How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Chris Wiggins and Matthew L Jones: “From facial recognition—capable of checking people into flights or identifying undocumented residents—to automated decision systems that inform who gets loans and who receives bail, each of us moves through a world determined by data-empowered algorithms. But these technologies didn’t just appear: they are part of a history that goes back centuries, from the census enshrined in the US Constitution to the birth of eugenics in Victorian Britain to the development of Google search.

Expanding on the popular course they created at Columbia University, Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones illuminate the ways in which data has long been used as a tool and a weapon in arguing for what is true, as well as a means of rearranging or defending power. They explore how data was created and curated, as well as how new mathematical and computational techniques developed to contend with that data serve to shape people, ideas, society, military operations, and economies. Although technology and mathematics are at its heart, the story of data ultimately concerns an unstable game among states, corporations, and people. How were new technical and scientific capabilities developed; who supported, advanced, or funded these capabilities or transitions; and how did they change who could do what, from what, and to whom?

Wiggins and Jones focus on these questions as they trace data’s historical arc, and look to the future. By understanding the trajectory of data—where it has been and where it might yet go—Wiggins and Jones argue that we can understand how to bend it to ends that we collectively choose, with intentionality and purpose…(More)”.

Exploring data journalism practices in Africa: data politics, media ecosystems and newsroom infrastructures

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sarah Chiumbu and Allen Munoriyarwa: “Extant research on data journalism in Africa has focused on newsroom factors and the predilections of individual journalists as determinants of the uptake of data journalism on the continent. This article diverts from this literature by examining the slow uptake of data journalism in sub- Saharan Africa through the prisms of non-newsroom factors. Drawing on in-depth interviews with prominent investigative journalists sampled from several African countries, we argue that to understand the slow uptake of data journalism on the continent; there is a need to critique the role of data politics, which encompasses state, market and existing media ecosystems across the continent. Therefore, it is necessary to move beyond newsroom-centric factors that have dominated the contemporary understanding of data journalism practices. A broader, non-newsroom conceptualisation beyond individual journalistic predilections and newsroom resources provides productive clarity on data journalism’s slow uptake on the continent. These arguments are made through the conceptual prisms of materiality, performativity and reflexivity…(More)”.

Ten (not so) simple rules for clinical trial data-sharing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Claude Pellen et al: “Clinical trial data-sharing is seen as an imperative for research integrity and is becoming increasingly encouraged or even required by funders, journals, and other stakeholders. However, early experiences with data-sharing have been disappointing because they are not always conducted properly. Health data is indeed sensitive and not always easy to share in a responsible way. We propose 10 rules for researchers wishing to share their data. These rules cover the majority of elements to be considered in order to start the commendable process of clinical trial data-sharing:

  • Rule 1: Abide by local legal and regulatory data protection requirements
  • Rule 2: Anticipate the possibility of clinical trial data-sharing before obtaining funding
  • Rule 3: Declare your intent to share data in the registration step
  • Rule 4: Involve research participants
  • Rule 5: Determine the method of data access
  • Rule 6: Remember there are several other elements to share
  • Rule 7: Do not proceed alone
  • Rule 8: Deploy optimal data management to ensure that the data shared is useful
  • Rule 9: Minimize risks
  • Rule 10: Strive for excellence…(More)”

Machine Learning as a Tool for Hypothesis Generation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jens Ludwig & Sendhil Mullainathan: “While hypothesis testing is a highly formalized activity, hypothesis generation remains largely informal. We propose a systematic procedure to generate novel hypotheses about human behavior, which uses the capacity of machine learning algorithms to notice patterns people might not. We illustrate the procedure with a concrete application: judge decisions about who to jail. We begin with a striking fact: The defendant’s face alone matters greatly for the judge’s jailing decision. In fact, an algorithm given only the pixels in the defendant’s mugshot accounts for up to half of the predictable variation. We develop a procedure that allows human subjects to interact with this black-box algorithm to produce hypotheses about what in the face influences judge decisions. The procedure generates hypotheses that are both interpretable and novel: They are not explained by demographics (e.g. race) or existing psychology research; nor are they already known (even if tacitly) to people or even experts. Though these results are specific, our procedure is general. It provides a way to produce novel, interpretable hypotheses from any high-dimensional dataset (e.g. cell phones, satellites, online behavior, news headlines, corporate filings, and high-frequency time series). A central tenet of our paper is that hypothesis generation is in and of itself a valuable activity, and hope this encourages future work in this largely “pre-scientific” stage of science…(More)”.

An iterative regulatory process for robot governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Hadassah Drukarch, Carlos Calleja and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga: “There is an increasing gap between the policy cycle’s speed and that of technological and social change. This gap is becoming broader and more prominent in robotics, that is, movable machines that perform tasks either automatically or with a degree of autonomy. This is because current legislation was unprepared for machine learning and autonomous agents. As a result, the law often lags behind and does not adequately frame robot technologies. This state of affairs inevitably increases legal uncertainty. It is unclear what regulatory frameworks developers have to follow to comply, often resulting in technology that does not perform well in the wild, is unsafe, and can exacerbate biases and lead to discrimination. This paper explores these issues and considers the background, key findings, and lessons learned of the LIAISON project, which stands for “Liaising robot development and policymaking,” and aims to ideate an alignment model for robots’ legal appraisal channeling robot policy development from a hybrid top-down/bottom-up perspective to solve this mismatch. As such, LIAISON seeks to uncover to what extent compliance tools could be used as data generators for robot policy purposes to unravel an optimal regulatory framing for existing and emerging robot technologies…(More)”.

