New book by Jean-Fabrice Lebraty, Katia Lobre-Lebraty on Crowdsourcing: “Crowdsourcing is a relatively recent phenomenon that only appeared in 2006, but it continues to grow and diversify (crowdfunding, crowdcontrol, etc.). This book aims to review this concept and show how it leads to the creation of value and new business opportunities.
Chapter 1 is based on four examples: the online-banking sector, an informative television channel, the postal sector and the higher education sector. It shows that in the current context, for a company facing challenges, the crowd remains an untapped resource. The next chapter presents crowdsourcing as a new form of externalization and offers definitions of crowdsourcing. In Chapter 3, the authors attempt to explain how a company can create value by means of a crowdsourcing operation. To do this, authors use a model linking types of value, types of crowd, and the means by which these crowds are accessed.
Chapter 4 examines in detail various forms that crowdsourcing may take, by presenting and discussing ten types of crowdsourcing operation. In Chapter 5, the authors imagine and explore the ways in which the dark side of crowdsourcing might be manifested and Chapter 6 offers some insight into the future of crowdsourcing.
Contents
1. A Turbulent and Paradoxical Environment.
2. Crowdsourcing: A New Form of Externalization.
3. Crowdsourcing and Value Creation.
4. Forms of Crowdsourcing.
5. The Dangers of Crowdsourcing.
6. The Future of Crowdsourcing.”
Civics for a Digital Age
Jathan Sadowski in the Atlantic on “Eleven principles for relating to cities that are automated and smart: Over half of the world’s population lives in urban environments, and that number is rapidly growing according to the World Health Organization. Many of us interact with the physical environments of cities on a daily basis: the arteries that move traffic, the grids that energize our lives, the buildings that prevent and direct actions. For many tech companies, though, much of this urban infrastructure is ripe for a digital injection. Cities have been “dumb” for millennia. It’s about time they get “smart” — or so the story goes….
Before accepting the techno-hype as a fait accompli, we should consider the implications such widespread technological changes might have on society, politics, and life in general. Urban scholar and historian Lewis Mumford warned of “megamachines” where people become mere components — like gears and transistors — in a hierarchical, human machine. The proliferation of smart projects requires an updated way of thinking about their possibilities, complications, and effects.
A new book, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, by Anthony Townsend, a research director at the Institute for the Future, provides some groundwork for understanding how these urban projects are occurring and what guiding principles we might use in directing their development. Townsend sets out to sketch a new understanding of “civics,” one that will account for new technologies.
The foundation for his theory speaks to common, worthwhile concerns: “Until now, smart-city visions have been controlling us. What we need is a new social code to bring meaning and to exert control over the technological code of urban operating systems.” It’s easy to feel like technologies — especially urban ones that are, at once, ubiquitous and often unseen to city-dwellers — have undue influence over our lives. Townsend’s civics, which is based on eleven principles, looks to address, prevent, and reverse that techno-power.”
Foundations of Digital Government
New book by Daniel Veit and Jan Huntgeburth: “Digital government consists in the purposeful use of information and communication technologies (ICT), in particular the internet, to transform the relationship between government and society in a positive manner. This book focuses on the current status, prospects and foundations of digital government. Integrating examples and cases from administrative practice, it covers all important aspects of digital government management. Learning outcomes include
- Understanding the implications of the internet for government and society
- Gaining deeper insights into the concept and opportunities of digital democracy
- Understanding the challenges of moving public services online
Table of Contents: Preface.- 1 Introduction to Digital Government.- 2 Impact of Digital Government.- 3 The Digital Divide.- 4 Legal Aspects of Digital Service Delivery.- 5 Online One-Stop Government.- 6 Open Government.- 7 E-Procurement.- 8 E-Voting.- 9 E-Participation.- 10 Lesson Learned and Outlook.”
Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better
New book by Clive Thompson: “It’s undeniable—technology is changing the way we think. But is it for the better? Amid a chorus of doomsayers, Clive Thompson delivers a resounding “yes.” The Internet age has produced a radical new style of human intelligence, worthy of both celebration and analysis. We learn more and retain it longer, write and think with global audiences, and even gain an ESP-like awareness of the world around us. Modern technology is making us smarter, better connected, and often deeper—both as individuals and as a society.
In Smarter Than You Think Thompson shows that every technological innovation—from the written word to the printing press to the telegraph—has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt—learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old.”
Cyberpsychology and New Media
A thematic reader, edited by Andrew Power, Grainne Kirwan: “Cyberpsychology is the study of human interactions with the internet, mobile computing and telephony, games consoles, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and other contemporary electronic technologies. The field has grown substantially over the past few years and this book surveys how researchers are tackling the impact of new technology on human behaviour and how people interact with this technology.
Examining topics as diverse as online dating, social networking, online communications, artificial intelligence, health-information seeking behaviour, education online, online therapies and cybercrime, Cyberpsychology and New Media book provides an in-depth overview of this burgeoning field, and allows those with little previous knowledge to gain an appreciation of the diversity of the research being undertaken in the area.”
Fighting for Reliable Evidence
New book by Judy Gueron and Howard Rolston: “Once primarily used in medical clinical trials, random assignment experimentation is now accepted among social scientists across a broad range of disciplines. The technique has been used in social experiments to evaluate a variety of programs, from microfinance and welfare reform to housing vouchers and teaching methods. How did randomized experiments move beyond medicine and into the social sciences, and can they be used effectively to evaluate complex social problems? Fighting for Reliable Evidence provides an absorbing historical account of the characters and controversies that have propelled the wider use of random assignment in social policy research over the past forty years.
Drawing from their extensive experience evaluating welfare reform programs, noted scholar practitioners Judith M. Gueron and Howard Rolston portray randomized experiments as a vital research tool to assess the impact of social policy. In a random assignment experiment, participants are sorted into either a treatment group that participates in a particular program, or a control group that does not. Because the groups are randomly selected, they do not differ from one another systematically. Therefore any subsequent differences between the groups can be attributed to the influence of the program or policy. The theory is elegant and persuasive, but many scholars worry that such an experiment is too difficult or expensive to implement in the real world. Can a control group be truly insulated from the treatment policy? Would staffers comply with the random allocation of participants? Would the findings matter?”
The Political Web: Media, Participation and Alternative Democracy
New book by Peter Dahlgren: “As democracy encounters increasing difficulties, many citizens are turning to the domain of alternative politics, and in so doing, making considerable use of the Web and other new communication technologies. Clearly this is having significant impact, and we see that new modes of political participation and even political cultures are emerging. Yet, we would be foolish to expect some simple ‘techno-fix’ for democracy; its problems are more complex than that. This volume analyses various factors that shape such Web-facilitated participation, including features of the Web itself as well as broader societal realities. Avoiding simplistic optimism or pessimism, the discussion highlights the tensions and force-fields that impact on participation. The presentation also addresses several key topics in regard to citizens’ engagement, such as civic subjectivity, web intellectuals, and cosmopolitanism. While anchored in an extensive literature and wide theoretical vistas, the book is written in a clear and accessible style.”
Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization
Book review by José Luis Cordeiro: Eric Drexler, popularly known as “the founding father of nanotechnology,” introduced the concept in his seminal 1981 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.This paper established fundamental principles of molecular engineering and outlined development paths to advanced nanotechnologies.
He popularized the idea of nanotechnology in his 1986 book, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, where he introduced a broad audience to a fundamental technology objective: using machines that work at the molecular scale to structure matter from the bottom up.
He went on to continue his PhD thesis at MIT, under the guidance of AI-pioneer Marvin Minsky, and published it in a modified form as a book in 1992 as Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation.
