MIT Press Release: “The MIT Media Lab today announced the creation of the Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM), funded by a five-year, $10 million commitment from Twitter. As part of the new program, Twitter will also provide full access to its real-time, public stream of tweets, as well as the archive of every tweet dating back to the first.
The new initiative, based at the Media Lab, will focus on the development of new technologies to make sense of semantic and social patterns across the broad span of public mass media, social media, data streams, and digital content. Pattern discovery and data visualization will be explored to reveal interaction patterns and shared interests in relevant social systems, while collaborative tools and mobile apps will be developed to enable new forms of public communication and social organization.
A main goal for the LSM will be to create new platforms for both individuals and institutions to identify, discuss, and act on pressing societal problems. Though funded by Twitter, the LSM will have complete operational and academic independence. In keeping with the academic mission of LSM, students and staff will work across many social media and mass media platforms — including, but not limited to, Twitter.
“The Laboratory for Social Machines will experiment in areas of public communication and social organization where humans and machines collaborate on problems that can’t be solved manually or through automation alone,” says Deb Roy, an associate professor at the Media Lab who will lead the LSM, and who also serves as Twitter’s chief media scientist. “Social feedback loops based on analysis of public media and data can be an effective catalyst for increasing accountability and transparency — creating mutual visibility among institutions and individuals.”
“With this investment, Twitter is seizing the opportunity to go deeper into research to understand the role Twitter and other platforms play in the way people communicate, the effect that rapid and fluid communication can have and apply those findings to complex societal issues,” says Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter…”
A Vision for Happier Cities
Post by Killy Kilford at the Huffington Post:“…Governments such as Bhutan and Venezuela are creating departments of happiness, and in both the US and UK, ‘nudge’ teams have been set up to focus on behavioral psychology. This gets more interesting when we bring in urban planning and neuroscience research, which shows that community aesthetics are a key contributor to our happiness at the same time positive emotions can change our thoughts, and lead to changes in our behaviors.
It was only after moving to New York City that I realized all my experiences… painting, advising executive boards, creative workshops, statistics and writing books about organizational change…gave me a unique set of tools to create the Dept. of Well Being and start a global social impact initiative, which is powered by public art installations entitled Happy Street Signs™.
New York City got the first Happy Street Signs last November. I used my paintings containing positive phrases like “Honk Less Love More” and “New York Loves You” to manufacture 200 government-specification street signs. They were then installed by a team of fifty volunteers around Manhattan and Brooklyn in 90 minutes. Whilst it was unofficial, the objective was to generate smiles for New Yorkers and then survey reactions. We got clipboards out and asked over 600 New Yorkers if they liked the Happy Street Signs and if they wanted more: 92.5 percent of those people said yes!…”
Big data is better data
Ted Talk by Kenneth Cukier, Data Editor of The Economist: “Self-driving cars were just the start. What’s the future of big data-driven technology and design? In a thrilling science talk, Kenneth Cukier looks at what’s next for machine learning — and human knowledge…”
Uncovering State And Local Gov’s 15 Hidden Successes
at GovLoop: “From garbage trucks to vacant lots, cities and states are often tasked with the thankless job of cleaning up a community’s mess. These are tasks that are often overlooked, but are critical to keeping a community vibrant.
But even in these sometimes thankless jobs, there are real innovations happening. Take Miami-Dade County where they are using hybrid garbage trucks to save the community millions of dollars in fuel every year and make the environment a little cleaner. Or head over to Milwaukee where the city is turning vacant and abandoned lots into urban farms.
There are just two of the fifteen examples, GovLoop uncovered in our new guide, From the State House to the County Clerk – 15 Challenges and Success Stories.
We have broken the challenges into four categories:
- Internal Best Practices
- Tech Challenges
- Health and Safety
- Community Engagement and Outreach
Here’s another example, the open data movement has the potential to effect governing and civic engagement at the state and local government levels. But today very few agencies are actively providing open data. In fact, only 46 U.S. cities and counties have open data sites. One of the cities on the leading edge of the open data movement is Fort Worth, Texas.
“When I came into office, that was one of my campaign promises, that we would get Fort Worth into this century on technology and that we would take a hard look at open records requests and requests for data,” Mayor Betsy Price said in an interview with the Star-Telegram. “It goes a lot further to being transparent and letting people participate in their government and see what we are doing. It is the people’s data, and it should be easy to access.”
The website, data.fortworthtexas.gov, offers data and documents such as certificates of occupancy, development permits and residential permits for download in several formats, including Excel and PDF. Not all datasets are available yet — the city said its priority was to put the most-requested data on the portal first. Next up? Crime data, code violations, restaurant ratings and capital projects progress.
