CrowdLaw

Calamity from the Crowd: Crowdsourcing isn't always beneficial, but still always powerful.

By: Alexandros Hatzakis (alexhatz.info | @alexandroshatz)

There can be no doubt that the power of the crowd is awe-inspiring. There are many examples of how institutions use crowdsourcing to increase the opportunity for adding value with respect to certain issues: bringing together subject matter experts, unlocking hidden worker knowledge (internal perspective in companies) or crowdfunding as an example. When it comes to the subject of engagement, the idea has certainly come up -- for government of course -- how can we create more engagement opportunities to get the public, the crowd, involved in helping government learn, gather feedback, gain insights, etc. Hey, there's an example of this thinking in action at NYU's Gov Lab (http://www.thegovlab.org/) Experiment on April 18th and 19th.

I certainly love the idea and concept of how powerful the power of the crowd truly can be and am quite energized by it. What we forget or try to dismiss sometimes though is the threat of the crowd or the risk. In the for-profit sector, sometimes what might be a small conversation concerning engaging customers moves to something large and public skirmish. 

If we look at recent events, we've had an example of how dangerous the crowd can be in spite of how helpful they seek to be -- aside from the "We The People's" about having the federal government building a Death Star. With the events of the Boston Marathon bombing, we had a test case of exactly how this awesome power can also generate dangerous circumstances.

On April 16th 2013, Wired.com reported intentions that had surfaced that the data from the Boston Bombing will be crowdsourced given the expanse of the data generated and collected during the events. Whether it was cellphone photos, vine recordings, and instagram feeds, investigators in Boston asked individuals, led by the FBI, to provide all data they had captured to try and build a large picture of what actually happened during the events of the bombings. As Wired.com commented, within a few minutes of the bombings, all social media sources flared up to generate a vast and unwieldly trove of information. One of the outlets that also became self-aware -- to lend the language from Terminator -- was Reddit (A user generated web 2.0 news website with a lefty, libertarian and geek slant. Tends to be slightly more upmarket than its larger competitor). Reddit user Oops777 created the /r/BostonBombings subreddit that became ground zero for geeks, homegrown image analysts, those sharing content and other entrepreneur sluthes to bring together all the data and information for finding the Boston Bombers. What began as an inspiring mobilization of individuals who really had the tools necessary -- and information potentially -- to help the authorities solve the question of who perpetrated the bombings, quickly devolved into a publicity and community fiasco pointing the finger at the wrong individuals and quickly creating vast public disonance against the poor, singled-out individual. USA today noted on the merits of using such a situation to examine the role for citizen law enforcement being a good idea.

The details: a poor student Sunil Tripathi (who had been missing since March 2013) was pointed out as the culprit from the media that was reviewed and sourced by the subreddit. Sunil Tripathi, a missing student from Brown University, was later confirmed to be found dead in late April.

To document the events that unfolded:

Last Thursday, shortly after the F.B.I. released grainy surveillance photographs of the two men they believed were the Boston bombers, some Internet users began to speculate that Mr. Tripathi might be one of them. They began posting messages suggesting as much on the Facebook page the family used to raise awareness about their search for Mr. Tripathi. As the policed pursued the two suspects on a fiery chase through the Boston area, the rumor spread, leading news vans to stake out the Tripathis’s family home in Bryn Mawr, Pa., and reporters to make dozens of calls to the Tripathi family’s cellphones.

“It was absolutely horrible,” said Ms. Tripathi, who said her family knew immediately that neither of the men in the photographs was her son — a man who they said literally would not hurt a fly, choosing instead to set insects free outside.

By last Friday morning, investigators had released the suspects’ names — Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — absolving Mr. Tripathi of any connection to the case. Apologies began to pour in to the Tripathi family — including one from the online forum Reddit, where users had doggedly pursued the rumor — who began a new social media campaign they hoped would persuade Sunil to come home.

Investigators were perceivably forced to release the names due in large part to the false claims made and the blowback that the Tripathi family was receiving inappropriately. Example of the sleuth-work:

*http://www.politisite.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/boston_bombers.jpg 

In retrospect, Reddit apologized for allowing the activity to take place (their own community manager weighed in) and for any harm that was generated by the activities of Reddit members. As far as Oops777, he did what's called an AMA on Reddit -- AskMeAnything -- after the events themselves. As the HuffPost mentions, quoted from the AMA:

"What is most remarkable about the AMA is how readily Oops777 admits that he regrets his decision to create the subreddit. He says that he originally created the page "to consolidate the already existing posts floating around /r/news and /r/boston," obviously not realizing what a stir the subreddit would cause. When asked if it was worth it, he responded: "Not even slightly."

