Paper by Jeremy de Beer, Paula Millar, Jacquelen Mwangi, Victor B. Nzomo, and Isaac Rutenberg: “This article explains the importance of technology hubs as drivers of innovation, social change, and economic opportunity within and beyond the African continent. The article is the first to thoroughly review and synthesize findings from multi-disciplinary literature, and integrate insights from qualitative data gathered via interviews and fieldwork. It identifies three archetypes of hubs — clusters, companies, and countries — and discusses examples of each archetype using Kenya as a case study. The article discusses potential collaboration, conflicts, and competition among these archetypes of hubs, and concludes with recommendations for future researchers….(More)”
Minecraft in urban planning: how digital natives are shaking up governments
Rebecca Hill in The Guardian: “When we think of governments and technology, the image that springs to mind is more likely to be clunky computers and red tape than it is nimble innovators.
But things are changing. The geeks in jeans are making their way into government and starting to shake things up.
New ideas are changing the way governments use technology – whether that’s the UK’s intelligence organisation GCHQ finding a secure way to use the instant messenger Slack or senior mandarins trumpeting the possibilities of big data.
Governments are also waking up to the idea that the public are not only users, but also a powerful resource – and that engaging them online is easier than ever before. “People get very excited about using technology to make a real impact in the world,” says Chris Lintott, the co-founder of Zooniverse, a platform that organisations can use to develop their own citizen science projects for everything from analysing planets to spotting penguins.
For one of these projects, Old Weather, Zooniverse is working with the UK Met Office to gather historic weather data from ancient ships’ logs. At the same time, people helping to discover the human stories of life at sea. “Volunteers noticed that one admiral kept turning up on ship after ship after ship,” says Lintott. “It turned out he was the guy responsible for awarding medals!”
The National Archives in the US has similarly been harnessing the power of people’s curiosity by asking them to transcribe and digitise, handwritten documents through its Citizen Archivist project….
The idea for the Järviwiki, which asks citizens to log observations about Finland’s tens of thousands of lakes via a wiki service, came to Lindholm one morning on the way into work….
The increase in the number of digital natives in governments not only brings in different skills, it also enthuses the rest of the workforce, and opens their eyes to more unusual ideas.
Take Block by Block, which uses the game Minecraft to help young people show city planners how urban spaces could work better for them.
A decade ago it would have been hard to imagine a UN agency encouraging local governments to use a game to re-design their cities. Now UN-Habitat, which works with governments to promote more sustainable urban environments, is doing just that….
In Singapore, meanwhile – a country with densely populated cities and high volumes of traffic – the government is using tech to do more than manage information. It has created an app, MyResponder, that alerts a network of more than 10,000 medically trained volunteers to anyone who has a heart attack nearby, sometimes getting someone to the scene faster than the ambulance can get through the traffic.
The government is now piloting an expansion of the project by kitting out taxis with defibrillators and giving drivers first aid training, then linking them up to the app.
It’s examples like these, where governments use technology to bring communities together, that demonstrates the benefit of embracing innovation. The people making it happen are not only improving services for citizens – their quirky ideas are breathing new life into archaic systems…(More)“
Software used to predict crime can now be scoured for bias
Dave Gershgorn in Quartz: “Predictive policing, or the idea that software can foresee where crime will take place, is being adopted across the country—despite being riddled with issues. These algorithms have been shown to disproportionately target minorities, and private companies won’t reveal how their software reached those conclusions.
In an attempt to stand out from the pack, predictive-policing startup CivicScape has released its algorithm and data online for experts to scour, according to Government Technology magazine. The company’s Github page is already populated with its code, as well as a variety of documents detailing how its algorithm interprets police data and what variables are included when predicting crime.
“By making our code and data open-source, we are inviting feedback and conversation about CivicScape in the belief that many eyes make our tools better for all,” the company writes on Github. “We must understand and measure bias in crime data that can result in disparate public safety outcomes within a community.”…
CivicScape claims to not use race or ethnic data to make predictions, although it is aware of other indirect indicators of race that could bias its software. The software also filters out low-level drug crimes, which have been found to be heavily biased against African Americans.
While this startup might be the first to publicly reveal the inner machinations of its algorithm and data practices, it’s not an assurance that predictive policing can be made fair and transparent across the board.
“Lots of research is going on about how algorithms can be transparent, accountable, and fair,” the company writes. “We look forward to being involved in this important conversation.”…(More)”.
Drones used in fight against plastic pollution on UK beaches
Tom Cheshire at SkyNews: “On a beach in Kent, Peter Koehler and Ellie Mackay are teaching a drone how to see.
Their project, Plastic Tide, aims to create software that will automatically pick out the pieces of plastic that wash up here on the shingle.
“One of the major challenges we face is that we can only account for 1% of those millions and millions of tonnes [of plastic] that are coming into our oceans every year,” Mr Koehler told Sky News.
