Weeknotes: IWD, universal basic services, another XR, guerrilla action
It's International Women's Day. Again. I used to try to write blog posts about this, but now I just point to the sage words of others. Here's Rachel:
and Alex:
Via Martin Weller, a rant from Maren Deepwell about washing - open washing, equality washing, community washing.
Via Ian Brown, a gloomy piece from Article 19 about threats to freedom of expression in the UK. All too easy to assume such concerns are only for less democratic places far away.
Also via Ian (and then many others): Maria Farrell on the Prodigal Tech Bro.
The iRobot story - so many failed robot business models, so much learning. It really is hard to do hardware, and it's slow, too. Aside from the many robot-specific things, I was struck by this:
Really this is a long read on how cities could be better, not just 'smart' in a different way (empowering rather than surveilling):
At last a reference (indeed, a book) making the case for universal basic services so I don't have to keep tweeting random links in response to calls for universal basic income.
A useful spreadsheet to help you calculate the carbon footprint of a digital project, from Chris Adams.
What does it mean to be building a movement in a time of climate emergency? How can we enable people power to fight for climate justice? Nathan Thanki writes:
Polly Toynbee and David Walker write about how austerity between 2010 and 2020 broke Britain - a depressing but clear collection of stories from the front lines of austerity around the country. HT Mia Ridge.
Got to keep that focus on hope:
A BBC article about ‘immersive experience’ (XR, an interesting abbreviation these days, including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality). Interesting focus on libraries as a way to introduce new technologies to people in a more neutral and effective way than a sales pitch or similar.
Thanks once again, mystery man:
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| https://twitter.com/rachelcoldicutt/status/1236577341851209728 |
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| https://twitter.com/iotwatch/status/1236348967883071488 |
I am in a position of privilege in many ways, in that I am a white European woman in a leadership position, I am well educated and I have the knowledge, skills and connections to navigate life to name some examples. Some of this privilege I was born into, some is due to luck and some I have worked hard to achieve. I also experience a lot of prejudice and discrimination and inequality as a woman working in a tech related field and in a myriad of other ways. Both have helped motivate me to actively try to see more of how others experience the world, and to do what is in my power to make a positive difference.It's me.
Besides the obvious, this type of ‘washing’ has serious downsides in the long term: from the outside, to policy makers for example, sectors in which ‘community washing’ is prevalent appear to be functioning well, hence not in need of investment or intervention. Snap shots show only activity levels not their unsustainable and patchy nature. From the inside, particularly for newcomers, this kind of washing can be hard to detect and the alternatives harder to find. Again and again I come across new hubs or networks that duplicate what existing communities already do – but marketing ‘we are supporting something that is already there’ with its own identity and power, is far less effective at ‘washing’ those impact reports and social media channels, it can’t bathe them in a light of seemingly authentic engagement. Thus, I feel, much resources get wasted, wheels invented many times over in the name of communitywashing. It doesn’t help empower actual communities or build capacity or develop skills in ways that are sustainable and fit for purpose.
What all types of ‘washing’ have in common is that there is no real shift in the power base. Control remains with whoever has it rather than being distributed and shared. Gender equalitywashing provides some particularly infuriating examples, from equating balanced gender representation with having a token woman at a tech conference (‘there was A WOMAN on stage…’) to featuring appropriately photogenic stories front and centre without ever actually changing practice (…our organisation and its assets may be entirely dominated by men but we have stories about woman succeeding in the industry on the website).
From reports misrepresenting everyday sexism to glossing over structural pay and policy inequality, every single day brings examples of gender equalitywashing. There is so much evidence of inequality that is both persistent and pervasive that the kind of window dressing marketing that International Women’s Day seems to prompt each year seems laughable.
Via Ian Brown, a gloomy piece from Article 19 about threats to freedom of expression in the UK. All too easy to assume such concerns are only for less democratic places far away.
Also via Ian (and then many others): Maria Farrell on the Prodigal Tech Bro.
