Is the Singularity the New Wild West? On Social Entrepreneurship in Extended Reality


Paper by Abigail Devereaux: “Augmented and virtual reality, whose ubiquitous convergence is known as extended reality (XR), are technologies that imbue a user’s apparent surroundings with some degree of virtuality. In this article, we are interested in how social entrepreneurs might utilize innovative technological methods in XR to solve social problems presented by XR. Social entrepreneurship in XR presents novel challenges and opportunities not present in traditional regulatory spaces, as XR changes the environment in which choices are made.

Furthermore, the challenges presented by rapidly advancing XR may require much more agile forms of governance than are available from public institutions, even under widespread algorithmic governance. Social entrepreneurship in blockchain solutions may very well be able to meet some of these challenges, as we show. Thus, we expect a new infrastructure to arise to address challenges presented by XR, built by social entrepreneurs in XR, and that may eventually be used as an alternative to public instantiations of governance. Our central thesis is that the dynamic, immersive, and agile nature of XR both provides an unusually fertile ground for the development of alternative forms of governance and essentially necessitates this development by contrast with relatively inagile institutions of public governance….(More)”.

This tech tells cities when floods are coming–and what they will destroy


Ben Paynter at FastCompany: “Several years ago, one of the eventual founders of One Concern nearly died in a tragic flood. Today, the company specializes in using artificial intelligence to predict how natural disasters are unfolding in real time on a city-block-level basis, in order to help disaster responders save as many lives as possible….

To fix that, One Concern debuted Flood Concern in late 2018. It creates map-based visualizations of where water surges may hit hardest, up to five days ahead of an impending storm. For cities, that includes not just time-lapse breakdowns of how the water will rise, how fast it could move, and what direction it will be flowing, but also what structures will get swamped or washed away, and how differing mitigation efforts–from levy building to dam releases–will impact each scenario. It’s the winner of Fast Company’s 2019 World Changing Ideas Awards in the AI and Data category.

[Image: One Concern]

So far, Flood Concern has been retroactively tested against events like Hurricane Harvey to show that it could have predicted what areas would be most impacted well ahead of the storm. The company, which was founded in Silicon Valley in 2015, started with one of that region’s pressing threats: earthquakes. It’s since earned contracts with cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Cupertino, as well as private insurance companies….

One Concern’s first offering, dubbed Seismic Concern, takes existing information from satellite images and building permits to figure out what kind of ground structures are built on, and what might happen if they started shaking. If a big one hits, the program can extrapolate from the epicenter to suggest the likeliest places for destruction, and then adjust as more data from things like 911 calls and social media gets factored in….(More)”.


Digital Pro Bono: Leveraging Technology to Provide Access to Justice


Paper by Kathleen Elliott Vinson and Samantha A. Moppett: “…While individuals have the constitutional right to legal assistance in criminal cases, the same does not hold true for civil matters. Low-income Americans are unable to gain access to meaningful help for basic legal needs. Although legal aid organizations exist to help low-income Americans who cannot afford legal representation, the resources available are insufficient to meet current civil legal needs. Studies show more than 80 percent of the legal needs of low-income Americans go unaddressed every year. 

This article examines how law students, law schools, the legal profession, legal services’ agencies, and low-income individuals who need assistance, all have a shared interest—access to justice—and can work together to reach the elusive goal in the Pledge of Allegiance of “justice for all.” It illustrates how their collaborative leveraging of technology in innovative ways like digital pro bono services, is one way to provide access to justice. It discusses ABA Free Legal Answers Online, the program that the ABA pioneered to help confront the justice gap in the United States. The program provides a “virtual legal advice clinic” where attorneys answer civil legal questions that low-income residents post on free, secure, and confidential state-specific websites. The article provides a helpful resource of how law schools can leverage this technology to increase access to justice for low-income communities while providing pro bono opportunities for attorneys and students in their state…(More)”.

