book – Page 82 – The Living Library

As If: Idealization and Ideals

Curated on March 20, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Kwame Anthony Appiah: “Idealization is a fundamental feature of human thought. We build simplified models in our scientific research and utopias in our political imaginations. Concepts like belief, desire, reason, and justice are bound up with idealizations and ideals. Life is a constant adjustment between the models we make and the realities we encounter. In idealizing, we proceed “as if” our representations were true, while knowing they are not. This is not a dangerous or distracting occupation, Kwame Anthony Appiah shows. Our best chance of understanding nature, society, and ourselves is to open our minds to a plurality of imperfect depictions that together allow us to manage and interpret our world.

The philosopher Hans Vaihinger first delineated the “as if” impulse at the turn of the twentieth century, drawing on Kant, who argued that rational agency required us to act as if we were free. Appiah extends this strategy to examples across philosophy and the human and natural sciences. In a broad range of activities, we have some notion of the truth yet continue with theories that we recognize are, strictly speaking, false. From this vantage point, Appiah demonstrates that a picture one knows to be unreal can be a vehicle for accessing reality.

As If explores how strategic untruth plays a critical role in far-flung areas of inquiry: decision theory, psychology, natural science, and political philosophy. A polymath who writes with mainstream clarity, Appiah defends the centrality of the imagination not just in the arts but in science, morality, and everyday life…(More)”.

Anthology on Democratic Innovation

Curated on March 15, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Democracy Lab: “Democratic systems are in a phase of systemic transition: from the post-war understanding of what democracy is – and how it works – towards a different, deeper democracy. In regards to the numerous challenges democracies faces, we need to question how to make democracies more resilient and to explore what the next steps towards a new form of democracy could be. It seems unlikely that today’s challenges, such as the destruction of our ecosystem or structural inequality, can be solved with the paradigms, structures and processes that helped produce them.

Democratic systems need to be able to shape an increasingly complex world and respond to the socio-economic, cultural, technological, and ecological transformation processes that societies are going through. Public discourse about the future of democracy often solely focuses on democratic reforms in order to improve existing structures and processes within the parameters of postwar democracy.

Many ideas and experiments thus aim at improving the “status quo of politics”. From citizens’ assemblies to digital tools for deliberation and participation, there is an abundance of ideas and tools that could help update our democratic systems. In his book “Realizing Democracy”, Harvard scholar Alberto Mangabeira Unger adds a new element to this “update” with his idea of radical reform: In his words, “reform is radical when it addresses and changes the basic arrangements of a society; its formative structure of its institutions and enacted beliefs; it is reform because it deals with one discrete part of this structure at a time.” According to Unger, societies must work on both the radical and incremental level of political reform. In addition to changes at policy level, societies must be willing to also reflect on what would make a difference and open up to a more fundamental perspective and self-reflection on why democracy is needed, and how its structures can be rebuild within the boundaries of the ecosystem….

The Anthology on Democratic Innovation presents a selection of the projects and ideas discussed during the Conference. It gives decision-makers, academia, journalists and civil society a glimpse into the vast array of ideas that are “already out there” in order to improve liberal democracies and make them fit for the 21st century….(More)”.

The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence-Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence

Curated on March 13, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Access Book by Justin Parkhurst: “There has been an enormous increase in interest in the use of evidence for public policymaking, but the vast majority of work on the subject has failed to engage with the political nature of decision making and how this influences the ways in which evidence will be used (or misused) within political areas. This book provides new insights into the nature of political bias with regards to evidence and critically considers what an ‘improved’ use of evidence would look like from a policymaking perspective.

Part I describes the great potential for evidence to help achieve social goals, as well as the challenges raised by the political nature of policymaking. It explores the concern of evidence advocates that political interests drive the misuse or manipulation of evidence, as well as counter-concerns of critical policy scholars about how appeals to ‘evidence-based policy’ can depoliticise political debates. Both concerns reflect forms of bias – the first representing technical bias, whereby evidence use violates principles of scientific best practice, and the second representing issue bias in how appeals to evidence can shift political debates to particular questions or marginalise policy-relevant social concerns.

