DATA – Page 348 – The Living Library

#TrendingLaws: How can Machine Learning and Network Analysis help us identify the “influencers” of Constitutions?

Curated on August 7, 2018December 11, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Unicef: “New research by scientists from UNICEF’s Office of Innovation — published today in the journal Nature Human Behaviour — applies methods from network science and machine learning to constitutional law. UNICEF Innovation Data Scientists Alex Rutherford and Manuel Garcia-Herranz collaborated with computer scientists and political scientists at MIT, George Washington University, and UC Merced to apply data analysis to the world’s constitutions over the last 300 years. This work sheds new light on how to better understand why countries’ laws change and incorporate social rights…

Data science techniques allow us to use methods like network science and machine learning to uncover patterns and insights that are hard for humans to see. Just as we can map influential users on Twitter — and patterns of relations between places to predict how diseases will spread — we can identify which countries have influenced each other in the past and what are the relations between legal provisions.

Why The Science of Constitutions?

One way UNICEF fulfills its mission is through advocacy with national governments — to enshrine rights for minorities, notably children, formally in law. Perhaps the most renowned example of this is the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (ICRC).

Constitutions, such as Mexico’s 1917 constitution — the first to limit the employment of children — are critical to formalizing rights for vulnerable populations. National constitutions describe the role of a country’s institutions, its character in the eyes of the world, as well as the rights of its citizens.

From a scientific standpoint, the work is an important first step in showing that network analysis and machine learning technique can be used to better understand the dynamics of caring for and protecting the rights of children — critical to the work we do in a complex and interconnected world. It shows the significant, and positive policy implications of using data science to uphold children’s rights.

What the Research Shows:

Through this research, we uncovered:

A network of relationships between countries and their constitutions.
A natural progression of laws — where fundamental rights are a necessary precursor to more specific rights for minorities.
The effect of key historical events in changing legal norms….(More)”.

Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data’s Relation to the Contemporary Subject

Curated on August 4, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias in Television & New Media (TVNM): “...Data colonialism combines the predatory extractive practices of historical colonialism with the abstract quantification methods of computing. Understanding Big Data from the Global South means understanding capitalism’s current dependence on this new type of appropriation that works at every point in space where people or things are attached to today’s infrastructures of connection. The scale of this transformation means that it is premature to map the forms of capitalism that will emerge from it on a global scale. Just as historical colonialism over the long-run provided the essential preconditions for the emergence of industrial capitalism, so over time, we can expect that data colonialism will provide the preconditions for a new stage of capitalism that as yet we can barely imagine, but for which the appropriation of human life through data will be central.

Right now, the priority is not to speculate about that eventual stage of capitalism, but to resist the data colonialism that is under way. This is how we understand Big Data from the South. Through what we call ‘data relations’ (new types of human relations which enable the extraction of data for commodification), social life all over the globe becomes an ‘open’ resource for extraction that is somehow ‘just there’ for capital. These global flows of data are as expansive as historic colonialism’s appropriation of land, resources, and bodies, although the epicentre has somewhat shifted. Data colonialism involves not one pole of colonial power (‘the West’), but at least two: the USA and China. This complicates our notion of the geography of the Global South, a concept which until now helped situate resistance and disidentification along geographic divisions between former colonizers and colonized. Instead, the new data colonialism works both externally — on a global scale — and internally on its own home populations. The elites of data colonialism (think of Facebook) benefit from colonization in both dimensions, and North-South, East-West divisions no longer matter in the same way.

It is important to acknowledge both the apparent similarities and the significant differences between our argument and the many preceding critical arguments about Big Data…(More)”

A rationale for data governance as an approach to tackle recurrent drawbacks in open data portals

Curated on August 4, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Conference paper by Juan Ribeiro Reis et al: “Citizens and developers are gaining broad access to public data sources, made available in open data portals. These machine-readable datasets enable the creation of applications that help the population in several ways, giving them the opportunity to actively participate in governance processes, such as decision taking and policy-making.

While the number of open data portals grows over the years, researchers have been able to identify recurrent problems with the data they provide, such as lack of data standards, difficulty in data access and poor understandability. Such issues make difficult the effective use of data. Several works in literature propose different approaches to mitigate these issues, based on novel or well-known data management techniques.

However, there is a lack of general frameworks for tackling these problems. On the other hand, data governance has been applied in large companies to manage data problems, ensuring that data meets business needs and become organizational assets. In this paper, firstly, we highlight the main drawbacks pointed out in literature for government open data portals. Eventually, we bring around how data governance can tackle much of the issues identified…(More)”.

