weeknotes: evidence, disruption, climate, maps

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Superflux ask whether this drive for data as evidence has led to the unshakeable belief that data is evidence.
“Evidence is just a special kind of data. Data becomes evidence when it stands in a particular testing relationship with a hypothesis.” — Brendan Clarke. Lecturer in History and the Philosophy of Medicine at University College London.
So, why is data being consistently conflated with evidence? As new business models have emerged which commodify data; from Google to Facebook, Uber and Amazon, the paradigm of data capital has firmly rooted itself in our collective consciousness. Big data can be a powerful tool for the good of society, but data is not evidence, and the rise of the use and misuse of big data in policy has risen in parallel with its more commercial deployment.
And as highlighted in this Quartz piece, much of the data used about us may be wrong. We can only influence one part of it — and the inferences built on top of that may be right or wrong.

Google’s research overview for 2018 is mostly AI and leads in with Ethics. It’s not just AI though — there’s quite a bit of quantum, along with theory, systems, robotics, open source. It is basically all “intelligence” though. (Aside, has the meaning of ‘assistive technology’ shifted? It seems to read here as mainstream personal assistant tools, rather than the former (?) meaning of tools for those with disabilities.)

The underlying architecture of the internet is quite invisible, even to most people worried about the dominance of big platforms. We need to think more about other layers, as per this thread from Niels ten Oever.

It seems appropriate to write about Anand Giridharadas’s Winners Take All in Davos week. I enjoyed the book, although it resonated so much with my world view that I almost feel I should seek out some sort of critique of it. The essential idea, as I would say it, is that powerful people and organisations will pursue the appearance of positive change (around climate, inequality, etc), in such ways as to avoid any serious challenges to their power and wealth. The book also details the support systems of elite consultancies which enable and back this up by applying business methods, the particular frustration with (US) philanthropy, and the ways well-intentioned people can end up following these undisruptive paths to change (because it’s a route to funding and support for good causes).

This latter point feels like one where some nuance is needed. It’s really very hard for a small charity with hand to mouth funding to pursue disruption of power, instead of acceding to the preferences (or requirements) of funders; easier, perhaps, at the top of a larger group with some resilience.

The section about Michael Porter’s perspectives was really interesting. I remember studying Porter’s 5 forces for organisational strategy in management classes; he seemed the hard end of business to me back then. Porter describes how a more global business perspective has lead to a loss of connection with local communities, and the loss of a sense of common interest and responsibility too. He also criticises the drive for optimisation and efficiency; great for the company, and easy to access the international expertise which could help you achieve it, but not so good for workers and others. Overall, he says business has become more about shareholders, and less about other stakeholders (workers, customers, the local environment) — highlighting how current business practice is not the only way things can be.

This podcast about the circular economy also asks similar questions to the book. The circular economy idea itself separates consumption from impact, and so allows high consumption lifestyles to look like a win win (in Anand’s terms). People just like stuff, and good times. I hadn’t realised that the energy efficiency rebound was an actual named phenomena — the idea that as you get more efficient lighting, it uses less energy for the same amount of lighting, so it’s cheaper, and so you go use more lighting because you can afford to. On top of this, we are currently in an era of opting to replace non-electronic processes with electronic ones. We put LEDs in our shoes; we make our kettles smart. Refurbished phone schemes seem like a nice move by corporations, but refurbished phones are not bought in place of a new phone; they are bought by people who otherwise would not have phones at all. So more people are connected, but environmentally, we have added an impact of the refurbishment system (on top of the new phone system) and of course all those phones get charged too. So companies will do the circular economy stuff, as long as it doesn’t cannibalise their main business; and consultants advise this sort of thing. It’s all very Winners Take All.

Even if we discount the (real) threat of greenwashing, people taking these well meaning actions may create worse outcomes, as the attempt to do small bits of good causes more problems. In climate, we need more radical action.