The Prodigal Tech Bro is a similar story, about tech executives who experience a sort of religious awakening. They suddenly see their former employers as toxic, and reinvent themselves as experts on taming the tech giants. They were lost and are now found. They are warmly welcomed home to the center of our discourse with invitations to write opeds for major newspapers, for think tank funding, book deals and TED talks. These guys – and yes, they are all guys – are generally thoughtful and well-meaning, and I wish them well. But I question why they seize so much attention and are awarded scarce resources, and why they’re given not just a second chance, but also the mantle of moral and expert authority. ....A history of responsible computing in the 1980s via Niels ten Oever, because there's nothing new under the sun.
I also wish that the many, exhausted activists who didn’t take money from Google or Facebook could have even a quarter of the attention, status and authority the Prodigal Techbro assumes is his birth-right.
Today, when the tide of public opinion on Big Tech is finally turning, the brothers (and sisters) who worked hard in the field all those years aren’t even invited to the party. No fattened calf for you, my all but unemployable tech activist. The moral hazard is clear; why would anyone do the right thing from the beginning when they can take the money, have their fun, and then, when the wind changes, convert their status and relative wealth into special pleading and a whole new career?
....
We all need second chances. Even if we don’t need those fresh starts ourselves, we want to live in a world where people have a reason to do better. But the prodigal tech bro’s redemption arc is so quick and smooth it’s barely a road bump.
...
Allowing people who share responsibility for our tech dystopia to keep control of the narrative means we never get to the bottom of how and why we got here, and we artificially narrow the possibilities for where we go next. And centering people who were insiders before and claim to be leading the outsiders now doesn’t help the overall case for tech accountability. It just reinforces the industry’s toxic dynamic that some people are worth more than others, that power is its own justification.
The prodigal tech bro doesn’t want structural change. He is reassurance, not revolution.
The iRobot story - so many failed robot business models, so much learning. It really is hard to do hardware, and it's slow, too. Aside from the many robot-specific things, I was struck by this:
It’s one of the great misunderstandings of entrepreneurship – that great entrepreneurs are risk takers. Great entrepreneurs are not great risk takers… they’re great managers of risk. And this was something we at iRobot were and are exceptionally good at.Connected cars and personal data - an outline of the issues from the Future of Privacy Forum (note the complexity of the space, even when the scope is restricted!).
Really this is a long read on how cities could be better, not just 'smart' in a different way (empowering rather than surveilling):
Ultimately, even with new tools, the empowerment model we’ve offered here is far less convenient and comfortable than the smart city models of today.Thanks UCL for an amusing thread which starts here:
And yet, if we want civic or urban tech to truly be “people-centric” and to solve real problems, they must do the hard work of building civic capacity. That doesn’t mean tasks like parking management or trash collection should never be automated—far from it. New technologies have a crucial role to play in automating drudgery and allow residents to spend more time on things that matter.
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| https://twitter.com/MathematicsUCL/status/1235857717811490816 |
At last a reference (indeed, a book) making the case for universal basic services so I don't have to keep tweeting random links in response to calls for universal basic income.
The case for universal basic services argues that we can build on what we’ve got, the National Health Service and schools, for example, and branch out to meet other essential needs — housing, transport, childcare, adult social care and access to digital information. These are not nice-to-haves but necessities. If anyone who needs them is unable to access them, it’s not just bad news for those individuals. We all lose in the end.
... We start with what people need, as opposed to what we want.
We aim for sufficiency, not something minimal.
... It follows that this is not about top-down, uniform state provision, but about providing services through a range of organisations, including co-ops and social enterprises and common ownership – another idea developed at NEF. We can do this in order to promote local control and put an end to profiteering.The Bennett Institute have published a new report:
The role of public institutions is transformed. National and local governments continue to provide some services, but their crucial role is to ensure equal access according to need, to set and enforce standards, to collect and distribute funds, and to support a wide range of provider organisations and to coordinate their efforts across the different sectors to get the best results.
The funds for universal basic services are not just a matter of public expenditure, they are a vital investment of shared resources in the social infrastructure that makes all our lives possible.
