DATA – Page 315 – The Living Library

From #Resistance to #Reimagining governance

Curated on December 14, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan G. Verhulst in Open Democracy: “…There is no doubt that #Resistance (and its associated movements) holds genuine transformative potential. But for the change it brings to be meaningful (and positive), we need to ask the question: What kind of government do we really want?

Working to maintain the status quo or simply returning to, for instance, a pre-Trump reality cannot provide for the change we need to counter the decline in trust, the rise of populism and the complex social, economic and cultural problems we face. We need a clear articulation of alternatives. Without such an articulation, there is a danger of a certain hollowness and dispersion of energies. The call for #Resistance requires a more concrete –and ultimately more productive – program that is concerned not just with rejecting or tearing down, but with building up new institutions and governance processes. What’s needed, in short, is not simply #Resistance.

Below, I suggest six shifts that can help us reimagine governance for the twenty-first century. Several of these shifts are enabled by recent technological changes (e.g., the advent of big data, blockchain and collective intelligence) as well as other emerging methods such as design thinking, behavioral economics, and agile development.

Some of the shifts I suggest have been experimented with, but they have often been developed in an ad hoc manner without a full understanding of how they could make a more systemic impact. Part of the purpose of this paper is to begin the process of a more systematic enquiry; the following amounts to a preliminary outline or blueprint for reimagined governance for the twenty-first century.

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Shift 1: from gatekeeper to platform…
Shift 2: from inward to user-and-problem orientation…
Shift 3: from closed to open…
Shift 4: from deliberation to collaboration and co-creation…
Shift 5: from ideology to evidence-based…
Shift 6: from centralized to distributed… (More)

Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media

Curated on December 13, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Shannon Mattern: “For years, pundits have trumpeted the earthshattering changes that big data and smart networks will soon bring to our cities. But what if cities have long been built for intelligence, maybe for millennia? In Code and Clay, Data and Dirt Shannon Mattern advances the provocative argument that our urban spaces have been “smart” and mediated for thousands of years.

Offering powerful new ways of thinking about our cities, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt goes far beyond the standard historical concepts of origins, development, revolutions, and the accomplishments of an elite few. Mattern shows that in their architecture, laws, street layouts, and civic knowledge—and through technologies including the telephone, telegraph, radio, printing, writing, and even the human voice—cities have long negotiated a rich exchange between analog and digital, code and clay, data and dirt, ether and ore.

Mattern’s vivid prose takes readers through a historically and geographically broad range of stories, scenes, and locations, synthesizing a new narrative for our urban spaces. Taking media archaeology to the city’s streets, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt reveals new ways to write our urban, media, and cultural histories….(More)”.

Business Models For Sustainable Research Data Repositories

Curated on December 13, 2017August 20, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “In 2007, the OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding were published and in the intervening period there has been an increasing emphasis on open science. At the same time, the quantity and breadth of research data has massively expanded. So called “Big Data” is no longer limited to areas such as particle physics and astronomy, but is ubiquitous across almost all fields of research. This is generating exciting new opportunities, but also challenges.

The promise of open research data is that they will not only accelerate scientific discovery and improve reproducibility, but they will also speed up innovation and improve citizen engagement with research. In short, they will benefit society as a whole. However, for the benefits of open science and open research data to be realised, these data need to be carefully and sustainably managed so that they can be understood and used by both present and future generations of researchers.

Data repositories – based in local and national research institutions and international bodies – are where the long-term stewardship of research data takes place and hence they are the foundation of open science. Yet good data stewardship is costly and research budgets are limited. So, the development of sustainable business models for research data repositories needs to be a high priority in all countries. Surprisingly, perhaps, little systematic analysis has been done on income streams, costs, value propositions, and business models for data repositories, and that is the gap this report attempts to address, from a science policy perspective…..

This project was designed to take up the challenge and to contribute to a better understanding of how research data repositories are funded, and what developments are occurring in their funding. Central questions included:

How are data repositories currently funded, and what are the key revenue sources?
What innovative revenue sources are available to data repositories?
How do revenue sources fit together into sustainable business models?
What incentives for, and means of, optimising costs are available?
What revenue sources and business models are most acceptable to key stakeholders?…(More)”

Victims of Sexual Harassment Have a New Resource: AI

Curated on December 12, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

MIT Technology Review (The Download): “If you have ever dealt with sexual harassment in the workplace, there is now a private online place for you to go for help. Botler AI, a startup based in Montreal, on Wednesday launched a system that provides free information and guidance to those who have been sexually harassed and are unsure of their legal rights.

Using deep learning, the AI system was trained on more than 300,000 U.S. and Canadian criminal court documents, including over 57,000 documents and complaints related to sexual harassment. Using this information, the software predicts whether the situation explained by the user qualifies as sexual harassment, and notes which laws may have been violated under the criminal code. It then generates an incident report that the user can hand over to relevant authorities….

The tool starts by asking simple questions that can guide the software, like what state you live in and when the incident occured. Then, you explain your situation in plain language. The software then creates a report based on that account and what it has learned from the court cases on which it was trained.

The company’s ultimate goal is to provide free legal tools to help with a multitude of issues, not just sexual harassment. In this Botler isn’t alone—a similar company called DoNotPay started as an automated way to fight parking tickets but has since expanded massively (see “This Chatbot Will Help You Sue Anyone“)….(More).

The Wikipedia competitor that’s harnessing blockchain for epistemological supremacy

Curated on December 12, 2017August 20, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Peter Rubin at Wired: “At the time of this writing, the opening sentence of Larry Sanger’s Everipedia entry is pretty close to his Wikipedia entry. It describes him as “an American Internet project developer … best known as co-founder of Wikipedia.” By the time you read this, however, it may well mention a new, more salient fact—that Sanger recently became the Chief Information Officer of Everipedia itself, a site that seeks to become a better version of the online encyclopedia than the one he founded back in 2001. To do that, Sanger’s new employer is trying something that no other player in the space has done: moving to a blockchain.

