The Church of Techno-Optimism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Margaret O’Mara at the New York Times: “…But Silicon Valley does have a politics. It is neither liberal nor conservative. Nor is it libertarian, despite the dog-eared copies of Ayn Rand’s novels that you might find strewn about the cubicles of a start-up in Palo Alto.

It is techno-optimism: the belief that technology and technologists are building the future and that the rest of the world, including government, needs to catch up. And this creed burns brightly, undimmed by the anti-tech backlash. “It’s now up to all of us together to harness this tremendous energy to benefit all humanity,” the venture capitalist Frank Chen said in a November 2018 speech about artificial intelligence. “We are going to build a road to space,” Jeff Bezos declared as he unveiled plans for a lunar lander last spring. And as Elon Musk recently asked his Tesla shareholders, “Would I be doing this if I weren’t optimistic?”

But this is about more than just Silicon Valley. Techno-optimism has deep roots in American political culture, and its belief in American ingenuity and technological progress. Reckoning with that history is crucial to the discussion about how to rein in Big Tech’s seemingly limitless power.

The language of techno-optimism first appears in the rhetoric of American politics after World War II. “Science, the Endless Frontier” was the title of the soaringly techno-optimistic 1945 report by Vannevar Bush, the chief science adviser to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, which set in motion the American government’s unprecedented postwar spending on research and development. That wave of money transformed the Santa Clara Valley and turned Stanford University into an engineering powerhouse. Dwight Eisenhower filled the White House with advisers whom he called “my scientists.” John Kennedy, announcing America’s moon shot in 1962, declared that “man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred.”

In a 1963 speech, a founder of Hewlett-Packard, David Packard, looked back on his life during the Depression and marveled at the world that he lived in, giving much of the credit to technological innovation unhindered by bureaucratic interference: “Radio, television, Teletype, the vast array of publications of all types bring to a majority of the people everywhere in the world information in considerable detail, about what is going on everywhere else. Horizons are opened up, new aspirations are generated.”…(More)”

The Global Disinformation Order: 2019 Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Philip Howard and Samantha Bradshaw: “…The report explores the tools, capacities, strategies and resources employed by global ‘cyber troops’, typically government agencies and political parties, to influence public opinion in 70 countries.

Key findings include:

  • Organized social media manipulation has more than doubled since 2017, with 70 countries using computational propaganda to manipulate public opinion.
  • In 45 democracies, politicians and political parties have used computational propaganda tools by amassing fake followers or spreading manipulated media to garner voter support.
  • In 26 authoritarian states, government entities have used computational propaganda as a tool of information control to suppress public opinion and press freedom, discredit criticism and oppositional voices, and drown out political dissent.
  • Foreign influence operations, primarily over Facebook and Twitter, have been attributed to cyber troop activities in seven countries: China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
  • China has now emerged as a major player in the global disinformation order, using social media platforms to target international audiences with disinformation.
  • 25 countries are working with private companies or strategic communications firms offering a computational propaganda as a service.
  • Facebook remains the platform of choice for social media manipulation, with evidence of formally organised campaigns taking place in 56 countries….

The report explores the tools and techniques of computational propaganda, including the use of fake accounts – bots, humans, cyborgs and hacked accounts – to spread disinformation. The report finds:

  • 87% of countries used human accounts
  • 80% of countries used bot accounts
  • 11% of countries used cyborg accounts
  • 7% of countries used hacked or stolen accounts…(More)”.

Community Data Dialogues

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sunlight foundation: “Community Data Dialogues are in-person events designed to share open data with community members in the most digestible way possible to start a conversation about a specific issue. The main goal of the event is to give residents who may not have technical expertise but have local experience a chance to participate in data-informed decision-making. Doing this work in-person can open doors and let facilitators ask a broader range of questions. To achieve this, the event must be designed to be inclusive of people without a background in data analysis and/or using statistics to understand local issues. Carrying out this event will let decision-makers in government use open data to talk with residents who can add to data’s value with their stories of lived experience relevant to local issues.

These events can take several forms, and groups both in and outside of government have designed creative and innovative events tailored to engage community members who are actively interested in helping solve local issues but are unfamiliar with using open data. This guide will help clarify how exactly to make Community Data Dialogues non-technical, interactive events that are inclusive to all participants….

A number of groups both in and outside of government have facilitated accessible open data events to great success. Here are just a few examples from the field of what data-focused events tailored for a nontechnical audience can look like:

Data Days Cleveland

Data Days Cleveland is an annual one-day event designed to make data accessible to all. Programs are designed with inclusivity and learning in mind, making it a more welcoming space for people new to data work. Data experts and practitioners direct novices on the fundamentals of using data: making maps, reading spreadsheets, creating data visualizations, etc….

