Gradually, Then Suddenly

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blogpost by Tim O’Reilly: “There’s a passage in Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Sun Also Rises in which a character named Mike is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he answers. “Gradually, then suddenly.”

Technological change happens in much the same way. Small changes accumulate, and suddenly the world is a different place. Throughout my career at O’Reilly Media, we’ve tracked and fostered a lot of “gradually, then suddenly” movements: the World Wide Web, open source software, big data, cloud computing, sensors and ubiquitous computing, and now the pervasive effects of AI and algorithmic systems on society and the economy.

What are some of the things that are in the middle of their “gradually, then suddenly” transition right now? The list is long; here are a few of the areas that are on my mind.

1) AI and algorithms are everywhere

The most important trend for readers of this newsletter to focus on is the development of new kinds of partnership between human and machine. We take for granted that algorithmic systems do much of the work at online sites like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter, but we haven’t fully grasped the implications. These systems are hybrids of human and machine. Uber, Lyft, and Amazon Robotics brought this pattern to the physical world, reframing the corporation as a vast, buzzing network of humans both guiding and guided by machines. In these systems, the algorithms decide who gets what and why; they’re changing the fundamentals of market coordination in ways that gradually, then suddenly, will become apparent.

2) The rest of the world is leapfrogging the US

The volume of mobile payments in China is $13 trillion versus the US’s $50 billion, while credit cards never took hold. Already Zipline’s on-demand drones are delivering 20% of all blood supplies in Rwanda and will be coming soon to other countries (including the US). In each case, the lack of existing infrastructure turned out to be an advantage in adopting a radically new model. Expect to see this pattern recur, as incumbents and old thinking hold back the adoption of new models..…

9) The crisis of faith in government

Ever since Jennifer Pahlka and I began working on the Gov 2.0 Summit back in 2008, we’ve been concerned that if we can’t get government up to speed on 21st century technology, a critical pillar of the good society will crumble. When we started that effort, we were focused primarily on government innovation; over time, through Jen’s work at Code for America and the United States Digital Service, that shifted to a focus on making sure that government services actually work for those who need them most. Michael Lewis’s latest book, The Fifth Risk, highlights just how bad things might get if we continue to neglect and undermine the machinery of government. It’s not just the political fracturing of our country that should concern us; it’s the fact that government plays a critical role in infrastructure, in innovation, and in the safety net. That role has gradually been eroded, and the cracks that are appearing in the foundation of our society are coming at the worst possible time….(More)”.

Paying Users for Their Data Would Exacerbate Digital Inequality

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog post by Eline Chivot: “Writing ever more complicated and intrusive regulations rules about data processing and data use has become the new fad in policymaking. Many are lending an ear to tempting yet ill-advised proposals to treat personal data as traditional finite resource. The latest example can be found in an article, A Blueprint for a Better Digital Society, by Glen Weyl, an economist at Microsoft Research, and Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and writer. Not content with Internet users being able to access many online services like Bing and Twitter for free, they want online users to be paid in cash for the data they provide. To say that this proposal is flawed is an understatement. Its flawed for three main reasons: 1) consumers would lose significant shared value in exchange for minimal cash compensation; 2) higher incomes individuals would benefit at the expense of the poor; and 3) transaction costs would increase substantially, further reducing value for consumers and limiting opportunities for businesses to innovate with the data.

Weyl and Lanier’s argument is motivated by the belief that because Internet users are getting so many valuable services—like search, email, maps, and social networking—for free, they must be paying with their data. Therefore, they argue, if users are paying with their data, they should get something in return. Never mind that they do get something in return: valuable digital services that they do not pay for monetarily. But Weyl and Lanier say this is not enough, and consumers should get more.

While this idea may sound good on paper, in practice, it would be a disaster.

…Weyl and Lanier’s self-declared objective is to ensure digital dignity, but in practice this proposal would disrupt the equal treatment users receive from digital services today by valuing users based on their net worth. In this techno-socialist nirvana, to paraphrase Orwell, some pigs would be more equal than others. The French Data Protection Authority, CNIL, itself raised concerns about treating data as a commodity, warning that doing so would jeopardize society’s humanist values and fundamental rights which are, in essence, priceless.