Oh, blockchain, that decentralized “global ledger” that provides the framework for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (as well as a thousand explainer videos, and seemingly a thousand startups’ business plans). Blockchain already stands to make medical patient data easier to move and improve food safety; now, Everipedia’s founders hope, it will allow for a more powerful, accountable encyclopedia.

Here’s how it’ll work. Everipedia already uses a points system where creating articles and approved edits amasses “IQ.” In January, when the site moves over to a blockchain, Everipedia will convert IQ scores to a token-based currency, giving all existing editors an allotment proportionate to their IQ—and giving them a real, financial stake in Everipedia. From then on, creating and curating articles will allow users to earn tokens, which act as virtual shares of the platform. To prevent bad actors from trying to cash in with ill-founded or deliberately false articles and edits, Everipedia will force users to put up a token of their own in order to submit. If their work is accepted, they get their token back, plus a little bit for their contribution; if not, they lose their token. The assumption is that other users, motivated by the desire to maintain the site’s value, will actively seek to prevent such efforts….

This isn’t the first time a company has proposed a decentralized blockchain-based encyclopedia; earlier this year, a company called Lunyr announced similar plans. However, judging from Lunyr’s most recent roadmap, Everipedia will beat it to market with room to spare….(More)”.

Big data in social and psychological science: theoretical and methodological issues

Curated on December 11, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Lin Qiu, Sarah Hian May Chan and David Chan in the Journal of Computational Social Science: “Big data presents unprecedented opportunities to understand human behavior on a large scale. It has been increasingly used in social and psychological research to reveal individual differences and group dynamics. There are a few theoretical and methodological challenges in big data research that require attention. In this paper, we highlight four issues, namely data-driven versus theory-driven approaches, measurement validity, multi-level longitudinal analysis, and data integration. They represent common problems that social scientists often face in using big data. We present examples of these problems and propose possible solutions….(More)”.

Analyzing the Role of the Internet-of-Things in Business and Technologically-Smart Cities

Curated on December 11, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by A. Shinn, K. Nakatani, and W. Rodriguez in the International Journal of Internet of Things: “This research analyzes and theorizes on the role that the Internet-of-Things will play in the expansion of business and technologically-smart cities. This study examines: a) the underlying technology, referred to as the Internet of Things that forms the foundation for smart cities; b) what businesses and government must do to successfully transition to a technologically-smart city; and c) how the proliferation of the Internet of Things through the emerging cities will affect local citizens. As machine-to-machine communication becomes increasingly common, new use cases are continually created, as is the case with the use of the Internet of Things in technologically-smart cities. Technology businesses are keeping a close pulse on end-users’ needs in order to identify and create technologies and systems to cater to new use cases. A number of the international smart city-specific use cases will be discussed in this paper along with the technology that aligns to those use cases….(More)”.

A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Governance

Curated on December 11, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Stephen Goldsmith and Neil Kleiman: “At a time when trust is dropping precipitously and American government at the national level has fallen into a state of long-term, partisan-based gridlock, local government can still be effective—indeed more effective and even more responsive to the needs of its citizens. Based on decades of direct experience and years studying successful models around the world, the authors of this intriguing book propose a new operating system (O/S) for cities. Former mayor and Harvard professor Stephen Goldsmith and New York University professor Neil Kleiman suggest building on the giant leaps that have been made in technology, social engagement, and big data.

Calling their approach “distributed governance,” Goldsmith and Kleiman offer a model that allows public officials to mobilize new resources, surface ideas from unconventional sources, and arm employees with the information they need to become pre-emptive problem solvers. This book highlights lessons from the many innovations taking place in today’s cities to show how a new O/S can create systemic transformation.

For students of government, A New City O/S: The Power of Distributed Governance presents a groundbreaking strategy for rethinking the governance of cities, marking an important evolution of the current bureaucratic authority-based model dating from the 1920s. More important, the book is designed for practitioners, starting with public-sector executives, managers, and frontline workers. By weaving real-life examples into a coherent model, the authors have created a step-by-step guide for all those who would put the needs of citizens front and center. Nothing will do more to restore trust in government than solutions that work. A New City O/S: The Power of Distributed Governanceputs those solutions within reach of those public officials responsible for their delivery….(More)”.

Blockchain: Unpacking the disruptive potential of blockchain technology for human development.

Curated on December 7, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

IDRC white paper: “In the scramble to harness new technologies to propel innovation around the world, artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning, and blockchain technologies are being explored and deployed in a wide variety of contexts globally.

Although blockchain is one of the most hyped of these new technologies, it is also perhaps the least understood. Blockchain is the distributed ledger — a database that is shared across multiple sites or institutions to furnish a secure and transparent record of events occurring during the provision of a service or contract — that supports cryptocurrencies (digital assets designed to work as mediums of exchange).

Blockchain is now underpinning applications such as land registries and identity services, but as its popularity grows, its relevance in addressing socio-economic gaps and supporting development targets like the globally-recognized UN Sustainable Development Goals is critical to unpack. Moreover, for countries in the global South that want to be more than just end users or consumers, the complex infrastructure requirements and operating costs of blockchain could prove challenging. For the purposes of real development, we need to not only understand how blockchain is workable, but also who is able to harness it to foster social inclusion and promote democratic governance.

This white paper explores the potential of blockchain technology to support human development. It provides a non-technical overview, illustrates a range of applications, and offers a series of conclusions and recommendations for additional research and potential development programming….(More)”.