On 28 September 2022 – Gemma Carolillo, Deputy Head of Next Generation Internet Unit, European Commission, presented the NGI initiative at the Connect University Autumn School Secure & Sustainable Digital Infrastructures.
Presenting at the “Web2 vs Web3 – Towards the Next Generation Internet” session, she explained how the Next Generation Internet is contributing to building the “internet of humans”, in line with European rights and principles, and to delivering internet technologies that enable better control of our digital life, respects our privacy, permits better sharing of data, based on user’s preferences, and enables better socio-economic impact based on improved trust.
“The NGI initiative intends to contribute to the internet of the future through developing human-centred technologies, an internet that is open and interoperable, secure and reliable, inclusive, and sustainable”, stated Gemma. She also highlighted the importance of digital commons as it will fuel power to the open internet infrastructure and nature the development of innovative software and applications.
She underlined how the NGI has already funded more than 600 innovators with inclusive and trust-based complementary technology building blocks including services, applications, decentralised ledger technologies such as blockchain, data portability, AI, machine learning, networking, hardware and open source software.
The NGI Solutions cover a broad range of subjects from private search, instant messaging and remote working tools with data privacy, health, energy, finance, supply chains, research, knowledge management and responsible media platforms.
The Deputy Head of Next Generation Internet Unit, concluded that the NGI is an ever-growing community of tech experts. Thanks to the funding opportunities offered by the European Commission, innovators can develop human-centered innovation and successfully foster its adoption by the market.