The Urban Institute’s Data Walks

The Urban Institute’s Data Walks are an innovative example of presenting data in an interactive and accessible way to communities. Data Walks are events gathering community residents, policymakers, and others to jointly review and analyze data presentations on specific programs or issues and collaborate to offer feedback based on their individual experiences and expertise. This feedback can be used to improve current projects and inform future policies….(More)“.

Great Policy Successes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Mallory Compton and Edited by Paul ‘t Hart: “With so much media and political criticism of their shortcomings and failures, it is easy to overlook the fact that many governments work pretty well much of the time. Great Policy Successes turns the spotlight on instances of public policy that are remarkably successful. It develops a framework for identifying and assessing policy successes, paying attention not just to their programmatic outcomes but also to the quality of the processes by which policies are designed and delivered, the level of support and legitimacy they attain, and the extent to which successful performance endures over time. The bulk of the book is then devoted to 15 detailed case studies of striking policy successes from around the world, including Singapore’s public health system, Copenhagen and Melbourne’s rise from stilted backwaters to the highly liveable and dynamic urban centres they are today, Brazil’s Bolsa Familia poverty relief scheme, the US’s GI Bill, and Germany’s breakthrough labour market reforms of the 2000s. Each case is set in context, its main actors are introduced, key events and decisions are described, the assessment framework is applied to gauge the nature and level of its success, key contributing factors to success are identified, and potential lessons and future challenges are identified. Purposefully avoiding the kind of heavy theorizing that characterizes many accounts of public policy processes, each case is written in an accessible and narrative style ideally suited for classroom use in conjunction with mainstream textbooks on public policy design, implementation, and evaluation….(More)”.

The Algorithmic Divide and Equality in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Peter Yu: “In the age of artificial intelligence, highly sophisticated algorithms have been deployed to detect patterns, optimize solutions, facilitate self-learning, and foster improvements in technological products and services. Notwithstanding these tremendous benefits, algorithms and intelligent machines do not provide equal benefits to all. Just as the digital divide has separated those with access to the Internet, information technology, and digital content from those without, an emerging and ever-widening algorithmic divide now threatens to take away the many political, social, economic, cultural, educational, and career opportunities provided by machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Although policymakers, commentators, and the mass media have paid growing attention to algorithmic bias and the shortcomings of machine learning and artificial intelligence, the algorithmic divide has yet to attract much policy and scholarly attention. To fill this lacuna, this article draws on the digital divide literature to systematically analyze this new inequitable gap between the technology haves and have-nots. Utilizing the analytical framework that the Author developed in the early 2000s, the article discusses the five attributes of the algorithmic divide: awareness, access, affordability, availability, and adaptability.

This article then turns to three major problems precipitated by an emerging and fast-expanding algorithmic divide: (1) algorithmic deprivation; (2) algorithmic discrimination; and (3) algorithmic distortion. While the first two problems affect primarily those on the unfortunate side of the algorithmic divide, the latter impacts individuals on both sides of the divide. This article concludes by proposing seven nonexhaustive clusters of remedial actions to help bridge this emerging and ever-widening algorithmic divide. Combining law, communications policy, ethical principles, institutional mechanisms, and business practices, the article fashions a holistic response to help foster equality in the age of artificial intelligence….(More)”.

Crowdsourcing Reliable Local Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jane Lawrence Sumner , Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman: “The adage “All politics is local” in the United States is largely true. Of the United States’ 90,106 governments, 99.9% are local governments. Despite variations in institutional features, descriptive representation, and policy-making power, political scientists have been slow to take advantage of these variations. One obstacle is that comprehensive data on local politics is often extremely difficult to obtain; as a result, data is unavailable or costly, hard to replicate, and rarely updated. We provide an alternative: crowdsourcing this data. We demonstrate and validate crowdsourcing data on local politics using two different data collection projects. We evaluate different measures of consensus across coders and validate the crowd’s work against elite and professional datasets. In doing so, we show that crowdsourced data is both highly accurate and easy to use. In doing so, we demonstrate that nonexperts can be used to collect, validate, or update local data….(More)”.

How Nontraditional Innovation is Rejuvenating Public Housing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Jamal Gauthier: “The crisis of affordable public housing can be felt across America on a large scale. Many poor and impoverished families that reside in public housing projects are consistently unable to pay rent for their dwellings while dealing with a host of other social complications that make living in public housing even more difficult. Creating affordable public housing involves the use of innovative processes that reduce construction cost and maximize livable square footage so that rents can remain affordable. Through the rising popularity of nontraditional approaches to innovation, many organizations tasked with addressing these difficult housing challenges are adopting such methods to uncover previously unthought of solutions.