Drexler’s new book, Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization, tells the story of nanotechnology from its small beginnings, then moves quickly towards a big future, explaining what it is and what it is not, and enlightening about what we can do with it for the benefit of humanity.
In his pioneering 1986 book, Engines of Creation, he defined nanotechnology as a potential technology with these features: “manufacturing using machinery based on nanoscale devices, and products built with atomic precision.”
In his 2013 sequel, Radical Abundance, Drexler expands on his prior thinking, corrects many of the misconceptions about nanotechnology, and dismisses fears of dystopian futures replete with malevolent nanobots and gray goo…
His new book clearly identifies nanotechnology with atomically precise manufacturing (APM)…Drexler makes many comparisons between the information revolution and what he now calls the “APM revolution.” What the first did with bits, the second will do with atoms: “Image files today will be joined by product files tomorrow. Today one can produce an image of the Mona Lisa without being able to draw a good circle; tomorrow one will be able to produce a display screen without knowing how to manufacture a wire.”
Civilization, he says, is advancing from a world of scarcity toward a world of abundance — indeed, radical abundance.”
The New Reality of Social Production
Don Peppers on LinkedIn: “…Waze is yet another example of social production, or the increasingly common use of connected people working together to create value with little or no actual economic incentives involved. Instead, social production is based on a completely different set of principles – sharing and giving, rather than trading and selling. It is an important aspect of what some are now calling the “sharing economy,” and systems like Waze are ever more rapidly replacing or supplementing large portions of the commercial economy, as Martha Rogers and I document in our book Extreme Trust.
In the commercial economy, where profit-making entities operate, what you pay for determines what you get. I pay you, and you give me something of value. I may be a customer buying a product or service, or you may be the boss paying my salary, but either way neither of us is volunteering. We are trading our time or money for value in return. In the commercial economy, we all expect to pay for the things we want. When you pay the grocer $6 for a 12-pack of Diet Coke by the can, you don’t begrudge him the money. And you wouldn’t even consider asking the grocer to give you the soda voluntarily, for free – the way a Waze participant voluntarily reports a new hazard for other participants.
An economic system based on money, as ours is, facilitates the efficient division of labor, enabling us to accomplish more and more complex tasks by dividing them into simple components. The end result is that you don’t have to wire your own smartphone together or harvest your own wheat for your morning bagel. The division-of-labor principle has allowed technology to become so complex that none of us today could ever make even the simplest manufactured products all by ourselves.
But because of the very efficient way in which people are now electronically connected, many social production tasks can also be parsed up and allocated bit by bit among assorted different players – just talk to any of the 3.4 million volunteer coders and developers who work on the more than 300,000 different open-source software projects now registered at Sourceforge, for example. Moreover, these tasks are sometimes so complex, diffused, or difficult that accomplishing them with a commercial model just wouldn’t be practical. Imagine what it would have taken for Waze’s organizers to identify and monitor traffic hazards across the nation on their own, for instance. A small army of paid scouts or robotic monitors would have been required, continually updating the system, and the cost would have made the whole project completely unrealistic…”
The Logic of Connective Action- Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics
New book by W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg: “The Logic of Connective Action explains the rise of a personalized digitally networked politics in which diverse individuals address the common problems of our times such as economic fairness and climate change. Rich case studies from the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany illustrate a theoretical framework for understanding how large-scale connective action is coordinated using inclusive discourses such as “We Are the 99%” that travel easily through social media. In many of these mobilizations, communication operates as an organizational process that may replace or supplement familiar forms of collective action based on organizational resource mobilization, leadership, and collective action framing. In some cases, connective action emerges from crowds that shun leaders, as when Occupy protesters created media networks to channel resources and create loose ties among dispersed physical groups. In other cases, conventional political organizations deploy personalized communication logics to enable large-scale engagement with a variety of political causes. The Logic of Connective Action shows how power is organized in communication-based networks, and what political outcomes may result.”