Dr Laura James's writings

Photo by  Fleur Treurniet  on  Unsplash People often ask me what technologies Doteveryone cares about. (Is it about broadband access? Privacy? AI? Data ethics?) The real answer is that our work is not so much about specific technologies as it is specific challenges. It’s about systems — how people and organisations and society and technology interact — not individual technologies in and of themselves. (You can see this in  our thinking around the different aspects of responsible technology , which cut across technical and business issues as both are often intertwined.) So we aim to tackle issues with technology today (and tomorrow!), some of which relate to specific technology fields, and some of which are quite general. There’s no shortage of interesting work to be done, and luckily we are not alone — many other great organisations and projects are thinking about many of these topics too. Here’s some of what we’re thinking about, now and into 2018. Domi...

Yesterday was a reflective workshop for the  Maker Assembly  community. I was inspired to organise  an event to celebrate maintenance and maintainers (more about this below), but we covered a lot of other ground too. Maker Assembly’s tweet and photo of the event A lot of maker culture is about making new things, and in many Western contexts, that’s making gadgets and gizmos that are fun for a while but generally then gather dust until eventually thrown away. Making and fixing useful things happens, but often in less visible places —  farmers repairing and modifying their equipment ,  making and fixing in rural areas , and around the world  local   manufacturing  and  hacking  and  reuse  where it’s the  only option to save  and  sustain   life . (We used to do more of that here, making do and mending, but of late that’s declined as consumer goods became more affordable, and often cheaper to replace ...

I’m delighted that a paper I wrote about  Field Ready ’s work and some of the engineering challenges we face was accepted by the  IEEE  for the  Global Humanitarian Technology Conference , which is taking place this weekend in California. I am permitted to share the accepted version of the paper [ PDF ] which is copyright IEEE. Once the official version is published, I’ll link to that and add the full citation. Abstract: Distributed manufacturing, where decentralized small, local sites are engaged in production, often supported by digital systems and networks, can be a powerful tool in humanitarian aid. Field Ready uses distributed manufacturing to produce essential non-food items locally where they are needed during humanitarian responses. Such supplies can be available to communities in need and to relief workers more quickly, more cheaply than alternatives, and provide appropriate solutions to problems, often engaging local people in designing and making n...

The IOTMark event on 16th June explored what open IOT might mean, and how a certification mark might enable more of it. It was good to come back to this topic 5 years after the OpenIOT Definition event, review  related work , to refresh the definition and to move towards a practical implementation. (It’s also very relevant for me, as I’m exploring trust and certification marks  at Doteveryone , as part of our work to get more  responsible digital technologies .) First up, it was interesting to hear how the 2012 work had actually influenced IOT development and strategy since then. We’d collaboratively created a definition over the two days back then, but it was hard to see how the ideas might translate into practice, and it felt like momentum was lost after the event. Nonetheless, Bosch had taken the ideas of openness on board in their IOT strategy, which was great to see. We talked about  Woolmark . It’s a nice example of a registered mark but had the luxury of ...

Five years ago was the Open Internet of Things Assembly. There arelots of links about it, and background reading,  here . The attendee list reads now as a veritable “who’s who” of creative and thoughtful folks involved in IOT in all kinds of ways. The culmination was a declaration, a  definition of the Open Internet Of Things , which many attendees signed. 2012 Open IOT Assembly [credit:  Alex D-S ] On  Friday  some of us will meet again — with new participants too — and attempt to create an updated definition and a plan for how to turn this into a certification mark. For me, it seems a long time since the Assembly. I was at the  Open Knowledge Foundation  then, so  my talk was about the meaning of open and the different ways different things can be open . Now I’m leading work to find ways to get  more responsible digital technologies  at  Doteveryone , and I’m a member of a  new co-operative to develop and supp...

At Doteveryone, we’d like to see technology become more responsible — in terms of how it’s developed, how it works for users, and how it affects society. So as part of our work to help Britain  lead the world in ethical tech ,  we’re exploring what “responsible technology” means and how we can encourage more of it. Responsible technology is important for delivering a fairer internet experience, and a positive future where tech is useful, trusted and trustworthy. We need to have technology developed and maintained which supports this vision, and to drive this requires making ethical and responsible activity not just more worthy, but easier and more valuable too. A big part of our work in 2017 (and beyond) involves figuring out how to drive more ethical, responsible and appropriate digital technology development and operation . To kick that off, we’ve come up with a draft set of ten areas responsible tech should consider. About half of them are specific to digital, wh...