The economic value of data: discussion paper

Curated on August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

HM Treasury (UK): “Technological change has radically increased both the volume of data in the economy, and our ability to process it. This change presents an opportunity to transform our economy and society for the better.

Data-driven innovation holds the keys to addressing some of the most significant challenges confronting modern Britain, whether that is tackling congestion and improving air quality in our cities, developing ground-breaking diagnosis systems to support our NHS, or making our businesses more productive.

The UK’s strengths in cutting-edge research and the intangible economy make it well-placed to be a world leader, and estimates suggest that data-driven technologies will contribute over £60 billion per year to the UK economy by 2020.1 Recent events have raised public questions and concerns about the way that data, and particularly personal data, can be collected, processed, and shared with third party organisations.

These are concerns that this government takes seriously. The Data Protection Act 2018 updates the UK’s world-leading data protection framework to make it fit for the future, giving individuals strong new rights over how their data is used. Alongside maintaining a secure, trusted data environment, the government has an important role to play in laying the foundations for a flourishing data-driven economy.

This means pursuing policies that improve the flow of data through our economy, and ensure that those companies who want to innovate have appropriate access to high-quality and well-maintained data.

This discussion paper describes the economic opportunity presented by data-driven innovation, and highlights some of the key challenges that government will need to address, such as: providing clarity around ownership and control of data; maintaining a strong, trusted data protection framework; making effective use of public sector data; driving interoperability and standards; and enabling safe, legal and appropriate data sharing.

Over the last few years, the government has taken significant steps to strengthen the UK’s position as a world leader in data-driven innovation, including by agreeing the Artificial Intelligence Sector Deal, establishing the Geospatial Commission, and making substantial investments in digital skills. The government will build on those strong foundations over the coming months, including by commissioning an Expert Panel on Competition in Digital Markets. This Expert Panel will support the government’s wider review of competition law by considering how competition policy can better enable innovation and support consumers in the digital economy.

There are still big questions to be answered. This document marks the beginning of a wider set of conversations that government will be holding over the coming year, as we develop a new National Data Strategy….(More)”.

Reclaiming the Smart City: Personal Data, Trust and the New Commons

Curated on August 2, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Theo Bass, Emma Sutherland and Tom Symons: “Cities are becoming a major focal point in the personal data economy. In city governments, there is a clamour for data-informed approaches to everything from waste management and public transport through to policing and emergency response

This is a triumph for advocates of the better use of data in how we run cities. After years of making the case, there is now a general acceptance that social, economic and environmental pressures can be better responded to by harnessing data.

But as that argument is won, a fresh debate is bubbling up under the surface of the glossy prospectus of the smart city: who decides what we do with all this data, and how do we ensure that its generation and use does not result in discrimination, exclusion and the erosion of privacy for citizens?

This report brings together a range of case studies featuring cities which have pioneered innovative practices and policies around the responsible use of data about people. Our methods combined desk research and over 20 interviews with city administrators in a number of cities across the world.

Recommendations

Based on our case studies, we also compile a range of lessons that policymakers can use to build an alternative version to the smart city – one which promotes ethical data collection practices and responsible innovation with new technologies:

Build consensus around clear ethical principles, and translate them into practical policies.
Train public sector staff in how to assess the benefits and risks of smart technologies.
Look outside the council for expertise and partnerships, including with other city governments.
Find and articulate the benefits of privacy and digital ethics to multiple stakeholders
Become a test-bed for new services that give people more privacy and control.
Make time and resources available for genuine public engagement on the use of surveillance technologies.
Build digital literacy and make complex or opaque systems more understandable and accountable.
Find opportunities to involve citizens in the process of data collection and analysis from start to finish….(More)”.

Technology, Activism, and Social Justice in a Digital Age

Curated on August 2, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by John G. McNutt: “…offers a close look at both the present nature and future prospects for social change. In particular, the text explores the cutting edge of technology and social change, while discussing developments in social media, civic technology, and leaderless organizations — as well as more traditional approaches to social change.

It effectively assembles a rich variety of perspectives to the issue of technology and social change; the featured authors are academics and practitioners (representing both new voices and experienced researchers) who share a common devotion to a future that is just, fair, and supportive of human potential.

They come from the fields of social work, public administration, journalism, law, philanthropy, urban affairs, planning, and education, and their work builds upon 30-plus years of research. The authors’ efforts to examine changing nature of social change organizations and the issues they face will help readers reflect upon modern advocacy, social change, and the potential to utilize technology in making a difference….(More)”

To Better Predict Traffic, Look to the Electric Grid

Curated on August 2, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Linda Poon at CityLab: “The way we consume power after midnight can reveal how we bad the morning rush hour will be….

