Algorithmic Sovereignty

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Thesis by Denis Roio: “This thesis describes a practice based research journey across various projects dealing with the design of algorithms, to highlight the governance implications in design choices made on them. The research provides answers and documents methodologies to address the urgent need for more awareness of decisions made by algorithms about the social and economical context in which we live. Algorithms consitute a foundational basis across different fields of studies: policy making, governance, art and technology. The ability to understand what is inscribed in such algorithms, what are the consequences of their execution and what is the agency left for the living world is crucial. Yet there is a lack of interdisciplinary and practice based literature, while specialised treatises are too narrow to relate to the broader context in which algorithms are enacted.

This thesis advances the awareness of algorithms and related aspects of sovereignty through a series of projects documented as participatory action research. One of the projects described, Devuan, leads to the realisation of a new, worldwide renown operating system. Another project, “sup”, consists of a minimalist approach to mission critical software and literate programming to enhance security and reliability of applications. Another project, D-CENT, consisted in a 3 year long path of cutting edge research funded by the EU commission on the emerging dynamics of participatory democracy connected to the technologies adopted by citizen organizations.

My original contribution to knowledge lies within the function that the research underpinning these projects has on the ability to gain a better understanding of sociopolitical aspects connected to the design and management of algorithms. It suggests that we can improve the design and regulation of future public, private and common spaces which are increasingly governed by algorithms by understanding not only economical and legal implications, but also the connections between design choices and the sociopolitical context for their development and execution….(More)”.

Finding a more human government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Centre for Public Impact: “…embarked upon a worldwide project to find out how governments can strengthen their legitimacy. Amidst the turbulence and unpredictability of recent years, there are many contemporary accounts of people feeling angry, cynical or ambivalent about government.

While much has been said about the personalities of leaders and the rise of populist parties, what’s less clear is what governments could really do to strengthen legitimacy, a concept most agree remains integral to worldwide stability and peace. To find out what legitimacy means to people today and how it could be strengthened, we decided to break out of the usual circles of influence and ensure our project heard directly from citizens from around the world. People were open and honest about the struggle for someone in government to understand and to listen. Some shed tears while others felt angry about how their voices and identities seemed undervalued. Everyone, however, wanted to show how it was still very possible to build a stronger relationship and understanding between governments and people, even if the day-to-day actions of government were not always popular.

The aim of this paper is not to provide the definitive model for legitimacy. Instead, we have sought to be open about what we heard, stay true to people’s views and shine a light on the common themes that could help governments have better conversations about building legitimacy into all their systems and with the support of their citizens.

We gathered case studies to show how this was already happening and found positive examples in places we didn’t expect. The importance of governments showing their human side – even in our age of AI and robotics – emerged as such a key priority, and is why we called this paper Finding a more human government.

This is a conversation that has only just begun. …. To see what others are saying, do take a look at our website www.findinglegitimacy.centreforpublicimpact.org”

Can we solve wicked problems?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gianluca Elia and Alessandro Margherita describing “A conceptual framework and a collective intelligence system to support problem analysis and solution design for complex social issues…Wicked problems are complex and multifaceted issues that have no single solution, and are perceived by different stakeholders through contrasting views. Examples in the social context include climate change, poverty, energy production, sanitation, sustainable cities, pollution and homeland security.

Extant research has been addressed to support open discussion and collaborative decision making in wicked scenarios, but complexities derive from the difficulty to leverage multiple contributions, coming from both experts and non-experts, through a structured approach.

In such view, we present a conceptual framework for the study of wicked problem solving as a complex and multi-stakeholder process. Afterwards, we describe an integrated system of tools and associated operational guidelines aimed to support collective problem analysis and solution design. The main value of the article is to highlight the relevance of collective approaches in the endeavor of wicked problem resolution, and to provide an integrated framework of activities, actors and purposeful tools….(More)”.

 

Can Social Media Help Build Communities?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Eric Forbush and  Nicol Turner-Lee: “In June 2017, Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed a new mission for Facebook, which was to “[g]ive people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” during the company’s first Community Summit. Yet, his declaration comes in the backdrop of a politically polarized America. While research has indicated that ideological polarization (the alignment and divergence of ideologies) has remained relatively unchanged, affective polarization (the degree to which Democrats and Republicans dislike each other) has skyrocketed (Gentzkow, 2016; Lelkes, 2016). This dislike for members of the opposite party may be amplified on social media platforms.
Social media have been accused of making our social networks increasingly insular, resulting in “echo chambers,” wherein individuals select information and friends who support their already held beliefs (Quattrociocchi, Scala, and Sunstein, 2016; Williams, McMurray, Kurz, and Lambert, 2015). However, the implicit message in Zuckerberg’s comments, and other leaders in this space, is that social media can provide users with a means for brokering relationships with other users that hold different values and beliefs from them. However, little is known on the extent to which social media platforms enable these opportunities.