Part II then draws on the fields of policy studies and cognitive psychology to understand the origins and mechanisms of both forms of bias in relation to political interests and values. It illustrates how such biases are not only common, but can be much more predictable once we recognise their origins and manifestations in policy arenas.

Finally, Part III discusses ways to move forward for those seeking to improve the use of evidence in public policymaking. It explores what constitutes ‘good evidence for policy’, as well as the ‘good use of evidence’ within policy processes, and considers how to build evidence-advisory institutions that embed key principles of both scientific good practice and democratic representation. Taken as a whole, the approach promoted is termed the ‘good governance of evidence’ – a concept that represents the use of rigorous, systematic and technically valid pieces of evidence within decision-making processes that are representative of, and accountable to, populations served….(More)”.

Ostrom in the City: Design Principles and Practices for the Urban Commons

Curated on March 10, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione in Routledge Handbook of the Study of the Commons (Dan Cole, Blake Hudson, Jonathan Rosenbloom eds.): “If cities are the places where most of the world’s population will be living in the next century, as is predicted, it is not surprising that they have become sites of contestation over use and access to urban land, open space, infrastructure, and culture. The question posed by Saskia Sassen in a recent essay—who owns the city?—is arguably at the root of these contestations and of social movements that resist the enclosure of cities by economic elites (Sassen 2015). One answer to the question of who owns the city is that we all do. In our work we argue that the city is a common good or a “commons”—a shared resource that belongs to all of its inhabitants, and to the public more generally.

We have been writing about the urban commons for the last decade, very much inspired by the work of Jane Jacobs and Elinor Ostrom. The idea of the urban commons captures the ecological view of the city that characterizes Jane Jacobs classic work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (Foster 2006) It also builds on Elinor Ostrom’s finding that common resources are capable of being collectively managed by users in ways that support their needs yet sustains the resource over the long run (Ostrom 1990).

Jacobs analyzed cities as complex, organic systems and observed the activity within them at the neighborhood and street level, much like an ecologist would study natural habitats and the species interacting within them. She emphasized the diversity of land use, of people and neighborhoods, and the interaction among them as important to maintaining the ecological balance of urban life in great cities like New York. Jacob’s critique of the urban renewal slum clearance programs of the 1940s and 50s in the United States was focused not just on the destruction of physical neighborhoods, but also on the destruction of the “irreplaceable social capital”—the networks of residents who build and strengthen working relationships over time through trust and voluntary cooperation—necessary for “self-governance” of urban neighborhoods. (Jacobs 1961) As political scientist Douglas Rae has written, this social capital is the “civic fauna” of urbanism (Rae 2003)…(More)”.

Data Science Landscape

Curated on March 8, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Usha Mujoo Munshi and Neeta Verma: “The edited volume deals with different contours of data science with special reference to data management for the research innovation landscape. The data is becoming pervasive in all spheres of human, economic and development activity. In this context, it is important to take stock of what is being done in the data management area and begin to prioritize, consider and formulate adoption of a formal data management system including citation protocols for use by research communities in different disciplines and also address various technical research issues. The volume, thus, focuses on some of these issues drawing typical examples from various domains….

In all, there are 21 chapters (with 21st Chapter addressing four different core aspects) written by eminent researchers in the field which deal with key issues of S&T, institutional, financial, sustainability, legal, IPR, data protocols, community norms and others, that need attention related to data management practices and protocols, coordinate area activities, and promote common practices and standards of the research community globally. In addition to the aspects touched above, the national / international perspectives of data and its various contours have also been portrayed through case studies in this volume. …(More)”.

Your Data Is Crucial to a Robotic Age. Shouldn’t You Be Paid for It?

