Projects & Initiatives

Cognizant of the fact that research on the role of information casts a very wide net, the active and vibrant community of researchers at the I+I Centre engage in numerous research projects that are aligned with the following five main research areas.

Governance of Information

Information is the lifeblood of the knowledge economy. As it has shifted from a conduit of commercial transactions (signaling among other things quality and price) to the central good exchanged on information markets, its value has risen - and so has the need to govern the flow of information.

Much of this governance takes place among private actors - individuals keep and relay information to each other, and so do commercial enterprises. Rules - in the form of laws and regulations - aid in this governing of information, from intellectual property to privacy rights, from contractual non-disclosure clauses to mandatory transparency norms, like the ones found in the freedom of information acts. The governance of information is as much about excluding others from information flows, as it is to include - and the societal limits that constrain these decisions. more >>

 

Information & Legitimacy

In this research initiative we look at the role information plays in legitimizing governance and power. This may sound perplexing at first, but quickly becomes clear when we look at two hotbeds of political change. more >>

 

Governance & Virtual Worlds

Tens of millions of individuals around the world engage in virtual worlds. This research area looks at the issue of governance in the context of virtual worlds - from at least two dimensions.

First, we look at the governance structures, institutions, and processes within a virtual world: what are the rules that govern interactions inworld, how do these rules come about, and how are they enforced? Normatively we ask what rules ought to be governing virtual worlds, and why. more >>

 

The Future of Cybergovernance

Judge Easterbrook famously asked: Does the Internet bring about unique policy challenges? Legal academics have grappled to find an answer ever since. If we can't come up with a good, solid rebuttal to Easterbrook, studying cyber-governance may be about as insightful, to paraphrase Judge Easterbrook, as to study the law of the horse.

(For non-lawyers: such a law does not exist; there are norms that govern transactions, including for horses, and liabilities, including for horses, as well as prescribing behavior including vis-a-vis horses; similarly there may be norms for transactions, including those that are concluded online, and for rights, including those that need to be upheld online, and for prohibiting behavior including acts conducted online, but nothing would require special laws and a unique conceptual framework). more >>

 

The Role of Information for Innovation

For many post-industrial nations, competitive advantage has shifted from natural resources, cheap labor and the efficient organization of production to the creation and (mostly market-based) utilization of knowledge - what is often called "innovation".

As innovation turns into an activity societies and nations desire to encourage, we know relatively little how to do that. Policy makers thus have to act more on beliefs than facts.

Part of the problem is that innovation itself is difficult to measure - often measured through proxies and only on the macro scale. Part of the problem is that we do not have enough of an understanding how policy mechanisms, including regulating, affect innovation.

Our research aims at tackling each of these two challenges.

 

Welcome

Projects & Initiatives