Theories of prejudice reduction (Paluck and Green, 2009) partially explain an idealistic outcome of improved online relationships. In his seminal contact theory, Gordon Allport (1954) argued that under certain optimal conditions, all that is needed to reduce prejudice is for members of different groups to spend more time interacting with each other. However, contemporary social media platforms may not be doing enough to increase intergroup engagements, especially between politically polarized communities on issues of importance.

In this paper, we use Twitter data collected over a 20-day period, following the Day of Action for Net Neutrality on July 12, 2017. In support of a highly polarized regulatory issue, the Day of Action was organized by advocacy groups and corporations in support of an open internet, which does not discriminate against online users when accessing their preferred content. Analyzing 81,316 tweets about #netneutrality from 40,502 distinct users, we use social network analysis to develop network visualizations and conduct discrete content analysis of central tweets. Our research also divides the content by those in support and those opposed to any type of repeal of net neutrality rules by the FCC.

Our analysis of this particular issue reveals that social media is merely replicating, and potentially strengthening polarization on issues by party affiliations and online associations. Consequently, the appearance of mediators who are able to bridge online conversations or beliefs on charged issues appear to be nonexistent on both sides of the issue. Consequently, our findings suggest that social media companies may not be doing enough to bring communities together through meaningful conversations on their platforms….(More)”.

Law, Metaphor, and the Encrypted Machine

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Lex Gill: “The metaphors we use to imagine, describe and regulate new technologies have profound legal implications. This paper offers a critical examination of the metaphors we choose to describe encryption technology in particular, and aims to uncover some of the normative and legal implications of those choices.

Part I provides a basic description of encryption as a mathematical and technical process. At the heart of this paper is a question about what encryption is to the law. It is therefore fundamental that readers have a shared understanding of the basic scientific concepts at stake. This technical description will then serve to illustrate the host of legal and political problems arising from encryption technology, the most important of which are addressed in Part II. That section also provides a brief history of various legislative and judicial responses to the encryption “problem,” mapping out some of the major challenges still faced by jurists, policymakers and activists. While this paper draws largely upon common law sources from the United States and Canada, metaphor provides a core form of cognitive scaffolding across legal traditions. Part III explores the relationship between metaphor and the law, demonstrating the ways in which it may shape, distort or transform the structure of legal reasoning. Part IV demonstrates that the function served by legal metaphor is particularly determinative wherever the law seeks to integrate novel technologies into old legal frameworks. Strong, ubiquitous commercial encryption has created a range of legal problems for which the appropriate metaphors remain unfixed. Part V establishes a loose framework for thinking about how encryption has been described by courts and lawmakers — and how it could be. What does it mean to describe the encrypted machine as a locked container or building? As a combination safe? As a form of speech? As an untranslatable library or an unsolvable puzzle? What is captured by each of these cognitive models, and what is lost? This section explores both the technological accuracy and the legal implications of each choice. Finally, the paper offers a few concluding thoughts about the utility and risk of metaphor in the law, reaffirming the need for a critical, transparent and lucid appreciation of language and the power it wields….(More)”.

Co-creation in Urban Governance: From Inclusion to Innovation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Dorthe Hedensted Lund: “This article sets out to establish what we mean by the recent buzzword ‘co-creation’ and what practical application this concept entails for democracy in urban governance, both in theory and practice.

The rise of the concept points to a shift in how public participation is understood. Whereas from the 1970s onwards the discussions surrounding participation centred on rights and power, following Sherry Arnstein, participation conceptualised as co-creation instead focuses on including diverse forms of knowledge in urban processes in order to create innovative solutions to complex problems.

Consequently, democratic legitimacy now relies to a much greater extent on output, rather than input legitimacy. Rather than provision of inclusive spaces for democratic debate and empowerment of the deprived, which have been the goals of numerous urban participatory efforts in the past, it is the ability to solve complex problems that has become the main criterion for the evaluation of co-creation. Furthermore, conceptualising participation as co-creation has consequences for the roles available to both citizens and public administrators in urban processes, which has implications for urban governance. An explicit debate, both in academia and in practice, about the normative content and implications of conceptualising participation as co-creation is therefore salient and necessary….(More).

