How a new platform is future-proofing governance for the intelligent age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kelly Ommundsen: “We are living through one of the most transformative moments in human history. Technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and synthetic biology are accelerating change at a pace few institutions are prepared to manage. Yet while innovation is leaping forward, regulation often remains standing still – constrained by outdated models, fragmented approaches and a reactive mindset…

To address this growing challenge, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with the UAE’s General Secretariat of the Cabinet, has launched the Global Regulatory Innovation Platform (GRIP).

GRIP is a new initiative designed to foster human-centred, forward-looking and globally coordinated approaches to regulation. Its goal: to build trust, reduce uncertainty and accelerate innovation that serves the public good.

This platform builds on the World Economic Forum’s broader body of work on agile governance. As outlined in the Forum’s 2020 report, Agile Governance: Reimagining Policy-making in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, traditional regulatory approaches – characterized by top-down control and infrequent updates – are increasingly unfit for the pace, scale and complexity of modern technological change…(More)”.

Artificial Democracy: The Impact of Big Data on Politics, Policy, and Polity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Cecilia Biancalana and Eric Montigny: “Democracy and data have a complicated relationship. Under the influence of big data and artificial intelligence, some democracies are being transformed as relations between citizens, political parties, governments, and corporations are gradually redrawn.

Artificial Democracy explores the ways in which data collection and analytics and their application are changing political practices, government policies, and even democratic policies themselves. With an international roster of multidisciplinary contributors, this topical collection takes a comprehensive approach to big data’s effect on democracy, from the use of micro-targeting in electoral campaigns to the clash between privacy and surveillance in the name of protecting society.

The book tackles both the dangers and the potentially desirable changes made possible by the symbiosis of big data and artificial intelligence. It explores shifts in how we conceptualize the citizen-government relationship and asks important questions about where we could be heading…(More)”.

Understanding Technology and Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Todd L. Pittinsky: “From the early days of navigating the world with bare hands to harnessing tools that transformed stones and sticks, human ingenuity has birthed science and technology. As societies expanded, the complexity of our tools grew, raising a crucial question: Do we control them, or do they dictate our fate? The trajectory of science and technology isn’tpredetermined; debates and choices shape it. It’s our responsibility to navigate wisely, ensuring technology betters, not worsens, our world. This book explores the complex nature of this relationship, with 18 chapters posing and discussing a compelling ‘big question.’ Topics discussed include technology’s influence on child development; big data; algorithms; democracy; happiness; the interplay of sex, gender, and science in its development; international development efforts; robot consciousness; and the future of human labor in an automated world. Think critically. Take a stand. With societal acceleration mirroring technological pace, the challenge is, can we keep up?…(More)”.

Why Big Tech is threatened by a global push for data sovereignty

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Damilare Dosunmu: “A battle for data sovereignty is brewing from Africa to Asia.

Developing nations are challenging Big Tech’s decades-long hold on global data by demanding that their citizens’ information be stored locally. The move is driven by the realization that countries have been giving away their most valuable resource for tech giants to build a trillion-dollar market capitalization.

In April, Nigeria asked Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to set concrete deadlines for opening data centers in the country. Nigeria has been making this demand for about four years, but the companies have so far failed to fulfill their promises. Now, Nigeria has set up a working group with the companies to ensure that data is stored within its shores.

“We told them no more waivers — that we need a road map for when they are coming to Nigeria,” Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, director-general of Nigeria’s technology regulator, the National Information Technology Development Agency, told Rest of World.

Other developing countries, including India, South Africa, and Vietnam, have also implemented similar rules demanding that companies store data locally. India’s central bank requires payment companies to host financial data within the country, while Vietnam mandates that foreign telecommunications, e-commerce, and online payments providers establish local offices and keep user data within its shores for at least 24 months…(More)”.

