Scientific Publishing: Enough is Enough

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Seemay Chou: “In Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson make the case that the biggest barriers to progress today are institutional. They’re not because of physical limitations or intellectual scarcity. They’re the product of legacy systems — systems that were built with one logic in mind, but now operate under another. And until we go back and address them at the root, we won’t get the future we say we want.

I’m a scientist. Over the past five years, I’ve experimented with science outside traditional institutes. From this vantage point, one truth has become inescapable. The journal publishing system — the core of how science is currently shared, evaluated, and rewarded — is fundamentally broken. And I believe it’s one of the legacy systems that prevents science from meeting its true potential for society.

It’s an unpopular moment to critique the scientific enterprise given all the volatility around its funding. But we do have a public trust problem. The best way to increase trust and protect science’s future is for scientists to have the hard conversations about what needs improvement. And to do this transparently. In all my discussions with scientists across every sector, exactly zero think the journal system works well. Yet we all feel trapped in a system that is, by definition, us.

I no longer believe that incremental fixes are enough. Science publishing must be built anew. I help oversee billions of dollars in funding across several science and technology organizations. We are expanding our requirement that all scientific work we fund will not go towards traditional journal publications. Instead, research we support should be released and reviewed more openly, comprehensively, and frequently than the status quo.

This policy is already in effect at Arcadia Science and Astera Institute, and we’re actively funding efforts to build journal alternatives through both Astera and The Navigation Fund. We hope others cross this line with us, and below I explain why every scientist and science funder should strongly consider it…(More)”.

Human rights centered global governance of quantum technologies: advancing information for all

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

UNESCO Brief: “The integration of quantum technologies into AI systems introduces greater complexity, requiring stronger policy and technical frameworks that uphold human rights protections. Ensuring that these advancements do not widen existing inequalities or cause environmental harm is crucial.

The  Brief  expands  on  the  “Quantum  technologies  and  their  global  impact:  discussion  paper ”published by UNESCO. The objective of this Brief is to unpack the multiple dimensions of the quantum ecosystem and broadly explore the human rights and policy implications of quantum technologies, with some key findings:

  • While quantum technologies promise advancements of human rights in the areas of encryption, privacy, and security,  they also pose risks to these very domains and related ones such as freedom of expression and access to information
  • Quantum  innovations  will  reshape security,  economic  growth,  and  science, but  without  a robust human  rights-based  framework,  they  risk  deepening  inequalities  and  destabilizing global governance.
  • The quantum  divide  is  emerging  as  a  critical  issue,  with  disparities  in  access  to  technology,  expertise, and infrastructure widening global inequalities. Unchecked, this gap could limit the benefits of quantum advancements for all.
  • The quantum gender divide remains stark—79% of quantum companies have no female senior leaders, and only 1 in 54 quantum job applicants are women.

The Issue Brief provides broad recommendations and targeted actions for stakeholders,emphasizing

human  rights-centered  governance,  awareness,  capacity  building,  and  inclusivity  to  bridge global and gender divides. The key recommendations focus on a comprehensive governance model which must  ensure  a  multistakeholder  approach  that  facilitates,  state  duties,  corporate  accountability, effective remedies for human rights violations, and open standards for equitable access. Prioritizing human  rights  in  global  governance  will  ensure  quantum  innovation  serves  all  of  humanity  while safeguarding fundamental freedoms…(More)”.

Project Push creates an archive of news alerts from around the world

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Neel Dhanesha: “A little over a year ago, Matt Taylor began to feel like he was getting a few too many push notifications from the BBC News app.

It’s a feeling many of us can probably relate to. Many people, myself included, have turned off news notifications entirely in the past few months. Taylor, however, went in the opposite direction.

Instead of turning off notifications, he decided to see how the BBC — the most popular news app in the U.K., where Taylor lives —  compared to other news organizations around the world. So he dug out an old Google Pixel phone, downloaded 61 news apps onto it, and signed up for push notifications on all of them.

As notifications roll in, a custom-built script (made with the help of ChatGPT) uploads their text to a server and a Bluesky page, providing a near real-time view of push notifications from services around the world. Taylor calls it Project Push.

People who work in news “take the front page very seriously,” said Taylor, a product manager at the Financial Times who built Project Push in his spare time. “There are lots of editors who care a lot about that, but actually one of the most important people in the newsroom is the person who decides that they’re going to press a button that sends an immediate notification to millions of people’s phones.”

The Project Push feed is a fascinating portrait of the news today. There are the expected alerts — breaking news, updates to ongoing stories like the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the latest shenanigans in Washington — but also:

— Updates on infrastructure plans that, without the context, become absolutely baffling (a train will instead be a bus?).

— Naked attempts to increase engagement.

— Culture updates that some may argue aren’t deserving of a push alert from the Associated Press.

— Whatever this is.