The trouble with informed consent in smart cities


Blog Post by Emilie Scott: “…Lilian Edwards, a U.K.-based academic in internet law, points out that public spaces like smart cities further dilutes the level of consent in the IoT: “While consumers may at least have theoretically had a chance to read the privacy policy of their Nest thermostat before signing the contract, they will have no such opportunity in any real sense when their data is collected by the smart road or smart tram they go to work on, or as they pass the smart dustbin.”

If citizens have expectations that their interactions in smart cities will resemble the technological interactions they have become familiar with, they will likely be sadly misinformed about the level of control they will have over what personal information they end up sharing.

The typical citizen understands that “choosing convenience” when you engage with technology can correspond to a decrease in their level of personal privacy. On at least some level, this is intended to be a choice. Most users may not choose to carefully read a privacy policy on a smartphone application or a website; however, if that policy is well-written and compliant, the user can exercise a right to decide whether they consent to the terms and wish to engage with the company.

The right to choose what personal information you exchange for services is lost in the smart city.

Theoretically, the smart city can bypass this right because municipal government services are subject to provincial public-sector privacy legislation, which can ultimately entail informing citizens their personal information is being collected by way of a notice.

However, the assumption that smart city projects are solely controlled by the public sector is questionable and verges on problematic. Most smart-city projects in Canada are run via public-private partnerships as municipal governments lack both the budget and the expertise to implement the technology system. Private companies can have leading roles in designing, building, financing, operating and maintaining smart-city projects. In the process, they can also have a large degree of control over the data that is created and used.

In some countries, these partnerships can even result in an unprecedented level of privatization. For example, Cisco Systems debatably has a larger claim over Songdo’s development than the South Korean government. Smart-city public-private partnership can have complex implications for data control even when both partners are highly engaged. Trapeze, a private-sector company in transportation software, cautions the public sector on the unintended transfer of data control when electing private providers to operate data systems in a partnership….

When the typical citizen enters a smart city, they will not know 1.) what personal information is being collected, nor will they know 2.) who is collecting it. The former is an established requirement of informed consent, and the later has debatably never been an issue until the development of smart cities.

While similar privacy issues are playing out in smart cities all around the world, Canada must take steps to determine how its own specific privacy legal structure is going to play a role in responding to these privacy issues in our own emerging smart-city projects….(More)”.

Setting Foundations for the Creation of Public Value in Smart Cities


Book edited by Manuel Pedro Rodriguez Bolivar: ” This book seeks to contribute to prior research facing the discussion about public value creation in Smart Cities and the role of governments.  In the early 21st century, the rapid transition to a highly urbanized population has made societies and their governments around the world to be meeting unprecedented challenges regarding key themes such as sustainability, new governance models and the creation of networks.

Also, cities today face increasing challenges when it comes to providing advanced (digital) services to their constituency. The use of information and communication technologies (usually ICTs) and data is thought to rationalize and improve government and have the potential to transform governance and organizational issues. These questions link up to the ever-evolving concept of Smart Cities. In fact, the rise of the Smart City and Smart City thinking is a direct response to such challenges, as well as providing a means of integrating fast evolving technology into our living environment….(More)”.  

The Discrete Charm of the Machine: Why the World Became Digital


Book by Ken Steiglitz: “A few short decades ago, we were informed by the smooth signals of analog television and radio; we communicated using our analog telephones; and we even computed with analog computers. Today our world is digital, built with zeros and ones. Why did this revolution occur? The Discrete Charm of the Machine explains, in an engaging and accessible manner, the varied physical and logical reasons behind this radical transformation.

The spark of individual genius shines through this story of innovation: the stored program of Jacquard’s loom; Charles Babbage’s logical branching; Alan Turing’s brilliant abstraction of the discrete machine; Harry Nyquist’s foundation for digital signal processing; Claude Shannon’s breakthrough insights into the meaning of information and bandwidth; and Richard Feynman’s prescient proposals for nanotechnology and quantum computing. Ken Steiglitz follows the progression of these ideas in the building of our digital world, from the internet and artificial intelligence to the edge of the unknown. Are questions like the famous traveling salesman problem truly beyond the reach of ordinary digital computers? Can quantum computers transcend these barriers? Does a mysterious magical power reside in the analog mechanisms of the brain? Steiglitz concludes by confronting the moral and aesthetic questions raised by the development of artificial intelligence and autonomous robots.