Authoritarian Privacy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Mark Jia: “Privacy laws are traditionally associated with democracy. Yet autocracies increasingly have them. Why do governments that repress their citizens also protect their privacy? This Article answers this question through a study of China. China is a leading autocracy and the architect of a massive surveillance state. But China is also a major player in data protection, having enacted and enforced a number of laws on information privacy. To explain how this came to be, the Article first turns to several top-down objectives often said to motivate China’s privacy laws: advancing its digital economy, expanding its global influence, and protecting its national security. Although each has been a factor in China’s turn to privacy law, even together they tell only a partial story.

More fundamental to China’s privacy turn is the party-state’s use of privacy law to shore up its legitimacy against a backdrop of digital abuse. China’s whiplashed transition into the digital age has given rise to significant vulnerabilities and dependencies for ordinary citizens. Through privacy law, China’s leaders have sought to interpose themselves as benevolent guardians of privacy rights against other intrusive actors—individuals, firms, even state agencies and local governments. So framed, privacy law can enhance perceptions of state performance and potentially soften criticism of the center’s own intrusions. China did not enact privacy law in spite of its surveillance state; it embraced privacy law in order to maintain it. The Article adds to our understanding of privacy law, complicates the conceptual relationship between privacy and democracy, and points towards a general theory of authoritarian privacy..(More)”.

The Role of Community Engagement in Urban Innovation Towards the Co-Creation of Smart Sustainable Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Bokolo Anthony Jr.: “One of the most recent topics in smart cities is community engagement which has been generally deliberated in both industrial and academic literature around the approaches and tools employed in urban environment. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to advocate for community engagement as a key driver that supports the acquisition of knowledge and requirements needed for innovation and creativity towards achieving an equitable community for social sustainability. A semi-systematic review method is adopted to analyze 71 sources from Web of Science and Scopus databases. Secondary data from the literature is extracted and synthesized to provide narrative and descriptive analysis. Findings from this study presents a developed model that can support community engagement for urban innovation by specifying factors that influences community engagement for smart sustainable city development. The model enables citizens, policy makers, government, urban planners, academics, and enterprises in urban environment to connect, interact, engage, and co-create innovative services. More importantly findings from this research provides theoretical evidence on administrative and non-administrative stakeholder’s involvement towards co-creation of urban services towards smart sustainable cities. Furthermore, this study provides recommendation on how community engagement perspective involving different stakeholders can help to achieve resilient technological driven city by supporting sustainable development and ultimately actualizing a socially inclusive urban space…(More)”

Democracy, Agony, and Rupture: A Critique of Climate Citizens’ Assemblies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Amanda Machin: “Stymied by preoccupation with short-term interests of individualist consumers, democratic institutions seem unable to generate sustained political commitment for tackling climate change. The citizens’ assembly (CA) is promoted as an important tool in combatting this “democratic myopia.” The aim of a CA is to bring together a representative group of citizens and experts from diverse backgrounds to exchange their different insights and perspectives on a complex issue. By providing the opportunity for inclusive democratic deliberation, the CA is expected to educate citizens, stimulate awareness of complex issues, and produce enlightened and legitimate policy recommendations. However, critical voices warn about the simplified and celebratory commentary surrounding the CA. Informed by agonistic and radical democratic theory, this paper elaborates on a particular concern, which is the orientation toward consensus in the CA. The paper points to the importance of disagreement in the form of both agony (from inside) and rupture (from outside) that, it is argued, is crucial for a democratic, engaging, passionate, creative, and representative sustainability politics…(More)”.

Access to Data for Environmental Purposes: Setting the Scene and Evaluating Recent Changes in EU Data Law

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Michèle Finck, and Marie-Sophie Mueller: “Few policy issues will be as defining to the EU’s future as its reaction to environmental decline, on the one hand, and digitalisation, on the other. Whereas the former will shape the (quality of) life and health of humans, animals and plants, the latter will define the future competitiveness of the internal market and relatedly, also societal justice and cohesion. Yet, to date, the interconnections between these issues are rarely made explicit, as evidenced by the European Commission’s current policy agendas on both matters. With this article, we hope to contribute to, ideally, a soon growing conversation about how to effectively bridge environmental protection and digitalisation. Specifically, we examine how EU law shapes the options of using data—the lifeblood of the digital economy—for environmental sustainability purposes, and ponder the impact of on-going legislative reform…(More)”.

Examining public views on decentralised health data sharing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Victoria Neumann et al: “In recent years, researchers have begun to explore the use of Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT), also known as blockchain, in health data sharing contexts. However, there is a significant lack of research that examines public attitudes towards the use of this technology. In this paper, we begin to address this issue and present results from a series of focus groups which explored public views and concerns about engaging with new models of personal health data sharing in the UK. We found that participants were broadly in favour of a shift towards new decentralised models of data sharing. Retaining ‘proof’ of health information stored about patients and the capacity to provide permanent audit trails, enabled by immutable and transparent properties of DLT, were regarded as particularly valuable for our participants and prospective data custodians. Participants also identified other potential benefits such as supporting people to become more health data literate and enabling patients to make informed decisions about how their data was shared and with whom. However, participants also voiced concerns about the potential to further exacerbate existing health and digital inequalities. Participants were also apprehensive about the removal of intermediaries in the design of personal health informatics systems…(More)”.