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

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The digital generation gap

Great FRONTLINE documentary on kids online, definitely worth checking out.  From an online Q&A with the producers: "The report mentions that the Intern…

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The Mediator-in-Chief

Well, I suppose no long time reader of this blog would be surprised to hear I'm in a good mood today. This has been a dark period in our nation's histo…

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Empiricism vs. human nature

Ah the David Brooks I've come to know and love showed up today: "...the current financial crisis — how so many people could be so stupid, incompetent a…

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Shmeat

I just created a group on facebook to discuss this topic further... I'd love to see a discussion arise over there. I must say, I don't like the term &q…

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Advancing meat subsitutes

In response to my prior post on the topic of meat substitutes, I received an email from Jason Matheny, who works with New Harvest, a great non-profit organizati…

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Teaching Reverence for Life

Thanks to my friend Tom Fee for sharing this piece by Albert Schweitzer... "No human being is ever totally and permanently a stranger to another human bein…

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Web-Wide Cops

John Dunn, on the PCWorld web site: "The Internet needs to be globally regulated if it is to have any chance of stopping scams such as security 'scarew…

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The In Vitro Meat X-Prize

I have had a longstanding interest in non-animal based meat production.  I do not believe humans will ever stop eating meat, but if meat could be made via stem…

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Technological literacy and youth

Tamar Lewin in the NYT today: "Good news for worried parents: All those hours their teenagers spend socializing on the Internet are not a bad thing, accord…