Why are “missions” proving so difficult?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by James Plunkett: “…Unlike many political soundbites, however, missions have a strong academic heritage, drawing on years of work from Mariana Mazzucato and others. They gained support as a way for governments to be less agnostic about the direction of economic growth and its social implications, most obviously on issues like climate change, while still avoiding old-school statism. The idea is to pursue big goals not with top-down planning but with what Mazzucato calls ‘orchestration’, using the power of the state to drive innovation and shape markets to an outcome.

For these reasons, missions have proven increasingly popular with governments. They have been used by administrations from the EU to South Korea and Finland, and even in Britain under Theresa May, although she didn’t have time to make them stick.

Despite these good intentions and heritage, however, missions are proving difficult. Some say the UK government is “mission-washing” – using the word, but not really adopting the ways of working. And although missions were mentioned in the spending review, their role was notably muted when compared with the central position they had in Labour’s manifesto.

Still, it would seem a shame to let missions falter without interrogating the reasons. So why are missions so difficult? And what, if anything, could be done to strengthen them as Labour moves into year two? I’ll touch on four characteristics of missions that jar with Whitehall’s natural instincts, and in each case I’ll ask how it’s going, and how Labour could be bolder…(More)”.

Enjoy TikTok Explainers? These Old-Fashioned Diagrams Are A Whole Lot Smarter

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jonathon Keats: “In the aftermath of Hiroshima, many of the scientists who built the atomic bomb changed the way they reckoned time. Their conception of the future was published on the cover of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which portrayed a clock set at seven minutes to midnight. In subsequent months and years, the clock sometimes advanced. Other times, the hands fell back. With this simple indication, the timepiece tracked the likelihood of nuclear annihilation.

Although few of the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project are still alive, the Doomsday Clock remains operational, steadfastly translating risk into units of hours and minutes. Over time, the diagram has become iconic, and not only for subscribers to The Bulletin. It’s now so broadly recognizable that we may no longer recognize what makes it radical.

12 - Fondazione Prada_Diagrams
John Auldjo. Map of Vesuvius showing the direction of the streams of lava in the eruptions from 1631 to 1831, 1832. Exhibition copy from a printed book In John Auldjo, Sketches of Vesuvius: with Short Accounts of Its Principal Eruptions from the Commencement of the Christian Era to the Present Time (Napoli: George Glass, 1832). Olschki 53, plate before p. 27, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Firenze. Courtesy Ministero della Cultura – Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. Any unauthorized reproduction by any means whatsoever is prohibited.Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze

A thrilling new exhibition at the Fondazione Prada brings the Doomsday Clock back into focus. Featuring hundreds of diagrams from the past millennium, ranging from financial charts to maps of volcanic eruptions, the exhibition provides the kind of survey that brings definition to an entire category of visual communication. Each work benefits from its association with others that are manifestly different in form and function…(More)”.

Digital Methods: A Short Introduction

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Tommaso Venturini and Richard Rogers: “In a direct and accessible way, the authors provide hands-on advice to equip readers with the knowledge they need to understand which digital methods are best suited to their research goals and how to use them. Cutting through theoretical and technical complications, they focus on the different practices associated with digital methods to skillfully provide a quick-start guide to the art of querying, prompting, API calling, scraping, mining, wrangling, visualizing, crawling, plotting networks, and scripting. While embracing the capacity of digital methods to rekindle sociological imagination, this book also delves into their limits and biases and reveals the hard labor of digital fieldwork. The book also touches upon the epistemic and political consequences of these methods, but with the purpose of providing practical advice for their usage…(More)”.

Tech: When Silicon Valley Remakes the World

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Olivier Alexandre: “Sometimes only an outsider can show how an industry works—and how that industry works upon the world. In Tech, sociologist Olivier Alexandre takes us on a revealing tour of Silicon Valley’s prominent personalities and vibrant networks to capture the way its denizens live, think, relate, and innovate, and how they shape the very code and conduct of business itself.
 