Taylor tells me he’s noticed some geographic differences in how news outlets approach push notifications. Publishers based in Asia and the Middle East, for example, send far more notifications than European or American ones; CNN Indonesia alone pushed about 17,000 of the 160,000 or so notifications Project Push has logged over the past year…(More)”.

Digital Democracy in a Divided Global Landscape

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

10 essays by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “A first set of essays analyzes how local actors are navigating the new tech landscape. Lillian Nalwoga explores the challenges and upsides of Starlink satellite internet deployment in Africa, highlighting legal hurdles, security risks, and concerns about the platform’s leadership. As African nations look to Starlink as a valuable tool in closing the digital divide, Nalwoga emphasizes the need to invest in strong regulatory frameworks to safeguard digital spaces. Jonathan Corpus Ong and Dean Jackson analyze the landscape of counter-disinformation funding in local contexts. They argue that there is a “mismatch” between the priorities of funders and the strategies that activists would like to pursue, resulting in “ineffective and extractive workflows.” Ong and Jackson isolate several avenues for structural change, including developing “big tent” coalitions of activists and strategies for localizing aid projects. Janjira Sombatpoonsiri examines the role of local actors in foreign influence operations in Southeast Asia. She highlights three motivating factors that drive local participation in these operations: financial benefits, the potential to gain an edge in domestic power struggles, and the appeal of anti-Western narratives.

A second set of essays explores evolving applications of digital repression…

A third set focuses on national strategies and digital sovereignty debates…

A fourth set explores pressing tech policy and regulatory questions…(More)”.

Representants and International Orders

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Alena Drieschova: “Different units of international politics, such as states or the church, cannot be present in their entirety during international interactions. Political rule needs to be represented for international actors to coordinate their activities. Representants (i.e. maps, GDP, buildings, and diplomatic and warfare practices) establish collective understandings about the nature of authority and its configuration. Whilst representants are not exact replica, they highlight and omit certain features from the units they stand in for. In these inclusions and exclusions lies representants’ irreducible effect. This book studies how representants define the units of the international system and position them in relation to each other, thereby generating an international order. When existing representants change, the international order changes because the units are defined differently and stand in different relations to each other. Power is therefore defined differently. Spanning centuries of European history, Alena Drieschova traces the struggles between actors over these representations…(More)”.

The Teacher in the Machine: A Human History of Education Technology

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Anne Trumbore: “From AI tutors who ensure individualized instruction but cannot do math to free online courses from elite universities that were supposed to democratize higher education, claims that technological innovations will transform education often fall short. Yet, as Anne Trumbore shows in The Teacher in the Machine, the promises of today’s cutting-edge technologies aren’t new. Long before the excitement about the disruptive potential of generative AI–powered tutors and massive open online courses, scholars at Stanford, MIT, and the University of Illinois in the 1960s and 1970s were encouraged by the US government to experiment with computers and artificial intelligence in education. Trumbore argues that the contrast between these two eras of educational technology reveals the changing role of higher education in the United States as it shifted from a public good to a private investment.

Writing from a unique insider’s perspective and drawing on interviews with key figures, historical research, and case studies, Trumbore traces today’s disparate discussions about generative AI, student loan debt, and declining social trust in higher education back to their common origins at a handful of elite universities fifty years ago. Arguing that those early educational experiments have resonance today, Trumbore points the way to a more equitable and collaborative pedagogical future. Her account offers a critical lens on the history of technology in education just as universities and students seek a stronger hand in shaping the future of their institutions…(More)”

Using Gamification to Engage Citizens in Micro-Mobility Data Sharing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Anu Masso, Anniki Puura, Jevgenia Gerassimenko and Olle Järv: “The European Strategy for Data aims to create a unified environment for accessing, sharing, and reusing data across sectors, institutions, and individuals, with a focus on areas like mobility and smart cities. While significant progress has been made in the technical interoperability and legislative frameworks for data spaces, critical gaps persist in the bottom-up processes, particularly in fostering social collaboration and citizen-driven initiatives. What is often overlooked is the need for effective citizen engagement and collaborative governance models to ensure the long-term viability and inclusivity of these data spaces. In addition, although principles for successful data sharing are well-established in sectors like healthcare, they remain underdeveloped and more challenging to implement in areas such as mobility. This article addresses these gaps by exploring how gamification can drive bottom-up data space formation, engaging citizens in data-sharing and fostering collaboration among private companies, local governments, and academic institutions. Using bicycle usage as an example, it illustrates how gamification can incentivise citizens to share mobility data for social good, promoting more active and sustainable transportation in cities. Drawing on a case study from Tallinn (Estonia), the paper demonstrates how gamification can improve data collection, highlighting the vital role of citizen participation in urban planning. The article emphasises that while technological solutions for data spaces are advancing, understanding collaborative governance models for data sharing remains crucial for ensuring the success of the European Union’s data space agenda and driving sustainable innovation in urban environments…(More)”.

Who Is Government?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Michael Lewis: “The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone.

Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers, including Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell, to join him in finding someone doing an interesting job for the government and writing about them. The stories they found are unexpected, riveting, and inspiring, including a former coal miner devoted to making mine roofs less likely to collapse, saving thousands of lives; an IRS agent straight out of a crime thriller; and the manager who made the National Cemetery Administration the best-run organization, public or private, in the entire country. Each essay shines a spotlight on the essential behind-the-scenes work of exemplary federal employees.

Whether they’re digitizing archives, chasing down cybercriminals, or discovering new planets, these public servants are committed to their work and universally reluctant to take credit. Expanding on the Washington Post series, the vivid profiles in Who Is Government? blow up the stereotype of the irrelevant bureaucrat. They show how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters…(More)”.

The Next Wave of Innovation Districts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Bruce Katz and Julie Wagner: “A next wave of innovation districts is gaining momentum given the structural changes underway in the global economy. The examples cited above telegraph where existing innovation districts are headed and explain why new districts are forming. The districts highlighted and many others are responding to fast-changing and highly volatile macro forces and the need to de-risk, decarbonize, and diversify talent.

The next wave of innovation districts is distinctive for multiple reasons.

  • The sectors leveraging this innovation geography expand way beyond the traditional focus on life sciences to include advanced manufacturing for military and civilian purposes.
  • The deeper emphasis on decarbonization is driving the use of basic and applied R&D to invent new clean technology products and solutions as well as organizing energy generation and distribution within the districts themselves to meet crucial carbon targets.
  • The stronger emphasis on the diversification of talent includes the upskilling of workers for new production activities and a broader set of systems to drive inclusive innovation to address long-standing inequities.
  • The districts are attracting a broader group of stakeholders, including manufacturing companies, utilities, university industrial design and engineering departments and hard tech startups.
  • The districts ultimately are looking to engage a wider base of investors given the disparate resources and traditions of capitalization that support defense tech, clean tech, med tech and other favored forms of innovation.

Some regions or states are also seeking ways to connect a constellation of districts and other economic hubs to harness the imperative to innovate accentuated by these and other macro forces. The state of South Australia is one such example. It has prioritized several innovation hubs across this region to foster South Australia’s knowledge and innovation ecosystem, as well as identify emerging economic clusters in industry sectors of global competitiveness to advance the broader economy…(More)”.

Computer Science and the Law

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Steven M. Bellovin: “There were three U.S. technical/legal developments occurring in approximately 1993 that had a profound effect on the technology industry and on many technologists. More such developments are occurring with increasing frequency.

The three developments were, in fact, technically unrelated. One was a bill before the U.S. Congress for a standardized wiretap interface in phone switches, a concept that spread around the world under the generic name of “lawful intercept.” The second was an update to the copyright statute to adapt to the digital age. While there were some useful changes—caching proxies and ISPs transmitting copyrighted material were no longer to be held liable for making illegal copies of protected content—it also provided an easy way for careless or unscrupulous actors—including bots—to request takedown of perfectly legal material. The third was the infamous Clipper chip, an encryption device that provided a backdoor for the U.S.—and only the U.S.—government.

All three of these developments could be and were debated on purely legal or policy grounds. But there were also technical issues. Thus, one could argue on legal grounds that the Clipper chip granted the government unprecedented powers, powers arguably in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That, of course, is a U.S. issue—but technologists, including me, pointed out the technical risks of deploying a complex cryptographic protocol, anywhere in the world (and many other countries have since expressed similar desires). Sure enough, Matt Blaze showed how to abuse the Clipper chip to let it do backdoor-free encryption, and at least two other mechanisms for adding backdoors to encryption protocols were shown to have flaws that allowed malefactors to read data that others had encrypted.

These posed a problem: debating some issues intelligently required not just a knowledge of law or of technology, but of both. That is, some problems cannot be discussed purely on technical grounds or purely on legal grounds; the crux of the matter lies in the intersection.

Consider, for example, the difference between content and metadata in a communication. Metadata alone is extremely powerful; indeed, Michael Hayden, former director of both the CIA and the NSA, once said, “We kill people based on metadata.” The combination of content and metadata is of course even more powerful. However, under U.S. law (and the legal reasoning is complex and controversial), the content of a phone call is much more strongly protected than the metadata: who called whom, when, and for how long they spoke. But how does this doctrine apply to the Internet, a network that provides far more powerful abilities to the endpoints in a conversation? (Metadata analysis is not an Internet-specific phenomenon. The militaries of the world have likely been using it for more than a century.) You cannot begin to answer that question without knowing not just how the Internet actually works, but also the legal reasoning behind the difference. It took more than 100 pages for some colleagues and I, three computer scientists and a former Federal prosecutor, to show how the line between content and metadata can be drawn in some cases (and that the Department of Justice’s manuals and some Federal judges got the line wrong), but that in other cases, there is no possible line1 

Newer technologies pose the same sorts of risks…(More)”.