To ensure “a better digital society,” companies should continue to be allowed to decide the best Internet business models based on what consumers demand. Data is neither cash nor a commodity, and pursuing policies based on this misconception will damage the digital economy and make the lives of digital consumers considerably worse….(More)”.

Innovations in satellite measurements for development

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ran Goldblatt, Trevor Monroe, Sarah Elizabeth Antos, Marco Hernandez at the World Bank Data Blog: “The desire of human beings to “think spatially” to understand how people and objects are organized in space has not changed much since Eratosthenes—the Greek astronomer best known as the “father of Geography”—first used the term “Geographika” around 250 BC. Centuries later, our understanding of economic geography is being propelled forward by new data and new capabilities to rapidly process, analyze and convert these vast data flows into meaningful and near real-time information.

The increasing availability of satellite data has transformed how we use remote sensing analytics to understand, monitor and achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. As satellite data becomes ever more accessible and frequent, it is now possible not only to better understand how the Earth is changing, but also to utilize these insights to improve decision making, guide policy, deliver services, and promote better-informed governance. Satellites capture many of the physical, economic and social characteristics of Earth, providing a unique asset for developing countries, where reliable socio-economic and demographic data is often not consistently available. Analysis of satellite data was once relegated to researchers with access to costly data or to “super computers”. Today, the increased availability of “free” satellite data, combined with powerful cloud computing and open source analytical tools have democratized data innovation, enabling local governments and agencies to use satellite data to improve sector diagnostics, development indicators, program monitoring and service delivery.

Drivers of innovation in satellite measurements

  • Big (geo)data – Satellites in Global Development are improving every day, creating new opportunities for impact in development. They capture millions of images from Earth in different spatial, spectral and temporal resolutions, generating data in ever increasing volume, variety and velocity.
  • Open Source –Open source annotated datasets, the World Bank’s Open Data, and other publicly available resources allow to process and document the data (e.g. Cumulus, label maker) and perform machine learning analysis using common programming languages such as R or Python.
  • Crowd – crowdsource platforms like MTurk, Figure-eight and Tomnod are used to collect and enhance inputs (reference data) to train machines to identify automatically specific objects and land cover on Earth.
  • High Quality Ground Truth –Robust algorithms that analyze the entire planet require diverse training data, and traditional development Microdata for use in machine learning training, validation and calibration, for example, to map urbanization processes.
  • Cloud – cloud computing and data storage capabilities within platforms like AWS, Azure and Google Earth Engine provide scalable solutions for storage, management and parallel processing of large volumes of data.

…As petabytes of geo data are being collected, novel methods are developed to convert these data into meaningful information about the nature and pace of change on Earth, for example, the formation of urban landscapes and human settlements, the creation of transportation networks that connect cities or the conversion of natural forests into productive agricultural land. New possibilities emerge for harnessing this data for a better understanding about our changing world….(More)”.

Digital rights as a security objective: New gateways for attacks

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Yannic Blaschke at EDRI: “Violations of human rights online, most notably the right to data protection, can pose a real threat to electoral security and societal polarisation. In this series of blogposts, we’ll explain how and why digital rights must be treated as a security objective instead. The second part of the series explains how encroaching on digital rights could create new gateways for attacks against our security.

In the first part of this series, we analysed the failure of the Council of the European Union to connect the obvious dots between ePrivacy and disinformation online, leaving open a security vulnerability through a lack of protection of citizens. However, a failure to act is not the only front on which the EU is potentially weakening our security on- and offline: on the contrary, some of the EU’s more actively pursued digital policies could have unintended, yet serious consequences in the future. Nowhere is this trend more visible than in the recent trust in filtering algorithms, which seem to be the new “censorship machine” that is proposed as a solution for almost everything, from copyright infringements to terrorist content online.

