Stefaan Verhulst

Law, Metaphor, and the Encrypted Machine

Curated on March 20, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Lex Gill: “The metaphors we use to imagine, describe and regulate new technologies have profound legal implications. This paper offers a critical examination of the metaphors we choose to describe encryption technology in particular, and aims to uncover some of the normative and legal implications of those choices.

Part I provides a basic description of encryption as a mathematical and technical process. At the heart of this paper is a question about what encryption is to the law. It is therefore fundamental that readers have a shared understanding of the basic scientific concepts at stake. This technical description will then serve to illustrate the host of legal and political problems arising from encryption technology, the most important of which are addressed in Part II. That section also provides a brief history of various legislative and judicial responses to the encryption “problem,” mapping out some of the major challenges still faced by jurists, policymakers and activists. While this paper draws largely upon common law sources from the United States and Canada, metaphor provides a core form of cognitive scaffolding across legal traditions. Part III explores the relationship between metaphor and the law, demonstrating the ways in which it may shape, distort or transform the structure of legal reasoning. Part IV demonstrates that the function served by legal metaphor is particularly determinative wherever the law seeks to integrate novel technologies into old legal frameworks. Strong, ubiquitous commercial encryption has created a range of legal problems for which the appropriate metaphors remain unfixed. Part V establishes a loose framework for thinking about how encryption has been described by courts and lawmakers — and how it could be. What does it mean to describe the encrypted machine as a locked container or building? As a combination safe? As a form of speech? As an untranslatable library or an unsolvable puzzle? What is captured by each of these cognitive models, and what is lost? This section explores both the technological accuracy and the legal implications of each choice. Finally, the paper offers a few concluding thoughts about the utility and risk of metaphor in the law, reaffirming the need for a critical, transparent and lucid appreciation of language and the power it wields….(More)”.

Co-creation in Urban Governance: From Inclusion to Innovation

Curated on March 20, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Dorthe Hedensted Lund: “This article sets out to establish what we mean by the recent buzzword ‘co-creation’ and what practical application this concept entails for democracy in urban governance, both in theory and practice.

The rise of the concept points to a shift in how public participation is understood. Whereas from the 1970s onwards the discussions surrounding participation centred on rights and power, following Sherry Arnstein, participation conceptualised as co-creation instead focuses on including diverse forms of knowledge in urban processes in order to create innovative solutions to complex problems.

Consequently, democratic legitimacy now relies to a much greater extent on output, rather than input legitimacy. Rather than provision of inclusive spaces for democratic debate and empowerment of the deprived, which have been the goals of numerous urban participatory efforts in the past, it is the ability to solve complex problems that has become the main criterion for the evaluation of co-creation. Furthermore, conceptualising participation as co-creation has consequences for the roles available to both citizens and public administrators in urban processes, which has implications for urban governance. An explicit debate, both in academia and in practice, about the normative content and implications of conceptualising participation as co-creation is therefore salient and necessary….(More).

Comparing published scientific journal articles to their pre-print versions

Curated on March 19, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Martin Klein, Peter Broadwell, Sharon E. Farb and Todd Grappone: “Academic publishers claim that they add value to scholarly communications by coordinating reviews and contributing and enhancing text during publication. These contributions come at a considerable cost: US academic libraries paid $$ 1.7$ billion for serial subscriptions in 2008 alone. Library budgets, in contrast, are flat and not able to keep pace with serial price inflation. We have investigated the publishers’ value proposition by conducting a comparative study of pre-print papers from two distinct science, technology, and medicine corpora and their final published counterparts. This comparison had two working assumptions: (1) If the publishers’ argument is valid, the text of a pre-print paper should vary measurably from its corresponding final published version, and (2) by applying standard similarity measures, we should be able to detect and quantify such differences.

Our analysis revealed that the text contents of the scientific papers generally changed very little from their pre-print to final published versions. These findings contribute empirical indicators to discussions of the added value of commercial publishers and therefore should influence libraries’ economic decisions regarding access to scholarly publications….(More)”.

Democracy Without Participation: A New Politics for a Disengaged Era

Curated on March 19, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Phil Parvin at Rex Publica: “Changing patterns of political participation observed by political scientists over the past half-century undermine traditional democratic theory and practice. The vast majority of democratic theory, and deliberative democratic theory in particular, either implicitly or explicitly assumes the need for widespread citizen participation. It requires that all citizens possess the opportunity to participate and also that they take up this opportunity. But empirical evidence gathered over the past half-century strongly suggests that many citizens do not have a meaningful opportunity to participate in the ways that many democratic theorists require, and do not participate in anything like the numbers that they believe is necessary.

This paper outlines some of the profound changes that have been experienced by liberal democratic states in the 20th and early 21st Centuries, changes which are still ongoing, and which have resulted in declines in citizens participation and trust, the marginalisation of citizens from democratic life, and the entrenchment of social and economic inequalities which have damaged democracy. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom in rejecting the idea that the future of democracy lies in encouraging more widespread participation.

