TNI presents its Atlas of Utopias, part of the Transformative Cities initiative, sharing 32 stories of radical transformation that demonstrate that another world is possible, and already exists.

C4SS Director William Gillis recently gave this talk in Austin, TX using the lenses of sociology, psychology, and information theory to explore the fundamental limitations of organizations. In other words, it’s a thorough explanation of why meetings suck.

Gillis presents a compelling explanation for the ineffectiveness of many political organizations, focused on some of the inescapable artifacts of human communication. Paraphrasing some of the salient points:

Location

United States

See map: Google Maps

Location

United States

See map: Google Maps

...

Pradeep Mutalik for Quanta Magazine: “You often hear the admonition “correlation does not imply causation.” But what exactly is causation? Unlike correlation, which has a specific mathematical meaning, causation is a slippery concept that has been debated by philosophers for millennia. It seems to get conflated with our intuitions or preconceived notions about what it means to cause something to happen.

Bruno Kaufmann and Joe Mathews in the Washington Post: “The new conventional wisdom seems to be that electoral democracy is in decline. But this ignores another widespread trend: direct democracy at the local and regional level is booming, even as disillusion with representative government at the national level grows.

About: “We know that social computing algorithms are used to categorize us, but the way they do so is not always transparent. To take just one example, ProPublica recently uncovered that Facebook allows housing advertisers to exclude users by race.
Even so, there are no simple and accessible resources for us, the public, to study algorithms empirically, and to engage critically with the technologies that are shaping our daily lives in such profound ways.
That is why we created Algorithm Observatory.

There will be significant Internet Society involvement at SINOG 5 next week, which is being co-organised by our colleague Jan Žorž, supported by ISOC, and will feature talks on NAT64Check and the Online Trust Alliance. SINOG is the Slovenian Network Operators Group, and the meeting is held on 7-8 June 2018 at the Biotehniška Fakulteta in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Joshua Vial: I can’t imagine Enspiral working without Loomio. It’s not just a core part of our technical stack, it is a cornerstone of our social architecture and shapes how we deal with powerful human forces of belonging, trust and power.
On Loomio we are trying to make decisions about issues which a large number of different people care deeply about. Online. With asynchronous text.

Stephen Boucher at Carnegie Europe: “…To connect citizens with the EU’s decisionmaking center, European politicians will need to provide ways to effectively hack this complex system. These democratic hacks need to be visible and accessible, easily and immediately implementable, viable without requiring changes to existing European treaties, and capable of having a traceable impact on policy. Many such devices could be imagined around these principles. Here are three ideas to spur debate.

National Institute of Standards and Technology: “Databases across the country include information with potentially important research implications and uses, e.g. contingency planning in disaster scenarios, identifying safety risks in aviation, assist in tracking contagious diseases, identifying patterns of violence in local communities.

Paper by Payal Arora and Linnea Holter Thompson in the International Journal of Communication: “Global complex supply chains have made it difficult to know the realities in factories. This structure obfuscates the networks, channels, and flows of communication between employers, workers, nongovernmental organizations and other vested intermediaries, creating a lack of transparency. Factories operate far from the brands themselves, often in developing countries where labor is cheap and regulations are weak.

Robert Raymond: Lying a few miles south of Marin County and just across the bay from San Francisco, the city of Richmond, California, is situated within two of the wealthiest regions of the United States. Richmond, however, does not share in this wealth.

Report by Margaret C. Levenstein, Allison R.B. Tyler, and Johanna Davidson Bleckman: “Research and evidence-building benefit from the increased availability of administrative datasets, linkage across datasets, detailed geospatial data, and other confidential data. Systems and policies for provisioning access to confidential data, however, have not kept pace and indeed restrict and unnecessarily encumber leading-edge science.

European Commission: “Childhood and adolescent obesity is a major global and European public health problem. Currently, public actions are detached from local needs, mostly including indiscriminate blanket policies and single-element strategies, limiting their efficacy and effectiveness.

Los ecosistemas digitales en los países más desarrollados son muy diferentes a los que tenemos en países del sur global. En ambos casos, el acceso, adopción y uso de nuevas tecnologías han tenido efectos transformadores, pero también han generado problemas que son muy nuevos, poco analizados y requieren de una mayor velocidad de respuesta de legisladores y gobernantes. Por esto, es importante tener investigación adaptada a la realidad y contexto locales.

Swadeshi" messaging app targeted at WhatsApp taken off from app stores hours after launch.
The article by Alnoor Peermohamed and Manavi Kapur was published in the Business Standard on May 31, 2018. Gurshabad Grover was quoted.

India’s health ministry has proposed a law to govern data security in the healthcare sector that would give individuals complete ownership of their health data.
The article by Madhur Singh was published as a cover story in IndiaSpend on May 31, 2018. Shweta Mohandas and Amber Sinha were quoted.

This blog has been translated from the original post at https://sv.okfn.org/2018/03/23/datos-abiertos-e-investigacion-manos-a-la-obra