The Future of Democracy, Money, and the Surveillance State

  Please join us on Friday when we will hear from Alex Gladstein. Technology is rapidly changing governance, economics, and our personal freedoms. From Beijing to Silicon Valley, new kinds of smart cities and social media and electronic payments are offering unprecedented conveniences with different kinds of tradeoffs. Most threaten our privacy. What's wrong with these centralized systems and are there decentralized alternatives?

  Alex Gladstein is Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. He has also served as Vice President of Strategy for the Oslo Freedom Forum since its inception in 2009. In his work Alex has connected hundreds of dissidents and civil society groups with business leaders, technologists, journalists, philanthropists, policymakers, and artists to promote free and open societies. Alex’s writing and views on human rights and technology have appeared in media outlets across the world including The Atlantic, BBC, CNN, Fast Company, The Guardian, Monocle, The New Republic, The New York Times, NowThis, NPR, Quartz, TIME, The Wall Street Journal, and WIRED. He has spoken at universities ranging from MIT to Stanford, presented at the European Parliament and U.S. Department of State, and participated in Singularity University events from Berlin to Johannesburg, where he lectures about decentralized technology. He currently lives in the San Francisco area.