AI battles the fake news: Can Artificial Intelligence combat all the fake news that’s out there? An article in Forbes looks at several ways fake news fighters are using AI, but the author casts some doubt on these approaches. Ultimately, humans are the problem, the article says: “The willingness to believe sensational information is a real phenomenon and debunking false information does not always change people’s minds.”

Alan Rothman at LLRX: “…For all of these good, bad or indifferent workplaces, a key question is whether any of the actions of management to engage the staff and listen to their concerns ever resulted in improved working conditions and higher levels of job satisfaction?

Report by the OECD: This report provides an overview of the state of open data policies across OECD member and partner countries, based on data collected through the OECD Open Government Data survey (2013, 2014, 2016/17), country reviews and comparative analysis. The report analyses open data policies using an analytical framework that is in line with the OECD OUR data Index and the International Open Data Charter.

Liz Richardson and Beth Perry at Nature: “Advocates of co-production encourage collaboration between professional researchers and those affected by that research, to ensure that the resulting science is relevant and useful. Opening up science beyond scientists is essential, particularly where problems are complex, solutions are uncertain and values are salient.

Ellie Violet Bramley at The Guardian: “We’ve all been there. You want a short cut – to the bus stop, office or corner shop – but there’s no designated path. Others before you have already flattened the grass, or cut a line through a hedge. Why not, you think.

Working Paper by Penny Lawrence: “Large international non-government organisations (INGOs) seem to be in an existential crisis in their role in the fight for social justice. Many, such as Save the Children or Oxfam, have become big well-known brands with compliance expectations similar to big businesses. Yet the public still imagine them to be run by volunteers. Their context is changing so fast, and so unpredictably, that they are struggling to keep up.

Nathan Gardels at the Washington Post: “The participatory power of social media is a game changer for governance. It levels the playing field among amateurs and experts, peers and authorities and even challenges the legitimacy of representative government. Its arrival coincides with and reinforces the widespread distrust of elites across the Western world, ripening the historical moment for direct democracy.

Die Bibliothek des ITM bleibt am 15.10.2018 aufgrund von Umbaumaßnahmen ganztägig geschlossen.

Am 17. und 18. Oktober 2018 findet in Berlin die Gutachterfachtagung „Big Data: intelligente Datenanalyse für die Datenökonomie“ des vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) geförderten interdisziplinären Forschungsprojekts Assessing Big Data (ABIDA) statt.

Book by Fiona Anciano and Laurence Piper: “Why is dissatisfaction with local democracy endemic, despite the spread of new participatory institutions? This book argues that a key reason is the limited power of elected local officials, especially to produce the City. City Hall lacks control over key aspects of city decision-making, especially under conditions of economic globalisation and rapid urbanisation in the urban South.

Since 2015, Budapest-based Cargonomia has acted as a sustainable urban transport centre and local organic food distribution point through its cargo-bike messenger service, bicycle-building cooperative, family-scale organic vegetable farm, organic bakery, wine distributor and network of citizen volunteers.
An open farm day tour in Zsambok’s Organic Garden, Cargonomia’s organic farming partner. Credit – Logan Strenchock

Karissa McKelvey from the Dat Project provides an overview of the new decentralized Internet and the need to insert commons thinking and practices into this new space. This text is based on Karissa’s2017 Full Stack Fest’s keynote and was originally published in the Dat Project’s Blog.

Chris Meserole at Brookings: “In the summer of 1955, while planning a now famous workshop at Dartmouth College, John McCarthy coined the term “artificial intelligence” to describe a new field of computer science. Rather than writing programs that tell a computer how to carry out a specific task, McCarthy pledged that he and his colleagues would instead pursue algorithms that could teach themselves how to do so.

...

"Las siete últimas palabras de Cristo en la cruz", obra religiosa escrita por Joseph Haydn será dirigida este fin de semana por el titular de la orquesta, maestro Leonid Grin, y en ella participarán como solistas Claudia Pereira, Ana Navarro, Felipe Catalán, y David Gáez, todos miembros de la Camerata Vocal.

Financiado por el Ministerio de las Culturas, las Artes y el Patrimonio, el curso en línea "Paisaje Sonoro: escucha, experiencia y cotidianidad" busca despertar nuevas formas de comprender y apreciar su entorno sonoro.

Reconocer constitucionalmente a los pueblos indígenas, establecer una ley de cuotas de participación política y mejorar las condiciones de vida en la región, son algunos de los anuncios realizados este lunes como parte de este plan. Pero, ¿cuál será la bajada de dichas propuestas y cómo quedarán plasmadas en la institucionalidad?

David Gal at the New York Times: “Behavioral economics seems to have captured the popular imagination.

David Nersessian at Business Horizons: “The Economist recently declared that digital information has overtaken oil as the world’s most valuable commodity. Big data technology is inherently global and borderless, yet little international consensus exists over what standards should govern its use. One source of global standards benefitting from considerable international consensus might be used to fill the gap: international human rights law.

Book by William Davies: “Why do we no longer trust experts, facts and statistics? Why has politics become so fractious and warlike? What caused the populist political upheavals of recent years?How can the history of ideas help us understand our present?