Stanford CIS

Colin Rule

Non-Residential Fellow

Colin Rule has worked at the intersection of technology and conflict resolution for the last two decades. He is CEO of Modria.com, an online dispute resolution service provider in Silicon Valley, and Co-Chair of the Advisory Board of the National Center for Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass-Amherst. From 2003 to 2011 he served as eBay and PayPal's first director of Online Dispute Resolution, designing and implementing systems that now resolve more than 60 million disputes each year.

Mr. Rule is the author of Online Dispute Resolution for Business, published by Jossey-Bass in September 2002. He has presented and trained around the world for organizations including the U.S. Department of State, UNCITRAL, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, as well as teaching at UMass-Amherst, Stanford, Southern Methodist University, and Hastings College of the Law. He has written and been interviewed extensively about the Internet since 1999, with columns and articles appearing in ACResolution, Consensus, Dispute Resolution Magazine, and Peace Review. He holds a master's degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in conflict resolution and technology, a B.A. in peace studies from Haverford College, and he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eritrea from 1995-1997.

Recent articles

Blog

Beer Summits and Presidential Mediations

I've wanted to post something on Obama's Beer Summit for some time, but I thought it best to let the dust settle before weighing in.  The racial hot but…

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Regulating Search Engine Optimization

From an anonymous executive, today on Tech Crunch: "Imagine, if you will, that the entire Internet is contained within a single continent. That continent…

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Born into a point of view

Peggy Noonan in the WSJ: "Sarah Palin's resignation gives Republicans a new opportunity to see her plain—to review the bidding, see her strengths, ackn…

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Debunking evo psych

Sharon Begley in Newsweek: "These have not been easy days for evolutionary psychology. For years the loudest critics have been social scientists, feminists…

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Go big or go home

Reading today's Paul Krugman: "On one side there’s Barack the Policy Wonk, whose command of the issues — and ability to explain those issues in plain E…

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Today's Father Coughlin

Ebert on O'Reilly: "I am not interested in discussing O'Reilly's politics here. That would open a hornet's nest. I am more concerned about…

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growing organs in a lab

"Why transplant an organ when you can grow yourself a new one? This research isn’t something that might happen in the distant future.  It’s being used tod…

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Water from the air

I've long thought a technology like this could be revolutionary for the developing world.  The notion that all the energy required could come from the sun i…

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Obama in Egypt

This is how I want my President to speak to the world.  I strongly urge you to read the whole thing. "We meet at a time of tension between the United Stat…