Cloud Computing is rapidly transforming not only computing, but the very fundamentals of how we process, store, and use information—and information is the very basis of civilization.  Cloud Computing is historically unique by simultaneously being an innovation ecosystem, production platform, and global marketplace. While the technology and business models are almost inherently global in scale, national politics and regulations will powerfully influence how Cloud Computing unfolds across the world. Critical issues such as information privacy (who gets to see and use information), security (how to protect information from unauthorized access), and communications network policy (the political economy of broadband and wireless networks) will be settled at the national or regional level. There are powerful tensions as US-based multinational firms are rapidly taking over the global Cloud Computing industry. What are the appropriate frameworks to understand how the competitive dynamics are unfolding? What are the options for national-level players? How should we understand the policy issues as they unfold? What is the role of Japan and Asia as this transformation unfolds?

Kenji Kushida is the Takahashi Research Associate in Japanese Studies at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a graduate research associate at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy. Kushida has an MA in East Asian studies and BAs in economics and East Asian studies, all from Stanford University.

Officials, scholars, and activists have long believed in improving environmental policy in developing countries by fostering desirable values and practices through networks of experts. Tim Forsyth will question this faith by arguing that all too often such networks ignore the limitations of global environmental assessments and the politics involved in producing and using expert opinion. Using preliminary evidence from Indonesia and Thailand, he will show how Procrustean advice and local agendas affect efforts to mitigate climate change, and what that can mean for the generation of greenhouse gas (through energy use) and its absorption in sinks (through forest conservation). Forsyth argues that more deliberative institutions of environmental information, judgment, and decision can better accommodate local knowledge and vulnerabilities, strike productive balances between mitigation and adaptation, and thereby address climate change in Southeast Asia in more timely and effective ways.

Tim Forsyth is Reader in Environment and Development in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published widely on matters of politics of environmental science and policy in Southeast Asia including Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science (Routledge, 2003); Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand (with A. Walker, Washington University Press, 2008); and International Investment and Climate Change: Energy Technologies for Developing Countries (Earthscan, 1999). He was a co-author of the chapter on climate change in the international Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005).