TED: “Something profound is changing our concept of trust, says Rachel Botsman. While we used to place our trust in institutions like governments and banks, today we increasingly rely on others, often strangers, on platforms like Airbnb and Uber and through technologies like the blockchain. This new era of trust could bring with it a more transparent, inclusive and accountable society — if we get it right. Who do you trust?…(More)”
Knowledge – Is Knowledge Power?
Book by Marian Adolf and Nico Stehr: “As we move through our modern world, the phenomenon we call knowledge is always involved. Whether we talk of know-how, technology, innovation, politics or education, it is the concept of knowledge that ties them all together. But despite its ubiquity as a modern trope we seldom encounter knowledge in itself. How is it produced, where does it reside, and who owns it? Is knowledge always beneficial, will we know all there is to know at some point in the future, and does knowledge really equal power? This book pursues an original approach to this concept that seems to define so many aspects of modern societies. It explores the topic from a distinctly sociological perspective, and traces the many ways that knowledge is woven into the very fabric of modern society….(More)”
How technology can help nations navigate the difficult path to food sovereignty
As the movement of people across the world creates more multicultural societies, can trade help communities maintain their identity? This is the question at the heart of a concept known as “food sovereignty”.
Food sovereignty has been defined as “the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods” and, critically, the ability of people to own their food systems.
Culturally appropriate food refers to the cuisine eaten by a certain group, which reflects their own values, norms, religion and preferences. It is usually dynamic and may change over time.
In my journey across different food landscapes, I have discovered that people consume food not just to satisfy hunger but for cultural, religious, and social reasons. And I have learnt that there are ways that international trade can help facilitate this….
Cultural groups have different definitions of good or appropriate food. The elite (who can afford it) and people who are environmentally conscious, for instance, believe in organic or local produce; Jews eat kosher food; and Muslims eat halal.
The challenge lies with making sure food is appropriately labelled – as organic, local, kosher or halal – and the key here is the authenticity of the certification process.
It can be quite difficult to trace the origin of certain foods, whether they’re produced locally or internationally. This educates consumers, allowing them to make the right choice. But it may be an additional cost for farmers, so there is little incentive to label.
The case for transparency and authentication
To ensure that trade allows people to have access to authentic and culturally appropriate food, I recommend a new, digitised process called “crypto-labelling”. Crypto-labelling would use secure communication technology to create a record which traces the history of a particular food from the farm to grocery stores. It would mean consistent records, no duplication, a certification registry, and easy traceability.
Crypto-labelling would ensure transparency in the certification process for niche markets, such as halal, kosher and organic. It allows people who don’t know or trust each other to develop a dependable relationship based on a particular commodity.
If somebody produces organic amaranth in Cotonou, Benin, for instance, and labels it with a digital code that anyone can easily understand, then a family in another country can have access to the desired food throughout the year.
This initiative, which should be based on the blockchain technology behind Bitcoin, can be managed by consumer or producer cooperatives. On the consumer end, all that’s required is a smartphone to scan and read the crypto-labels.
The adoption of blockchain technology in the agricultural sector can help African countries “leapfrog” to the fourth industrial revolution.
Leapfrogging happens when developing countries skip an already outmoded technology that’s widely used in the developed world and embrace a newer one instead. In the early 2000s, for instance, households with no landline became households with more than two mobile phones. This enabled the advent of a new platform for mobile banking in Kenya and Somalia.
Similarly, crypto-labelling will lead to a form of “electronic agriculture” which will make it cheaper in the long run to label and enhance traceability. With access to mobile technology increasing globally, it’s a feasible system for the developing world…(More)”
Innovando para una mejor gestión: La contribución de los laboratorios de innovación pública
Paper by Acevedo, Sebastián; and Dassen, Nicolás for IDB: “Los cambios tecnológicos, económicos y sociales de los últimos años exigen gobiernos capaces de adaptarse a nuevos desafíos y a las crecientes demandas de la ciudadanía. En muchos países y en distintos niveles de gobierno, esto ha llevado a la creación de laboratorios de innovación, unidades cuyo objetivo es promover de diversos modos la innovación en el sector público. En este trabajo se analizan los roles y desafíos de los laboratorios latinoamericanos, contrastándolos con buenas prácticas y características que la literatura ha asociado a mayores niveles de innovación en el sector público y en otras organizaciones.