The Discrete Charm of the Machine examines why our information technology, the lifeblood of our civilization, became digital, and challenges us to think about where its future trajectory may lead….(More)”.

Digital mile-markers provide navigation in cities


Springwise: “UK-based Maynard Design Consultancy has developed a system to help people navigate the changing landscape of city neighbourhoods. A prototype of a wayfinding solution for districts in London combines smart physical markers and navigational apps. The physical markers, inspired by traditional mile markers, include a digital screen. They provide real-time information, including daily news and messages from local businesses. The markers also track how people use the park, providing valuable information to the city and urban planners. The partnering apps provide up-to-date information about the changing environment in the city, such as on-going construction and delays due to large-scale events.

Unlike traditional, smartphone based navigational apps, this concept uses technology to help us reconnect with our surroundings, Maynard Design said.

The proposal won the Smart London District Challenge competition set by the Institute for Sustainability. Maynard is currently looking for partner companies to pilot its concept.

Takeaway: The Maynard design represents the latest efforts to use smartphones to amplify public safety announcements, general information and local businesses. The concept moves past traditional wayfinding markers to link people to a smart-city grid. By tracking how people use parks and other urban spaces, the markers will provide valuable insight for city officials. We expect more innovations like this as cities increasingly move toward seamless communication between services and city residents, aided by smart technologies. Over the past several months, we have seen technology to connect drivers to parking spaces and a prototype pavement that can change functions based on people’s needs….(More)”

How Tech Utopia Fostered Tyranny


Jon Askonas at The New Atlantis: “The rumors spread like wildfire: Muslims were secretly lacing a Sri Lankan village’s food with sterilization drugs. Soon, a video circulated that appeared to show a Muslim shopkeeper admitting to drugging his customers — he had misunderstood the question that was angrily put to him. Then all hell broke loose. Over a several-day span, dozens of mosques and Muslim-owned shops and homes were burned down across multiple towns. In one home, a young journalist was trapped, and perished.

Mob violence is an old phenomenon, but the tools encouraging it, in this case, were not. As the New York Times reported in April, the rumors were spread via Facebook, whose newsfeed algorithm prioritized high-engagement content, especially videos. “Designed to maximize user time on site,” as the Times article describes, the newsfeed algorithm “promotes whatever wins the most attention. Posts that tap into negative, primal emotions like anger or fear, studies have found, produce the highest engagement, and so proliferate.” On Facebook in Sri Lanka, posts with incendiary rumors had among the highest engagement rates, and so were among the most highly promoted content on the platform. Similar cases of mob violence have taken place in India, Myanmar, Mexico, and elsewhere, with misinformation spread mainly through Facebook and the messaging tool WhatsApp.

Follow The New AtlantisThis is in spite of Facebook’s decision in January 2018 to tweak its algorithm, apparently to prevent the kind of manipulation we saw in the 2016 U.S. election, when posts and election ads originating from Russia reportedly showed up in newsfeeds of up to 126 million American Facebook users. The company explained that the changes to its algorithm will mean that newsfeeds will be “showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation,” and “less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.” But these changes, which Facebook had tested out in countries like Sri Lanka in the previous year, may actually have exacerbated the problem — which is that incendiary content, when posted by friends and family, is guaranteed to “spark conversation” and therefore to be prioritized in newsfeeds. This is because “misinformation is almost always more interesting than the truth,” as Mathew Ingram provocatively put it in the Columbia Journalism Review.

How did we get here, from Facebook’s mission to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together”? Riot-inducing “fake news” and election meddling are obviously far from what its founders intended for the platform. Likewise, Google’s founders surely did not build their search engine with the intention of its being censored in China to suppress free speech, and yet, after years of refusing this demand from Chinese leadership, Google has recently relented rather than pull their search engine from China entirely. And YouTube’s creators surely did not intend their feature that promotes “trending” content to help clickbait conspiracy-theory videos go viral.