The Cambridge University Engineer’s Association had a meeting last week, with 3 speakers talking about different aspects of sustainability. Possibly the first meeting I’ve heard about, and certainly the first I’ve attended. We don’t seem to be a very active alumni group thus far…

The first speaker, Bryan Hanley, focussed on the challenges of food and sustainability, said he didn’t believe in disruptive technologies. Many people say they want them, but they don’t really — big established industries, such as manufacturers, services and banking, don’t want change, either because they are doing well under the status quo, or because it’s really hard (and their cultures are not up for tough work like that). Not many companies actually embrace disruption, and it often doesn’t work even if they do. (He also had an interesting idea about how disruption itself is changing. Old disruptors were emerging technologies, new business models, new customer needs. New disruptors are to do with cutting carbon footprints, recycling, and efficient or resilient manufacturing.)

This is closely linked with Superflux’s article looking at the gap between the desire for the new, and the realities of delivering this. (I suspect some of this, although not all, is the preference for Winners Take All style ‘win win’ change, where the existing leaders perhaps do not actually have to change themselves, or experience change too much.)
I encounter this desire for ‘imaginative’, ‘creative’, ‘artistic’ future visions from various different places — from CEOs, scientists, economists, technologists, governments, policy makers and so on. Many are searching for those beacons-of-hope, beacons to guide us towards “better futures”. There is a hunger for alternative visions, ideas, experiments. Radical imaginings that grasp the interconnected nature of complex systems; help navigate uncertainty; and shake up present day dogmatism. We welcome this desire with open arms.
But the question is, whether desire is enough? Is there enough courage and commitment from those with decision-making power to actually follow through on that desire? While the appetite for innovative ideas abounds, there is less gumption when it comes to following alternative trajectories.
Hugh Hunt’s talk was really the highlight of the sustainability event.

Hugh plugged the Climate Series of lectures, now in their third year, which were created in memory of David MacKay, whose seminal work Sustainable energy without the hot air remains an essential reference.

His report back from COP24 (detailed reports) was fascinating. The fifty thousand people in attendance, but very limited representation from the communities that would be most affected. The balance of “the rulebook” with discourse, which the Fijians wanted after COP21, creating the Talanoa dialogue. The mixed messages, such as the Polish stand decorated with coal. The frivolity of free carbon neutral cupcakes, compared to the serious business presumably being done behind the scenes. The glamorous and substantial UK stand, an improvement on previous years, proclaiming “Green is Great” — but questioned by the experts who point to our new oil platforms and exploitation of shale gas as suggesting that we don’t actually have serious policy to back up the slogan. The apparent complete absence of disruptive technologies, such as geoengineering, from discussion. Also hope — the daily protests; the call from Greta Thunberg for the climate crisis to be treated as such; the response to Attenborough’s speech.
I’ve started looking into some alternative ways of thinking about software-driven vehicles. Through the helpful Trucks newsletter, I came across this Drive article about public understanding of automated vehicles, which is more thoughtful than I would have expected about public education about the technology.
Some of the biggest mobility news at this year’s (boring) Consumer Electronics Show was the launch of Partners for Automated Vehicle Education, a coalition of autonomous vehicle industry players and nonprofits aimed at improving the public’s understanding of automated vehicles. Some two years in the works, the formation of PAVE by some of the space’s heaviest hitters shows that the era of self-driving hype may finally be coming to a close. But, as Jack Stilgoe points out at DriverlessFutures (and the gadfly vanguard of #AVTwitter has been discussing in the days since the announcement), PAVE can’t simply show up, talk about the safety benefits of AVs, and then hope to make the impact they are looking for. Understanding the source of the confusion and misinformation that they hope to address, and finding the initiative to directly confront it, will be very real challenges.
Stilgoe argues that there’s a potential parallel to PAVE: “In the 1980s,” he writes,
“scientists and innovators recognised a growing public scepticism. Their prescription was one of education. In the UK, we saw institutionalised programmes to improve the ‘public understanding of science’. These programmes were based on what Brian Wynne later called the ‘Deficit Model’.The problem was seen as one of public ignorance, which could be corrected with more public information. It was the wrong diagnosis. As controversies grew around new technologies like genetically modified crops, it quickly became clear that the problem was not a deficient public, but institutions of science and innovation that didn’t really understand what the public thought. Members of the public had a range of legitimate questions about the technology and these questions weren’t being listened too. The things that scientists and the biotech industry had decided were ‘the facts’ about GM crops were not the only facts that members of the public were interested in.”
I was chatting just this week about the challenge of putting systems change thinking into practice, and so I was delighted to see the Point People have shared a systems change canvas tool! Looking forward to trying this out. Thanks, People :)