“So the question is, where is that 99% going?”
He added: “We just don’t know. It could be in the water, it could be in wildlife, or it could be on beaches.
“And so what the Plastic Tide is doing, it’s using drone technology to image beaches in a way that’s never been done before, on a scientific scale. So that you can build up a picture of how much of that missing 99% is washing up on our beaches.”
Mr Koehler and Ms Mackay use an off-the-shelf drone. They select the area of beach they want to film and a free app comes up with a survey pattern flight path – the drone moves systematically up and down the beach as if it were ploughing it.
The images taken are then uploaded to a scientific crowd-sourcing platform called Zooniverse.
Anyone can log on, look at the images and tag bits of plastic in them.
That will build up a huge amount of data, which will be used to train a machine-learning algorithm to spot plastic by itself – no humans required.
The hope is that, eventually, anyone will be able to fly a drone, take images, then computers will automatically scan the images and determine the levels of plastic pollution on a beach.
This summer, Mr Koehler and Ms Mackay will travel all 3,200 miles of the UK coastline, surveying beaches….
There’s no new, groundbreaking piece of technology here.
Just off-the-shelf components, smart thinking and a desire to put a small dent in a huge problem….(More)”
The Crowd & the Cloud
The Crowd & the Cloud (TV series): “Are you interested in birds, fish, the oceans or streams in your community? Are you concerned about fracking, air quality, extreme weather, asthma, Alzheimer’s disease, Zika or other epidemics? Now you can do more than read about these issues. You can be part of the solution.
Smartphones, computers and mobile technology are enabling regular citizens to become part of a 21st century way of doing science. By observing their environments, monitoring neighborhoods, collecting information about the world and the things they care about, so-called “citizen scientists” are helping professional scientists to advance knowledge while speeding up new discoveries and innovations.
The results are improving health and welfare, assisting in wildlife conservation, and giving communities the power to create needed change and help themselves.
Citizen science has amazing promise, but also raises questions about data quality and privacy. Its potential and challenges are explored in THE CROWD & THE CLOUD, a 4-part public television series premiering in April 2017. Hosted by former NASA Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati, each episode takes viewers on a global tour of the projects and people on the front lines of this disruptive transformation in how science is done, and shows how anyone, anywhere can participate….(More)”
Crowdsourced Science: Sociotechnical Epistemology in the e-Research Paradigm
Paper by David Watson and Luciano Floridi: “Recent years have seen a surge in online collaboration between experts and amateurs on scientific research. In this article, we analyse the epistemological implications of these crowdsourced projects, with a focus on Zooniverse, the world’s largest citizen science web portal. We use quantitative methods to evaluate the platform’s success in producing large volumes of observation statements and high impact scientific discoveries relative to more conventional means of data processing. Through empirical evidence, Bayesian reasoning, and conceptual analysis, we show how information and communication technologies enhance the reliability, scalability, and connectivity of crowdsourced e-research, giving online citizen science projects powerful epistemic advantages over more traditional modes of scientific investigation. These results highlight the essential role played by technologically mediated social interaction in contemporary knowledge production. We conclude by calling for an explicitly sociotechnical turn in the philosophy of science that combines insights from statistics and logic to analyse the latest developments in scientific research….(More)”
Citizen Science in the Digital Age: Rhetoric, Science, and Public Engagement
Book by James Wynn: “…highlights scientific studies grounded in publicly gathered data and probes the rhetoric these studies employ. Many of these endeavors, such as the widely used SETI@home project, simply draw on the processing power of participants’ home computers; others, like the protein-folding game FoldIt, ask users to take a more active role in solving scientific problems. In Citizen Science in the Digital Age: Rhetoric, Science, and Public Engagement, Wynn analyzes the discourse that enables these scientific ventures, as well as the difficulties that arise in communication between scientists and lay people and the potential for misuse of publicly gathered data.
Wynn puzzles out the intricacies of these exciting new research developments by focusing on various case studies. He explores the Safecast project, which originated from crowd-sourced mapping for Fukushima radiation dispersal, arguing that evolving technologies enable public volunteers to make concrete, sound, science-based arguments. Additionally, he considers the potential use of citizen science as a method of increasing the public’s identification with the scientific community, and contemplates how more collaborative rhetoric might deepen these opportunities for interaction and alignment. Furthermore, he examines ways in which the lived experience of volunteers may be integrated with expert scientific knowledge, and also how this same personal involvement can be used to further policy agendas.
