Renovating democracy from the bottom up

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Nathan Gardels at the Washington Post: “The participatory power of social media is a game changer for governance. It levels the playing field among amateurs and experts, peers and authorities and even challenges the legitimacy of representative government. Its arrival coincides with and reinforces the widespread distrust of elites across the Western world, ripening the historical moment for direct democracy.

For the first time, an Internet-based movement has come to power in a major country, Italy, under the slogan “Participate, don’t delegate!” All of the Five Star Movement’s parliamentarians, who rule the country in a coalition with the far-right League party, were nominated and elected to stand for office online. And they have appointed the world’s first minister for direct democracy, Riccardo Fraccaro.

In Rome this week, he explained the participatory agenda of Italy’s ruling coalition government to The WorldPost at a meeting of the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy. “Citizens must be granted the same possibility to actively intervene in the process of managing and administrating public goods as normally carried out by their elected representatives,” he enthused. “What we have witnessed in our democracy is a drift toward ‘partyocracy,’ in which a restricted circle of policymakers have been so fully empowered with decision-making capacity that they could virtually ignore and bypass the public will. The mere election of a representative every so many years is no longer sufficient to prevent this from happening. That is why our government will take the next step forward in order to innovate and enhance our democracy.”

Fraccaro went on: “Referenda, public petitions and the citizens’ ballot initiative are nothing other than the direct means available for the citizenry to submit laws that political parties are not willing to propose or to reject rules approved by political parties that are not welcome by the people. Our aim, therefore, is to establish the principles and practices of direct democracy alongside the system of representative government in order to give real, authentic sovereignty to the citizens.”

At the Rome forum, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi di Maio, a Five Star member, railed against the technocrats and banks he says are trying to frustrate the will of the people. He promised forthcoming changes in the Italian constitution to follow through on Fraccaro’s call for citizen-initiated propositions that will go to the public ballot if the legislature does not act on them.

The program that has so far emerged out of the government’s participatory agenda is a mixed bag. It includes everything from anti-immigrant and anti-vaccine policies to the expansion of digital networks and planting more trees. In a move that has unsettled the European Union authorities as well as Italy’s non-partisan, indirectly-elected president, the governing coalition last week proposed both a tax cut and the provision of a universal basic income — despite the fact that Italy’s long-term debt is already 130 percent of GDP.

The Italian experiment warrants close attention as a harbinger of things to come elsewhere. It reveals a paradox for governance in this digital age: the more participation there is, the greater the need for the counterbalance of impartial mediating practices and institutions that can process the cacophony of voices, sort out the deluge of contested information, dispense with magical thinking and negotiate fair trade-offs among the welter of conflicting interests….(More)”.

Democracy Disconnected: Participation and Governance in a City of the South

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Fiona Anciano and Laurence Piper: “Why is dissatisfaction with local democracy endemic, despite the spread of new participatory institutions? This book argues that a key reason is the limited power of elected local officials, especially to produce the City. City Hall lacks control over key aspects of city decision-making, especially under conditions of economic globalisation and rapid urbanisation in the urban South.

Demonstrated through case studies of daily politics in Hout Bay, Democracy Disconnected shows how Cape Town residents engage local rule. In the absence of democratic control, urban rule in the Global South becomes a complex and contingent framework of multiple and multilevel forms of urban governance (FUG) that involve City Hall, but are not directed by it. Bureaucratic governance coexists alongside market, developmental and informal forms of governance. This disconnect of democracy from urban governance segregates people spatially, socially, but also politically. Thus, while the residents of Hout Bay may live next to each other, they do not live with each other…(More)”.

What is machine learning?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chris Meserole at Brookings: “In the summer of 1955, while planning a now famous workshop at Dartmouth College, John McCarthy coined the term “artificial intelligence” to describe a new field of computer science. Rather than writing programs that tell a computer how to carry out a specific task, McCarthy pledged that he and his colleagues would instead pursue algorithms that could teach themselves how to do so. The goal was to create computers that could observe the world and then make decisions based on those observations—to demonstrate, that is, an innate intelligence.

The question was how to achieve that goal. Early efforts focused primarily on what’s known as symbolic AI, which tried to teach computers how to reason abstractly. But today the dominant approach by far is machine learning, which relies on statistics instead. Although the approach dates back to the 1950s—one of the attendees at Dartmouth, Arthur Samuels, was the first to describe his work as “machine learning”—it wasn’t until the past few decades that computers had enough storage and processing power for the approach to work well. The rise of cloud computing and customized chips has powered breakthrough after breakthrough, with research centers like OpenAI or DeepMind announcing stunning new advances seemingly every week.