Article 13 of the Copyright Directive proposal and the Terrorist Content Regulation proposal are two examples of the attempt to regulate the online world via algorithms. While having different motivations, both share the logic of outsourcing accountability and enforcement of public rules to private entities who will be the ones deciding about the availability of speech online. They, explicitly or implicitly, advocate for the introduction of technologies that detect and remove certain types of content: upload filters. They empower internet companies to decide which content will stay online, based on their terms of service (and not law). In a nutshell, public institutions are encouraging Google, Facebook and other platform giants to become the judge and the police of the internet. In turn, they undermine the presumption that it should be democratically legitimise states, not private entities, who are tasked with the heavy burden of balancing the right to freedom of expression.

Even more chilling is the outlook of upload filters creating new entry points for forces that seek to influence societal debates in their favour. If algorithms will be the judges of what can or cannot be published, they could become the target of the next wave of election interference campaigns, with attackers instigating them to take down critical or liberal voices to influence debates on the internet. Despite continuous warnings about the misuse of personal data on Facebook, it only took us a few years to arrive at the point of Cambridge Analytica. How long will it take us to arrive at a similar point of election interference through upload filters in online platforms?

If we let this pre-emptive and extra-judicial censorship happen, it would likely result in severe detriments to the freedom of speech and right to information of European citizens, and the free flow of information would, in consequence, be stifled. The societal effects of this could be further aggravated by the introduction of a press publishers right (Article 11 of the Copyright Directive) that is vividly opposed by the academic world, as it will concentrate the power over what appears in the news in ever fewer hands. Especially in Member States where media plurality and independence of bigger outlets from state authorities are no longer guaranteed, a decline in societal resilience to authoritarian tendencies is unfortunately easy to imagine.

We have to be very clear about what machines are good at and what they are bad at: Algorithms are incredibly well suited to detect patterns and trends, but cannot and will not be able perform the delicate act of balancing our rights and freedoms in accordance with the law any time soon….(More)”

The promises — and challenges — of data collaboratives for the SDGs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paula Hidalgo-Sanchis and Stefaan G. Verhulst at Devex: “As the road to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals becomes more complex and challenging, policymakers around the world need both new solutions and new ways to become more innovative. This includes better policy and program design based on evidence to solve problems at scale. The use of big data — the vast majority of which is collected, processed, and analyzed by the private sector — is key.

In the past few months, we at UN Global Pulse and The GovLab have sought to understand pathways to make policymaking more evidence-based and data-driven with the use of big data. Working in parallel at both local and global scale, we have conducted extensive desk research, held a series of workshops, and conducted in-depth conversations and interviews with key stakeholders, including government, civil society, and private sector representatives.

Our work is driven by a recognition of the potential of use of privately processed data through data collaboratives — a new form of public-private partnership in which government, private industry, and civil society work together to release previously siloed data, making it available to address the challenges of our era.

Research suggests that data collaboratives offer tremendous potential when implemented strategically under the appropriate policy and ethical frameworks. Nonetheless, this remains a nascent field, and we have summarized some of the barriers that continue to confront data collaboratives, with an eye toward ultimately proposing solutions to make them more effective, scalable, sustainable, and responsible.

Here are seven challenges…(More)”.

Smart cities could be lousy to live in if you have a disability

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Elizabeth Woyke in MIT Technology Review: “People with disabilities affecting mobility, vision, hearing, and cognitive function often move to cities to take advantage of their comprehensive transit systems and social services. But US law doesn’t specify how municipalities should design and implement digital services for disabled people. As a result, cities sometimes adopt new technologies that can end up causing, rather than resolving, problems of accessibility.

Nowhere was this more evident than with New York City’s LinkNYC kiosks, which were installed on sidewalks in 2016 without including instructions in Braille or audible form. Shortly after they went in, the American Federation for the Blind sued the city. The suit was settled in 2017 and the kiosks have been updated, but Pineda says touch screens in general are still not fully accessible to people with disabilities.

Also problematic: the social-media-based apps that some municipal governments have started using to solicit feedback from residents. Blind and low-vision people typically can’t use the apps, and people over 65 are less likely to, says James Thurston, a vice president at the nonprofit G3ict, which promotes accessible information and communication technologies. “Cities may think they’re getting data from all their residents, but if those apps aren’t accessible, they’re leaving out the voices of large chunks of their population,” he says….