The concept of crowdsourcing especially is paving the way for federal agencies (such as HUD), nonprofits, and private housing companies alike to gain new perspectives and approaches to complex public housing topics from unlikely and/or underutilized sources. Crowdsourcing proponents and stakeholders hope to add fresh ideas and new insights to the shared pool of public knowledge, augmenting innovation and productivity in the current public housing landscape.

The federal government could particularly benefit from these nontraditional forms of innovation by implementing these practices into standard government processes. The struggling affordable public housing system in America, for example, points to a glaring flaw in standard government process that makes applying the best ideas for real-world implementation by the government virtually impossible….(More)”.

How does a computer ‘see’ gender?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Pew Research Center: “Machine vision tools like facial recognition are increasingly being used for law enforcement, advertising, and other purposes. Pew Research Center itself recently used a machine vision system to measure the prevalence of men and women in online image search results. This kind of system develops its own rules for identifying men and women after seeing thousands of example images, but these rules can be hard for to humans to discern. To better understand how this works, we showed images of the Center’s staff members to a trained machine vision system similar to the one we used to classify image searches. We then systematically obscured sections of each image to see which parts of the face caused the system to change its decision about the gender of the person pictured. Some of the results seemed intuitive, others baffling. In this interactive challenge, see if you can guess what makes the system change its decision.

Here’s how it works:…(More)”.

Traffic Data Is Good for More than Just Streets, Sidewalks

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Skip Descant at Government Technology: “The availability of highly detailed daily traffic data is clearly an invaluable resource for traffic planners, but it can also help officials overseeing natural lands or public works understand how to better manage those facilities.

The Natural Communities Coalition, a conservation nonprofit in southern California, began working with the traffic analysis firm StreetLight Data in early 2018 to study the impacts from the thousands of annual visitors to 22 parks and natural lands. StreetLight Data’s use of de-identified cellphone data held promise for the project, which will continue into early 2020.

“You start to see these increases,” Milan Mitrovich, science director for the Natural Communities Coalition, said of the uptick in visitor activity the data showed. “So being able to have this information, and share it with our executive committee… these folks, they’re seeing it for the first time.”…

Officials with the Natural Communities Coalition were able to use the StreetLight data to gain insights into patterns of use not only per day, but at different times of the day. The data also told researchers where visitors were traveling from, a detail park officials found “jaw-dropping.”

“What we were able to see is, these resources, these natural areas, cast an incredible net across southern California,” said Mitrovich, noting visitors come from not only Orange County, but Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego counties as well, a region of more than 20 million residents.

The data also allows officials to predict traffic levels during certain parts of the week, times of day or even holidays….(More)”.

The Future of Political Philosophy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Katrina Forrester in Boston Review: “Since the upheavals of the financial crisis of 2008 and the political turbulence of 2016, it has become clear to many that liberalism is, in some sense, failing. The turmoil has given pause to economists, some of whom responded by renewing their study of inequality, and to political scientists, who have since turned to problems of democracy, authoritarianism, and populism in droves. But Anglo-American liberal political philosophers have had less to say than they might have.

The silence is due in part to the nature of political philosophy today—the questions it considers worth asking and those it sidelines. Since Plato, philosophers have always asked about the nature of justice. But for the last five decades, political philosophy in the English-speaking world has been preoccupied with a particular answer to that question developed by the American philosopher John Rawls.

Rawls’s work in the mid-twentieth century ushered in a paradigm shift in political philosophy. In his wake, philosophers began exploring what justice and equality meant in the context of modern capitalist welfare states, using those concepts to describe, in impressive and painstaking detail, the ideal structure of a just society—one that turned out to closely resemble a version of postwar social democracy. Working within this framework, they have since elaborated a body of abstract moral principles that provide the philosophical backbone of modern liberalism. These ideas are designed to help us see what justice and equality demand—of our society, of our institutions, and of ourselves.

This is a story of triumph: Rawls’s philosophical project was a major success. It is not that political philosophers after Rawls didn’t disagree; fine-grained and heated arguments are what philosophers do best. But over the last few decades they built a robust consensus about the fundamental rules of the game, conceiving of themselves as engaged in a common intellectual project with a shared conceptual framework. The governing concepts and aims of political philosophy have, for generations, been more or less taken for granted.

But if modern political philosophy is bound up with modern liberalism, and liberalism is failing, it may well be time to ask whether these apparently timeless ideas outlived their usefulness….(More)”.