Stefaan G. Verhulst in the Stanford Social Innovation Review: “Proprietary data can help improve and save lives, but fully harnessing its potential will require a cultural transformation in the way companies, governments, and other organizations treat and act on data…. We live, as it is now common to point out, in an era of big data. The proliferation of apps, social media, and e-commerce platforms, as well as sensor-rich consumer devices like mobile phones, wearable devices, commercial cameras, and even cars generate zettabytes of data about the environment and about us. Yet much of the most valuable data resides... (More >)
What Does Big Data Mean For Sustainability?
Saurabh Tyagi at Sustainable Brands: “Everything around us is impacted by big data today. The phenomenon took shape earlier in this decade and there are now a growing number of compelling ways in which big data analytics is being applied to solve real-world problems….Out of the many promises of big data, environment sustainability is one of the most important ones to implement and maintain. Why so? Climate change has moved to the top of the list of global risks, affecting every country and disrupting economies. While a major part of this damage is irreversible, it is still possible with... (More >)
Technology tools in human rights
Engine Room: “Over the past few years, we have been witnessing a wave of new technology tools for human rights documentation. Along with the arrival of the new tools, human rights defenders are facing new tools, new possibilities, new challenges, and new expectations of human rights documentation initiatives. Produced with support from the Oak Foundation, this report is designed as a first attempt to detail available technologies that are designed for human rights documentation, understand the various perspectives on the challenges human rights documentation initiatives face when adopting new tools and practices, and analyse what is working and what... (More >)
How The Tech Community Mobilized To Help Refugees
Steven Melendez at FastCompany: “Thousands of techies the world over have banded together to help refugees flooding Europe to stay connected. The needs of the waves of migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, and other points—more than a million in 2015—go beyond just shelter, safety, and sustenance. “You can imagine, crossing to a border or coming to a place you don’t know. Information needs are massive,” says Alyoscia D’Onofrio, senior director at the governance technical unit of the International Rescue Committee, which assists refugees and displaced people around the world. “One of the big differences between this crisis response and many... (More >)
Data can become Nigeria’s new ‘black gold’
Labi Ogunbiyi in the Financial Times: “In the early 2000s I decided to leave my job heading the African project finance team in a global law firm to become an investor. My experience of managing big telecoms, infrastructure and energy transactions — and, regrettably, often disputes — involving governments, project sponsors, investors, big contractors, multilateral and development agencies had left me dissatisfied. Much of the ownership of the assets being fought over remained in the hands of international conglomerates. Africa’s lack of capacity to raise the capital to own them directly — and to develop the technical skills necessary... (More >)
Social Media’s Globe-Shaking Power
Farhad Manjoo in the New York Times: “…Over much of the last decade, we have seen progressive social movementspowered by the web spring up across the world. There was the Green Revolution in Iran and the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa. In the United States, we saw the Occupy Wall Street movement andthe #BlackLivesMatter protests. Social networks also played a role in electoral politics — first in the ultimately unsuccessful candidacy of Howard Dean in 2003, and then in the election of the first African-American president in 2008. Yet now those movements look like the... (More >)
Using Cloud Computing to Untangle How Trees Can Cool Cities
Timothy Boucher at CoolGreenScience: “We’ve all used Google Earth — to explore remote destinations around the world or to check out our house from above. But Google Earth Engine is a valuable tool for conservationists and geographers like myself that allows us to tackle some tricky remote-sensing analysis. After having completed a few smaller spatial science projects in the cloud (mostly on the Google Earth Engine, or GEE, platform), I decided to give it a real workout — by analyzing more than 300 gigabytes of data across 28 United States and seven Chinese cities. This project was part of... (More >)
Playing politics: exposing the flaws of nudge thinking
Book Review by Pat Kane in The New Scientist: “The cover of this book echoes its core anxiety. A giant foot presses down on a sullen, Michael Jackson-like figure – a besuited citizen coolly holding off its massive weight. This is a sinister image to associate with a volume (and its author, Cass Sunstein) that should be able to proclaim a decade of success in the government’s use of “behavioural science”, or nudge theory. But doubts are brewing about its long-term effectiveness in changing public behaviour – as well as about its selective account of evolved human nature. Nudging... (More >)
Embracing Digital Democracy: A Call for Building an Online Civic Commons
John Gastil and Robert C. Richards Jr. in Political Science & Politics (Forthcoming): “Recent advances in online civic engagement tools have created a digital civic space replete with opportunities to craft and critique laws and rules or evaluate candidates, ballot measures, and policy ideas. These civic spaces, however, remain largely disconnected from one another, such that tremendous energy dissipates from each civic portal. Long-term feedback loops also remain rare. We propose addressing these limitations by building an integrative online commons that links together the best existing tools by making them components in a larger “Democracy Machine.” Drawing on gamification... (More >)
Three ways to grow the open data economy
Nigel Shadbolt in The Guardian: “…here are three areas where action by the UK government can help to support and promote a flourishing open data economy Strengthen our data infrastructure We are used to thinking of areas like transport and energy requiring physical infrastructure. From roads and rail networks to the national grid and power stations, we understand that investment and management of these vital parts of an infrastructure are essential to the economic wellbeing and future prosperity of the nation. This is no less true of key data assets. Our data infrastructure is a core part of our... (More >)
