Wired Wisdom

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Eszter Hargittai and John Palfrey: “Everyone has that one older relative who loves to post misinformation on social media. That older coworker who fell prey to a phishing attack. Or a parent who still can’t quite get the hang of using emoji in texts. By popular account, these incidents are typical of older generations who inevitably struggle with tech woes. But is that the full story?

Absolutely not, according to the findings of Internet researchers Eszter Hargittai and John Palfrey. Their eye-opening book on the Internet’s fastest-growing demographic offers a more nuanced picture—debunking common myths about older adults’ Internet use to offer hope and a necessary call to action. Incorporating original interviews and survey results from thousands of people sixty and over, Wired Wisdom shows that many, in fact, use technology in ways that put younger peers to shame. Over-sixties are often nimble online, and quicker to abandon social media platforms that don’t meet their needs. Despite being targeted more often, they also may be less likely to fall for scams than younger peers. And fake news actually fools fewer people over sixty, who have far more experience evaluating sources and detecting propaganda. Still, there are unseen risks and missed opportunities for this group. Hargittai and Palfrey show that our stereotypes can be hurdles—keeping us from building intergenerational support communities, aiding loved ones to adopt new technology that may improve their lives, and helping us all thrive.

Full of surprising insights, Wired Wisdom helps push readers beyond ageist assumptions, offers practical advice for older tech users and their communities, and ultimately questions what it really means to age well online—no matter your birthdate…(More)”

Second-Order Agency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Cass Sunstein: “Many people prize agency; they want to make their own choices. Many people also prize second-order agency, by which they decide whether and when to exercise first-order agency. First-order agency can be an extraordinary benefit or an immense burden. When it is an extraordinary benefit, people might reject any kind of interference, or might welcome a nudge, or might seek some kind of boost, designed to increase their capacities. When first-order agency is an immense burden, people might also welcome a nudge or might make some kind of delegation (say, to an employer, a doctor, an algorithm, or a regulator). These points suggests that the line between active choosing and paternalism can be illusory. When private or public institutions override people’s desire not to exercise first-order agency, and thus reject people’s exercise of second-order agency, they are behaving paternalistically, through a form of choice-requiring paternalism. Choice-requiring paternalism may compromise second-order agency. It might not be very nice to do that…(More)”.

Critical Dependencies: How power consolidation of digital infrastructures threatens democracies—and what we can do about it.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Green Web Foundation: “We are at an inflection point in digital infrastructures. There is much conversation about the unprecedented speed and scale of our computational future. Significant investments are being made, especially as part of private and national efforts to “win the AI arms race.” Meanwhile, more data is becoming available about the harms of these systems. No one has perfect knowledge of the situation, and in some instances, information is being intentionally obscured or distorted. Amidst the confusion and scramble, well-resourced players are seizing strategic footholds and advancing their cause. This moment is called the “fog of enactment.”

Some of the wealthiest companies in the world spend billions in lobbying, sponsoring research, obscuring their emissions and building out parallel energy and digital infrastructures to further secure their market positions.

Meanwhile, deliberative democratic processes take time and resources. The public and, at times, democratically elected officials lack access to the data and decision-making about our digital futures. Furthermore, the technical expertise to evaluate these tradeoffs from a public interest perspective is structurally under-resourced.

This report seeks to call out these maneuvers and recommend pathways for funding in the public’s interest with a focus on the energy and climate impacts of digital infrastructures and harms caused by current ownership models. We call for actions that are ambitious, collaborative and intersectional to help redistribute more power to the public interest and to just and sustainable digital futures…(More)”.

Problem-solving matter

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by David C Krakauer and Chris Kempes: “What makes computation possible? Seeking answers to that question, a hardware engineer from another planet travels to Earth in the 21st century. After descending through our atmosphere, this extraterrestrial explorer heads to one of our planet’s largest data centres, the China Telecom-Inner Mongolia Information Park, 470 kilometres west of Beijing. But computation is not easily discovered in this sprawling mini-city of server farms. Scanning the almost-uncountable transistors inside the Information Park, the visiting engineer might­ be excused for thinking that the answer to their question lies in the primary materials driving computational processes: silicon and metal oxides. After all, since the 1960s, most computational devices have relied on transistors and semiconductors made from these metalloid materials.

If the off-world engineer had visited Earth several decades earlier, before the arrival of metal-oxide transistors and silicon semiconductors, they might have found entirely different answers to their question. In the 1940s, before silicon semiconductors, computation might appear as a property of thermionic valves made from tungsten, molybdenum, quartz and silica – the most important materials used in vacuum tube computers.

And visiting a century earlier, long before the age of modern computing, an alien observer might come to even stranger conclusions. If they had arrived in 1804, the year the Jacquard loom was patented, they might have concluded that early forms of computation emerged from the plant matter and insect excreta used to make the wooden frames, punch cards and silk threads involved in fabric-weaving looms, the analogue precursors to modern programmable machines.

But if the visiting engineer did come to these conclusions, they would be wrong. Computation does not emerge from silicon, tungsten, insect excreta or other materials. It emerges from procedures of reason or logic.

This speculative tale is not only about the struggles of an off-world engineer. It is also an analogy for humanity’s attempts to answer one of our most difficult problems: life. For, just as an alien engineer would struggle to understand computation through materials, so it is with humans studying our distant origins…(More)”.

The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Francis Collins: “As the COVID-19 pandemic revealed, we have become not just a hyper-partisan society but also a deeply cynical one, distrustful of traditional sources of knowledge and wisdom. Skepticism about vaccines led to the needless deaths of at least 230,000 Americans. “Do your own research” is now a rallying cry in many online rabbit holes. Yet experts can make mistakes, and institutions can lose their moral compass. So how can we navigate through all this?