I understand very well this post was supposed to be about the amazing power of crowdsourcing. I recognize the power and am hopeful of the vast value that can be generated by the crowd. What I'm doing here which I've never done -- is taking a position against it and the potential threat. I'm definitely in the camp of put it out there and see how the crowd handles it and creates value. I couldn't help but document this story because for those of us who want to push the value of the crowd forward, we'll always have detractors come back to us with the story of how Reddit and the Bombing fiasco are reasons not to. Here's what I propose; when we talk of the value of the crowd, strict boundaries, rules and constraints have to be applied even though the web traditionally exists in a pure laissez-faire, autonomous manner. As institutions and potential beneficiaries of the value of crowd-work, we have to put some rules in place not to constrict people in a box of thinking but to ensure we limit risk to the public good -- especially on matters that relate to the public good, like crime fighting and terrorism.

We need to look carefully at this situation and determine whether there is a way to replay the crowd-crime-sleuthing contrary to Oops777's feelings about it being a terrible idea from the get go. That's the easy way out -- it's our job to figure out how to make this work. The world is moving this way -- and we don't have much of a choice, so let's ensure we make the most of it and maintain the public good, especially for the potential of lawmaking and policymaking with the crowd.

Bits & Bytes: How Data Supports and Leads to Innovation

By: Alexandros Hatzakis (alexhatz.info | @alexandroshatz)

I had the privelage to talk with Jake Porway of DataKind. DataKind™ (formerly known as Data Without Borders) brings together leading data scientists with high impact social organizations through a comprehensive, collaborative approach that leads to shared insights, greater understanding, and positive action through data in the service of humanity.

DataKind is certainly contributing to the discussion on how amazing data can be not just for the for-profit sector but for the social sector: data can help to reinvigorate government, non-profits and others who seek to really address the real problems on the ground. Hackathons aren't a silver bullet as many have made them out to be -- we don't just need to hack "education" over a weekend to fix the problem of attendance or reading. What we need to do is legitimately look at the data we have at hand to better understand the sources of the problems we deal with in our respective sectors. DataKind charges organizations and data scientists to come together and examine specific problems through the lens of an organization's data with social impact in mind.

My talk with Jake Porway was certainly exciting and mentally invigorating. The possiblities of data are endless. From an engagement standpoint re: crowdlaw, opening data and inviting individuals to be introspective about it and providing the platforms upon which they can engage in analysis and offer feedback that can potentially provide vital feedback in the policymaking and legislation process.

Here's a short montage of our interview for your viewing pleasure!

 

 

Gov 3.0 Needs More Skeptics

By: Kevin Hansen

For my final blog post in Beth Simone Noveck's Government 3.0 course at NYU Wagner, I'm forcing myself to tackle a subject I think we may have neglected a bit this semester: the dark side of technology's influence on democracy.

Among the scholars and governments following the dramatic ways in which technology has recently been applied to government, the emphasis is most often placed on the positive. Specifically, the focus is typically on how new technologies (e.g., big data and social media) and social science advances (e.g., behavioral economics) can enable democratic instutitons to be more transparent, participatory and collaborative--ultimately allowing government to be both more legitimate (i.e., more representative of mainstream society's desires) as well as more effective (by benifitting from the expertise and volunteer service of more citizens).

On the one hand, I am an unequivocal optimist and wholeheartedly endorse focusing our energy on the potential first and the pitfalls second. The inertia of the status quo in government is hard to overestimate, so a healthy reservoir of enthusiasm for change is nothing to turn away. Moreover, given governments' contemporary budgetary pressures and major geopolitical threats (e.g., climate change, pollution, weapons of mass destruction, energy shortages), it'd be negligence to ignore the the Internet and other aforementioned advances to serve as partial panaceas.

On the other hand, history is littered with technologies--e.g., the printing press and the telephone--which similarly convinced many thinkers of their day that improved communication flow would lead to world peace. Writer and NYU Lecturer Clay Shirky comically highlights a few of these historical examples in his 2012 TED Talk: "How the Internet will (one day) transform government". 

 

However, even Shirky's talk ends on a positive note, leaving even him open to critcism for being part of this growing movement of "cyber utopians": a somewhat pejorative term used to label those with potentially unrealistic expectations for how the Internet can positively shape society. As I read through California Lt. Governor and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's recent book, Citizenville, and Steven Berlin Johnson's Future Perfect, I also couldn't help but feel like each was a little too intoxicated with optimism.
 

       

My question: where are all of the skeptics and cynics, who can help us flesh out the limitations of technology and watch for its potential drawbacks? Part of the problem is that the people most aware of this movement are probably those who have most embraced the tools that embody it. In other words, if you already love the Internet and open source software, of course you believe in the concept of peer production. Another part of the problem is that these technologies are so new and transformative that there isn't a whole lot of research supporting answers either way.

In terms of testing the potential positive impact of technology, for example, researchers are only just beginning to ask questions like, "When does more citizen participation through technology lead to better governance? What types of participation do, and what types do not? What type of technology platforms work best? What causes citizens to decide to participate?"

