Fortnight notes: Fame, blame, protest, digital bits, towns
A recent edition of the Kneeling Bus looks at the void left behind when products and services cease to be. Blockbuster went away, but was replaced by Netflix etc, arguably improvements. Spotify has replaced CDs, and many people don't have them any more. If/when Spotify goes away, will there be something better?
Several people linked to this New Republic article on the internet and climate change. A good mix of necessary responses (resilient local mesh networks for times when extreme weather damage conventional infrastructure), and thought-provoking stats - streaming "one hour of Netflix a week requires more electricity, annually, than the yearly output of two new refrigerators."
Along similar lines to Bruce Sterling's recent [protected] tweet about Wired - where he asks whether Wired will continue doing cover pics of "The Architects of Our Digital Hellscape" - which is what Wired is calling Silicon Valley leaders now.
Also reminds me of Sam Weiss Evans:
Thanks as usual to Lee Vinsel of the Maintainers for the historical perspective there.
Via Jennifer Cobbe and Frank Pasquale, the last decade in terms of fame engulfing all, over at Slate. A great piece including examples, everything from Grumpy Cat to Old Town Road, and the way the internet has changed the speed and scale of fame from previous already fame-oriented TV and newspapers.
The distinction between blame and accountability is explored by the Bennett Institute, studying the Grenfell Tower fire.
There's been a lot of noise around Amazon's access to NHS website data. Jeni Tennison helpfully teases apart the different concerns, real and imagined.
Doteveryone got a lot done this year. I'm proud to be part of such an amazing team, albeit very much more distantly and erratically these days than for much of the last four years.
Wikimedia isn't just signing a protest letter - it's trying to make sure the letter makes a difference (via Sander van der Waal).
A nice thread from Reuben Binns summarising his new paper about the distinction between individual and group fairness in machine learning.
Jennifer Cobbe succinctly capturing the problem with assuming people just need more digital skills - when what we need is legal protection and fewer dreadful services:
I was on BBC Radio 4 talking about making things. Thanks Tim Hayward for making this happen!
Field Ready, where I worked 2015-17, have published a new summary of their working practices for humanitarian aid. Great to see this maturing further!
Understanding degrowth, relative vs absolute decoupling, or perhaps dematerialised growth? A useful Science article exploring different angles of green growth (or otherwise).
Adam Minter looks at waste, reuse and recycling value chains in Star Wars - finding useful learnings for our own struggles. I've just finished reading his book Secondhand, which includes descriptions of the difference between fearful perceptions of electronic waste in Ghana, and the reality of reuse. I was struck by the parallels with this Verge piece about fears around electronic waste - of toxic worker conditions, false papers, etc.
Sean McDonald is spot on as usual:
Did you know digital loans from libraries are provided by a private company? This wouldn't necessarily be an issue, of course, as long as the incentives were sensibly aligned and assets protected. OverDrive was just acquired by an investment firm.
New Belgium Brewing was an employee-owned business - until now. Last Call showcases diverse thoughts on the end of this business phase, as it is acquired by Kirin.
When the water goes off, you might be dependent on a private company selling bottled water from the car park of a supermarket. Richard Sandford goes on to discuss shifting baselines.
Predictions for how emerging technologies may influence citizen participation, from Tiago Peixoto and Tom Steinberg - two very insightful people in this space. I especially note Prediction 11, about attempts to use 'blockchain' to provide certainty about information; I've seen some tech-for-good proposals going this way (and needing support to flesh out exactly what they need/mean).
The Civic Tech Field Guide (thanks Matt Stempeck and co) now has a section on narrative tech - not just telling stories, but listening (and organising, etc):
I was fascinated by Stian Westlake's thoughts on UK towns and economic development.
I'd like to learn more about Preston - this related thread discusses different reasons for its success
(one being "the Preston model", of which more here; others being motorway links etc).
Tom Forth is very good on towns/cities/infrastructure. He's been tweeting about towns -
Sook appeared in the Times this week about their way to enable dis-/under-used high street retail spaces to be used as flexible spaces for different kinds of activity at different times. Glad to see this local startup, which I met through mentoring cohort 2 at Zinc, getting some coverage.
