Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Richard H. R. Harper: “The Internet has altered how people engage with each other in myriad ways, including offering opportunities for people to act distrustfully. This fascinating set of essays explores the question of trust in computing from technical, socio-philosophical, and design perspectives. Why has the identity of the human user been taken for granted in the design of the Internet? What difficulties ensue when it is understood that security systems can never be perfect? What role does trust have in society in general? How is trust to be understood when trying to describe activities as part of a user requirement program? What questions of trust arise in a time when data analytics are meant to offer new insights into user behavior and when users are confronted with different sorts of digital entities? These questions and their answers are of paramount interest to computer scientists, sociologists, philosophers, and designers confronting the problem of trust.

Springwise: “Most people are uneasy about companies making money from the personal data they make available online, but are happy to turn a blind eye if it means they can continue using services such as Facebook for free. Aiming to give web users more control over what they share, Datacoup is a marketplace that lets anyone sell their personal information direct to advertisers.
The data we create on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Google are worth billions of dollars to advertisers, data brokers and businesses. Through Datacoup, users pick and choose basic information, real time social feeds and even credit and debit card purchases if they’re happy to share them with advertisers, as well deciding which brands can buy their information. Datacoup stores the data — which is all anonymous — under bank-level encryption and acts as a broker to sell it to businesses who want it. It then hands a portion of the sale — typically around USD 8 — back to users on a monthly basis…”

Opinion by Alex Marshall in GovTech: “From the thermostats on our walls to the sensors under the asphalt of our streets, digital technology – the so-called Internet of things – is pervading and infecting every aspect of our lives.
As this technology comes to cities, whether lazy suburban ones or frenetic urban centers, it is increasingly wearing the banner of “Smart Cities.” Like those other S-words and phrases, such as smart growth and sustainability, a smart city can be just about anything to anybody, and therein lies both its utility and danger. I use the term to mean the marrying of our places with the telecommunications revolution that has took hold over the last half century, including the silicon chip, the Internet, the fiber optic line and broadband networks.
Because this transformation is so broad and deep, it’s impossible to list or even dream of all the different ways we will reshape our communities, any more than we could 100 years ago name all the ways the then-new technologies of electricity or phone service would be employed. But we can list some of the ways digital technologies are being used right now. It’s sensors in sewers, face-recognizing cameras in plazas, and individual streetlights being controlled through a dial in an office at City Hall. It’s entire new cities arising out of the ground, like Songdo in South Korea or others in the Middle East….
But as wondrous as these new technologies are, we should remember an old truth: Whether it’s the silicon chip or the entire Internet, they are just tools that deliver power and possibilities to whoever wields them. So, it’s important to know and to think about who will and should control these tools. A policeman can use street cameras with facial recognition software to look for a thief, or a dictator can use them to hunt for dissidents. So far, different cities even within the same country are answering that question differently.”

Paper by Dirk Helbing; “Our society is fundamentally changing. These days, almost nothing works without a computer chip. Processing power doubles every 18 months and will exceed the capabilities of human brains in about ten years from now. Some time ago, IBM’s Big Blue computer already beat the best chess player. Meanwhile, computers perform about 70 percent of all financial transactions, and IBM’s Watson advises customers better than human telephone hotlines. Will computers and robots soon replace skilled labor? In many European countries, unemployment is reaching historical heights. The forthcoming economic and social impact of future information and communication technologies (ICT) will be huge – probably more significant than that caused by the steam engine, or by nano- or biotechnology.
The storage capacity for data is growing even faster than computational capacity. Within just a year we will soon generate more data than in the entire history of humankind. The “Internet of Things” will network trillions of sensors. Unimaginable amounts of data will be collected. Big Data is already being praised as the “oil of the 21st century”. What opportunities and risks does this create for our society, economy, and environment?”

Development Impact and You Toolkit: “This is a toolkit on how to invent, adopt or adapt ideas that can deliver better results. It’s quick to use, simple to apply, and designed to help busy people working in development.


The tools are not coming out of thin air. It draws on a study of many hundreds of tools currently being used – here we have included only the ones which practitioners found most useful. Many of them are well documented and have been widely used in other sectors. In that sense this toolkit is standing on the shoulders of giants, and we are happy to acknowledge that. All the tool descriptions include a key reference, so it is easy to trace back their origins and dive deeper into other publications about their application.”

