Springwise: “There’s more traffic on today’s city streets than there ever has been, and managing it all can prove to be a headache for local authorities and transport bodies. In the past, we’ve seen the City of Calgary in Canada detect drivers’ Bluetooth signals to develop a map of traffic congestion. Now the EAR-IT project in Santander, Spain, is using acoustic sensors to measure the sounds of city streets and determine real time activity on the ground.
Launched as part of the autonomous community’s SmartSantander initiative, the experimental scheme placed hundreds of acoustic processing units around the region. These pick up the sounds being made in any given area and, when processed through an audio recognition engine, can provide data about what’s going on on the street. Smaller ‘motes’ were also developed to provide more accurate location information about each sound.
Created by members of Portugal’s UNINOVA institute and IT consultants EGlobalMark, the system was able to use city noises to detect things such as traffic congestion, parking availability and the location of emergency vehicles based on their sirens. It could then automatically trigger smart signs to display up-to-date information, for example.
The team particularly focused on a junction near the city hospital that’s a hotspot for motor accidents. Rather than force ambulance drivers to risk passing through a red light and into lateral traffic, the sensors were able to detect when and where an emergency vehicle was coming through and automatically change the lights in their favor.
The system could also be used to pick up ‘sonic events’ such as gunshots or explosions and detect their location. The researchers have also trialled an indoor version that can sense if an elderly resident has fallen over or to turn lights off when the room becomes silent.”
Why the World Needs Anonymous
Gabriella Coleman at MIT Technology Review: “Anonymity is under attack, and yet the actions of a ragtag band of hackers, activists, and rabble-rousers reveal how important it remains.
“It’s time to end anonymous comments sections,” implored Kevin Wallsten and Melinda Tarsi in the Washington Post this August. In the U.K., a parliamentary committee has even argued for a “cultural shift” against treating pseudonymous comments as trustworthy. This assault is matched by pervasive practices of monitoring and surveillance, channeled through a stunning variety of mechanisms—from CCTV cameras to the constant harvesting of digital data.
But just as anonymity’s value has sunk to a new low in the eyes of some, a protest movement in favor of concealment has appeared. The hacker collective Anonymous is most famous for its controversial crusades against the likes of dictators, corporations, and pseudo-religions like Scientology. But the group is also the embodiment of this new spirit.
Anonymous may strike a reader as unique, but its efforts represent just the latest in experimentation with anonymous speech as a conduit for political expression. Anonymous expression has been foundational to our political culture, characterizing monumental declarations like the Federalist Papers, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly granted anonymous speech First Amendment protection.
The actions of this group are also important because anonymity remains important to us all. Universally enforcing disclosure of real identities online would limit the possibilities for whistle-blowing and voicing unpopular beliefs—processes essential to any vibrant democracy. And just as anonymity can engender disruptive and antisocial behavior such as trolling, it can provide a means of pushing back against increased surveillance.
By performing a role increasingly unavailable to most Internet users as they participate in social networks and other gated communities requiring real names, Anonymous dramatizes the existence of other possibilities. Its members symbolically incarnate struggles against the constant, blanket government surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden and many before him.
As an anthropologist who has spent half a dozen years studying Anonymous, I’ve have had the unique opportunity to witness and experience just how these activists conceive of and enact obfuscation. It is far from being implemented mindlessly. Indeed, there are important ethical lessons that we can draw from their successes and failures.
Often Anonymous activists, or “Anons,” interact online under the cover of pseudo-anonymity. Typically, this takes the form of a persistent nickname, otherwise known as a handle, around which a reputation necessarily accrues. Among the small fraction of law-breaking Anons, pseudo-anonymity is but one among a roster of tactics for achieving operational security. These include both technical solutions, such as encryption and anonymizing software, and cultivation of the restraint necessary to prevent the disclosure of personal information.
The great majority of Anonymous participants are neither hackers nor lawbreakers but must nonetheless remain circumspect in what they reveal about themselves and others. Sometimes, ignorance is the easiest way to ensure protection. A participant who helped build up one of the larger Anonymous accounts erected a self-imposed fortress between herself and the often-private Internet Relay Chat channels where law-breaking Anons cavorted and planned actions. It was a “wall,” as she put it, which she sought never to breach.
During the course of my research, I eschewed anonymity and mitigated risk by erecting the same wall, making sure not to climb over it. But some organizers were more intrepid. Since they associated with lawbreakers or even witnessed planning of illegal activity on IRC, they chose to cloak themselves for self-protection.
Regardless of the reasons for maintaining anonymity, it shaped many of the ethical norms and mores of the group. The source of this ethic is partly indebted to 4chan, a hugely popular, and deeply subversive, image board that enforced the name “Anonymous” for all users, thus hatching the idea’s potential (see “Radical Opacity”)….
See also: Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous.