City officials’ ultimate goal is to create and adopt a full open data policy. As part of the launch, they are also looking for local software developers and designers who want to help guide the open data initiative. Those interested in participating can sign up online to receive more information….”
The Glass Cage: Automation and Us
New Book by Nicholas Carr: “What kind of world are we building for ourselves? That’s the question bestselling author Nicholas Carr tackles in this urgent, absorbing book on the human consequences of automation. At once a celebration of technology and a warning about its misuse, The Glass Cage will change the way you think about the tools you use every day.
Digging behind the headlines about factory robots and self-driving cars, wearable computers and digitized medicine, Carr explores the hidden costs of granting software dominion over our work and our leisure. Even as they bring ease to our lives, computer programs are stealing something essential from us.
Drawing on psychological and neurological studies that underscore how tightly people’s happiness and satisfaction are tied to performing meaningful work in the real world, Carr reveals something we already suspect: shifting our attention to computer screens can leave us disengaged and discontented.
From nineteenth-century textile mills to the cockpits of modern jets, from the frozen hunting grounds of Inuit tribes to the sterile landscapes of GPS maps, The Glass Cage explores the impact of automation from a deeply human perspective, examining the personal as well as the economic consequences of our growing dependence on computers.
With a characteristic blend of history and philosophy, poetry and science, Carr takes us on a journey from the work and early theory of Adam Smith and Alfred North Whitehead to the latest research into human attention, memory, and happiness, culminating in a moving meditation on how we can use technology to expand the human experience.
Nicholas Carr’s The Glass Cage: Automation and Us. Coming on September 29.”
UN Data Revolution Group
Website: “UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has asked an Independent Expert Advisory Group to make concrete recommendations on bringing about a data revolution in sustainable development. Here you can find out more about the work of the group, and feed into the process by adding your comments to this site or sending a private consultation submission
Consultation Areas
Why we’re failing to get the most out of open data
Victoria Lemieux at the WEF Blog: “An unprecedented number of individuals and organizations are finding ways to explore, interpret and use Open Data. Public agencies are hosting Open Data events such as meetups, hackathons and data dives. The potential of these initiatives is great, including support for economic development (McKinsey, 2013), anti-corruption (European Public Sector Information Platform, 2014) and accountability (Open Government Partnership, 2012). But is Open Data’s full potential being realized?
A news item from Computer Weekly casts doubt. A recent report notes that, in the United Kingdom, poor data quality is hindering the government’s Open Data program. The report goes on to explain that – in an effort to make the public sector more transparent and accountable – UK public bodies have been publishing spending records every month since November 2010. The authors of the report, who conducted an analysis of 50 spending-related data releases by the Cabinet Office since May 2010, found that that the data was of such poor quality that using it would require advanced computer skills.
Far from being a one-off problem, research suggests that this issue is ubiquitous and endemic. Some estimates indicate that as much as 80 percent of the time and cost of an analytics project is attributable to the need to clean up “dirty data” (Dasu and Johnson, 2003).
In addition to data quality issues, data provenance can be difficult to determine. Knowing where data originates and by what means it has been disclosed is key to being able to trust data. If end users do not trust data, they are unlikely to believe they can rely upon the information for accountability purposes. Establishing data provenance does not “spring full blown from the head of Zeus.” It entails a good deal of effort undertaking such activities as enriching data with metadata – data about data – such as the date of creation, the creator of the data, who has had access to the data over time and ensuring that both data and metadata remain unalterable.
Similarly, if people think that data could be tampered with, they are unlikely to place trust in it; full comprehension of data relies on the ability to trace its origins….”
In an emergency, apps locate nearby first aiders
Springwise: “In the case of a sudden accident or health problem, a matter of seconds’ difference in the response times of emergency services can be the difference between saving a life and losing one. The irony is that there could even be trained first aiders nearby, but there’s usually no way of letting them know they’re needed. Now two apps — GoodSAM and PulsePoint — both let those with life-saving skills to receive alerts when an emergency happens close by.
The GoodSAM app comes in two versions — the Alerter and Responder. Those facing an emergency can use the Alerter app to instantly send a call for help to any responders in the vicinity, along with their exact location. At the same time, the country’s emergency number is also called. Those who have first aid or medical experience can download the Responder app, which pushes a notification to their device whenever someone needs help. If they’re unavailable, they can choose to reject the request and the Alerter will be notified. If accepted, the app offers a map and directions to the location of the incident and the two parties can communicate through an in-app messaging service.
