymInf program, just finished and presented her project “Trace(r)s on the web – Julia Rebstein“. She explains how different types of cookies fonction, and looks at a 1-week sample of browsing sessions from 10 persons. Under the supervision of Linus Gasser and Sandra Siby,…
News type : Blog posts

Digital Governance Book Review: The Platform Society. Public Values in a Connective World (2018)

Van Dijck, J., Poell, T. and M. de Waal (2018). The Platform Society. Public Values in a Connective World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 226 pages. By Matthias Finger This book is already five years old and probably older if one considers the time of writing, an eternity when it comes…
News type : Blog posts

Digital Governance Book Review: Platform Regulation. Exemplars, Approaches and Solutions (2023)

Thomas, Pradip Ninan (2023). Platform Regulation. Exemplars, Approaches and Solutions. Anti-trust, The Right to be Forgotten, GDPR, Privacy, The Equalisation Levy, Digital Platforms Report. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 123 pages. By Matthias Finger Digitalization is such a multifaceted and such a pervasive phenomenon that only a cross-disciplinary approach and culturally…
News type : Blog posts

Digital Governance Book Review: Data Cartels. The Companies That Control and Monopolize our Information (2023)

Lamdan, Sarah (2023). Data Cartels. The Companies That Control and Monopolize our Information. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 203 pages. By Matthias Finger This extremely well documented and researched book introduces the reader to some novel areas of platformization, namely the platformization of actors that manage information, knowledge and intelligence. The author, a…
News type : Blog posts

Digital Governance Book Review: The Rise of the New Network Industries (2021)

Montero, Juan and Matthias Finger (2021). The Rise of the New Network Industries: Regulating Digital Platforms. New York & London: Routledge, 292 pages. By Melanie Kolbe-Guyot “The Rise of the New Network Industries – Regulating Digital Platforms” (2021), by Juan Montero and Matthias Finger, is an excellent resource on the rise and…
News type : Blog posts

ChatGPT and the future of digital health

How we interact with computers has just changed overnight, forever. A new class of generative AI has emerged that will revolutionize communication and information – and health along with it.
News type : Blog posts

Digital Governance Book Review: Cloud Empires (2022)

This installment of C4DT’s Digital Governance Book Review focuses on Vili Lehdonvirta’s 2022 book Cloud Empires. How Digital Platforms are Overtaking the State and how we can Regain Control Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 283 pages. An acutely current and fascinating analysis of the adverse effects digital platforms have on…
News type : Blog posts

Digital Governance Book Review: Click Here to Kill Everybody (2018)

This installment of C4DT’s Digital Governance Book Review focuses on Bruce Schneier's 2018 Click Here to Kill Everybody. Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World New York; London: W.W. Norton & Company, 319 pages. A must-read for anyone interested in the mounting cyber security challenges posed by the rapid growth…
News type : Blog posts

Digital Governance Book Review: Ruling the Root (2002)

With the discussion of this book, the C4DT begins a new publication series, the Digital Governance Book Review: Hereafter, every month, we will summarize and contextualize a book we consider relevant. The book will be either a classic, whose lessons are worth recalling, or a new publication our readers should…
News type : Blog posts

immutable.js, concurrent-safe data structures

Concurrent programming is one the oldest and hardest issues in the Computer Science Book. For years, we have been using locks, big threads sharing the minimum, using optimistic reasoning for "how data will be updated". And we are still stuck with the same issues of some part of the code…
News type : Blog posts

Why Blockchain is Not Yet Working – 2021

The article Why Blockchain Is Not Yet Working goes over six points - for most of these points, research papers exist. For some of them test networks exist. Only one or two are solved in active main networks.
News type : Blog posts

A Journey With Predikon (3/3)

On the 7th of March, the Swiss population voted on a ban for full face coverings, the e-ID Act, and an economic partnership agreement with Indonesia. As with all Swiss referendums since 2019, the EPFL election prediction tool Predikon generated real-time predictions for the vote outcomes.
News type : Blog posts

A Journey With Predikon (2/3)

On March 7, the next Swiss referendum vote will be held, with votes on a ban for full face coverings, the e-ID Act, and the economic partnership agreement with Indonesia. As this national vote approaches, the EPFL election prediction tool, Predikon, is rolling out some improvements with new features.
News type : Blog posts

A Journey With Predikon (1/3)

While votes seem to yield increasingly surprising results, such as the election of Donald Trump in 2016 or the Brexit vote in the UK defying pre-vote polls and initial vote counting predictions, Swiss vote results are swiftly being predicted by Predikon. We will follow the evolution of the project until…
News type : Blog posts