Commuters check Google Maps for traffic updates the same way they check the weather app for rain predictions. And for good reasons: By pooling information from millions of drivers already on the road, Google can paint an impressively accurate real-time portrait of congestion. Meanwhile, historical numbers can roughly predict when your morning commutes may be particularly bad.

But “the information we extract from traffic data has been exhausted,” said Zhen (Sean) Qian, who directs the Mobility Data Analytics Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He thinks that to more accurately predict how gridlock varies from day to day, there’s a whole other set of data that cities haven’t mined yet: electricity use.

“Essentially we all use the urban system—the electricity, water, the sewage system and gas—and when people use them and how heavily they do is correlated to the way they use the transportation system,” he said. How we use electricity at night, it turns out, can reveal when we leave for work the next day. “So we might be able to get new information that helps explain travel time one or two hours in advance by having a better understanding of human activity.”

When compared with 2014 traffic data, they found that 8 out of the 10 patterns had an impact on highway traffic. Households that show a spike of electricity use from midnight to 2 a.m., for example, may be night owls who sleep in, leave late, and likely won’t contribute to the early morning congestion. In contrast, households that report low electricity use from midnight to 5 a.m., followed by a rise after 5:30 a.m., could be early risers who will be on the road during rush hour. If the researchers’ model detects more households falling into the former group, it might predict that peak congestion will start closer to, say, 7:45 a.m. rather than the usual 7:30….(More)”.

From Code to Cure

Curated on August 2, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

David J. Craig at Columbia Magazine: “Armed with enormous amounts of clinical data, teams of computer scientists, statisticians, and physicians are rewriting the rules of medical research….

The deluge is upon us.

We are living in the age of big data, and with every link we click, every message we send, and every movement we make, we generate torrents of information.

In the past two years, the world has produced more than 90 percent of all the digital data that has ever been created. New technologies churn out an estimated 2.5 quintillion bytes per day. Data pours in from social media and cell phones, weather satellites and space telescopes, digital cameras and video feeds, medical records and library collections. Technologies monitor the number of steps we walk each day, the structural integrity of dams and bridges, and the barely perceptible tremors that indicate a person is developing Parkinson’s disease. These are the building blocks of our knowledge economy.

This tsunami of information is also providing opportunities to study the world in entirely new ways. Nowhere is this more evident than in medicine. Today, breakthroughs are being made not just in labs but on laptops, as biomedical researchers trained in mathematics, computer science, and statistics use powerful new analytic tools to glean insights from enormous data sets and help doctors prevent, treat, and cure disease.

“The medical field is going through a major period of transformation, and many of the changes are driven by information technology,” says George Hripcsak ’85PS,’00PH, a physician who chairs the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC). “Diagnostic techniques like genomic screening and high-resolution imaging are generating more raw data than we’ve ever handled before. At the same time, researchers are increasingly looking outside the confines of their own laboratories and clinics for data, because they recognize that by analyzing the huge streams of digital information now available online they can make discoveries that were never possible before.” …

Consider, for example, what the young computer scientist has been able to accomplish in recent years by mining an FDA database of prescription-drug side effects. The archive, which contains millions of reports of adverse drug reactions that physicians have observed in their patients, is continuously monitored by government scientists whose job it is to spot problems and pull drugs off the market if necessary. And yet by drilling down into the database with his own analytic tools, Tatonetti has found evidence that dozens of commonly prescribed drugs may interact in dangerous ways that have previously gone unnoticed. Among his most alarming findings: the antibiotic ceftriaxone, when taken with the heartburn medication lansoprazole, can trigger a type of heart arrhythmia called QT prolongation, which is known to cause otherwise healthy people to suddenly drop dead…(More)”

Our misguided love affair with techno-politics

Curated on August 1, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “What might happen if technology, which smothers us with its bounty as consumers, made the same inroads into politics? Might data-driven recommendations suggest “policies we may like” just as Amazon recommends books? Would we swipe right to pick candidates in elections or answers in referendums? Could businesses expand into every cranny of political and social life, replete with ® and ™ at each turn? What would this mean for political discourse and individual freedom?

This dystopian yet all-too-imaginable world has been conjured up by Giuseppe Porcaro in his novel “Disco Sour”. The story takes place in the near future, after a terrible war and breakdown of nations, when the (fictional) illegitimate son of Roman Polanski creates an app called Plebiscitum that works like Tinder for politics.

Mr Porcaro—who comes armed with a doctorate in political geography—uses the plot to consider questions of politics in the networked age. The Economist’s Open Future initiative asked him to reply to five questions in around 100 words each. An excerpt from the book appears thereafter.

