Weeknotes: charismatic tech, third space games, responsible data communities of practice
Data is about the past; imagination and experimentation is about the future.-- from Peter Bihr's excellent newsletter, Connection Problem.
Starting with tech and innovation, broadly.
A great thread (thanks to Alex Howard) about how we think about problems and potential solutions with the Silicon Valley way of doing things, and the limited perspectives of so much of the policy response:
How artificial intelligence might change our language.
The latest Talking Politics podcast asks "Can we innovate out of the mess we're in, and if so, who is going to pay for it?" - mostly about the green new deal, but also considering tech, innovation funding, and the state of the world in general. It has top Cambridge thinkers joining David Runciman, including Diane Coyle and Bill Janeway.
Diane wrote a related post about what we measure and what matters:
“Software is frozen organisational and policy discourse” – as we are learning with the burgeoning debate about algorithmic accountability. The essential ambiguity of politics is impossible to embed in code. The big data and AI era will force some of the fudged issues into the open.Yup. One of the joys of Cambridge is the presence of many great scholars with practical mindsets - we aren't (just) an ivory tower - and access to such people is fairly open. Last week I was lucky to be able to discuss two topics with Prof Coyle. She joined our Open IP research network to discuss intellectual property rights and public policy around innovation, and gave a talk about tech regulation for the Trust & Technology Initiative's lunchtime events, which we hold in pubs (to help break down the perceived barriers between disciplines and the university and the wider world). More from those events next time.
Local organisation The Cambridge Commons tries to research and tackle local inequality. They've got lots of research online - here's a highlight:
Cambridge is lauded as a ‘success story’. This initial report seeks recognition of another side of this success – the gross inequality in Cambridge. Imagine an affluent, thriving city in one of the richest countries in the world where:
- House prices and rents are beyond the means of the great majority of the population and are among the fastest-rising in the country.
- Nearly 5,000 people cannot afford to feed themselves and are driven to food banks for their food. A third of them are children.
- More than 6,000 households – one in eight – are too poor to heat their homes adequately and must choose between living in cold homes or going without food.
- The city has a higher level of fuel poverty than the regional and national averages.
And that's just the city - once you look to the wider region the inequalities and poverty are worse. I'd really like to see the University making a concrete difference locally. There is so much emphasis here on "Cambridge ideas changing the world" and this particularly being true of major challenges globally and the sustainable development goals, and yet if we cannot address our local problems, we surely should not be claiming to have knowledge and insights to help others.
Different communities tackling different facets of how to do data work responsibly:
A fascinating blog post about the ethical challenges of data-driven forecasting of political instability (war, protest, coups), with lots of overlap with questions around responsible data use in humanitarian contexts. Bits of it are quite specialist but it's generally very readable. The bit that I'm highlighting below is almost an aside, but links to my ongoing interest in maintenance and sustainability of digital stuff:
...far too much data is coming from projects with relatively short-term funding, typically from the US National Science Foundation, where social science grants tend to be just two or three years, with no guarantee of renewal, and grants from foundations which tend to favor shiny new objects over slogging through stuff that just needs to be done to support a diffuse community.The Wildlabs.net conservation technology network is an amazing community of active technologists and conservationists, and recent threads on sustainability of open source projects and on responsible data and machine learning are particularly interesting to me. The network isn't fully open - you need to apply to join some of the sub-communities, which is reasonable given the sensitive nature of some of the topics. Questions of ethics in conservation technologies aren't new, as this 2015 article shows.
The ethical problem here is the extent to which one can expect researchers to invest in models using data which may not be available in the future, and, conversely, whether the absence of such guarantees is leading the collective research community to spend too much effort in the proverbial search for the keys where the light is best.
I've also been enjoying the conversations over at ClimateAction.tech - technology professionals "supporting the tech industry in combating climate change and advocating rapid transition to renewable energy."
(I don't know if I count as a tech professional, or if I want to be - Buzzfeed have a survey out about their opinions on media etc which is tough reading.)
The Ordnance Survey is launching a mapping drone.