Old time readers may remember freeware, the term for software you didn't have to pay for. You can now pay for your software in trees - treeware.
Several people linked to this New Republic article on the internet and climate change. A good mix of necessary responses (resilient local mesh networks for times when extreme weather damage conventional infrastructure), and thought-provoking stats - streaming "one hour of Netflix a week requires more electricity, annually, than the yearly output of two new refrigerators."
We’ve grown used to communicating in videos, memes, and animation. Most websites are packed with video players, blaring banner ads, pop-ups, elaborate layouts. But the glut of data costs actual energy. And do we actually need any of it? “Streaming could easily be 10 percent of global electricity by 2030,” says Hazas, “and will that be OK?” In many ways, the campaign to make the web environmentally friendly is also a campaign to make it less wasteful, chaotic, and toxic.Nathan Matias says:
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| https://twitter.com/natematias/status/1206700106382266370 |
Also reminds me of Sam Weiss Evans:
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| https://twitter.com/SAWEvans/status/1206608443416760320 |
Via Jennifer Cobbe and Frank Pasquale, the last decade in terms of fame engulfing all, over at Slate. A great piece including examples, everything from Grumpy Cat to Old Town Road, and the way the internet has changed the speed and scale of fame from previous already fame-oriented TV and newspapers.
The distinction between blame and accountability is explored by the Bennett Institute, studying the Grenfell Tower fire.
As a society we are fixated with blame. But it is much more useful to look at major failures through the perspective of accountability.The final judgement in the Post Office trial has been handed down. I've been surprised how little this seems to have been noticed - over five hundred claimants, disputing the way a centrally provided computer system worked for Post Office branch management. Apparent shortfalls of money have lead to postmasters being bankrupted and jailed. The processes around software management and complaints investigation are worrying, with a presumption of "computer is right," which is all too often not the case these days. Thanks to Steven Murdoch for action and commentary here.
James Reason summarised the problem very nicely in his book Human Error:
"A culture of blame can develop because it is often easier, cheaper, and more emotionally satisfying to hold an individual responsible for an accident than to acknowledge more fundamental problems in an organisation."A blame narrative considers who’s at fault, is highly personal and assumes that removing the individual(s) will solve the problems. However, simply replacing someone with another person operating in the same context will likely lead to little change or learning.
An accountability narrative instead considers what structures (e.g. job roles and assurance mechanisms) were in place and how these were fulfilled or not.
There's been a lot of noise around Amazon's access to NHS website data. Jeni Tennison helpfully teases apart the different concerns, real and imagined.
Doteveryone got a lot done this year. I'm proud to be part of such an amazing team, albeit very much more distantly and erratically these days than for much of the last four years.
Wikimedia isn't just signing a protest letter - it's trying to make sure the letter makes a difference (via Sander van der Waal).
A nice thread from Reuben Binns summarising his new paper about the distinction between individual and group fairness in machine learning.
Jennifer Cobbe succinctly capturing the problem with assuming people just need more digital skills - when what we need is legal protection and fewer dreadful services:
 |
| https://twitter.com/jennifercobbe/status/1206471639132753920 |
I was on BBC Radio 4 talking about making things. Thanks Tim Hayward for making this happen!
Field Ready, where I worked 2015-17, have published a new summary of their working practices for humanitarian aid. Great to see this maturing further!
Our new approach, developed six years ago, is firmly grounded in the calls for localization. It combines and harnesses existing and emergent tech and techniques in humanitarian contexts in a variety of ways that addresses the problems discussed above. It is deeply rooted in participatory techniques (and the corresponding equivalents found in the commercial sector in what are known as human-centered design) that start to design and co-create solutions. Any aid agency worth its salt does this but what is special is that instead of relying on a slow, expensive and cumbersome supply chain, we make useful items in the field. We then openly share the objects and knowledge and try to get others to follow our examples.Vice on why games such as Civilisation (and the 4X genre, which I hadn't heard of before, meaning explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) have an unhelpful view of societal development, technological advancement, and success.