Precious few texts explore the intersection of rhetoric, science, and the Internet. Citizen Science in the Digital Age fills this gap, offering a clear, intelligent overview of the topic intended for rhetoric and communication scholars as well as practitioners and administrators in a number of science-based disciplines. With the expanded availability of once inaccessible technologies and computing power to laypeople, the practice of citizen science will only continue to grow. This study offers insight into how—given prudent application and the clear articulation of common goals—citizen science might strengthen the relationships between scientists and laypeople….(More)”
Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing for Earth Observations: An Analysis of Stakeholder Opinions on the Present and Future
Suvodeep Mazumdar, Stuart Wrigley and Fabio Ciravegna in Remote Sense: “The impact of Crowdsourcing and citizen science activities on academia, businesses, governance and society has been enormous. This is more prevalent today with citizens and communities collaborating with organizations, businesses and authorities to contribute in a variety of manners, starting from mere data providers to being key stakeholders in various decision-making processes. The “Crowdsourcing for observations from Satellites” project is a recently concluded study supported by demonstration projects funded by European Space Agency (ESA). The objective of the project was to investigate the different facets of how crowdsourcing and citizen science impact upon the validation, use and enhancement of Observations from Satellites (OS) products and services. This paper presents our findings in a stakeholder analysis activity involving participants who are experts in crowdsourcing, citizen science for Earth Observations. The activity identified three critical areas that needs attention by the community as well as provides suggestions to potentially help in addressing some of the challenges identified….(More)”.
Be the Change: Saving the World with Citizen Science
Book by It’s so easy to be overwhelmed by everything that is wrong in the world. In 2010, there were 660,000 deaths from malaria. Dire predictions about climate change suggest that sea levels could rise enough to submerge both Los Angeles and London by 2100. Bees are dying, not by the thousands but by the millions.
But what can you do? You’re just one person, right? The good news is that you *can* do something.
It’s called citizen science, and it’s a way for ordinary people like you and me to do real, honest-to-goodness, help-answer-the-big-questions science.
This book introduces you to a world in which it is possible to go on a wildlife survey in a national park, install software on your computer to search for a cure for cancer, have your smartphone log the sound pollution in your city, transcribe ancient Greek scrolls, or sift through the dirt from a site where a mastodon died 11,000 years ago—even if you never finished high school….(More)”
Crowdsourcing, Citizen Science, and Data-sharing
Sapien Labs: “The future of human neuroscience lies in crowdsourcing, citizen science and data sharing but it is not without its minefields.
A recent Scientific American article by Daniel Goodwin, “Why Neuroscience Needs Hackers,” makes the case that neuroscience, like many fields today, is drowning in data, begging for application of advances in computer science like machine learning. Neuroscientists are able to gather realms of neural data, but often without big data mechanisms and frameworks to synthesize them.
The SA article describes the work of Sebastian Seung, a Princeton neuroscientist, who recently mapped the neural connections of the human retina from an “overwhelming mass” of electron microscopy data using state of the art A.I. and massive crowd-sourcing. Seung incorporated the A.I. into a game called “Eyewire” where 1,000s of volunteers scored points while improving the neural map. Although the article’s title emphasizes advanced A.I., Dr. Seung’s experiment points even more to crowdsourcing and open science, avenues for improving research that have suddenly become easy and powerful with today’s internet. Eyewire perhaps epitomizes successful crowdsourcing — using an application that gathers, represents, and analyzes data uniformly according to researchers’ needs.
Crowdsourcing is seductive in its potential but risky for those who aren’t sure how to control it to get what they want. For researchers who don’t want to become hackers themselves, trying to turn the diversity of data produced by a crowd into conclusive results might seem too much of a headache to make it worthwhile. This is probably why the SA article title says we need hackers. The crowd is there but using it depends on innovative software engineering. A lot of researchers could really use software designed to flexibly support a diversity of crowdsourcing, some AI to enable things like crowd validation and big data tools.
The Potential
The SA article also points to Open BCI (brain-computer interface), mentioned here in other posts, as an example of how traditional divisions between institutional and amateur (or “citizen”) science are now crumbling; Open BCI is a community of professional and citizen scientists doing principled research with cheap, portable EEG-headsets producing professional research quality data. In communities of “neuro-hackers,” like NeurotechX, professional researchers, entrepreneurs, and citizen scientists are coming together to develop all kinds of applications, such as “telepathic” machine control, prostheses, and art. Other companies, like Neurosky sell EEG headsets and biosensors for bio-/neuro-feedback training and health-monitoring at consumer affordable pricing. (Read more in Citizen Science and EEG)
Tan Le, whose company Emotiv Lifesciences, also produces portable EEG head-sets, says, in an article in National Geographic, that neuroscience needs “as much data as possible on as many brains as possible” to advance diagnosis of conditions such as epilepsy and Alzheimer’s. Human neuroscience studies have typically consisted of 20 to 50 participants, an incredibly small sampling of a 7 billion strong humanity. For a single lab to collect larger datasets is difficult but with diverse populations across the planet real understanding may require data not even from thousands of brains but millions. With cheap mobile EEG-headsets, open-source software, and online collaboration, the potential for anyone can participate in such data collection is immense; the potential for crowdsourcing unprecedented. There are, however, significant hurdles to overcome….(More)”