Even for city officials who have these issues on their minds, knowing where to begin can be difficult. Smart Cities for All, an initiative led by Thurston and Pineda, aims to help by providing free, downloadable tools that cities can use to analyze their technology and find more accessible options. One is a database of hundreds of pre-vetted products and services. Among the entries are Cyclomedia, which uses lidar data to determine when city sidewalks need maintenance, and ZenCity, a data analytics platform that uses AI to gauge what people are saying about a city’s level of accessibility. 

This month, the group will kick off a project working with officials in Chicago to grade the city on how well it supports people with disabilities. One key part of the project will be ensuring the accessibility of a new 311 phone system being introduced as a general portal to city services. The group has plans to expand to several other US cities this year, but its ultimate aim is to turn the work into a global movement. It’s met with governments in India and Brazil as well as Sidewalk Labs, the Alphabet subsidiary that is developing a smart neighborhood in Toronto….(More)”.

The UN Principles on Personal Data Protection and Privacy

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United Nations System: “The Principles on Personal Data Protection and Privacy set out a basic framework for the processing of personal data by, or on behalf of, the United Nations System Organizations in carrying out their mandated activities.

The Principles aim to: (i) harmonize standards for the protection of personal data across the UN System; (ii) facilitate the accountable processing of personal data; and (iii) ensure respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals, in particular the right to privacy. These Principles apply to personal data, contained in any form, and processed in any manner. Where appropriate, they may also be used as a benchmark for the processing of non-personal data, in a sensitive context that may put certain individuals or groups of individuals at risk of harms. 
 
The High Level Committee on Management (HLCM) formally adopted the Principles at its 36th Meeting on 11 October 2018. The adoption followed the HLCM’s decision at its 35th Meeting in April 2018 to engage with the UN Data Privacy Policy Group (UN PPG) in developing a set of high-level principles on the cross-cutting issue of data privacy. Preceding the 36th HLCM meeting in October, the Principles were developed and unanimously endorsed by the organizations represented on the UN PPG….(More) (Download the Personal Data Protection and Privacy Principles)

Blockchain and Sustainable Growth

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Cathy Mulligan in the UN Chronicle: “…What can blockchain give us, then?

Blockchain’s 1,000 Thought Experiments

Blockchain is still new and will evolve many times before it can be fully integrated into society. We have seen similar trajectories before in the technology industry; examples include the Internet of things, mobile telephony and even the Internet itself. Every one of those technologies went through various iterations before it was fully integrated and used within society. Many technical, social and political obstacles had to be slowly but surely overcome.

It is often useful, therefore, to approach emerging technologies with some depth of thought—not by expecting them to act immediately as a fully functional solution but rather as a lens on the possible. Such an approach allows for a broader discussion, one in which we can challenge our preconceived notions. Blockchain has already illustrated the power of individuals connected via the Internet with sufficient computing power at their disposal. Far from merely tweeting, taking and sharing photos or videos, such people can also create an entirely new economic structure.

The power of blockchain thus lies not in the technology itself but rather in how it has reframed many discussions across various parts of our society and economy. Blockchain shows us that there are options, that we can organize society differently. It has launched 1,000 different thought experiments but the resulting solutions, which will be delivered a decade or two from now, may or may not be based on blockchain or cryptocurrencies. The discussions that started from this point, however, will have been important contributions to the progress that society makes around digital technologies and what they can mean for humankind. For these reasons, it is important that everyone, including the United Nations, engage with these technologies to understand and learn from them.

At its most basic level, blockchain speaks to a deep, human need, one of being able to trust other people, organizations and companies in a world where most of our interactions are mediated and stored digitally. It is arguable how well it captures that notion of trust, or whether any technology can ever actually replicate what a human being thinks, feels and acts like when they trust and are trusted. These concepts are deeply human, as are the power structures within which digital solutions are built. Blockchain is often discussed as removing intermediaries or creating democratic solutions to problems, but it may merely replace existing analogue power structures with digital ones, and cause decision-making within such contexts to become more brutally binary. ‘Truth’ on the blockchain does not leave room for interpretation, as today’s systems do.

