Other News from Participating Centers

Seeing Theory

“Seeing Theory is a project designed and created by Daniel Kunin with support from Brown University’s Royce Fellowship Program. The goal of the project is to make statistics more accessible to a wider range of students through interactive visualizations.

​NTU Singapore and Schaeffler set up joint lab to develop smart mobility devices

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The Problem With Facts

Tim Hartford: “…In 1995, Robert Proctor, a historian at Stanford University who has studied the tobacco case closely, coined the word “agnotology”. This is the study of how ignorance is deliberately produced; the entire field was started by Proctor’s observation of the tobacco industry. The facts about smoking — indisputable facts, from unquestionable sources — did not carry the day. The indisputable facts were disputed. The unquestionable sources were questioned.

What if Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists?

 in the New York Times: “Another academic discipline may not have the ear of presidents but may actually do a better job of explaining what has gone wrong in large swaths of the United States and other advanced nations in recent years.

iGod

Novel by Willemijn Dicke and Dirk Helbing: “iGod is a science fiction novel with heroes, love, defeat and hope. But it is much more than that. This book aims to explore how societies may develop, given the technologies that we see at present. As Dirk Helbing describes it in his introduction:

Google DeepMind and healthcare in an age of algorithms

Julia Powles and Hal Hodson in Health and Technology: “Data-driven tools and techniques, particularly machine learning methods that underpin artificial intelligence, offer promise in improving healthcare systems and services. One of the companies aspiring to pioneer these advances is DeepMind Technologies Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Google conglomerate, Alphabet Inc.

Seizure-inducing tweet leads to a new kind of prosecution

Location

United States

See map: Google Maps

Digital Democracy in Belgium and the Netherlands. A Socio-Legal Analysis of Citizenlab.be and Consultatie.nl

Chapter by Koen Van Aeken in: Prins, C. et. al (eds.) Digital Democracy in a Globalized World (Edward Elgar, 2017), Forthcoming: “The research question is how technologies characterized by ubiquitous Web 2.0 interactivity may contribute to democracy. Following a case study design, two applications were evaluated: the Belgian CitizenLab, a mobile, social and local private application to support public decision making in cities, and the Dutch governmental website Internetconsultatie.

Prediction and explanation in social systems

Jake M. Hofman, Amit Sharma, and Duncan J. Watts in Science: “Historically, social scientists have sought out explanations of human and social phenomena that provide interpretable causal mechanisms, while often ignoring their predictive accuracy. We argue that the increasingly computational nature of social science is beginning to reverse this traditional bias against prediction; however, it has also highlighted three important issues that require resolution.

Regulating by Robot: Administrative Decision Making in the Machine-Learning Era

Paper by Cary Coglianese and David Lehr: “Machine-learning algorithms are transforming large segments of the economy, underlying everything from product marketing by online retailers to personalized search engines, and from advanced medical imaging to t

Government Hacking: Evidence & Court Disclosure of Vulnerabilities

RSVP is required for this free event. April 5, 2017Stanford Law School

Creating awareness about Open Data in Kyambogo University, Uganda

This blog is part of the event report series on International Open Data Day 2017. On Saturday 4 March, groups from around the world organised over 300 events to celebrate, promote and spread the use of open data.

Sam van Velze winnaar VIE-prijs 2017

The post Sam van Velze winnaar VIE-prijs 2017 appeared first on IVIR.

Social Justice in an Age of Datafication

Digital Asia Hub Executive Director Malavika Jayaram was a keynote speaker at the launch of Cardiff University’s Data Justice Lab on March 17, 2017, at the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies (JOMEC),Cardiff University.

The $4 trillion question

Location

United States

See map: Google Maps

Will the Yahoo breach indictments be an effective hacker deterrent?

Location

United States

See map: Google Maps

Date published: March 17, 2017TechTarget"Albert Gidari, director of privacy for the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, said, at best, an "indictment is better than silence or inaction," but may not be an effective hacker deterrent.

The road ahead: self-driving cars on the brink of a revolution in California

Location

United States

See map: Google Maps

Date published: March 17, 2017The Guardian"But for others self-certification is “a very big leap”, said Ryan Calo, a law professor at University of Washington, who is arguing for independent audits. “I’m worried by the idea of a company saying, ‘We’re good.’”"

Factory worker killed by rogue robot, says widowed husband in lawsuit

Location

United States

See map: Google Maps

EVMs: How transparent is the Indian election process?

Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) have become a bone of contention after the results of the Assembly elections in five states were declared last Saturday and the BSP president Mayawati alleged tampering. The Congress party and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have called for a probe into her allegation. Social media too is abuzz with messages and videos showing how the machines can be allegedly manipulated to sway the votes in favour of a particular candidate.

Nasscom chief saying full data protection isn’t possible should wake us from our digital slumber

Considering India is rapidly moving towards a digital economy, the hurdles not withstanding, data and identity security are topics which have to be taken very seriously. Since the demonetisation, a large part of the population who would never bother with digital transactions has suddenly come online. But there is no such thing as complete security of personal data, according to Nasscom chief R Chandrashekhar.