Stefaan Verhulst
Geoff Shullenberger at the New Atlantis: “…The old net delusion was naïve but internally consistent. The new net delusion is fragmented and self-contradictory. It vacillates between radical pessimism about the effects of digital platforms and boosterism when new online happenings seem to revive the old cyber-utopian dreams.
One day, democracy is irreversibly poisoned by social media, which empowers the radical right, authoritarians, and racist, misogynist trolls. The next day, the very same platforms are giving rise to a thrilling resurgence of grassroots activism. The new net delusion more closely resembles a psychotic delusion in the clinical meaning of the word, in which the sufferer often swings between megalomaniacal fantasies of control and panicked sensations of loss of control.
The shift toward a subtle endorsement of manipulation and propaganda — itself an expression of a desire for control — is a result of the fracture of our information ecosystem. The earlier cyber-utopian consensus overrated the value of information in itself and underrated the importance of narratives that bestow meaning on information. The openness of the media system to an endless stream of new users, channels, and data has overwhelmed shared stable narratives, bringing about what L. M. Sacasas calls “narrative collapse.”
But sustaining ideological projects and achieving political ends still requires narratives to extract some meaning from the noise. In the oversaturated attention economy, the most extreme narratives generally stand out. As a result, open networks, which were supposed to counteract propaganda, have instead caused its proliferation — sometimes top-down and state-directed, sometimes crowdsourced, often both.
This helps to explain why the democratization of information channels has been less inimical to authoritarian governments than was anticipated ten years ago. Much like extremists and conspiracy theorists, states with aggressive propaganda arms offer oversimplified messages to keep bewildered online users from having to navigate a swelling tide of data on their own.
Conversely, legacy media, if it remains committed to some degree of neutrality, offers fewer definitive explanatory frameworks, and its messages are accordingly more likely to get lost in the noise. It should not surprise us that news organizations are actually pivoting toward more overt ideological commitments. Adopting forceful narratives, however well they actually make sense of the world, attracts more eyeballs.
Those who celebrated Twitter and Facebook as vehicles of global liberalization and those who now denounce them as gateways into dangerous extremism (often the same people) have erred in seeing the platforms as causally linked to specific politics, rather than to a particular range of styles of politics. Their deeper mistake, however, is to view freedom and control as opposed, rather than as complementary elements of a system. The expansion of freedom through open networks generates informational chaos that, in turn, feeds a demand for reinvigorated control. We can see the demand for control in the new appeal of extreme, even bizarre views that impose an organizing principle on the chaos.
And we can also see the demand for control in the nostalgia for the old gatekeepers, whose demise was once celebrated. Ironically, the only way for these gatekeepers to stay relevant may be to follow the lead of the authoritarians and activists — to abandon any stance of being neutral and above the fray and instead furnish a cohering narrative of their own….(More)”.
Paper by Peter Drahos: “Regulatory capitalism depends heavily on science, but science faces epi-stemic critiques and crises of research integrity. These critiques and crises are outlined and then located within capitalism’s general tragedy of commodification. Drawing on Marx’s insights into the relationship between science, commodity production, and the machine age, the general tragedy of commodification is outlined. From here, the article shifts to discussing some well-known global public good problems relating to access to medicines and access to knowledge. The roots of these problems can be traced back to the way the institution of science has been bent toward processes of capital accumulation. The evidence we have from the history of science suggests that too often its research agendas have been set by capital and the demands of war-making capitalist states. The final part of the article considers whether the ideal of responsiveness might help us to reformulate the way in which we think about the responsibilities and duties of science. It focuses on human rights, citizen science, and the intellectual commons as potential sources of responsiveness. Responsiveness has been a fertile ideal for law and society theorists when it has come to theory building in law and regulation. It also has something to offer the debates around the crises of science….(More)”.
Issue Brief by Andrew Young: “Understanding how and why group data is collected and what can be done to protect children’s rights…While the data protection field largely focuses on individual data harms, it is a focus that obfuscates and exacerbates the risks of data that could put groups of people at risk, such as the residents of a particular village, rather than individuals.
Though not well-represented in the current responsible data literature and policy domains writ large, the challenges group data poses are immense. Moreover, the unique and amplified group data risks facing children are even less scrutinized and understood.
To achieve Responsible Data for Children (RD4C) and ensure effective and legitimate governance of children’s data, government policymakers, data practitioners, and institutional decision makers need to ensure children’s group data are a core consideration in all relevant policies, procedures, and practices….(More)”. (See also Responsible Data for Children).
Chiara Longoni and Luca Cian at Harvard Business School: “More and more companies are leveraging technological advances in machine learning, natural language processing, and other forms of artificial intelligence to provide relevant and instant recommendations to consumers. From Amazon to Netflix to REX Real Estate, firms are using AI recommenders to enhance the customer experience. AI recommenders are also increasingly used in the public sector to guide people to essential services. For example, the New York City Department of Social Services uses AI to give citizens recommendations on disability benefits, food assistance, and health insurance.