Comparing published scientific journal articles to their pre-print versions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Martin Klein, Peter Broadwell, Sharon E. Farb and Todd Grappone: “Academic publishers claim that they add value to scholarly communications by coordinating reviews and contributing and enhancing text during publication. These contributions come at a considerable cost: US academic libraries paid $1.7$1.7 billion for serial subscriptions in 2008 alone. Library budgets, in contrast, are flat and not able to keep pace with serial price inflation. We have investigated the publishers’ value proposition by conducting a comparative study of pre-print papers from two distinct science, technology, and medicine corpora and their final published counterparts. This comparison had two working assumptions: (1) If the publishers’ argument is valid, the text of a pre-print paper should vary measurably from its corresponding final published version, and (2) by applying standard similarity measures, we should be able to detect and quantify such differences.

Our analysis revealed that the text contents of the scientific papers generally changed very little from their pre-print to final published versions. These findings contribute empirical indicators to discussions of the added value of commercial publishers and therefore should influence libraries’ economic decisions regarding access to scholarly publications….(More)”.

Democracy Without Participation: A New Politics for a Disengaged Era

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Phil Parvin at Rex Publica: “Changing patterns of political participation observed by political scientists over the past half-century undermine traditional democratic theory and practice. The vast majority of democratic theory, and deliberative democratic theory in particular, either implicitly or explicitly assumes the need for widespread citizen participation. It requires that all citizens possess the opportunity to participate and also that they take up this opportunity. But empirical evidence gathered over the past half-century strongly suggests that many citizens do not have a meaningful opportunity to participate in the ways that many democratic theorists require, and do not participate in anything like the numbers that they believe is necessary.

This paper outlines some of the profound changes that have been experienced by liberal democratic states in the 20th and early 21st Centuries, changes which are still ongoing, and which have resulted in declines in citizens participation and trust, the marginalisation of citizens from democratic life, and the entrenchment of social and economic inequalities which have damaged democracy. The paper challenges the conventional wisdom in rejecting the idea that the future of democracy lies in encouraging more widespread participation.

The paper takes seriously the failure of the strategies adopted by many states to increase participation, especially among the poor, and suggests that instead of requiring more of citizens, we should in fact be requiring less of them. Instead of seeking to encourage more citizen participation, we should acknowledge that citizens will probably not participate in the volume, or in the ways, many democratic theorists would like, and that therefore we need an alternative approach: a regime which can continue to produce democratic outcomes, and which satisfies the requirements of political equality, in the absence of widespread participation by citizens….(More)”.

The Algorithm Game

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jane R. Bambauer and Tal Zarsky: “Most of the discourse on algorithmic decision-making, whether it comes in the form of praise or warning, assumes that algorithms apply to a static world. But automated decision-making is a dynamic process. Algorithms attempt to estimate some difficult-to-measure quality about a subject using proxies, and the subjects in turn change their behavior in order to game the system and get a better treatment for themselves (or, in some cases, to protest the system.) These behavioral changes can then prompt the algorithm to make corrections. The moves and counter-moves create a dance that has great import to the fairness and efficiency of a decision-making process. And this dance can be structured through law. Yet existing law lacks a clear policy vision or even a coherent language to foster productive debate.

This Article provides the foundation. We describe gaming and counter-gaming strategies using credit scoring, criminal investigation, and corporate reputation management as key examples. We then show how the law implicitly promotes or discourages these behaviors, with mixed effects on accuracy, distributional fairness, efficiency, and autonomy….(More)”.

Is Distributed Ledger Technology Built for Personal Data?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Henry Chang: “Some of the appealing characteristics of distributed ledger technology (DLT), which blockchain is a type of, include guaranteed integrity, disintermediation and distributed resilience. These characteristics give rise to the possible consequences of immutability, unclear ownership, universal accessibility and trans-border storage. These consequences have the potential to contravene data protection principles of Purpose Specification, Use Limitation, Data Quality, Individual Participation and Trans-Border Data Flow. This paper endeavors to clarify the various types of DLTs, how they work, why they exhibit the depicted characteristics and the consequences. Using the universal privacy principles developed by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), this paper then describes how each of the consequence causes concerns for privacy protection and how attempts are being made to address them in the design and implementation of various applications of blockchain and DLT, and indicates where further research and best-practice developments lie….(More)”.