Hiring was described, at a talk at Cambridge Tech+Beer on Thursday, as the War On Talent. This was meant to convey that hiring tech people was very competitive. Ian Bogost questions this whole idea in a twitter thread:
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| https://twitter.com/ibogost/status/1099041744195330056?s=19 |
When you think of ecosystems of organisations trying to change the world, power dynamics get interesting very fast. Usually this means funders, who wield incredible control over what NGOs, charities and community organisations do. Of course, they all try to be nice about it and to say that they fund the things most needed by workers in the field or on the ground (depending on sector!), but there are many stories about how this doesn't work out in practice. It's good that we have sites like GrantAdvisor which provide a place to share honest feedback safely, and try to surface good practice and help funding dynamics improve, alongside data from sites like 360giving so everyone can see what funding is actually happening.
We talk a lot less about the power dynamics between organisations, and so I read Jeni Tennison's post about the ODI and the dynamics around it with interest. Thanks Jeni for sharing thoughts on such a tricky topic, much appreciated.
The ODI (the Open Data Institute, not the Overseas Development Institute) and I go way back - I remember when it was just an outline proposal, when I was starting out at the Open Knowledge Foundation. The evolution of the open data space, and the political environments, related movements (such as digital rights, accountability, etc), and the scale and power/influence of different entities and communities would be an interesting analysis.
I used to work in educational technology, and watch the evolution of tools, particularly for higher education, from a distance. This recent article on open source and educational technologies (quite specialist edtech terminology in parts!) raises questions of social justice, and also the relevance of open source as a basis for customisation as well as shared infrastructure.
The Sakai (open source virtual learning, collaboration and research platform) community hosted the first conference I attended which supported remote participation - we took part in Second Life, back in 2008. It was actually pretty good - we could watch the sessions, and whilst there was limited engagement between remote participants and those in Paris in person, remote people were able to network and discuss the talks fairly well.
Despite the many good reasons for remote attendance at conferences (supporting those who cannot travel for health, visa (increasingly an issue), or caring responsibility reasons, or to cut the carbon impact of flights), it's still quite rare. Consideration of how to make the "hallway track" of networking come to life is particularly tricky; livestreaming and online questions are generally technically viable, if not always implemented.
Here's a thoughtful post about remote attendance at CHI - partly in response to criticism of an earlier announcement about local proxies (people wearing/carrying iPads linked to remote attendees), which had some rather negative hot takes. Of course, being CHI (the world leading computer human interaction conference) they had considered the obvious high tech option:
Beams (or equivalent telepresence robots) aren’t available everywhere and so we have had to ship them to each conference’s location from California, USA. This was not always cheap and did not present a globally responsive solution to reducing carbon footprints. While remote attendees helped promote sustainability by not traveling, as ironic as it is, the Beams still had to travel.
Over the years, we have brainstormed a large number of different ways to support remote attendance at conferences, ranging from dedicated video conferencing tables in break areas and hallways to situated video conferencing links at the front of presentation rooms to programs that might pair up local and remote attendees. And, that is where we ended up going for CHI 2019.
Firstly, most paper sessions will be live-streamed, free of charge to people taking advantage of this. Secondly, we want to provide access to social interaction with our buddy/human proxy pairing of local and remote attendees.
On the theme of edtech, via The Maintainers, I found this paper by Morgan Ames exploring charisma and technology, specifically around One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). It sets out nicely things I've thought vaguely, about the power certain technologies (and certain technical leaders) have and how that affects outcomes. The Ames paper clarifies the notion of charisma, with the insight that charisma is usually found (ironically) when something reinforces existing world views, rather than actually being radically new.
OLPC is a project which I've been aware of for a long time, watching it from a distance, and then wondering what we've all learned from it. It certainly hasn't gone as intended - last year the Verge had a deep dive into many of the aspects where it went wrong (quoting Ames several times). A year ago Lara Allen at the Centre for Global Equality and I were bouncing around ideas for a new 'hardware for good' platform, inspired by the question of: What is Cambridge's next project for the world, after Raspberry Pi? We realised that before we could plan something new we needed to bring together learnings from various significant 'hardware for good' infrastructure/platform projects, such as Pi itself, OLPC, BRCK, and perhaps some wildcards such as Project Loon. (If anyone would like to fund a research project on that topic, let us know!)