A partir de una encuesta a directores de laboratorios y dos estudios de casos, se describe el panorama de los laboratorios latinoamericanos y se discuten sus desafíos para: i) trabajar sobre temas centrales de la gestión, ii) conseguir la adopción de innovaciones y el escalamiento de las mismas y iii) asegurar la sostenibilidad de estas.
En particular, hay cuatro factores clave para su desempeño en esos aspectos: dos factores político-institucionales –el apoyo del liderazgo y las redes de política– y dos factores metodológicos –la adecuación técnica de las innovaciones y la construcción de un significado compartido sobre ellas–.
Además, se identifican dos diferencias principales entre la mayoría de los laboratorios relevados aquí y la experiencia de otras regiones, descripta por la literatura existente: un foco más intenso en temas de gobierno abierto y menos actividades para el testeo controlado de innovaciones, como experimentos aleatorios y evaluaciones de impacto. Finalmente, se presentan conclusiones y recomendaciones para la consolidación de los laboratorios como canales efectivos para gestionar innovaciones, manejando los riesgos inherentes, y modernizar la gestión… (More Español)
President Barack Obama on Fixing Government With Technology
“WIRED guest editor President Barack Obama discusses what he’d like to see technology solve in government with WIRED editor in chief Scott Dadich and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito.”
Open Innovation: Practices to Engage Citizens and Effectively Implement Federal Initiatives
United States Government Accountability Office: “Open innovation involves using various tools and approaches to harness the ideas, expertise, and resources of those outside an organization to address an issue or achieve specific goals. GAO found that federal agencies have frequently used five open innovation strategies to collaborate with citizens and external stakeholders, and encourage their participation in agency initiatives.
GAO identified seven practices that agencies can use to effectively implement initiatives that involve the use of these strategies:
- Select the strategy appropriate for the purpose of engaging the public and the agency’s capabilities.
- Clearly define specific goals and performance measures for the initiative.
- Identify and engage external stakeholders and potential partners.
- Develop plans for implementing the initiative and recruiting participants.
- Engage participants and partners while implementing the initiative.
- Collect and assess relevant data and report results.
- Sustain communities of interested partners and participants.
Aspects of these practices are illustrated by the 15 open innovation initiatives GAO reviewed at six selected agencies: the Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation (DOT); the Environmental Protection Agency; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
For example:
• With the Asteroid Data Hunter challenge, NASA used a challenge and citizen science effort, beginning in 2014, to improve the accuracy of its asteroid detection program and develop an application for citizen scientists.
• Since 2009, DOT’s Federal Highway Administration has used an ideation initiative called Every Day Counts to identify innovations to improve highway project delivery. Teams of federal, state, local, and industry experts then implement the ideas chosen through this process….(More)”
When the Algorithm Itself is a Racist: Diagnosing Ethical Harm in the Basic Components of Software
Paper by Christian Sandvig et al in Special Issue of the International Journal of Communication on Automation, Algorithms, and Politics: “Computer algorithms organize and select information across a wide range of applications and industries, from search results to social media. Abuses of power by Internet platforms have led to calls for algorithm transparency and regulation. Algorithms have a particularly problematic history of processing information about race. Yet some analysts have warned that foundational computer algorithms are not useful subjects for ethical or normative analysis due to complexity, secrecy, technical character, or generality. We respond by investigating what it is an analyst needs to know to determine whether the algorithm in a computer system is improper, unethical, or illegal in itself. We argue that an “algorithmic ethics” can analyze a particular published algorithm. We explain the importance of developing a practical algorithmic ethics that addresses virtues, consequences, and norms: We increasingly delegate authority to algorithms, and they are fast becoming obscure but important elements of social structure…. (More)”
NYC cyclists crowd-source map showing cars in bike lanes
Springwise: “Founded by a cyclist frustrated at the lack of local government action on enforcing bike safety, the Cars In Bike Lanes map geo-tags and time-stamps each contribution. New York City riders upload their photos, including a description of the cross streets where the incident occurred. License plate details are made visible, and users of the map can click to find out if a driver is a repeat offender.
The interactive map is open source, and the founder says he hopes other cities and developers customize the site for their areas. Development plans for the site will focus on increasing the numbers of cyclists using, and contributing to, it. And ideally, it will put pressure on local governments to actively enforce safety regulations designed to protect cyclists.