The paper takes seriously the failure of the strategies adopted by many states to increase participation, especially among the poor, and suggests that instead of requiring more of citizens, we should in fact be requiring less of them. Instead of seeking to encourage more citizen participation, we should acknowledge that citizens will probably not participate in the volume, or in the ways, many democratic theorists would like, and that therefore we need an alternative approach: a regime which can continue to produce democratic outcomes, and which satisfies the requirements of political equality, in the absence of widespread participation by citizens….(More)”.

Coastal research increasingly depends on citizen scientists

Curated on March 19, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Brenna Visser at CS Monitor: “…This monthly ritual is a part of the COASST survey, a program that relies on data taken by volunteers to study large-scale patterns in seabird populations on the West Coast. The Haystack Rock Awareness Program conducts similar surveys for sea stars and marine debris throughout the year.

Surveys like these play a small part in a growing trend in the science community to use citizen scientists as a way to gather massive amounts of data. Over the weekend, marine scientists and conservationists came to Cannon Beach for an annual Coast Conference, a region wide event to discuss coastal science and stewardship.

Whether the presentation was about ocean debris, marine mammals, seabirds, or ocean jellies, many relied on the data collection work of volunteers throughout the state. A database for citizen science programs called Citsci.org, which recorded only a few dozen groups 10 years ago, now has more than 500 groups registered across the country, with new ones registering every day….

Part of the rise has to do with technology, she said. Apps that help identify species and allow unprecedented access to information have driven interest up and removed barriers that would have otherwise made it harder to collect data without formal training. Another is the science community slowly coming around to accept citizen science.

“I think there’s a lot of reticence in the science community to use citizen science. There’s some doubt the data collected is of the precision or accuracy that is needed to document phenomena,” Parrish said. “But as it grows, the more standardized it becomes. What we’re seeing right now is a lot of discussion in citizen science programs asking what they need to do to get to that level.”…While a general decline in federal funding for scientific research could play a factor in the science community’s acceptance of using volunteer-collected data, Parrish said, regardless of funding, there are some projects only citizen scientists can accomplish….(More)”

How Incorporating Behavioral Science into Cash Transfer Programs Is Changing Lives

Curated on March 18, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Josh Martin and Laura Rawlings at Next Billion: “…Today, a new generation of cash transfer programs – currently being piloted in several countries in Africa – uses behavioral insights to help beneficiaries decide how to spend their cash and follow through on those plans. But the circumstances under which they receive the funds—like how long they have to wait on payment day or how close the local market is to the payment site—impact whether they put that intention into action. Other often-overlooked program design factors, such as the frequency of payments or how the purpose of the cash is framed, can disproportionately affect how people spend (or save) their money. Insights from behavioral science show that people act in predictable ways—and we can use that knowledge to design cash transfer programs that support people’s goals and continue to set them up for success.

For example, in our work, we have found that the way payments are made often caters more to administrators’ convenience than beneficiaries’ needs. But some innovators are already changing the timing, location and frequency of payments to suit recipients. For instance, GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that provides unconditional cash transfers, is experimenting with allowing beneficiaries in Kenya to choose when they’d prefer their payments to occur. This is important because getting money at the wrong time can actually increase stress. When cash arrives infrequently, it forces recipients to stretch funds until the next payment. But if it is transferred too often, recipients must save slowly over time, pulling their attention away from other critical tasks. While it isn’t always possible to pay everyone according to their ideal schedule, even offering some payment flexibility may help recipients achieve their goals more quickly.

A simple prompt for beneficiaries to consider how they’d like to use their money right before receiving it can also support their financial goals. Other tactics include reminders to follow through on plans, systems to provide feedback to people on their savings progress, and wallets to help them physically separate (and thus mentally separate) what they want to spend routinely from what they want to set aside for the future. Many inexpensive options exist that are fairly easy to put in place.

To bring more of these solutions to cash transfer programs, ideas42 and the World Bank, with financial support from the Global Innovation Fund, are launching a new initiative, Behavioral Design for Cash Transfer Programs. Working with government partners to identify the best options for incorporating behavioral designs in cash transfer programs across several African nations is a critical next step in improving this anti-poverty tool. We can then work to make behavioral science an automatic part of any social protection program that features a cash transfer….(More)”.

Say goodbye to the information age: it’s all about reputation now

Curated on March 18, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Gloria Origgi at Aeon: “There is an underappreciated paradox of knowledge that plays a pivotal role in our advanced hyper-connected liberal democracies: the greater the amount of information that circulates, the more we rely on so-called reputational devices to evaluate it. What makes this paradoxical is that the vastly increased access to information and knowledge we have today does not empower us or make us more cognitively autonomous. Rather, it renders us more dependent on other people’s judgments and evaluations of the information with which we are faced.