In this paper however, OLPC is a case study used to explore the idea of charisma in tech.
OLPC had charisma - many of the features which charmed people were never realised (such as the hand-crank for power, which the Verge notes is still talked about, even though it never happened).
... highlighting the project’s continued charm despite its many failures is simply a method for demonstrating that charisma is indeed at play. In the next three sections, I will show how this charisma was based on specific ideas about childhood, school, and computers.What should we do about the effects charisma has on how we relate to technologies? A historical view may help -
While it may be easy to discount these past charismatic technologies given the perspective and tarnish of time, they contain two lessons, one about the enduring importance of charisma to the modern cultural imagination, and the other about its limits. In particular, there is a striking parallel between the charisma of computers that OLPC draws on and these earlier charismatic technologies. Historian Howard Segal notes that the rhetoric of the power of the Internet to spread democracy “was identical to what thousands of Americans and Europeans had said since the nation’s founding about transportation and communications systems, from canals to railroads to clipper ships to steamboats, and from telegraphs to telephones to radios” [54:170]. ....I can very much relate to the desire to use the power of charisma to get good projects off the ground. (This relates to comments above about the power of funders over NGOs and non-profits). It still remains frustratingly the case that it's easier to get funding to pilot a new innovation, than to either develop something from pilot to robust system, or to maintain things we already have.
In short, a historical perspective helps (in William Stahl’s words) “break the spell of the present” [56]. It demonstrates that today’s charismatic technologies are neither natural nor inevitable, but are ideologically conservative: even as they promise revolution, they repeat the charisma of past technologies and ultimately reinforce the status quo. This, in
turn, allows us to better identify new charismatic technologies and to understand charisma’s consequences.
Finally, we will see that education reforms like OLPC are often compelled to use charismatic technologies to promise utopia in order to secure attention and funding,One aspect of the paper helped clarify my thinking about how technology developers bring their own experiences into their work. I confess that during the early days of Raspberry Pi, it seemed to me to be a group of mostly white men, who had enjoyed the BBC Micro era and had built successful computing careers from it, now doing the same for the next generation and claiming it would benefit all children, without seeing that many of the people who had benefited from the BBC Micro were men from reasonably stable backgrounds, and that possibly something different might be needed to attract a wider demographic as stated. (Pi has evolved since then, thankfully. I am not sure it was helped by some of the early advocates.) Ames draws this out to another level --
which then sets them up for failure and short-lived projects. As reformers then shift to the next charismatic technology, charisma will continue to impede real, if incremental, change. .... Indeed, those who pin reform efforts on charismatic technologies are often
caught in a catch-22 where their projects are cut short whether they register success or not, because the promises of charisma are ultimately unattainable.
To OLPC’s contributors, we saw that the charisma of the XO laptop affirmed their belief in the power of computers in childhood, imposed coherence and direction on their work, and gave them reasons to push back against doubters, even in the face of what might otherwise feel like overwhelming odds or ample counterevidence [2]. On the other hand, we saw that charisma could also have a blinding effect. It prevented those on the project from recognizing or appreciating ideological diversity, much less constructively confronting problems of socio-economic disparity, racial and gender bias, or other issues of social justice beyond most of their personal experiences [47]. OLPC’s XO laptop was charismatic to them because it mirrored their existing ideologies and promoted a social order with them at the top. As a result, their narratives not only glorified childhood, they specified the kinds of learning that children are naturally inclined to do.So we need to be aware of charisma.
The case of OLPC shows us why it is dangerous to ignore the origins of charisma: one risks being perpetually blinded by the newest charismatic technology as a result. ....
We must remember that charisma is ultimately a conservative social force. Even when charismatic technologies promise to quickly and painlessly transform our lives for the better, they appeal precisely because they echo existing stereotypes, confirm the value of existing power relations, and reinforce existing ideologies. Meanwhile, they may divert attention and resources from more complicated, expensive, or politically charged reforms that do not promise a quick fix and are thus less ‘charismatic.’ Still, it is also important to recognize that charisma plays an important role in smoothing away uncertainties, contradictions, and adversities.
