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The Internet, connected personal devices, and networked information systems underpin and mediate a significant and increasing amount of social, economic, and governmental processes. The new technological artifacts are conceptualized by developers, scientists, and engineers who make decisions about the technical design of these applications. Adoption of such technological applications can transform society in a variety of ways. Therefore, design choices are not neutral; they have implications on how these applications can and hopefully will be used in society, for better or for worse. Ben will present his ongoing work with governments, academia, and the private sector, who are increasingly recognizing that the use of networked systems and data science have important ethical implications for society, and should be designed carefully.

Bio:
Ben Zevenbergen is a visiting research scholar at the CITP. His work is mostly multidisciplinary investigations in the ethical, social, and legal impacts of Internet technologies, and vice versa. At CITP he is working on case studies to further develop a framework and theory about the design of Internet projects that take social functional requirements into account in a meaningful way.

Ben is currently working on a PhD at the Oxford Internet Institute where he uses socio-legal methods to investigate the upcoming field of privacy engineering. Next to his doctoral work, Ben been working actively with computer scientists and network engineers to develop a set of guidelines of ethics in networked systems research.

Before returning to academia, Ben was a policy advisor to a politician in the European Parliament, working on Europe’s Digital Agenda and other Internet policy. Previously, Ben worked as an ICT/IP lawyer and policy consultant in the Netherlands. Bendert holds a degree in law, specialising in Information Law.