Even seasoned observers will gain insight into the industry’s singular milieu from Alexandre’s piercing eye. He spends as much time with Silicon Valley’s major players as with those who fight daily to survive within a system engineered for disruption. Embedded deep within the community, Alexandre accesses rooms shut tight to the public and reports back on the motivations, ambitions, and radical vision guiding tech companies. From the conquest of space to quantum computing, engineers have recast the infinitely large and small. Some scientists predict the end of death and the replacement of human beings with machines. But at what cost? Alexandre sees a shadow hanging over the Valley, jeopardizing its future and the economy made in its image. Critical yet fair, Tech illuminates anew a world of perpetual revolution…(More)”.

Intended, afforded, and experienced serendipity: overcoming the paradox of artificial serendipity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Annelien Smets: “Designing for serendipity in information technologies presents significant challenges for both scholars and practitioners. This paper presents a theoretical model of serendipity that aims to address this challenge by providing a structured framework for understanding and designing for serendipity. The model delineates between intended, afforded, and experienced serendipity, recognizing the role of design intents and the subjective nature of experiencing serendipity. Central to the model is the recognition that there is no single definition nor a unique operationalization of serendipity, emphasizing the need for a nuanced approach to its conceptualization and design. By delineating between the intentions of designers, the characteristics of the system, and the experiences of end-users, the model offers a pathway to resolve the paradox of artificial serendipity and provides actionable guidelines to design for serendipity in information technologies. However, it also emphasizes the importance of establishing ‘guardrails’ to guide the design process and mitigate potential negative unintended consequences. The model aims to lay ground to advance both research and the practice of designing for serendipity, leading to more ethical and effective design practices…(More)”.

Sustainable Development Report 2025

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN): “Ten years after the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), progress remains alarmingly off-track, with less than 20% of targets projected to be achieved by 2030…The SDR includes the SDG Index and Dashboards, which rank all UN Member States on their performance across the 17 Goals, and this year’s report features a new Index (SDGi), which focuses on 17 headline indicators to track overall SDG progress over time…This year’s SDR highlights five key findings:

The Global Financial Architecture (GFA) must be urgently reformed to finance global public goods and achieve sustainable development. Roughly half the world’s population resides in countries that cannot adequately invest in sustainable development due to unsustainable debt burdens and limited access to affordable, long-term capital. Sustainable development is a high-return investment, yet the GFA continues to direct capital toward high-income countries instead of EMDEs, which offer stronger growth prospects and higher returns. Global public goods also remain significantly underfinanced. The upcoming Ff4D offers a critical opportunity for UN Member States to reform this system and ensure that international financing flows at scale to EMDEs to achieve sustainable development…

At the global level, SDG progress has stalled; none of the 17 Global Goals are on track, and only 17% of the SDG targets are on track to be achieved by 2030. Conflicts, structural vulnerabilities, and limited fiscal space continue to hinder progress, especially in emerging and developing economies (EMDEs). The five targets showing significant reversal in progress since 2015 include: obesity rate (SDG 2), press freedom (SDG 16), sustainable nitrogen management (SDG 2), the red list index (SDG 15), and the corruption perception index (SDG 16). Conversely, many countries have made notable progress in expanding access to basic services and infrastructure, including: mobile broadband use (SDG 9), access to electricity (SDG 7), internet use (SDG 9), under-5 mortality rate (SDG 3), and neonatal mortality (SDG 3). However, future progress on many of these indicators, including health-related outcomes, is threatened by global tensions and the decline in international development finance.

Barbados leads again in UN-based multilateralism commitment, while the U.S. ranks last. The SDR 2025’s Index of countries’ support to UN-based multilateralism (UN-Mi) ranks countries based on their support for and engagement with the UN system. The top three countries most committed to UN multilateralism are: Barbados (#1), Jamaica (#2), and Trinidad and Tobago (#3). Among G20 nations, Brazil (#25) ranks highest, while Chile (#7) leads among OECD countries. In contrast, the U.S., which recently withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO) and formally declared its opposition to the SDGs and the 2030 Agenda, ranks last (#193) for the second year in a row…(More)”