However, simply offering AI assistance won’t necessarily lead to more successful transactions. In fact, there are cases when AI’s suggestions and recommendations are helpful and cases when they might be detrimental. When do consumers trust the word of a machine, and when do they resist it? Our research suggests that the key factor is whether consumers are focused on the functional and practical aspects of a product (its utilitarian value) or focused on the experiential and sensory aspects of a product (its hedonic value).
In an article in the Journal of Marketing — based on data from over 3,000 people who took part in 10 experiments — we provide evidence supporting for what we call a word-of-machine effect: the circumstances in which people prefer AI recommenders to human ones.
The word-of-machine effect.
The word-of-machine effect stems from a widespread belief that AI systems are more competent than humans in dispensing advice when utilitarian qualities are desired and are less competent when the hedonic qualities are desired. Importantly, the word-of-machine effect is based on a lay belief that does not necessarily correspond to the reality. The fact of the matter is humans are not necessarily less competent than AI at assessing and evaluating utilitarian attributes. Vice versa, AI is not necessarily less competent than humans at assessing and evaluating hedonic attributes….(More)”.
Blog by Evan S. Michelson: “The overlapping crises the world has experienced in 2020 make clear that resources from multiple sectors — government, private sector, and philanthropy — need to be deployed at multiple scales to better address societal challenges. In particular, science philanthropy has stepped up, helping to advance COVID-19 vaccine development, identify solutions to climate change, and make the tools of scientific inquiry more widely available.
As I write in my recently published book, Philanthropy and the Future of Science and Technology (Routledge, 2020), this linkage between science philanthropy and societal responsibility is one that needs to be continually strengthened and advanced as global challenges become more intertwined and as the relationship between science and society becomes more complex. In fact, science philanthropies have an important, yet often overlooked, role in raising the profile of the societal responsibility of research. One way to better understand the role science philanthropies can and should play in society is to draw on the responsible research and innovation (RRI) framework, a concept developed by scholars from fields such as science & technology policy and science & technology studies. Depending on its configuration, the RRI framework has roughly three core dimensions: anticipatory research that is forward-looking and in search of new discoveries, deliberative and inclusive approaches that better engage and integrate members of the public with the research process, and the adoption of reflexive and responsive dispositions by funders (along with those conducting research) to ensure that societal and public values are accounted for and integrated at the outset of a research effort.
Philanthropies that fund research can more explicitly consider this perspective — even just a little bit — when making their funding decisions, thereby helping to better infuse whatever support they provide for individuals, institutions, and networks with attention to broader societal concerns. For instance, doing so not only highlights the need for science philanthropies to identify and support high-quality early career researchers who are pursuing new avenues of science and technology research, but it also raises considerations of diversity, equity, and inclusion as equally important decision-making criteria for funding. The RRI framework also suggests that foundations working in science and technology should not only help to bring together networks of individual scholars and their host institutions, but that the horizon of such collaborations should be actively extended to include practitioners, decision-makers, users, and communities affected by such investigations. Philanthropies can take a further step and reflexively apply these perspectives to how they operate, how they set their strategies and grantmaking priorities, or even in how they directly manage scientific research infrastructure, which some philanthropic institutions have even begun to do within their own institutions….(More)”.
Paper by Mara Maretti, Vanessa Russo & Emiliano del Gobbo: “The expression ‘open data’ relates to a system of informative and freely accessible databases that public administrations make generally available online in order to develop an informative network between institutions, enterprises and citizens. On this topic, using the semantic network analysis method, the research aims to investigate the communication structure and the governance of open data in the Twitter conversational environment. In particular, the research questions are: (1) Who are the main actors in the Italian open data infrastructure? (2) What are the main conversation topics online? (3) What are the pros and cons of the development and use (reuse) of open data in Italy? To answer these questions, we went through three research phases: (1) analysing the communication network, we found who are the main influencers; (2) once we found who were the main actors, we analysed the online content in the Twittersphere to detect the semantic areas; (3) then, through an online focus group with the main open data influencers, we explored the characteristics of Italian open data governance. Through the research, it has been shown that: (1) there is an Italian open data governance strategy; (2) the Italian civic hacker community plays an important role as an influencer; but (3) there are weaknesses in governance and in practical reuse….(More)”.
Freedom House: “The coronavirus pandemic is accelerating a dramatic decline in global internet freedom. For the 10th consecutive year, users have experienced an overall deterioration in their rights, and the phenomenon is contributing to a broader crisis for democracy worldwide.