The future of intelligence is distributed – and so is the future of government
Craig Thomler at eGovAU: “…Now we can do much better. Rather than focusing on electing and appointing individual experts – the ‘nodes’ in our governance system, governments need to focus on the network that interconnects citizens, government, business, not-for-profits and other entities.
Rather than limiting decision making to a small core of elected officials (supported by appointed and self-nominated ‘experts’), we need to design decision-making systems which empower broad groups of citizens to self-inform and involve themselves at appropriate steps of decision-making processes.
This isn’t quite direct democracy – where the population weighs in on every issue, but it certainly is a few steps removed from the alienating ‘representative democracy’ that many countries use today.
What this model of governance allows for is far more agile and iterative policy debates, rapid testing and improvement of programs and managed distributed community support – where anyone in a community can offer to help others within a framework which values, supports and rewards their involvement, rather than looks at it with suspicion and places many barriers in the way.
Of course we need the mechanisms designed to support this model of government, and the notion that they will simply evolve out of our existing system is quite naive.
Our current governance structures are evolutionary – based on the principle that better approaches will beat out ineffective and inefficient ones. Both history and animal evolution have shown that inefficient organisms can survive for extremely long times, and can require radical environmental change (such as mass extinction events) for new forms to be successful.
On top of this the evolution of government is particularly slow as there’s far fewer connections between the 200-odd national governments in the world than between the 200+ Watson artificial intelligences in the world.
While every Watson learns what other Watsons learn rapidly, governments have stilted and formal mechanisms for connection that mean that it can take decades – or even longer – for them to recognise successes and failures in others.
In other words, while we have a diverse group of governments all attempting to solve many of the same basic problems, the network effect isn’t working as they are all too inward focused and have focused on developing expertise ‘nodes’ (individuals) rather than expert networks (connections).
This isn’t something that can be fixed by one, or even a group of ten or more governments – thereby leaving humanity in the position of having to repeat the same errors time and time again, approving the same drugs, testing the same welfare systems, trialing the same legal regimes, even when we have examples of their failures and successes we could be learning from.
So therefore the best solution – perhaps the only workable solution for the likely duration of human civilisation on this planet – is to do what some of our forefather did and design new forms of government in a planned way.
Rather than letting governments slowly and haphazardly evolve through trial and error, we should take a leaf out of the book of engineers, and place a concerted effort into designing governance systems that meet human needs.
These systems should involve and nurture strong networks, focusing on the connections rather than the nodes – allowing us to both leverage the full capabilities of society in its own betterment and to rapidly adjust settings when environments and needs change….”
Why Hasn’t ‘Big Data’ Saved Democracy?
Review by Marshall Ganz : “In his new book, The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics (Yet), Personal Democracy Forum founder Micah Sifry asks a very good question: what ever happened to the prediction that a radically cheapened cost of connection would displace traditional political gatekeepers, not only radically opening up politics, but also producing a real shift in the balance of power?
Sifry, an insider, offers an honest assessment of the effects of the new technology on politics, calling out his colleagues courageously in ways that can be useful to outsiders as well. Defining his terms at the outset, he provides us with a helpful roadmap: the “Internet” is “the set of protocols and practices that allow computing and communications devices to connect to each other and share information and the set of cultural behaviors and expectations that this underlying foundation makes possible.” Politics is “everything we can and must do together;” democracy is “a system in which all people participate fully and equally in decisions that affect their lives.”
…
Sifry’s case is persuasive, but incomplete. Although he sees the problem, he locates its sources, and solutions, only in the technology. But what about the people who chose to use technology in the ways they do? Is the agency in the tools, or in those who use them?
One glaringly important question noted but left unaddressed is why new technology seems to have had a far greater impact on progressive politics than on conservative ones. Why is the NRA, for example, indifferent to the new technology, while anti-gun violence groups are almost entirely dependent on it? Are progressives more technologically minded? Do their causes and candidates lend themselves more to digital mobilization? Are they more creative?
That new technology enables the emergence of a professional cadre whose wealth and power depend on control of that technology is nothing new. It happened with television, direct mail fund raising, and early forms of targeting, too. But why, unlike television and direct mail, has the Internet effect has been far more evident on the Left than on the Right?
The fact that Sifry fails to explore this question may be rooted not only in a kind of “technological determinism” but also in a kind of commitment to direct democracy—a belief that “true” democracy requires the ongoing and unmediated expression of a preference by every individual affected by any decision.” This makes it hard for him to recognize good organizing, which is based on the role of leadership in mobilizing, developing and expressing shared preferences through organization, party, or chosen representative….”
Can Bottom-Up Institutional Reform Improve Service Delivery?