The extraordinary success of machine learning has made it the default method of choice for AI researchers and experts. Indeed, machine learning is now so popular that it has effectively become synonymous with artificial intelligence itself. As a result, it’s not possible to tease out the implications of AI without understanding how machine learning works—as well as how it doesn’t….(More)”.

Why Is Behavioral Economics So Popular?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

David Gal at the New York Times: “Behavioral economics seems to have captured the popular imagination. Authors like Michael Lewis write about it in best sellers like “The Undoing Project,” while pioneers of the field like Daniel Kahneman popularize it in books like “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” Its lexicon of “nudging,” “framing bias” and “the endowment effect” has become part of the vernacular of business, finance and policymaking. Even “Crazy Rich Asians,” the summer’s blockbuster romantic comedy, features an explicit nod to “loss aversion,” a key concept in the field.

What is behavioral economics, and why has it become so popular? The field has been described by Richard Thaler, one of its founders, as “economics done with strong injections of good psychology.” Proponents view it as a way to make economics more accurate by incorporating more realistic assumptions about how humans behave.

In practice, much of behavioral economics consists in using psychological insights to influence behavior. These interventions tend to be small, often involving subtle changes in how choices are presented: for example, whether you have to “opt in” to a 401(k) savings plan versus having to “opt out.” In this respect, behavioral economics can be thought of as endorsing the outsize benefits of psychological “tricks,” rather than as calling for more fundamental behavioral or policy change.

The popularity of such low-cost psychological interventions, or “nudges,” under the label of behavioral economics is in part a triumph of marketing. It reflects the widespread perception that behavioral economics combines the cleverness and fun of pop psychology with the rigor and relevance of economics.

Yet this triumph has come at a cost. In order to appeal to other economists, behavioral economists are too often concerned with describing how human behavior deviates from the assumptions of standard economic models, rather than with understanding why people behave the way they do.

Consider loss aversion. This is the notion that losses have a bigger psychological impact than gains do — that losing $5, for example, feels worse than gaining $5 feels good. Behavioral economists point to loss aversion as a psychological glitch that explains a lot of puzzling human conduct. But in an article published this year, the psychologist Derek D. Rucker and I contend that the behaviors most commonly attributed to loss aversion are a result of other causes….

There is nothing wrong with achieving small victories with minor interventions. The worry, however, is that the perceived simplicity and efficacy of such tactics will distract decision makers from more substantive efforts — for example, reducing electricity consumption by taxing it more heavily or investing in renewable energy resources.

It is great that behavioral economics is receiving its due; the field has contributed significantly to our understanding of ourselves. But in all the excitement, it’s important to keep an eye on its limits….(More)”.

The law and ethics of big data analytics: A new role for international human rights in the search for global standards

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

David Nersessian at Business Horizons: “The Economist recently declared that digital information has overtaken oil as the world’s most valuable commodity. Big data technology is inherently global and borderless, yet little international consensus exists over what standards should govern its use. One source of global standards benefitting from considerable international consensus might be used to fill the gap: international human rights law.

This article considers the extent to which international human rights law operates as a legal or ethical constraint on global commercial use of big data technologies. By providing clear baseline standards that apply worldwide, human rights can help shape cultural norms—implemented as ethical practices and global policies and procedures—about what businesses should do with their information technologies. In this way, human rights could play a broad and important role in shaping business thinking about the proper handling of this increasingly valuable commodity in the modern global society…(More)”.

Nervous States

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by William Davies: “Why do we no longer trust experts, facts and statistics? Why has politics become so fractious and warlike? What caused the populist political upheavals of recent years?How can the history of ideas help us understand our present?

In this bold and far-reaching exploration of our new political landscape, William Davies reveals how feelings have come to reshape our world. Drawing deep on history, philosophy, psychology and economics, he shows how some of the fundamental assumptions that defined the modern world have dissolved. With advances in science and medicine, the division between mind and body is no longer so clear-cut. The spread of digital and military technology has left us not quite at war nor exactly at peace. In the murky new space between mind and body, between war and peace, lie nervous states: with all of us relying increasingly on feeling rather than fact.

In a book of profound insight and astonishing breadth, William Davies reveals the origins of this new political reality. Nervous States is a compelling and essential guide to the turbulent times we are living through….(More)”.