For us, technology is simply a means to an end; tools that help achieve clear goals. We use exponential technology as well as appropriate technology to carry out local manufacturing in ways that have never been done before in the field. A focus on human-centred problem solving is more important than a simple application of technology. Instead of being weighed down by the constraints of traditional mindsets and bureaucratic inertia, we embrace complexity, abundance thinking and ‘skin in the game’.
Our non-linear process enables us to work across sectors... we engage in a number of practices which help us arrive at novel solutions to very difficult problems. These include having a bias toward action, not differentiating between ‘creative’ and ‘non-creative’ team members, and iterating by making lots of prototypes (which means allowing for failure but also for small successes that lead to bigger results).
Understanding degrowth, relative vs absolute decoupling, or perhaps dematerialised growth? A useful Science article exploring different angles of green growth (or otherwise).
Adam Minter looks at waste, reuse and recycling value chains in Star Wars - finding useful learnings for our own struggles. I've just finished reading his book Secondhand, which includes descriptions of the difference between fearful perceptions of electronic waste in Ghana, and the reality of reuse. I was struck by the parallels with this Verge piece about fears around electronic waste - of toxic worker conditions, false papers, etc.
Sean McDonald is spot on as usual:
 |
| https://twitter.com/seanmmcdonald/status/1208739585699696640 |
Did you know digital loans from libraries are provided by a private company? This wouldn't necessarily be an issue, of course, as long as the incentives were sensibly aligned and assets protected. OverDrive was just acquired by an investment firm.
New Belgium Brewing was an employee-owned business - until now. Last Call showcases diverse thoughts on the end of this business phase, as it is acquired by Kirin.
When the water goes off, you might be dependent on a private company selling bottled water from the car park of a supermarket. Richard Sandford goes on to discuss shifting baselines.
Predictions for how emerging technologies may influence citizen participation, from Tiago Peixoto and Tom Steinberg - two very insightful people in this space. I especially note Prediction 11, about attempts to use 'blockchain' to provide certainty about information; I've seen some tech-for-good proposals going this way (and needing support to flesh out exactly what they need/mean).
The Civic Tech Field Guide (thanks Matt Stempeck and co) now has a section on narrative tech - not just telling stories, but listening (and organising, etc):
Technology has always had a role in shaping how narratives are created, distributed, tracked and absorbed into society. Today, technology moves the words, pictures and meaning of narrative around the world in seconds. Technology helps us track the movement of narrative and research how narrative shifts behavior.CIVICUS, the big global civil society network you've probably never heard of, published a new guide on how to protest in a resilient way. They also include links to many other resources for civic action and change The challenges restricting protest and action may seem very different around the world, but there's actually a lot of commonality, and the resources are timely given the shrinking civil space in many places. We shouldn't feel complacent that this is a problem only for brown people somewhere else.
Narrative Technology encompasses the tools, platforms, and infrastructure that can be used to assist and accelerate the shifting and/or maintenance of dominant narratives. These include, but aren’t limited to, technologies that can baseline, listen to, test, and respond to media and online discourse at scale.
I was fascinated by Stian Westlake's thoughts on UK towns and economic development.
I'd like to learn more about Preston - this related thread discusses different reasons for its success
(one being "the Preston model", of which more here; others being motorway links etc).
Tom Forth is very good on towns/cities/infrastructure. He's been tweeting about towns -
We put the ONS in Newport. We put the ICO in Wilmslow. We put the research councils in Swindon. We put the met office in Exeter. We put the BBC in Salford. And this is a map of where we put the catapult centres. All 8 in North England placed in towns.A positive contrast to Hal Hodson's tweet on cities being the new frontier for Silicon Valley tech and VCs (I struggle to feel good about VCs shaping justice and law).
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| https://twitter.com/halhod/status/1208536285553528832 |
Old time readers may remember freeware, the term for software you didn't have to pay for. You can now pay for your software in trees - treeware.