McKinsey: “From the invention of the printing press to the telephone, the radio, and the Internet, the ways people collaborate change frequently, and the effects of those changes often reverberate through generations. In this video interview, Clay Shirky, author, New York University professor, and leading thinker on the impact of social media, explains the disruptive impact of technology on how people live and work—and on the economics of what we make and consume. This interview was conducted by McKinsey Global Institute partner Michael Chui, and an edited transcript of Shirky’s remarks follows….
Shirky:…The thing I’ve always looked at, because it is long-term disruptive, is changes in the way people collaborate. Because in the history of particularly the Western world, when communications tools come along and they change how people can contact each other, how they can share information, how they can find each other—we’re talking about the printing press, or the telephone, or the radio, or what have you—the changes that are left in the wake of those new technologies often span generations.
The printing press was a sustaining technology for the scientific revolution, the spread of newspapers, the spread of democracy, just on down the list. So the thing I always watch out for, when any source of disruption comes along, when anything that’s going to upset the old order comes along, is I look for what the collaborative penumbra is.”

New report by Hans J. Scholl and Margit C. Scholl: “It has been the object of this article to make the case and present a roadmap for the study of the phenomena of smart governance as well as smart and open governance as an enactment of smart governance in practice. As a concept paper, this contribution aimed at sparking interest and at inspiring scholarly and practitioner discourse in this area of study inside the community of electronic government research and practice, and beyond. The roadmap presented here comprises and details seven elements of smart governance along with eight areas of focus in practice.
Smart governance along with its administrative enactment of smart and open government, it was argued, can help effectively address the three grand challenges to 21st century societal and individual well-being, which are (a) the Third Industrial Revolution with the information revolution at its core, (b) the rapidity of change and the lack of timely and effective government intervention, and (c) expansive government spending and exorbitant public debt financing. Although not seen as a panacea, it was also argued that smart governance principles could guide the relatively complex administrative enactment of smart and open government more intelligently than traditional static and inflexible governance approaches could do.
Since much of the road ahead metaphorically speaking leads through uncharted territory, dedicated research is needed that accompanies projects in this area and evaluates them. Research could further be embedded into practical projects providing for fast and systematic learning. We believe that such embedding of research into smart governance projects should become an integral part of smart projects’ agendas.”

Paper by Lee Rainie and Susannah Fox from Pew: “The overall verdict: The internet has been a plus for society and an especially good thing for individual users… This report is the first part of a sustained effort through 2014 by the Pew Research Center to mark the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Lee wrote a paper on March 12, 1989 proposing an “information management” system that became the conceptual and architectural structure for the Web.  He eventually released the code for his system—for free—to the world on Christmas Day in 1990. It became a milestone in easing the way for ordinary people to access documents and interact over a network of computers called the internet—a system that linked computers and that had been around for years. The Web became especially appealing after Web browsers were perfected in the early 1990s to facilitate graphical displays of pages on those linked computers.”

Press Release: “The European Commission is calling on those involved in creating smart cities to publish their efforts in order to help build an open planning movement from the ground up.
The challenge is being issued to city administrations, small and large companies and other organisations to go public with their ICT, energy and mobility plans, so that all parties can learn from each other and grow the smart city market. Through collaboration as well as traditional competition, the Europe will get smarter, more competitive and more sustainable.
The Commission is looking for both new commitments to “get smart” and for interested parties to share their current and past successes. Sharing these ideas will feed the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (see IP/13/1159 and MEMO/13/1049) and networks such as the Smart Cities Stakeholder Platform, the Green Digital Charter, the Covenant of Mayors, and CIVITAS.
What’s in it for me?
If you are working in the smart cities field, joining the open planning movement will help you find the right partners, get better access to finance and make it easier to learn from your peers. You will help grow the marketplace you work in, and create export opportunities outside of Europe.
If you live in a city, you will benefit sooner from better traffic flows, greener buildings, and cheaper or more convenient services.
European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes said, “For those of us living in cities, – we need to make sure they are smart cities. Nothing else makes sense. And nothing else is such a worldwide economic opportunity – so we need to get sharing!”.
Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger said: “Cities and Communities can only get smart if mayors and governors are committed to apply innovative industrial solutions”.
In June 2014 the Commission will then seek to analyse, group and promote the best plans and initiatives.”