Context is critical for the development of any technology, as is the political economy within which it exists. Those who have tried to use blockchain, however, have quickly realized something: it forces a new level of cooperation. It requires partnerships and deep discussions of what transparency and inclusion truly look like….

Perhaps one of the reasons that blockchain has received so much attention is because it speaks to something that many people across the world are feeling instinctively: that we can only create new solutions to some of the world’s oldest problems by working together and including everyone in the discussion. Blockchain appeals to many people as a viable solution precisely because it is about applying a counter-intuitive approach to problems; despite the often technology-deterministic manner in which it is discussed, it is important to listen to the underlying message. The call to inclusion, trust and multilateralism that blockchain attempts to address from a technical perspective is one that will continue for many decades to come and one to which we must find new ways to respond via Governments, civil society, academia, non-governmental organizations and international organizations such as the United Nations….(More)”.

Childhood’s End

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The 2019 Edge New Year’s Essay by George Dyson: “All revolutions come to an end, whether they succeed or fail.

The digital revolution began when stored-program computers broke the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things. Numbers that do things now rule the world. But who rules over the machines?

Once it was simple: programmers wrote the instructions that were supplied to the machines. Since the machines were controlled by these instructions, those who wrote the instructions controlled the machines.

Two things then happened. As computers proliferated, the humans providing instructions could no longer keep up with the insatiable appetite of the machines. Codes became self-replicating, and machines began supplying instructions to other machines. Vast fortunes were made by those who had a hand in this. A small number of people and companies who helped spawn self-replicating codes became some of the richest and most powerful individuals and organizations in the world.

Then something changed. There is now more code than ever, but it is increasingly difficult to find anyone who has their hands on the wheel. Individual agency is on the wane. Most of us, most of the time, are following instructions delivered to us by computers rather than the other way around. The digital revolution has come full circle and the next revolution, an analog revolution, has begun. None dare speak its name.

Childhood’s End was Arthur C. Clarke’s masterpiece, published in 1953, chronicling the arrival of benevolent Overlords who bring many of the same conveniences now delivered by the Keepers of the Internet to Earth. It does not end well…

The genius — sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental — of the enterprises now on such a steep ascent is that they have found their way through the looking-glass and emerged as something else. Their models are no longer models. The search engine is no longer a model of human knowledge, it is human knowledge. What began as a mapping of human meaning now defines human meaning, and has begun to control, rather than simply catalog or index, human thought. No one is at the controls. If enough drivers subscribe to a real-time map, traffic is controlled, with no central model except the traffic itself. The successful social network is no longer a model of the social graph, it is the social graph. This is why it is a winner-take-all game. Governments, with an allegiance to antiquated models and control systems, are being left behind…(More)”.

Blockchain helps refugees gain access to financial services

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Springwise: “…Blockchain has also lead to huge steps forward in this sector, enabling greater transparency for consumers in the food industry. This latest innovation could also combine both worlds in using blockchain to take back control of personal data.

Gravity Earth seeks to provide equal access and opportunity to digital IDs, a growing necessity in the modern world. Digital identities allow access to key financial services, mobile communication, and other online benefits. At the moment, Gravity Earth estimates that around 1.5 billion people across the globe do not have an official proof of identity.

The Nairobi-based startup sought to change this by allowing anyone to create a secure, self-sovereign digital ID based on their personal data. The blockchain-based process can be done wherever you are and on any mobile device. Their solution allows currently disadvantaged people to store and share personal data with whoever they want. In so doing, it also allows users to build on existing traditional IDs, but does not depend on them.

The products is currently close to its first deployment at a refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya. Gravity Earth will use it to track attendance at three refugee schools. In the future, the startup is also looking to work closely with more refugee-orientated NGOs…(More)”

See also: Field Report On the Emergent Use of Distributed Ledger Technologies for Identity Management