Watch the video below for a demonstration of how the system works…
The PulsePoint Respond app works in much the same way, although is mainly focused on sudden cardiac arrests and those who can offer CPR resuscitation. Additionally, anyone in the community can use the app to track emergency activity in their neighborhood. Local authorities can also implement the PulsePoint system across their jurisdictions, with community outreach strategies and project management services included starting from USD 5,000….”
'How We Got to Now' by Steven Johnson
Book Review by Philip Delves Broughton in the Wall Street Journal: “Theories of innovation and entrepreneurship have always yo-yoed between two basic ideas. First, that it’s all about the single brilliant individual and his eureka moment that changes the world. Second, that it’s about networks, collaboration and context. The truth, as in all such philosophical dogfights, is somewhere in between. But that does not stop the bickering. This controversy blew up in a political context during the 2012 presidential election, when President Obama used an ill-chosen set of words (“you didn’t build that”) to suggest that government and society had a role in creating the setting for entrepreneurs to flourish, and Republicans berated him for denigrating the rugged individualists of American enterprise.
Through a series of elegant books about the history of technological innovation, Steven Johnson has become one of the most persuasive advocates for the role of collaboration in innovation. His latest, “How We Got to Now,” accompanies a PBS series on what he calls the “six innovations that made the modern world.” The six are detailed in chapters titled “Glass,” “Cold,” “Sound,” “Clean,” “Time” and “Light.” Mr. Johnson’s method is to start with a single innovation and then hopscotch through history to illuminate its vast and often unintended consequences….
Mr. Johnson calls this “long-zoom” history, an examination of what he refers to as the “hummingbird effect” in history. Back in the Cretaceous age, he explains, flowers evolved colors and scents to alert insects to the presence of nectar. Hummingbirds evolved their peculiar flying mechanics to hover beside a flower like an insect in order to extract nectar. From flowers to nectar to insects to an innovation in avian flight. Mr. Johnson professes to be agnostic about the innovations he describes, but the hummingbird effects he believes in are so hard to predict that taking the long view means withholding negative judgments on the present. One may not like the Facebook of today, for example, but who knows what benefits its social network might yield in decades to come?
Mr. Johnson’s ideas are popular in Silicon Valley, and it is easy to see why. He is an optimist about technology and its possibilities. In his section on “Light,” he links the discovery of neon lighting to the growth of Las Vegas and then to the post-modernist movement in American art and architecture. A more raffish mind might have gone from Las Vegas to Siegfried and Roy, Wayne Newton, and the Nevada flesh trade. But Mr. Johnson is too upstanding for that. He believes that the arc of technological history may be long but that it bends toward good.”
Antidisciplinary
Joi Ito at LinkedIn: “One of the first words that I learned when I joined the Media Lab was “antidisciplinary.” It was listed an a requirement in an ad seeking applicants for a new faculty position. Interdisciplinary work is when people from different disciplines work together. An antidisciplinary project isn’t a sum of a bunch of disciplines but something entirely new – the word defies easy definition. But what it means to me is someone or something that doesn’t fit within traditional academic discipline–a field of study with its own particular words, frameworks, and methods. Most academics are judged by how many times they have published in prestigious, peer-reviewed journals. Peer review usually consists of the influential members of your field reviewing your work and deciding whether it is important and unique. This architecture often leads to a dynamic where researchers focus more on impressing a small number of experts in their own field than on taking the high risk of an unconventional approach. This dynamic reinforces the cliché of academics–learning more and more about less and less. It causes a hyper-specialization where people in different areas have a very difficult time collaborating–or even communicating–with people in different fields. For me, antidisciplinary research is akin to mathematician Stanislaw Ulam’s famous observation that the study of non-linear physics is like the study of “non-elephant animals.” Antidisciplinary is all about the non-elephant animals.
The Media Lab focuses on “uniqueness, impact and magic.” What our students and faculty do should be unique. We shouldn’t be doing something that someone else is doing. If someone else starts doing it, we should stop. Everything we do should have impact. Lastly, things should induce us to be passionate and should go beyond incremental thinking. “Magic” means that we take on projects that inspire us. In the Lifelong Kindergarten group, researchers often describe the “Four Ps of Creative Learning” as Projects, Peers, Passion and Play. Play is extremely important for creative learning. There is a great deal of research showing that rewards and pressure can motivate people to “produce,” but creative learning and thinking requires the “space” that play creates. Pressure and rewards can often diminish that space, and thus, squash creative thinking….”