* * *

The Economist: In your novel, an entrepreneur attempts to replace elections with an app that asks people to vote on individual policies. Is that science fiction or prediction? And were you influenced by Italy’s Five Star Movement?

Giuseppe Porcaro: The idea of imagining a Tinder-style app replacing elections came up because I see connections between the evolution of dating habits and 21st-century politics. A new sort of “tinderpolitics” kicking in when instant gratification substitutes substantial participation. Think about tweet trolling, for example.

Italy’s Five Star Movement was certainly another inspiration as it is has been a pioneer in using an online platform to successfully create a sort of new political mass movement. Another one was an Australian political party called Flux. They aim to replace the world’s elected legislatures with a new system known as issue-based direct democracy.

The Economist: Is it too cynical to suggest that a more direct relationship between citizens and policymaking would lead to a more reactionary political landscape? Or does the ideal of liberal democracy depend on an ideal citizenry that simply doesn’t exist?

Mr Porcaro: It would be cynical to put the blame on citizens for getting too close to influence decision-making. That would go against the very essence of the “liberal democracy ideal”. However, I am critical towards the pervasive idea that technology can provide quick fixes to bridge the gap between citizens and the government. By applying computational thinking to democracy, an extreme individualisation and instant participation, we forget democracy is not simply the result of an election or the mathematical sum of individual votes. Citizens risk entering a vicious circle where reactionary politics are easier to go through.

The Economist: Modern representative democracy was in some ways a response to the industrial revolution. If AI and automation radically alter the world we live in, will we have to update the way democracy works too—and if so, how?

Mr Porcaro: Democracy has already morphed several times. 19th century’s liberal democracy was shaken by universal suffrage, and adapted to the Fordist mode of production with the mass party. May 1968 challenged that model. Today, the massive availability of data and the increasing power of decision-making algorithms will change both political institutions.

The policy “production” process might be utterly redesigned. Data collected by devices we use on a daily basis (such as vehicles, domestic appliances and wearable sensors) will provide evidence about the drivers of personal voting choices, or the accountability of government decisions. …(More)

This surprising, everyday tool might hold the key to changing human behavior

Curated on August 1, 2018October 9, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Annabelle Timsit at Quartz: “To be a person in the modern world is to worry about your relationship with your phone. According to critics, smartphones are making us ill-mannered and sore-necked, dragging parents’ attention away from their kids, and destroying an entire generation.

But phones don’t have to be bad. With 4.68 billion people forecast to become mobile phone users by 2019, nonprofits and social science researchers are exploring new ways to turn our love of screens into a force for good. One increasingly popular option: Using texting to help change human behavior.

Texting: A unique tool

The short message service (SMS) was invented in the late 1980s, and the first text message was sent in 1992. (Engineer Neil Papworth sent “merry Christmas” to then-Vodafone director Richard Jarvis.) In the decades since, texting has emerged as the preferred communication method for many, and in particular younger generations. While that kind of habit-forming can be problematic—47% of US smartphone users say they “couldn’t live without” the device—our attachment to our phones also makes text-based programs a good way to encourage people to make better choices.

“Texting, because it’s anchored in mobile phones, has the ability to be with you all the time, and that gives us an enormous flexibility on precision,” says Todd Rose, director of the Mind, Brain, & Education Program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “When people lead busy lives, they need timely, targeted, actionable information.”

And who is busier than a parent? Text-based programs can help current or would-be moms and dads with everything from medication pickup to childhood development. Text4Baby, for example, messages pregnant women and young moms with health information and reminders about upcoming doctor visits. Vroom, an app for building babies’ brains, sends parents research-based prompts to help them build positive relationships with their children (for example, by suggesting they ask toddlers to describe how they’re feeling based on the weather). Muse, an AI-powered app, uses machine learning and big data to try and help parents raise creative, motivated, emotionally intelligent kids. As Jenny Anderson writes in Quartz: “There is ample evidence that we can modify parents’ behavior through technological nudges.”

Research suggests text-based programs may also be helpful in supporting young children’s academic and cognitive development. …Texts aren’t just being used to help out parents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have also used them to encourage civic participation in kids and young adults. Open Progress, for example, has an all-volunteer community called “text troop” that messages young adults across the US, reminding them to register to vote and helping them find their polling location.

Text-based programs are also useful in the field of nutrition, where private companies and public-health organizations have embraced them as a way to give advice on healthy eating and weight loss. The National Cancer Institute runs a text-based program called SmokefreeTXT that sends US adults between three and five messages per day for up to eight weeks, to help them quit smoking.

Texting programs can be a good way to nudge people toward improving their mental health, too. Crisis Text Line, for example, was the first national 24/7 crisis-intervention hotline to conduct counseling conversations entirely over text…(More).