We are experiencing a fundamental paradigm shift in our relationship to knowledge. From the ‘information age’, we are moving towards the ‘reputation age’, in which information will have value only if it is already filtered, evaluated and commented upon by others. Seen in this light, reputation has become a central pillar of collective intelligence today. It is the gatekeeper to knowledge, and the keys to the gate are held by others. The way in which the authority of knowledge is now constructed makes us reliant on what are the inevitably biased judgments of other people, most of whom we do not know.

Let me give some examples of this paradox. If you are asked why you believe that big changes in the climate are occurring and can dramatically harm future life on Earth, the most reasonable answer you’re likely to provide is that you trust the reputation of the sources of information to which you usually turn for acquiring information about the state of the planet. In the best-case scenario, you trust the reputation of scientific research and believe that peer-review is a reasonable way of sifting out ‘truths’ from false hypotheses and complete ‘bullshit’ about nature. In the average-case scenario, you trust newspapers, magazines or TV channels that endorse a political view which supports scientific research to summarise its findings for you. In this latter case, you are twice-removed from the sources: you trust other people’s trust in reputable science….(More)”.

The Promise of Community Citizen Science

Curated on March 17, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Ramya Chari, Luke J. Matthews, Marjory S. Blumenthal, Amanda F. Edelman, and Therese Jones: “Citizen science is public participation in research and scientific endeavors. Citizens volunteer as data collectors in science projects; collaborate with scientific experts on research design; and actively lead and carry out research, exerting a high degree of control and ownership over scientific activities. The last type — what we refer to as community citizen science — tends to involve action-oriented research to support interventional activities or policy change. This type of citizen science can be of particular importance to those working at the nexus of science and decisionmaking.

The authors examine the transformative potential of community citizen science for communities, science, and decisionmaking. The Perspective is based on the authors’ experiences working in collaboration with community groups, extensive readings of the scientific literature, and numerous interviews with leading scholars and practitioners in the fields of citizen science and participatory research. It first discusses models of citizen science in general, including community citizen science, and presents a brief history of its rise. It then looks at possible factors motivating the development of community citizen science, drawing from an exploration of the relationships among citizens, science, and decisionmaking. The final section examines areas in which community citizen science may exhibit promise in terms of outcomes and impacts, discusses concerns that may hinder its overall potential, and assesses the roles different stakeholders may play to continue to develop community citizen science into a positive force for science and society.

Key Findings

At Its Core, Citizen Science Is Public Participation in Research and Scientific Endeavors

Citizens volunteer as data collectors in science projects, collaborate with scientific experts on research design, and actively lead and carry out research.
It is part of a long tradition of rebirth of inventors, scientists, do-it-yourselfers, and makers at all levels of expertise.
Instead of working alone, today’s community citizen scientists take advantage of new technologies for networking and coordination to work collaboratively; learn from each other; and share knowledge, insights, and findings.

The Democratization of Science and the Increasingly Distributed Nature of Expertise Are Not Without Concern

There is some tension and conflict between current standards of practice and the changes required for citizen science to achieve its promising future.
There is also some concern about the potential for bias, given that some efforts begin as a form of activism.

Yet the Efforts of Community Citizen Science Can Be Transformative

Success will require an engaged citizenry, promote more open and democratic decisionmaking processes, and generate new solutions for intractable problems.
If its promise holds true, the relationship between science and society will be profoundly transformed for the betterment of all…(More)”.

The Metric God That Failed

Curated on March 17, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jerry Muller in PS Long Reads: “Over the past few decades, formal institutions have increasingly been subjected to performance measurements that define success or failure according to narrow and arbitrary metrics. The outcome should have been predictable: institutions have done what they can to boost their performance metrics, often at the expense of performance itself.

…In 1986, the American management guru Tom Peters popularized the organizational theorist Mason Haire’s dictum that, “What gets measured gets done,” and with it a credo of measured performance that I call “metric fixation.” In time, the devotees of measured performance would arrive at a naive article of faith that is nonetheless appealing for its mix of optimism and scientism: “Anything that can be measured can be improved.”

In the intervening decades, this faith-based conceit has developed into a dogma about the relationship between measurement and performance. Evangelists of “disruption” and “best practices” have carried the new gospel to ever more distant shores. If you work in health care, education, policing, or the civil service, you have probably been subjected to the policies and practices wrought by metric-centrism.

There are three tenets to the metrical canon. The first holds that it is both possible and desirable to replace judgment – acquired through personal experience and talent – with numerical indicators of comparative performance based on standardized data. Second, making such metrics public and transparent ensures that institutions are held accountable. And, third, the best way to motivate people within organizations is to attach monetary or reputational rewards and penalties to their measured performance….(More)”.