Translating science into business innovation: The case of open food and nutrition data hackathons

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Christopher Tucci, Gianluigi Viscusi and Heidi Gautschi: “In this article, we explore the use of hackathons and open data in corporations’ open innovation portfolios, addressing a new way for companies to tap into the creativity and innovation of early-stage startup culture, in this case applied to the food and nutrition sector. We study the first Open Food Data Hackdays, held on 10-11 February 2017 in Lausanne and Zurich. The aim of the overall project that the Hackdays event was part of was to use open food and nutrition data as a driver for business innovation. We see hackathons as a new tool in the innovation manager’s toolkit, a kind of live crowdsourcing exercise that goes beyond traditional ideation and develops a variety of prototypes and new ideas for business innovation. Companies then have the option of working with entrepreneurs and taking some of the ideas forward….(More)”.

(In)Equalities and Social (In)Visibilities in the Digital Age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Intro by Inês Amaral, Maria João Barata and Vasco Almeida to the Special issue of Interações: “The influence of new technologies in public and private spheres of society, rather than a reformulation, has given rise to a new social field and directly interferes with how we perceive the world, relate to it and to others. One should note that in Pierre Bourdieu›s (2001) theory, field arises as a configuration of socially distributed relations.
Progressively, a universe of socialisation has emerged and consolidated: cyber-space. Although virtual, it exists and produces effects. It can be defined as the space boosted by the different digital communication platforms and assumes itself as an
individual communication model, allowing the receiver to be simultaneously emitter. Space of flows (Castells, 1996), cyberspace translates the social dimension of the Internet, enabling the diffusion of communication/information on a global scale. This causes an intense process of inclusion and exclusion of people in the network.
The reference to info-inclusive and info-excluded societies of the digital scenario is imperative when it is reflected in the geography of the new socio-technological spaces. The dynamics of these territories are directly associated with the way social,
demographic, economic and technological variables condition each other, revealing the potential for dissemination of information and knowledge through technologies.
In this special issue of the journal Interações we propose a reflection on (In)Equalities and Social (In)Visibilities in the Digital Age. The articles in the volume present research results and/or theoretical reflection on social visibilities and invisibilities
created by dynamics of media and digital inclusion and exclusion, relations between the digital and inequalities in different geographical, social and professional contexts, digital literacy and vulnerable social groups, conditioning created by technology to the individual in social context, among others….(More)”

Privacy and Interoperability Challenges Could Limit the Benefits of Education Technology

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Katharina Ley Best and John F. Pane: “The expansion of education technology is transforming the learning environment in classrooms, schools, school systems, online, and at home. The rise of education technology brings with it an increased opportunity for the collection and application of data, which are valuable resources for educators, schools, policymakers, researchers, and software developers.

RAND researchers examine some of the possible implications of growing data collection and availability related to education technology. Specifically, this Perspective discusses potential data infrastructure challenges that could limit data usefulness, consider data privacy implications in an education technology context, and review privacy principles that could help educators and policymakers evaluate the changing education data privacy landscape in anticipation of potential future changes to regulations and best practices….(More)”.

Open Data, Grey Data, and Stewardship: Universities at the Privacy Frontier.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Christine L. Borgman: “As universities recognize the inherent value in the data they collect and hold, they encounter unforeseen challenges in stewarding those data in ways that balance accountability, transparency, and protection of privacy, academic freedom, and intellectual property. Two parallel developments in academic data collection are converging: (1) open access requirements, whereby researchers must provide access to their data as a condition of obtaining grant funding or publishing results in journals; and (2) the vast accumulation of “grey data” about individuals in their daily activities of research, teaching, learning, services, and administration.

The boundaries between research and grey data are blurring, making it more difficult to assess the risks and responsibilities associated with any data collection. Many sets of data, both research and grey, fall outside privacy regulations such as HIPAA, FERPA, and PII. Universities are exploiting these data for research, learning analytics, faculty evaluation, strategic decisions, and other sensitive matters. Commercial entities are besieging universities with requests for access to data or for partnerships to mine them. The privacy frontier facing research universities spans open access practices, uses and misuses of data, public records requests, cyber risk, and curating data for privacy protection. This Article explores the competing values inherent in data stewardship and makes recommendations for practice by drawing on the pioneering work of the University of California in privacy and information security, data governance, and cyber risk….(More)”.