Curated on March 7, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Eduardo Porter at The New York Times: “The idea has been around for a bit. Jaron Lanier, the tech philosopher and virtual-reality pioneer who now works for Microsoft Research, proposed it in his 2013 book, “Who Owns the Future?,” as a needed corrective to an online economy mostly financed by advertisers’ covert manipulation of users’ consumer choices.

It is being picked up in “Radical Markets,” a book due out shortly from Eric A. Posner of the University of Chicago Law School and E. Glen Weyl, principal researcher at Microsoft. And it is playing into European efforts to collect tax revenue from American internet giants.

In a report obtained last month by Politico, the European Commission proposes to impose a tax on the revenue of digital companies based on their users’ location, on the grounds that “a significant part of the value of a business is created where the users are based and data is collected and processed.”

Users’ data is a valuable commodity. Facebook offers advertisers precisely targeted audiences based on user profiles. YouTube, too, uses users’ preferences to tailor its feed. Still, this pales in comparison with how valuable data is about to become, as the footprint of artificial intelligence extends across the economy.

Data is the crucial ingredient of the A.I. revolution. Training systems to perform even relatively straightforward tasks like voice translation, voice transcription or image recognition requires vast amounts of data — like tagged photos, to identify their content, or recordings with transcriptions.

“Among leading A.I. teams, many can likely replicate others’ software in, at most, one to two years,” notes the technologist Andrew Ng. “But it is exceedingly difficult to get access to someone else’s data. Thus data, rather than software, is the defensible barrier for many businesses.”

We may think we get a fair deal, offering our data as the price of sharing puppy pictures. By other metrics, we are being victimized: In the largest technology companies, the share of income going to labor is only about 5 to 15 percent, Mr. Posner and Mr. Weyl write. That’s way below Walmart’s 80 percent. Consumer data amounts to work they get free….

The big question, of course, is how we get there from here. My guess is that it would be naïve to expect Google and Facebook to start paying for user data of their own accord, even if that improved the quality of the information. Could policymakers step in, somewhat the way the European Commission did, demanding that technology companies compute the value of consumer data?…(More)”.

Digitalization, Collective Intelligence, and Entrepreneurship in the Care Sector

Curated on March 3, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Erik Lakomaa in Managing Digital Transformation edited by Per Andersson, Staffan Movin, Magnus Mähring, Robin Teigland, and Karl Wennberg: “Parallel to the formal private or public (health) care organisations in Europe, a number of community-driven care projects have emerged. They may supplement the formal organisations by reducing costs or provide care to groups that, for some reason, do not have access to the formal sector. Drawing upon the Ostromian theory of commons and on previous theory and research on open software development (which share some of the characteristics of “open care”), I use historical cases of community-driven care to examine the prospects for such projects to help remedy the cost crisis in the care sector. I explore under which institutional settings “open care” is likely to emerge and when open care projects have potential to scale. It is found that open care is more likely to emerge and prosper when it builds upon existing organisational structures: where the participants do not need to create new hierarchies or governance structures, and where they share common values…(More)”.

Strategies for Governing: The Foundation of Public Administration

Curated on February 28, 2018August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Alasdair S. Roberts: “The leaders of modern-day states face an extraordinary challenge. They must devise a strategy for leading their countries toward security, order, prosperity, well-being and justice. They must design and build institutions that will put their strategy into practice. And they must deal with the vicissitudes of time and chance, adapting strategies and institutions in response to altered circumstances and unexpected events. To do this well, leaders need advice about the machinery of government — how it should be designed and built, how it ought to be run, and how it can be disassembled and reconstructed. Researchers who work in the academic discipline of public administration should be expert in providing this sort of advice. And at one time, they did aspire to provide that sort of expertise. But the field of public administration took a wrong turn forty years ago, and slowly moved away from large and important questions about the governance of modern-day states. The purpose of this book is to map a way back to the main road….(More)”.