January 1, 2025 07:30 IST
Date first published: January 1, 2025 07:30 IST
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When I told a friend that I was spending part of my winter break previewing digital technology, there was silence. “Are you going to stay in this dark mood forever?” she asked. Looking at my notes, I was surprised that despite the continuing risks and impacts of emerging technologies, often affecting the most vulnerable, I still felt hopeful. We are starting the year with some caveats.
Most positive reports on technology development and adoption focus on innovation, economics, and access as indicators of success and growth. But technology is more than just a tool. They are the conditions that shape us, the contexts in which we live, and the controversies that define how we work, speak, and love. So instead of looking to the shiny new thing or the next big thing, I decided to focus on five key milestones where future technology users will think history is in the making. I did.
2024 will go down in history as the year we accepted digital and data privacy as a fundamental right. The passage of the historic Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP) brings India on par with developed countries offering the most comprehensive protection for online personal and personal data. DPDP may not radically change the way we use the internet, but on the back end it imposes strict restrictions and protections on how data can be used in digital transactions. The discussion on digital privacy in India began in 2009 with the creation of the Unique Identification Authority of India, which later became Aadhaar. It took a lot of consultation, protest, mobilization, and increased public literacy for data privacy to become a fundamental right. Going forward, DPDP represents a great step forward in securing our digital future by correctly placing responsibility for the protection and security of personal data on businesses, intermediaries and actors, rather than individuals.
But 2024 was a general election year and a year of misinformation. Throughout the year, we have witnessed the unsupervised, uncontrolled, and weaponized use of misinformation to create political isolation, detailed targeting, incitement of hatred, and the creation of situations of deep uncertainty. It looked and was seen. We are witnessing an entire ecosystem of misinformation forming in this country, so it is impossible to point to just one source or villain. Significant work has been done by the unsung hero of the fact-checking community, which is passionately fighting these misinformation attacks. But we are left with a baseline of naturalized misinformation that disproportionately targets women, misfits, and minority communities in particular. In 2025, we can only hope that the pioneering work started by these amazing information warriors continues to grow, showing that human populations are essential to countering AI misinformation.
Generative AI is the elephant in the room, and no matter what we talk about, we end up talking about the disruption and affordances it brings. This is an emerging technology and we must survive the future it predicts. It is impossible to know what will persist, but one thing to watch is the localization of technology. For a long time, the digital divide has been exacerbated by the language divide. While many other populous language groups have successfully created local language internet zones, think of the Chinese or Spanish internets, for example. India is lagging in the development of local internet. This is due in part to disparities in literacy levels, in part to the country’s linguistic diversity, and in part to the reluctance of businesses not to cater to smaller linguistic communities because it is not likely to be profitable. This is due to Generative AI has made incredible progress in simultaneous multilingual translation. GenAI language apps amplify and support the incredible work of open knowledge advocates and collectives like Wikipedia. This increases the potential for localization of technology, allowing more people to find their voice online.
The next trend worth recognizing is the emergence of universal access within countries. This doesn’t immediately appear in our imaginations of the glossy, consumerist, big-tech Internet narratives we’re used to. However, the consistent expansion of digital access and improved network readiness of India will bear fruit in 2024. For those who remember the struggle to maintain domestic net neutrality without sacrificing universal access, 2025 will be the year that proves both. They can coexist. As more Indians in rural and remote areas connect to the internet, and as India continues to offer the most competitive and affordable digital access and builds more community-driven hubs , expectations for more equitable social and economic structures for mobility are increasing. And development.
And if there’s anything I’m looking forward to more than this, it’s you guys. In the tech industry, 2024 was also the year that people embraced technology. Now more than ever, we are connecting and talking to each other online. The assault on our collective imagination and power continues. But even as technology becomes more integrated and corporatized, the efforts of those who fight to keep the Internet free, open, and empathetic are what make it worth keeping. Perhaps 2025 will be the year we learn to care not only for those around us, but also for those far away who are facing genocide, violence, and hatred. People can only live with hope.
In this new year, we want to remain focused on establishing digital infrastructure as a fundamental right and providing marginalized and first-time users with the opportunity and security to participate in the digital future.
The author is Professor of Global Media at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a teaching assistant at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
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