What I love about this post from Dark Matter Labs is the blend of description of really big issues, with a specific focus (South Korea) which makes them more tractable.

I’ve been thinking for a while about the usefulness of smaller, more local spaces online. It seems an intuitively sensible way to reclaim better social dynamics — not trying to design for 2bn people, but for a smaller community with more shared values and interests. Nadia Eghbal compares online private/public life with that of urban areas as documented by Jane Jacobs in 1961. The idea that there are things you can observe but you should ignore, to enable it to be possible to live amongst others — how does that play out online, where I may want to share things for some people but not others?
Bits and pieces.

Cubesats again — this time showcasing the information supply chains.

We are moving to greater detail and more real time mapping and imagery. At the same time, I’m encouraged to see projects which try to capture more of the lived experience of places, such as the focus of this article in Emergence Magazine. (Also worth a look for the lovely footage of beautiful remote places in America.)
The Zuni maps remind us that modern, conventional maps convey only one very particular way of being in place, one which often, counterintuitively, leaves us disoriented and disconnected. Conventional maps do not tell us what it means to be somewhere — the details of the landscapes we live in, the sounds of the trees and the birds, the long histories of the arroyos and the mountains, the names of the people who built our homes.
“Modern maps don’t have a memory,” says Jim.
Emergence Magazine has a lot of nice features this issue, such as shimmering sprawl — satellite images of urban areas — or the Anthropocene project.
Co-ops need leaders too, says Nathan Schneider. I think this captures much of what happened at the Digital Life Collective — and Nathan was one of many to point this out very early on, too.
Don’t reinvent too many wheels at once. I am drawn, like many cooperators today, to the ideal of a world in which we are all equally leaders of our own lives, interacting through ever more radically direct forms of democracy. I still row in that direction through my research and activism. But when I’m advising co-op founders struggling for a foothold in an economy slanted steeply against them, I find myself more and more leaning toward conservatism — toward the examples of remarkable, accountable, not-necessarily-radical leaders of cooperatives past.
For our co-ops to survive and transform communities, we don’t need to reinvent every single wheel of organizational life at once. It’s powerful enough if you can flip a few critical levers — like who owns a company and how its most high-level policies are decided.
So what are the best practices for new kinds of organising in changing contexts, assuming you aren’t taking on too much at once? Thankfully Richard Bartlett from the Hum has been assembling resources about this — a fascinating set so far, recognising that there’s no one true way:
“I think the best structure for any organising effort must be custom-fit to its local context. I don’t believe in “one size fits all” solutions, but we don’t need to start from a blank slate either.”
The Hum is a fascinating group, and has also been thinking about what strategy means for them:
So for The Hum we don’t have “a strategy”, as in, a set of static decisions about an unknowable future. Instead, we have a series of “strategic conversations”: an intentional learning space for us to develop shared language and to co-imagine possible futures. Our strategic process grows shared context so we can make better decisions in the future. …
We don’t want to get stuck looking inwards, caught in our own little bubble. The gaps in our strategic conversations are openings for rest of the world to come in. What’s happening out there? What are people excited about? What are they concerned about? How can we help?
I like this — although in my experience it’s helpful to supplement the conversations with a living document that captures something that can be shared with people outside the team. Listening to understand — how seemingly similar groups can use language very differently — is a useful idea.