... Services are worth much more to poor households: this system is redistributive. Pooling resources and sharing risks is more efficient than one based on market transactions, where you’ve got profit extraction, vastly unequal information, moral hazard and no way of ensuring that basic needs are met. UBS draws on and strengthens solidarity. And it is a form of collective consumption that is much more sustainable – socially, economically and environmentally – than market based systems.
Is there anything radical about any of this? Yes... Because we want to reclaim the collective ideal that was at the heart of the post-war settlement – now submerged and discredited by neoliberal politics. ...
So our case for universal basic services is theoretical – based on wellbeing, capabilities and needs. It is normative – arguing that this approach is best if we want to secure greater equality, efficiency, solidarity and sustainability. And it is politically feasible, in that it is incremental, adaptable and affordable.
During this first year we focused on natural capital, particularly climate, and social capital. In recent years there has been little evidence on the empirical relationships between trust, social capital, and the economy as a whole. We have demonstrated that meaningful measurement of social capital is feasible, and that this helps explain ‘hard’ economic outcomes like productivity growth. We have provided an additional important lens on accounting for CO2 in terms of the damage caused by climate change - so that while for example Australia accounts for just 1.3% of global CO2 production, it is on track to experience between 12 and 24 times more damage from climate change than the world per capita average.I'm looking forward to more along these lines - from the preview post:
The effect of this first wave of research at the Bennett Institute has been far-reaching in academic and policy spheres. But this is the beginning, and the team plan to take this work further. While continuing to look at social and natural capital, research will expand to a third capital -human-, and look further to how these three interact.
Clear from the outset of the Wealth Economy project was that defining and measuring intangible and natural capitals would be challenging. The forthcoming report, however, which brings together a year’s worth of research, shows that significant steps can and are being taken in this direction, and this first year of work forges the path to thinking of wealth as a framework for measurement of economic prosperity.
A useful spreadsheet to help you calculate the carbon footprint of a digital project, from Chris Adams.
What does it mean to be building a movement in a time of climate emergency? How can we enable people power to fight for climate justice? Nathan Thanki writes:
There are major challenges to building people power. Principally, our starting point: an NGO-model of campaigning, advocating, and raising funds. This NGO logic — emanating from the global North — is utterly incapable of imagining how to respond to the climate crisis. It has spent a decades and a vast amount of resources on building a climate movement that is for the most-part disconnected from working people, from the global majority, and even from other progressive movements.An entertaining debate (audio) about whether we need to end capitalism to stop climate collapse. I liked the idea of private sufficiency, public luxury.
The barrier for entry to the “climate movement” is extremely high. Even the most exciting recent developments — the School Strikes and Extinction Rebellion — have relatively high barriers for entry and yet higher for leadership. These are largely middle class and global north, albeit with notable exceptions. This isn’t to say that radical movements do not exist in the global South because they patently do. Rather, they are regularly ignored, dismissed, or undermined by the Northern-dominated climate movement. By and large, our movement is one drawn from the richest 10% of the world. That’s not how we win.
Polly Toynbee and David Walker write about how austerity between 2010 and 2020 broke Britain - a depressing but clear collection of stories from the front lines of austerity around the country. HT Mia Ridge.
Got to keep that focus on hope:
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| http://wondermark.com/c1512/ |
A BBC article about ‘immersive experience’ (XR, an interesting abbreviation these days, including Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality). Interesting focus on libraries as a way to introduce new technologies to people in a more neutral and effective way than a sales pitch or similar.
There is potentially a fruitful symbiotic relationship for libraries and the XR industry (and possibly wider technology). As community hubs with high footfall, and close trusted relationships with their users, libraries represent a useful gateway for mainstream audiences to have their first experiences of VR in safe spaces.HT Sophie Sampson.
Equally, whilst libraries seek to remain central parts of their community, introducing their visitors to exciting new technologies could be part of remaining relevant, and reaching new users.
Thanks once again, mystery man:
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| https://twitter.com/guerrgroundsman/status/1235202217449263105 |