Book by Meghan O’Gieblyn: “For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes’s division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking.
Meghan O’Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering….(More)”.
Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India
Book by Rajesh Veeraraghavan: “How can development programs deliver benefits to marginalized citizens in ways that expand their rights and freedoms? Political will and good policy design are critical but often insufficient due to resistance from entrenched local power systems. In Patching Development, Rajesh Veeraraghavan presents an ethnography of one of the largest development programs in the world, the Indian National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and examines NREGA’s implementation in the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. He finds that the local system of power is extremely difficult to transform, not because of inertia, but because of coercive counter strategy from actors at the last mile and their ability to exploit information asymmetries. Upper-level NREGA bureaucrats in Andhra Pradesh do not possess the capacity to change the power axis through direct confrontation with local elites, but instead have relied on a continuous series of responses that react to local implementation and information, a process of patching development. “Patching development” is a top-down, fine-grained, iterative socio-technical process that makes local information about implementation visible through technology and enlists participation from marginalized citizens through social audits. These processes are neither neat nor orderly and have led to a contentious sphere where the exercise of power over documents, institutions and technology is intricate, fluid and highly situated. A highly original account with global significance, this book casts new light on the challenges and benefits of using information and technology in novel ways to implement development programs….(More)”.
Open Science: the Very Idea
Book by Frank Miedema: “This open access book provides a broad context for the understanding of current problems of science and of the different movements aiming to improve the societal impact of science and research.
The author offers insights with regard to ideas, old and new, about science, and their historical origins in philosophy and sociology of science, which is of interest to a broad readership. The book shows that scientifically grounded knowledge is required and helpful in understanding intellectual and political positions in various discussions on the grand challenges of our time and how science makes impact on society. The book reveals why interventions that look good or even obvious, are often met with resistance and are hard to realize in practice.
Based on a thorough analysis, as well as personal experiences in aids research, university administration and as a science observer, the author provides – while being totally open regarding science’s limitations- a realistic narrative about how research is conducted, and how reliable ‘objective’ knowledge is produced. His idea of science, which draws heavily on American pragmatism, fits in with the global Open Science movement. It is argued that Open Science is a truly and historically unique movement in that it translates the analysis of the problems of science into major institutional actions of system change in order to improve academic culture and the impact of science, engaging all actors in the field of science and academia…(More)”.
The Age of A.I. And Our Human Future
Book by Henry A Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher: “Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming human society fundamentally and profoundly. Not since the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason have we changed how we approach knowledge, politics, economics, even warfare. Three of our most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore what it means for us all.
An A.I. that learned to play chess discovered moves that no human champion would have conceived of. Driverless cars edge forward at red lights, just like impatient humans, and so far, nobody can explain why it happens. Artificial intelligence is being put to use in sports, medicine, education, and even (frighteningly) how we wage war.
In this book, three of our most accomplished and deep thinkers come together to explore how A.I. could affect our relationship with knowledge, impact our worldviews, and change society and politics as profoundly as the ideas of the Enlightenment…(More)”.
End State: 9 Ways Society is Broken – and how we can fix it
Book by James Plunkett: “As the shockwaves of Covid 19 continue to spread, and as the smoke clears from a year of anger and unrest, many people feel forlorn about the future.
In End State, James Plunkett argues that this can be a moment not of despair, but of historic opportunity – a chance to rethink, renew, and reform some of the most fundamental ways we organise society. In much the same way as societies emerged stronger from crises in the past – building the state as we know it today – we too can build a happier future.
James Plunkett has spent his career thinking laterally about the complicated relationships between individuals and the state. First as an advisor to Gordon Brown, then a leading economic researcher and writer, and then in the charity sector, helping people struggling at the front-line of economic change. James combines a deep understanding of social issues with an appreciation of how change is playing out not in the ivory tower, but in the reality of people’s lives.
Now, in his first book, he sets out an optimistic vision, exploring nine ways in which our social settlement can be upgraded to harness the power of the digital age. Covering a dizzying sweep of geography and history, from London’s 18th Century sewage systems to the uneasy inequality of Silicon Valley, it’s a thrilling and iconoclastic account of how society can not only survive, but thrive, in the digital age.
End State provides a much-needed map to help us navigate our way over the curious terrain of the twenty-first century…(More)”.
Data Science for Social Good: Philanthropy and Social Impact in a Complex World
Book edited by Ciro Cattuto and Massimo Lapucci: “This book is a collection of insights by thought leaders at first-mover organizations in the emerging field of “Data Science for Social Good”. It examines the application of knowledge from computer science, complex systems, and computational social science to challenges such as humanitarian response, public health, and sustainable development. The book provides an overview of scientific approaches to social impact – identifying a social need, targeting an intervention, measuring impact – and the complementary perspective of funders and philanthropies pushing forward this new sector.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction; By Massimo Lapucci
The Value of Data and Data Collaboratives for Good: A Roadmap for Philanthropies to Facilitate Systems Change Through Data; By Stefaan G. Verhulst
UN Global Pulse: A UN Innovation Initiative with a Multiplier Effect; By Dr. Paula Hidalgo-Sanchis
Building the Field of Data for Good; By Claudia Juech
When Philanthropy Meets Data Science: A Framework for Governance to Achieve Data-Driven Decision-Making for Public Good; By Nuria Oliver
Data for Good: Unlocking Privately-Held Data to the Benefit of the Many; By Alberto Alemanno
Building a Funding Data Ecosystem: Grantmaking in the UK; By Rachel Rank
A Reflection on the Role of Data for Health: COVID-19 and Beyond; By Stefan E. Germann and Ursula Jasper….(More)”
Reboot AI with human values
Book Review by Reema Patel of “In AI We Trust: Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms Helga Nowotny Polity (2021)”: “In the 1980s, a plaque at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, declared: “In God we trust. All others must bring data.” Helga Nowotny’s latest book, In AI We Trust, is more than a play on the first phrase in this quote attributed to statistician W. Edwards Deming. It is most occupied with the second idea.
