James Trew in Engadget : “Today sees the release of The Walk, an iOS and Android game backed by the UK’s Department of Health. It’s the second release in a collection of apps funded as part of the UK’s Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI). The first — StepJockey, an app that lets you map, locate, rate and log the calorific expenditure of staircases around your city — came out on Monday. All five apps in the program encourage you to move more, or change negative habits. Can an app improve your life? At the very least, we’re guessing the... (More >)
Book Review: Three Harbingers of Change
Howard Rheingold reviews the following books in Strategy and Business: Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) Marina Gorbis The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World (Free Press, 2013) Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (New York University Press, 2013) “Whether you invest, build, teach, research, regulate, investigate, heal, entertain, or sell, major changes in how you do what you do are looming. “Big data,” much in the media spotlight... (More >)
Net Effects: The Past, Present & Future Impact of Our Networks – History, Challenges and Opportunities
Ebook by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: “Almost a month into my new job, the fact that I’ve always been a “network guy” and an intrepid history buff should come as no surprise. Reading history has reinforced the central importance networks play and revealed the common themes in successive periods of network-driven change. Now, at the FCC, I find myself joining my colleagues in a position of both responsibility and authority over how the public is affected by and interfaces with the networks that connect us. Prior to my appointment by President Obama, I was doing research for a book... (More >)
Selected Readings on Smart Disclosure
The Living Library’s Selected Readings series seeks to build a knowledge base on innovative approaches for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance. This curated and annotated collection of recommended works on the topic of smart disclosure was originally published in 2013. While much attention is paid to open data, data transparency need not be managed by a simple On/Off switch: It’s often desirable to make specific data available to the public or individuals in targeted ways. A prime example is the use of government data in Smart Disclosure, which provides consumers with data they need to make difficult... (More >)
Social movements and their technologies. wiring social change
New book by Stefania Milan: “Social Movements and Their Technologies. Wiring Social Change explores the interplay between social movements and their “liberated technologies”. It analyzes the rise of low-power radio stations and radical internet projects (“emancipatory communication practices”) as a political subject, focusing on the sociological and cultural processes at play. It provides an overview of the relationship between social movements and technology and investigates what is behind the communication infrastructure that made possible the main protest events of the past 15 years. In doing so, Stefania Milan illustrates how contemporary social movements organize in order to create autonomous... (More >)
Accountability Technologies – Tools for Asking Hard Questions
New book by Dietmar Offenhuber and Katja Schechtner: “A growing part of the public is concerned about cities being designed and governed in a responsible way. In the contemporary information society, however, the democratic obligation of the citizens to inform themselves thoroughly, so that they can participate in public affairs has become impossible to fulfill. Rather than submitting to the opinions of self-proclaimed experts, citizens need new ways to make sense of what is going on around them. Accountability technologies stand for new innovative approaches to bottom-up governance: technologies to monitor those in power and hold them accountable for... (More >)
Digital Government @ Work: A Social Informatics Perspective
Book Review by Chi Onwurah: “In the 1990s and 2000s, tech cynics would often quote Robert Solow’s 1987 quip, ‘You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.’ Now that value chains have been disintermediated and dependent business models trashed, it is less common to hear that. However it would still be appropriate to say ‘You can see the digital age everywhere but in Government.’ Certainly in a recent Policy Exchange report, the Prime Minister’s former digital advisor Rohan Silva did his best to portray the public sector as a digitally backward captured client of ICT... (More >)
Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics
New book by Stephen Wendel :” A new wave of products is helping people change their behavior and daily routines, whether it’s exercising more (Jawbone Up), taking control of their finances (HelloWallet), or organizing their email (Mailbox). This practical guide shows you how to design these types of products for users seeking to take action and achieve specific goals. Stephen Wendel, HelloWallet’s head researcher, takes you step-by-step through the process of applying behavioral economics and psychology to the practical problems of product design and development. Using a combination of lean and agile development methods, you’ll learn a simple iterative... (More >)
Peacekeeping 4.0: Harnessing the Potential of Big Data, Social Media, and Cyber Technologies
Chapter by John Karlsrud in “Cyberspace and International Relations: Theory, Prospects and Challenges”(Edited by Jan-Frederik Kremer, and Benedikt Müller): “Since the Cold War, peacekeeping has evolved from first-generation peacekeeping that focused on monitoring peace agreements, to third-generation multidimensional peacekeeping operations tasked with rebuilding states and their institutions during and after conflict. However, peacekeeping today is lagging behind the changes marking our time. Big Data, including social media, and the many actors in the field may provide peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations with information and tools to enable them to respond better, faster and more effectively, saving lives and building states.... (More >)
Twitter and Society
New book by Weller, Katrin / Bruns, Axel / Burgess, Jean / Mahrt, Merja / Puschmann, Cornelius (eds.): “Since its launch in 2006, Twitter has evolved from a niche service to a mass phenomenon; it has become instrumental for everyday communication as well as for political debates, crisis communication, marketing, and cultural participation. But the basic idea behind it has stayed the same: users may post short messages (tweets) of up to 140 characters and follow the updates posted by other users. Drawing on the experience of leading international Twitter researchers from a variety of disciplines and contexts, this... (More >)