A great (depressing) summary of the many and various gendered designs and standards which disadvantage or actively endanger women. I still have a pair of purple safety boots, from a Women's Engineering Society campaign many years ago for PPE which actually fits women.
I enjoyed this article about Fortnite as a third space, which I found via Sentiers.
It's not a new idea to me - at home we've played games with friends and family in far-flung places for years, where the game has really simply been providing an opportunity to talk (and also to collaborate on fun things at the same time, building things creatively, or problem solving technically, or just doing something challenging together). It's a really valuable and enjoyable experience, a way to stay in touch which goes beyond just a conversation - which you might not make the time for, if you've nothing much to say.
Minecraft has always been excellent for this (or, rather, it's been excellent since multiplayer - I can remember when it was just single-player and yadda yadda yadda). You can drop in and out of playing according to your schedule, and you can play with or without others; you can build incredible creative structures or artworks; with mods in particular you can come up against and solve tricky technical problems (people build computers, for instance, or huge automated train systems, or figure out complex magical mechanisms); you can explore and discover new things together. Minecraft can be relaxing, with a gentle pace, or intense and challenging, or a bit of both. You can play it in a way that leaves plenty of time and attention for random chat.
Fortnite has a slightly different dynamic, being a battle royale game, so it's generally speaking more intense bursts of collaboration with your remote friends, where there's actually quite a lot of coordination to do, more than socialising. (Disclaimer: I have not played Fortnite.) Of course, there's some 'lobby' time for chit-chat, and the inevitable "dressing up" activities so important in many games. I assume, though, that like in other online battle royale games like PUBG, and also in FPS-type matchmaking gameplay (eg Halo, Titanfall), it's really predominantly about the time when you are playing together in an intense competitive way (even if you and your friends are collaborating, you are focussed on overcoming challenges in game, not talking about your workday).
There are also games like Red Dead Redemption online, where there's perhaps more of a mix of paces, should be good for this too; you can do random wandering and 'quests', or engage in more intense wild West gun battles. Sadly RDR suffers from the problem of random players attacking you whilst you peacefully collect herbs in a group, for instance. Elder Scrolls Online has a similar mixture of activities, although the quest system doesn't work so well for occasional group play (dungeons are another matter).
Boundless may be a Minecraft-ish option - without modding, you still get more variety and it's a massively multiplayer world.
What other games provide a good 'third space', without the intensity of battle royale?
A slightly different gaming angle, with news about Pokemon Go (remember when it was the next big thing?) and how the game's augmented reality is slowly coming to terms with the real world it operates within.
A novel lawsuit appears to be coming to an end with an equally novel agreement. On Thursday, a bunch of homeowners suing over the way that the augmented reality game Pokemon Go led players to congregate on or near private property submitted a proposed settlement for review by a California federal judge. If the deal gets the judge's blessing, Pokemon Go creator Niantic will become much more legally responsible for the virtual creatures — called Pokemon — that roam around and are invisible to all but those using a mobile device and the Pokemon Go app.
I'm not sure what to make of this thread, but the closing (at time of writing) tweet from Vinay Gupta - that the big collective projects such as Linux, Wikipedia, etc, have been lead by "autistic sociopaths" has a seed of something in it. (Are these leaders charismatic?)
What do we want in our collective projects - scale and success, or an inclusive team with (mostly/hopefully) acceptable stress levels? Is tempering the visionary, driven, but 'difficult' leaders of ambitious projects like this a net good? (This counterweight seems to have been a role I've played several times, and arguably is a distinctive skill/strength, so I am particularly interested in this question.) (thanks to Sam Smith for highlighting this on Twitter)
I am reminded of John Naughton's comment - "organisations are sociopathic."
So maybe the answer is to avoid organisations. I discovered the idea of Pirate care this week - how we might imagine health and social care for a different future, taking more control ourselves. There's also a call for papers.
Apologies for any incoherence. I strongly related to this -
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| https://twitter.com/kathy_hirst/status/1097593034294874112 |