What happens, Nowotny asks, when we deploy artificial intelligence (AI) without interrogating its effectiveness, simply trusting that it ‘works’? What happens when we fail to take a data-driven approach to things that are themselves data driven? And what about when AI is shaped and influenced by human bias? Data can be inaccurate, of poor quality or missing. And technologies are, Nowotny reminds us, “intrinsically intertwined with conscious or unconscious bias since they reflect existing inequalities and discriminatory practices in society”.
Nowotny, a founding member and former president of the European Research Council, has a track record of trenchant thought on how society should handle innovation. Here, she offers a compelling analysis of the risks and challenges of the AI systems that pervade our lives. She makes a strong case for digital humanism: “Human values and perspectives ought to be the starting point” for the design of systems that “claim to serve humanity”….(More)”.
What Universities Owe Democracy
Book by Ronald J. Daniels with Grant Shreve and Phillip Spector: “Universities play an indispensable role within modern democracies. But this role is often overlooked or too narrowly conceived, even by universities themselves. In What Universities Owe Democracy, Ronald J. Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, argues that—at a moment when liberal democracy is endangered and more countries are heading toward autocracy than at any time in generations—it is critical for today’s colleges and universities to reestablish their place in democracy.
Drawing upon fields as varied as political science, economics, history, and sociology, Daniels identifies four distinct functions of American higher education that are key to liberal democracy: social mobility, citizenship education, the stewardship of facts, and the cultivation of pluralistic, diverse communities. By examining these roles over time, Daniels explains where colleges and universities have faltered in their execution of these functions—and what they can do going forward.
Looking back on his decades of experience leading universities, Daniels offers bold prescriptions for how universities can act now to strengthen democracy. For those committed to democracy’s future prospects, this book is a vital resource…(More)”.
Solutions to Plastic Pollution: A Conceptual Framework to Tackle a Wicked Problem
Chapter by Martin Wagner: “There is a broad willingness to act on global plastic pollution as well as a plethora of available technological, governance, and societal solutions. However, this solution space has not been organized in a larger conceptual framework yet. In this essay, I propose such a framework, place the available solutions in it, and use it to explore the value-laden issues that motivate the diverse problem formulations and the preferences for certain solutions by certain actors. To set the scene, I argue that plastic pollution shares the key features of wicked problems, namely, scientific, political, and societal complexity and uncertainty as well as a diversity in the views of actors. To explore the latter, plastic pollution can be framed as a waste, resource, economic, societal, or systemic problem.
Doing so results in different and sometimes conflicting sets of preferred solutions, including improving waste management; recycling and reuse; implementing levies, taxes, and bans as well as ethical consumerism; raising awareness; and a transition to a circular economy. Deciding which of these solutions is desirable is, again, not a purely rational choice. Accordingly, the social deliberations on these solution sets can be organized across four scales of change. At the geographic and time scales, we need to clarify where and when we want to solve the plastic problem. On the scale of responsibility, we need to clarify who is accountable, has the means to make change, and carries the costs. At the magnitude scale, we need to discuss which level of change we desire on a spectrum of status quo to revolution. All these issues are inherently linked to value judgments and worldviews that must, therefore, be part of an open and inclusive debate to facilitate solving the wicked problem of plastic pollution…(More)”.
Digital Technology, Politics, and Policy-Making
Open access book by Fabrizio Gilardi: “The rise of digital technology has been the best of times, and also the worst, a roller coaster of hopes and fears: “social media have gone—in the popular imagination at least—from being a way for pro-democratic forces to fight autocrats to being a tool of outside actors who want to attack democracies” (Tucker et al., 2017, 47). The 2016 US presidential election raised fundamental questions regarding the compatibility of the internet with democracy (Persily, 2017). The divergent assessments of the promises and risks of digital technology has to do, in part, with the fact that it has become such a pervasive phenomenon. Whether digital technology is, on balance, a net benefit or harm for democratic processes and institutions depends on which specific aspects we focus on. Moreover, the assessment is not value neutral, because digital technology has become inextricably linked with our politics. As Farrell (2012, 47) argued a few years ago, “[a]s the Internet becomes politically normalized, it will be ever less appropriate to study it in isolation but ever more important to think clearly, and carefully, about its relationship to politics.” Reflecting on this issue requires going beyond the headlines, which tend to focus on the most dramatic concerns and may have a negativity bias common in news reporting in general. The shortage of hard facts in this area, linked to the singular challenges of studying the connection between digital technology and politics, exacerbates the problem.
Since it affects virtually every aspect of politic and policy-making, the nature and effects of digital technology have been studied from many different angles in increasingly fragmented literatures. For example, studies of disinformation and social media usually do not acknowledge research on the usage of artificial intelligence in public administration—for good reasons, because such is the nature of specialized academic research. Similarly, media attention tends to concentrate on the most newsworthy aspects, such as the role of Facebook in elections, without connecting them to other related phenomena. The compartmentalization of academic and public attention in this area is understandable, but it obscures the relationships that exist among the different parts. Moreover, the fact that scholarly and media attention are sometimes out of sync might lead policy-makers to focus on solutions before there is a scientific consensus on the nature and scale of the problems. For example, policy-makers may emphasize curbing “fake news” while there is still no agreement in the research community about its effects on political outcomes…(More)”.