In The Road to Wisdom, Francis Collins reminds us of the four core sources of judgement and clear thinking: truth, science, faith, and trust. Drawing on his work from the Human Genome Project and heading the National Institutes of Health, as well as on ethics, philosophy, and Christian theology, Collins makes a robust, thoughtful case for each of these sources—their reliability, and their limits. Ultimately, he shows how they work together, not separately—and certainly not in conflict. It is only when we relink these four foundations of wisdom that we can begin to discern the best path forward in life.

​Thoughtful, accessible, winsome, and deeply wise, The Road to Wisdom leads us beyond current animosities to surer footing. Here is the moral, philosophical, and scientific framework with which to address the problems of our time—including distrust of public health, partisanship, racism, response to climate change, and threats to our democracy—but also to guide us in our daily lives. This is a book that will repay many readings, and resolve dilemmas that we all face every day…(More)”.

Public Sector Innovation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Mehmet Akif Demircioglu and David B. Audretsch: “Governments around the world are under pressure to do more with less. Dispelling the conventional wisdom that government is the enemy of innovation, this book argues that the promise of innovation addressing the most compelling societal problems will only come to fruition if governments become full partners and participants in innovation. The authors provide a systematic overview, analysis, framework, research agenda, and strategic directions for the study of public sector innovation, examining drivers, sources, barriers, typologies, and outcomes of innovation along with ethics. They suggest that innovation in government requires a new approach to public sector strategy, organization, human resources, and culture. Featuring large data analyses and poignant case studies drawn from best practices across the globe, Demircioglu and Audretsch identify what works and what doesn’t in transforming governments from the periphery to the very heart of the most profound innovations driving societal change and development…(More)”.

A blueprint for better international collaboration on evidence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

BIT Report: “…This report is focused on four countries: the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Canada and provides a series of practical ideas for investments to improve the quality and use of evidence in policy design, implementation, and evaluation. It highlights the opportunities and challenges ahead, as the demand for and supply of evidence continue to grow in a world with complex policy challenges. 

It is a call to action for governments to collaborate more closely on evidence generation and utilisation. By pooling resources and expertise, countries can bridge the existing gaps in their evidence ecosystems, ultimately leading to more informed and effective public policies. 

The main recommendation is for countries to collaborate on evidence synthesis. The most promising avenue for evidence synthesis is Living Evidence Reviews (LERs), which are systematic reviews that are continuously updated. The authors propose ‘meta’ LERs are conducted across all areas of social policy to answer the questions that really matter to policymakers…(More)”. See also: Using Living Evidence and
Visualization in the Grant Making Process

UN E-Government Survey 2024

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by United Nations (DESA): “…provides a comprehensive assessment of the digital government landscape across all 193 Member States. The 2024 Survey highlights a significant upward trend in the development of digital government worldwide, with increased investment in resilient infrastructure and cutting-edge technologies. The global average value of the E-Government Development Index (EGDI) shows substantial improvement, with the proportion of the population lagging in digital government development decreasing from 45.0 per cent in 2022 to 22.4 per cent in 2024. Despite significant progress in digital government development, the EGDI averages for the African region, least developed countries, and small island developing States remain below the global average, underscoring the need for targeted efforts to bridge existing gaps.

At the local level, the Survey continues to assess city portals using the Local Online Services Index (LOSI). The LOSI findings reflect steady progress but also highlight persistent disparities between national and local e-government performance, pointing to the need for focused initiatives to strengthen digital government at the municipal level. This edition introduces the new Digital Government Model Framework, providing countries with a comprehensive road map for the effective planning, implementation and assessment of digital government initiatives. A short addendum explores the integration of AI in digital government development, emphasizing the importance of maximizing benefits and minimizing risks to achieve balanced governance…(More)”

Use GenAI to Improve Scenario Planning

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Daniel J. Finkenstadt et al: “Businesses are increasingly leveraging strategic foresight and scenario planning to navigate uncertainties stemming from climate change, global conflicts, and technological advancements. Traditional methods, however, struggle with identifying key trends, exploring multiple scenarios, and providing actionable guidance. Generative AI offers a robust alternative, enabling rapid, cost-effective, and comprehensive contingency planning. This AI-driven approach enhances scenario creation, narrative exploration, and strategy generation, providing detailed, adaptable strategies rather than conclusive solutions. This approach demands accurate, relevant data and encourages iterative refinement, transforming how organizations forecast and strategize for the future…(More)”.

It’s time we put agency into Behavioural Public Policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Sanchayan Banerjee et al: “Promoting agency – people’s ability to form intentions and to act on them freely – must become a primary objective for Behavioural Public Policy (BPP). Contemporary BPPs do not directly pursue this objective, which is problematic for many reasons. From an ethical perspective, goals like personal autonomy and individual freedom cannot be realised without nurturing citizens’ agency. From an efficacy standpoint, BPPs that override agency – for example, by activating automatic psychological processes – leave citizens ‘in the dark’, incapable of internalising and owning the process of behaviour change. This may contribute to non-persistent treatment effects, compensatory negative spillovers or psychological reactance and backfiring effects. In this paper, we argue agency-enhancing BPPs can alleviate these ethical and efficacy limitations to longer-lasting and meaningful behaviour change. We set out philosophical arguments to help us understand and conceptualise agency. Then, we review three alternative agency-enhancing behavioural frameworks: (1) boosts to enhance people’s competences to make better decisions; (2) debiasing to encourage people to reduce the tendency for automatic, impulsive responses; and (3) nudge+ to enable citizens to think alongside nudges and evaluate them transparently. Using a multi-dimensional framework, we highlight differences in their workings, which offer comparative insights and complementarities in their use. We discuss limitations of agency-enhancing BPPs and map out future research directions…(More)”.