Cycle safety is a common urban problem, and cities around the world are designing different solutions. In The Netherlands,flashing LED lights warn cars of approaching cyclists at busy intersections. In Denmark, bikes fitted with radio frequency identification tags turn traffic lights in favor of the cyclist….(More)”
A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
Matthew Hodgson at TechCrunch: “…The original purpose of the web and internet, if you recall, was to build a common neural network which everyone can participate in equally for the betterment of humanity.Fortunately, there is an emerging movement to bring the web back to this vision and it even involves some of the key figures from the birth of the web. It’s called the Decentralised Web or Web 3.0, and it describes an emerging trend to build services on the internet which do not depend on any single “central” organisation to function.
So what happened to the initial dream of the web? Much of the altruism faded during the first dot-com bubble, as people realised that an easy way to create value on top of this neutral fabric was to build centralised services which gather, trap and monetise information.
Search Engines (e.g. Google), Social Networks (e.g. Facebook), Chat Apps (e.g. WhatsApp )have grown huge by providing centralised services on the internet. For example, Facebook’s future vision of the internet is to provide access only to the subset of centralised services endorses (Internet.org and Free Basics).
Meanwhile, it disables fundamental internet freedoms such as the ability to link to content via a URL (forcing you to share content only within Facebook) or the ability for search engines to index its contents (other than the Facebook search function).
The Decentralised Web envisions a future world where services such as communication,currency, publishing, social networking, search, archiving etc are provided not by centralised services owned by single organisations, but by technologies which are powered by the people: their own community. Their users.
The core idea of decentralisation is that the operation of a service is not blindly trusted toany single omnipotent company. Instead, responsibility for the service is shared: perhaps by running across multiple federated servers, or perhaps running across client side apps in an entirely “distributed” peer-to-peer model.
Even though the community may be “byzantine” and not have any reason to trust or depend on each other, the rules that describe the decentralised service’s behaviour are designed to force participants to act fairly in order to participate at all, relying heavily on cryptographic techniques such as Merkle trees and digital signatures to allow participants to hold each other accountable.
There are three fundamental areas that the Decentralised Web necessarily champions:privacy, data portability and security.
- Privacy: Decentralisation forces an increased focus on data privacy. Data is distributed across the network and end-to-end encryption technologies are critical for ensuring that only authorized users can read and write. Access to the data itself is entirely controlled algorithmically by the network as opposed to more centralized networks where typically the owner of that network has full access to data, facilitating customer profiling and ad targeting.
- Data Portability: In a decentralized environment, users own their data and choose with whom they share this data. Moreover they retain control of it when they leave a given service provider (assuming the service even has the concept of service providers). This is important. If I want to move from General Motors to BMW today, why should I not be able to take my driving records with me? The same applies to chat platform history or health records.
- Security: Finally, we live in a world of increased security threats. In a centralized environment, the bigger the silo, the bigger the honeypot is to attract bad actors.Decentralized environments are safer by their general nature against being hacked,infiltrated, acquired, bankrupted or otherwise compromised as they have been built to exist under public scrutiny from the outset….(More)”
Crowdsourcing investigative journalism
Convoca in Peru: “…collaborative effort is the essence of Convoca. We are a team of journalists and programmers who work with professionals from different disciplines and generations to expose facts that are hidden by networks of power and affect the life of citizens. We bet on the work in partnership to publish findings of high impact from Peru, where the Amazon survives in almost 60% of the country, in the middle of oil exploitation, minerals and criminal activities such as logging, illegal mining and human trafficking. Fifty percent of social conflicts have as epicenter extractives areas of natural resources where the population and communities with the highest poverty rates live.
Over one year and seven months, Convoca has uncovered facts of public relevance such as the patterns of corruption and secrecy networking with journalists from Latin America and the world. The series of reports with the BRIO platform revealed the cost overruns of highways and public works in Latin American countries in the hands of Brazilian companies financed by the National Bank of Economic and Social Development (BNDES), nowadays investigated in the most notorious corruption scandal in the region, ‘Lava Jato’. This research won the 2016 Journalistic Excellence Award granted by the Inter American Press Association (SIP). On a global scale, we dove into 11 million and a half files of the ‘Panama Papers’ with more than a hundred media and organizations led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which allowed to undress the world of tax havens where companies and characters hide their fortune.
Our work on extractive industries ‘Excesses unpunished’ won the most important award of data journalism in the world, the Data Journalism Awards 2016, and is a finalist of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Award which recognized the best of journalism in Latin America. We invite you to be the voice of this effort to keep publishing new reports that allow citizens to make better decisions about their destinies and compel groups of power to come clean about their activities and fulfill their commitments. So join ConBoca: The Power of Citizens Call, our first fundraising campaign alongside our readers. We believe that journalism is a public service….(More)”