Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by James Vincent: “From the cubit to the kilogram, the humble inch to the speed of light, measurement is a powerful tool that humans invented to make sense of the world. In this revelatory work of science and social history, James Vincent dives into its hidden world, taking readers from ancient Egypt, where measuring the annual depth of the Nile was an essential task, to the intellectual origins of the metric system in the French Revolution, and from the surprisingly animated rivalry between metric and imperial, to our current age of the “quantified self.” At every turn, Vincent is keenly attuned to the political consequences of measurement, exploring how it has also been used as a tool for oppression and control.

Beyond Measure reveals how measurement is not only deeply entwined with our experience of the world, but also how its history encompasses and shapes the human quest for knowledge…(More)”.

Science in Negotiation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Jessica Espey on “The Role of Scientific Evidence in Shaping the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, 2012-2015”: “This book explores the role of scientific evidence within United Nations (UN) deliberation by examining the negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), endorsed by Member States in 2015. Using the SDGs as a case study, this book addresses a key gap in our understanding of the role of evidence in contemporary international policy-making. It is structured around three overarching questions: (1) how does scientific evidence influence multilateral policy development within the UN General Assembly? (2) how did evidence shape the goals and targets that constitute the SDGs?; and (3) how did institutional arrangements and non-state actor engagements mediate the evidence-to-policy process in the development of the SDGs? The ultimate intention is to tease out lessons on global policy-making and to understand the influence of different evidence inputs and institutional factors in shaping outcomes.

To understand the value afforded to scientific evidence within multilateral deliberation, a conceptual framework is provided drawing upon literature from policy studies and political science, including recent theories of evidence-informed policy-making and new institutionalism. It posits that the success or failure of evidence informing global political processes rests upon the representation and access of scientific stakeholders, levels of community organisation, the framing and presentation of evidence, and time, including the duration over which evidence and key conceptual ideas are presented. Cutting across the discussion is the fundamental question of whose evidence counts and how expertise is defined? The framework is tested with specific reference to three themes that were prominent during the SDG negotiation process; public health (articulated in SDG 3), urban sustainability (articulated in SDG 11), and data and information systems (which were a cross-cutting theme of the dialogue). Within each, scientific communities had specific demands and through an exploration of key literature, including evidence inputs and UN documentation, as well as through key informant interviews, the translation of these scientific ideas into policy priorities is uncovered…(More)”.

Data Analysis for Social Science: A Friendly and Practical Introduction

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Elena Llaudet and Kosuke Imai: “…provides a friendly introduction to the statistical concepts and programming skills needed to conduct and evaluate social scientific studies. Using plain language and assuming no prior knowledge of statistics and coding, the book provides a step-by-step guide to analyzing real-world data with the statistical program R for the purpose of answering a wide range of substantive social science questions. It teaches not only how to perform the analyses but also how to interpret results and identify strengths and limitations. This one-of-a-kind textbook includes supplemental materials to accommodate students with minimal knowledge of math and clearly identifies sections with more advanced material so that readers can skip them if they so choose…(More)”.

Digital Oil

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Eric Monteiro: “Digitalization sits at the forefront of public and academic conversation today, calling into question how we work and how we know. In Digital Oil, Eric Monteiro uses the Norwegian offshore oil and gas industry as a lens to investigate the effects of digitalization on embodied labor and, in doing so, shows how our use of new digital technology transforms work and knowing.

For years, roughnecks have performed the dangerous and unwieldy work of extracting the oil that lies three miles below the seabed along the Norwegian continental shelf. Today, the Norwegian oil industry is largely digital, operated by sensors and driven by data. Digital representations of physical processes inform work practices and decision-making with remotely operated, unmanned deep-sea facilities. Drawing on two decades of in-depth interviews, observations, news clips, and studies of this industry, Monteiro dismantles the divide between the virtual and the physical in Digital Oil.

What is gained or lost when objects and processes become algorithmic phenomena with the digital inferred from the physical? How can data-driven work practices and operational decision-making approximate qualitative interpretation, professional judgement, and evaluation? How are emergent digital platforms and infrastructures, as machineries of knowing, enabling digitalization? In answering these questions Monteiro offers a novel analysis of digitalization as an effort to press the limits of quantification of the qualitative…(More)”.

The Future of Self-Governing, Thriving Democracies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Brigitte Geissel: “This book offers a new approach for the future of democracy by advocating to give citizens the power to deliberate and to decide how to govern themselves.

Innovatively building on and integrating components of representative, deliberative and participatory theories of democracy with empirical findings, the book provides practices and procedures that support communities of all sizes to develop their own visions of democracy. It revitalizes and reinfuses the ‘democratic spirit’ going back to the roots of democracy as an endeavor by, with and for the people, and should inspire us in our search for the democracy we want to live in.

This book is of key interest to scholars and students in democracy, democratic innovations, deliberation, civic education and governance and further for policy-makers, civil society groups and activists. It encourages us to reshape democracy based on citizens’ perspectives, aspirations and preferences…(More)”.

Data Cartels: The Companies That Control and Monopolize Our Information

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Sarah Lamdan: “In our digital world, data is power. Information hoarding businesses reign supreme, using intimidation, aggression, and force to maintain influence and control. Sarah Lamdan brings us into the unregulated underworld of these “data cartels”, demonstrating how the entities mining, commodifying, and selling our data and informational resources perpetuate social inequalities and threaten the democratic sharing of knowledge.

Just a few companies dominate most of our critical informational resources. Often self-identifying as “data analytics” or “business solutions” operations, they supply the digital lifeblood that flows through the circulatory system of the internet. With their control over data, they can prevent the free flow of information, masterfully exploiting outdated information and privacy laws and curating online information in a way that amplifies digital racism and targets marginalized communities. They can also distribute private information to predatory entities. Alarmingly, everything they’re doing is perfectly legal.