In the COVID-19 era, connectivity is not a convenience, but a necessity. Virtually all human activities—commerce, education, health care, politics, socializing—seem to have moved online. But the digital world presents distinct challenges for human rights and democratic governance. State and nonstate actors in many countries are now exploiting opportunities created by the pandemic to shape online narratives, censor critical speech, and build new technological systems of social control.
Three notable trends punctuated an especially dismal year for internet freedom. First, political leaders used the pandemic as a pretext to limit access to information. Authorities often blocked independent news sites and arrested individuals on spurious charges of spreading false news. In many places, it was state officials and their zealous supporters who actually disseminated false and misleading information with the aim of drowning out accurate content, distracting the public from ineffective policy responses, and scapegoating certain ethnic and religious communities. Some states shut off connectivity for marginalized groups, extending and deepening existing digital divides. In short, governments around the world failed in their obligation to promote a vibrant and reliable online public sphere.
Second, authorities cited COVID-19 to justify expanded surveillance powers and the deployment of new technologies that were once seen as too intrusive. The public health crisis has created an opening for the digitization, collection, and analysis of people’s most intimate data without adequate protections against abuses. Governments and private entities are ramping up their use of artificial intelligence (AI), biometric surveillance, and big-data tools to make decisions that affect individuals’ economic, social, and political rights. Crucially, the processes involved have often lacked transparency, independent oversight, and avenues for redress. These practices raise the prospect of a dystopian future in which private companies, security agencies, and cybercriminals enjoy easy access not only to sensitive information about the places we visit and the items we purchase, but also to our medical histories, facial and voice patterns, and even our genetic codes.
The third trend has been the transformation of a slow-motion “splintering” of the internet into an all-out race toward “cyber sovereignty,” with each government imposing its own internet regulations in a manner that restricts the flow of information across national borders. For most of the period since the internet’s inception, business, civil society, and government stakeholders have participated in a consensus-driven process to harmonize technical protocols, security standards, and commercial regulation around the world. This approach allowed for the connection of billions of people to a global network of information and services, with immeasurable benefits for human development, including new ways to hold powerful actors to account….(More)“
OECD Paper by James Mohun and Alex Roberts: “Rules as Code (RaC) is an exciting concept that rethinks one of the core functions of governments: rulemaking. It proposes that governments create an official version of rules (e.g. laws and regulations) in a machine-consumable form, which allows rules to be understood and actioned by computer systems in a consistent way. More than simply a technocratic solution, RaC represents a transformational shift in how governments create rules, and how third parties consume them. Across the world, public sector teams are exploring the concept and its potential as a response to an increasingly complex operating environment and growing pressures on incumbent rulemaking systems. Cracking the Code is intended to help those working both within and outside of government to understand the potential, limitations and implications of RaC, as well as how it could be applied in a public service context….(More)”.
Book by Common Sense: “…collection of essential essays, provocative perspectives, and calls to action that challenge the status quo, and that could—if we are willing to listen—redefine our relationship with technology….The onset of the coronavirus pandemic brought cascading crises and a deeper dependency on technology to keep us connected—but at a cost. We’re using tech for work, education, health care, essential services, and fun. That same technology is spreading misinformation and threatening free and open democracies. It’s widening the gap between rich and poor, taxing our emotional capacities and mental health, and creating social inequities by leaving behind those of us who are underserved and under-connected…(More)”.
Blog by Dominic Campbell: “…We have an opportunity ahead of us to set up a new model which seeds and keeps innovation firmly in the public realm. Using entrepreneurial approaches, we can work together to not only deliver better outcomes for citizens for less but ideate, create and build technology-driven, sustainable services that remain in public hands.
Rebooting public services for the 21st century
Conventional wisdom is that the private sector is best placed to drive radical change with its ecosystem of funders, appetite for risk and perceived ability to attract the best and brightest minds. In the private sector, digital companies have disrupted whole industries. Tech startups are usurping the incumbents, improving experiences and reducing costs before expanding and completely transforming the landscape around them.
We’re talking about the likes of Netflix who started a new model for movie rentals, turned streaming platform for TV and is now one of the world’s largest producers of media. Or Airbnb, which got its start renting a spare room and air mattress, turned one of the largest travel booking platforms and is now moving into building physical hotels and housing. Two organisations who saw an opportunity in a market, and have gone on to reinvent a full-stack service.
The entrepreneurial approach has driven rapid innovation in some fields, but private sector outsourcing for the public realm has rarely led to truly radical innovation. That doesn’t stop the practice, and profits remain in private hands. Old models of innovation, either internal and incremental or left to the private sector, aren’t working.
The public sector can, and does, drive innovation. And yet, we continue to see private profits take off from the runway of publicly funded innovation, the state receiving little of the financial reward for the private sector’s increased role in public service delivery….(More)…Find out more about the Institute of Impossible Ideas.