Working paper by Molina, Ezequiel: “This article makes three contributions to the literature. First, it provides new evidence of the impact of community monitoring interventions using a unique dataset from the Citizen Visible Audit (CVA) program in Colombia. In particular, this article studies the effect of social audits on citizens’ assessment of service delivery performance. The second contribution is the introduction a theoretical framework to understand the pathway of change, the necessary building blocks that are needed for social audits to be effective. Using this framework, the third contribution of this article is answering the following questions: i) under what conditions do citizens decide to monitor government activity and ii) under what conditions do governments facilitate citizen engagement and become more accountable.”
Tackling Wicked Government Problems
Book by Jackson Nickerson and Ronald Sanders: “How can government leaders build, sustain, and leverage the cross-organizational collaborative networks needed to tackle the complex interagency and intergovernmental challenges they increasingly face? Tackling Wicked Government Problems: A Practical Guide for Developing Enterprise Leaders draws on the experiences of high-level government leaders to describe and comprehensively articulate the complicated, ill-structured difficulties they face—often referred to as “wicked problems”—in leading across organizational boundaries and offers the best strategies for addressing them.
Tackling Wicked Government Problems explores how enterprise leaders use networks of trusted, collaborative relationships to respond and lead solutions to problems that span agencies. It also offers several approaches for translating social network theory into practical approaches for these leaders to build and leverage boundary-spanning collaborative networks and achieve real mission results.
Finally, past and present government executives offer strategies for systematically developing enterprise leaders. Taken together, these essays provide a way forward for a new cadre of officials better equipped to tackle government’s twenty-first-century wicked challenges”
The Problem-solving Capacity of the Modern State
New book edited by Martin Lodge and Kai Wegrich: “The early 21st century has presented considerable challenges to the problem-solving capacity of the contemporary state in the industrialised world. Among the many uncertainties, anxieties and tensions, it is, however, the cumulative challenge of fiscal austerity, demographic developments, and climate change that presents the key test for contemporary states. Debates abound regarding the state’s ability to address these and other problems given increasingly dispersed forms of governing and institutional vulnerabilities created by politico-administrative and economic decision-making structures. This volume advances these debates, first, by moving towards a cross-sectoral perspective that takes into account the cumulative nature of the contemporary challenge to governance focusing on the key governance areas of infrastructure, sustainability, social welfare, and social integration; second, by considering innovations that have sought to add problem-solving capacity; and third, by exploring the kind of administrative capacities (delivery, regulatory, coordination, and analytical) required to encourage and sustain innovative problem-solving. This edition introduces a framework for understanding the four administrative capacities that are central to any attempt at problem-solving and how they enable the policy instruments of the state to have their intended effect. It also features chapters that focus on the way in which these capacities have become stretched and how they have been adjusted, given the changing conditions; the way in which different states have addressed particular governance challenges, with particular attention paid to innovation at the level of policy instrument and the required administrative capacities; and, finally, types of governance capacities that lie outside the boundaries of the state.”
VouliWatch – Empowering Democracy in Greece
Proposal at IndieGogo: “In the wake of the economic crisis and in a country where politics has all too often been beset by scandals and corruption, Vouliwatch aims to help develop an open and accountable political system that uses new digital technology to promote citizen participation in the political process and to rebuild trust in parliamentary democracy. In the heyday of Ancient Greek democracy, citizens actively participated in political dialogue, and Vouliwatch aims to revive this essential aspect of a democratic society through the use of digital technology.
How it actually works!
Vouliwatch is a digital platform that offers Greek citizens the opportunity to publicly question MPs and MEPs on the topic of their choice, and to hold their elected representatives accountable for their parliamentary activity. It is loosely modelled on similar initiatives that are already running successfully in other countries (Ireland, Luxemburg, Tunisia, Germany, France and Austria)….
Crowdsourcing/bottom up approach
The platform also gives users the chance to influence political debate and to focus the attention of both the media and the politicians on issues that citizens believe are important and are not being discussed widely.Vouliwatch offers citizens the chance to share their ideas and experiences and to make proposals to parliament for political action. The community of users can then comment on and rate them. A Google map application depicts all submitted data with the option of filtering based on different criteria (location; subject categories such as e.g. education, tourism, etc.). Every 2 months all submitted data is summarized in a report and sent to all MPs by our team, as food for thought and action. Vouliwatch will then publish and promote any resulting parliamentary reaction….”
Organizing For Outcomes
Code for America Summit YouTube: “Michael Flowers, former Chief Analytics Officer for New York City, explores the organizational opportunities and challenges of supporting an outcomes-driven approach to service delivery and problem-solving in government and what he’s learned from doing this in the NYC Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics…”
How to upgrade democracy for the Internet era
Ted Talk: “Pia Mancini and her colleagues want to upgrade democracy in Argentina and beyond. Through their open-source mobile platform they want to bring citizens inside the legislative process, and run candidates who will listen to what they say.”