In this book, Lamdan contends that privatization and tech exceptionalism have prevented us from creating effective legal regulation. This in turn has allowed oversized information oligopolies to coalesce. In addition to specific legal and market-based solutions, Lamdan calls for treating information like a public good and creating digital infrastructure that supports our democratic ideals….(More)”.

Ethics, Integrity and Policymaking

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Dónal O’Mathúna, and Ron Iphofen: “…provides illustrative case studies that explore various research and innovation topics that raise challenges requiring ethical reflection and careful policymaking responses. The cases highlight diverse ethical challenges and provide lessons for the various options available for policymaking. Cases are drawn from many fields, including artificial intelligence, space science, energy, data protection, professional research practice and pandemic planning. Case studies are particularly helpful with ethical issues to provide crucial context. This book reflects the ambiguity of ethical dilemmas in contemporary policymaking. Analyses reflect current debates where consensus has not yet been achieved. These cases illustrate key points made throughout the PRO-RES EU-funded project from which they arise: that ethical judgement is a fluid enterprise, where values, principles and standards must constantly adjust to new situations, new events and new research developments. This book is an indispensable aid to policymaking that addresses, and/or uses evidence from, novel research developments….(More)”.

Vulnerable People and Data Protection Law

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Gianclaudio Malgieri: “Human vulnerability has traditionally been viewed through the lens of specific groups of people, such as ethnic minorities, children, the elderly, or people with disabilities. With the rise of digital media, our perceptions of vulnerable groups and individuals have been reshaped as new vulnerabilities and different vulnerable sub-groups of users, consumers, citizens, and data subjects emerge.

Vulnerable People and Data Protection Law not only depicts these problems but offers the reader a detailed investigation of the concept of data subjects and a reconceptualisation of the notion of vulnerability within the General Data Protection Regulation. The regulation offers a forward-facing set of tools that – though largely underexplored – are essential in rebalancing power asymmetries and mitigating induced vulnerabilities in the age of artificial intelligence.

This book proposes a layered approach to data subject definition. Considering the new potentialities of the digital market, the new awareness about cognitive weaknesses, and the new philosophical sensitivity about vulnerability conditions, the author looks for a more general definition of vulnerability that goes beyond traditional labels. In doing so, he seeks to promote a ‘vulnerability-aware’ interpretation of the GDPR.

A heuristic analysis that re-interprets the whole GDPR, this work is a must-read for both scholars of data protection law and for policymakers looking to strengthen regulations and protect the data of vulnerable individuals…(More)”.

Calls to “save democracy” won’t work if there is little agreement on what democracy is

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Nicholas T. Davis, Kirby Goidel and Keith Gaddie: “One of the most consistent findings in academic research is the existence of something called the principle-implementation gap. People can agree that an idea is perfectly reasonable but will largely reject any meaningful action designed to achieve it. It happens with government spending. People want government to create public goods such as law enforcement, healthcare, and national defense, but oppose new (or additional) taxes. It happens with climate change. The public largely accepts the idea that human-caused climate change is occurring but is unwilling to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. And it happens with racial equality. People decry racism, but they reject policies that reduce inequality. It also happens, it turns out, with democracy. People claim to love democracy, but willingly sacrifice democratic norms in pursuit of partisan political ends.

A recent New York Times/Siena Poll illustrates this point. Most Americans (71 percent) said they believed American democracy was endangered, but there was little agreement on the nature of the threat or the appropriate corrective action. In response to an open-end question, the most frequently identified threat (mentioned by only 14 percent of respondents) was corruption, not the undermining of democratic norms or the rule of law by former President Donald Trump and the almost 300 Republican candidates running for public office in this year’s midterm elections who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.…

Despite much weeping and gnashing of teeth about the “crisis of democracy,” a singular, widely shared understand of democracy is not on the ballot. Or, if it is on the ballot, it appears to be losing.

Why don’t right-wing populist threats against democracy inspire, mobilize, or persuade a public that professes to believe in democracy?

Our new book, Democracy’s Meanings: How the Public Thinks About Democracy and Why It Matters, suggests at least two reasons. First, according to open-ended responses, citizens mostly view democracy through the lens of “freedom” and “elections.” The United States is having an election this fall. It may be less free and less fair in some places than others, but, overall, the electoral apparatus in the United States hasn’t cracked apart – at least in the minds of ordinary voters who don’t pay much attention to the news or care much about the intricacies of electoral law….(More)”.

Data Structures the Fun Way

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Jeremy Kubica: “This accessible and entertaining book provides an in-depth introduction to computational thinking through the lens of data structures — a critical component in any programming endeavor. Through diagrams, pseudocode, and humorous analogies, you’ll learn how the structure of data drives algorithmic operations, gaining insight into not just how to build data structures, but precisely how and when to use them. 

This book will give you a strong background in implementing and working with more than 15 key data structures, from stacks, queues, and caches to bloom filters, skip lists, and graphs. Master linked lists by standing in line at a cafe, hash tables by cataloging the history of the summer Olympics, and Quadtrees by neatly organizing your kitchen cabinets. Along with basic computer science concepts like recursion and iteration, you’ll learn: 

  • The complexity and power of pointers
  • The branching logic of tree-based data structures
  • How different data structures insert and delete data in memory
  • Why mathematical mappings and randomization are useful
  • How to make tradeoffs between speed, flexibility, and memory usage

Data Structures the Fun Way shows how to efficiently apply these ideas to real-world problems—a surprising number of which focus on procuring a decent cup of coffee. At any level, fully understanding data structures will teach you core skills that apply across multiple programming languages, taking your career to the next level….(More)”.