These outcomes — not merely unanticipated by the companies’ founders but outright opposed to their intentions — are not limited to social media. So far, Big Tech companies have presented issues of incitement, algorithmic radicalization, and “fake news” as merely bumps on the road of progress, glitches and bugs to be patched over. In fact, the problem goes deeper, to fundamental questions of human nature. Tools based on the premise that access to information will only enlighten us and social connectivity will only make us more humane have instead fanned conspiracy theories, information bubbles, and social fracture. A tech movement spurred by visions of libertarian empowerment and progressive uplift has instead fanned a global resurgence of populism and authoritarianism.

Despite the storm of criticism, Silicon Valley has still failed to recognize in these abuses a sharp rebuke of its sunny view of human nature. It remains naïvely blind to how its own aspirations for social engineering are on a spectrum with the tools’ “unintended” uses by authoritarian regimes and nefarious actors….(More)”.

The Untapped Potential of Civic Technology


DemocracyLab: “Today’s most significant problems are being addressed primarily by governments, using systems and tools designed hundreds of years ago. From climate change to inequality, the status quo is proving inadequate, and time is running out.

The role of our democratic institutions is analogous to breathing — inhaling citizen input and exhaling government action. The civic technology movement is inventing new ways to gather input, make decisions and execute collective action. The science fiction end state is an enlightened collective intelligence. But in the short term, it’s enough to seek incremental improvements in how citizens are engaged and government services are delivered. This will increase our chances of solving a wide range of problems in communities of all scales.

The match between the government and tech sectors is complementary. Governments and nonprofits are widely perceived as lagging in technological adoption and innovation. The tech sector’s messiah complex has been muted by Cambridge Analytica, but the principles of user-centered design, iterative development, and continuous learning have not lost their value. Small groups of committed technologists can easily test hypotheses about ways to make institutions work better. Trouble is, it’s really hard for them to earn a living doing it.

The Problem for Civic Tech

The unique challenge facing civic tech was noted by Fast Forward, a tech nonprofit accelerator, in a recent report that aptly described the chicken and egg problem plaguing tech nonprofits:

Many foundations will not fund a nonprofit without signs of proven impact. Tech nonprofits are unique. They must build their product before they can prove impact, and they cannot build the tech product without funding.

This is compounded by the fact that government procurement processes are often protracted and purchasers risk averse. Rather than a thousand flowers blooming in learning-rich civic experiments, civic entrepreneurs are typically frustrated and ineffectual, finding that their ideas are difficult to monetize, met with skepticism by government, and starved for capital.

These challenges are described well in the Knight and Rita Allen Foundations’ report Scaling Civic Tech. The report notes the difference between “buyer” revenue that is earned from providing services, and “builder” capital that is invested to increase organizations’ capacities. The report calls for more builder capital investment and better coordination among donors. Other recommendations made in the report include building competencies within organizations by tapping into knowledge sharing resources and skilled volunteerism, measuring and communicating impact, and nurturing infrastructure that supports collaboration….(More)”.

Thinking about GovTech: A brief guide for policymakers


Report by Tanya Filer: “If developed with care, the emergent GovTech ecosystem, in which start-ups and innovative small and medium enterprises (SMEs) provide innovative technology products and services to public sector clients, could contribute to achieving these objectives. Thinking about GovTech introduces the concept of GovTech and identifies eight activities that policymakers can undertake to foster national GovTech innovation ecosystems and help to steer them towards positive outcomes for citizens and public administrators. It suggests that policymakers:

1. Build the social and technical foundations for GovTech
2. Embed expectations of accountability at an ecosystem-wide level
3. Address GovTech procurement barriers
4. Ensure the provision of appropriate, and often patient, capital
5. Engage academia at each stage of the GovTech innovation lifecycle
6. Develop pipelines of technological talent, emphasising public sector problems and
opportunities
7. Build translator capacity within the public sector
8. Develop and utilise regional and international networks

Thinking about GovTech is the first GovTech guide written for a fully international audience of policymakers. It offers examples of emerging international policy and programme design and urges policymakers to think carefully about local context and capacity for implementation….(More)”.