On the negative end of the spectrum, I am left with questions such as, "How can we prevent special interests from capturing participatory processes, when the individuals who show up are likely to be the status quo---those with the greatest stake in the outcome of such decisions? What role should government play in limiting the ways in which private companies can use citizens' data, even when those citizens content to such uses? What are the societal privacy and security-related risks of a government and its citizens conducting more of its business out in the open?

In my opinion, there aren't enough Orwellian questions being asked at this stage of the movement--not enough philosophizing about how to defeat the dark forces of power and influence that will undoubtedly war against any effort to democratize their advantages. Moreover, what to make of the authoritarian states that use such technologies to track and silence their citizenry?

Ultimately, I think it's been right to focus heavily on the promise of our society's technological advancement. Hoever, to do so at the expense of its drawbacks is similarly negligent. In the future, I think Government 3.0 would be strengthened if its students are equally aware of the views of such critics.

Next year, I hope students will be required to read darker critiques in parallel--be it the classic dystopian vision presented in 1984 by George Orwell or a modern, non-fiction work such as Evgeny Morozov's The Net Delusion. 

 

Flipping Gov 3.0: did we do it?

By: Kevin Hansen

One of the strongly-embedded principles in our learning this semester was the very much in vogue concept of "flipping the classroom" or flip teaching. According to Wikipedia (a source that is more welcome in this class than perhaps any other):

"Flip teaching (or flipped classroom) is a form of blended learning which encompasses any use of technology to leverage the learning in a classroom, so a teacher can spend more time interacting with students instead of lecturing. This is most commonly being done using teacher-created videos that students view outside of class time."

Given that flip teaching is: a) a significant component of the Gov 3.0 class experience, and b) is a philosophy that has implications for other forms of online colaboration,  the subject feels to be fair game for a blog post. As such, I ask two questions: 1) what is flip teaching, really? and 2) did we accomplish it?

The Flip Teaching Philosophy

The underlying philosophy of flip teaching is that technology makes traditional, planned lectures much less necessary. In other words, why do I still need to sit in a room just to hear a teacher deliver a canned, ninety-minute speech? If I have a video of that speech, I can watch it when it's convenient for me--even if that's 1:00 AM. Moreover, I can also pause, rewind, and skip through sections that are confusing or less helpful.

Salman Khan, Founder of Khan Academy, is flip teaching's most recognizable face. Khan Academy's innovative, gamified, video-based model, is lionized in class-relevant books like Citizenville and was heavily featured in the documentary Waiting for Superman. Khan also outlined his philosophy in a very memorable 2011 TED Talk, titled: "Let's use video to reinvent education." 

 

For me , there are a few striking features of successful flip teaching:

• High-quality resources are used to shift more learning time outside of the classroom. I'm going to admit: I like lectures. Done well, I think they can be extremely educational and memorable, and I've found that the instances in which I have interrupted a lecturer to clarify or draw out the implications of a point have been among the most important moments in my learning. In other words, if lecture is cancelled, the readings, videos, or online exercises should be sufficient to make up for it--or instructors risk leeting "flipping the classroom" becoming a euphemism for not preparing lesson plans. Effective flip teaching takes the best of what lecture has to offer and makes it on-demand.
  
  
• Classroom time is reserved only for activities that could not be done outside of class. This is easily my favorite element of the flip teaching pedagogy: time in the classroom is treated as sacred. Particularly when dealing with grown-ups, it's hard to justify bringing people together just so they can read silently. Under flip teaching, classroom time is a period in which individual questions can be clarified, discussions can be expanded, and learning can be applied. 
  
  
• Instructor feedback can be individualized. In a typical classroom, one student's question may not be relevant to most of the people sitting in the room. Under flip teaching, much of the learning happens outside of the classroom, meaning that the rest of the classroom doesn't necessarily have to sit and wait while a question is answered. If an instructor knows what each student's questions are coming in, they can respond to those questions offline or assign different lectures and follow-up readings.
  
  
• Students can mentor each other. In flip teaching, because the "lectures" happen outside of class, by the time everyone is a room together, students have a sense of whether or not they strongly grasp a concept or will struggle with it. Flip teaching can make this apparent, allowing for students well-versed in some topics to help those having troubles with the same.

Gov 3.0: Did We Do It?

Upon reflection, my answer to whether or not we accomplished it would be that we did accomplish it, albeit of course leaving some room for improvement. On the whole, particularly understanding that our peer group was the first trial run for future GovLab Academy classes, I'm very pleased with my educational experience. Coffee Haus, the Twitter back channel, the guest speakers...we had a pretty special semester. More importantly, we covered a lot of skills starkly absent from the typical public service curriculum, giving nods to modern issues like big data, open data, behavioral economics, smart disclosure and peer production.

Below are my own recommendations for next year--be sure to add yours in the comments:

• Add more high-quality resources, and reserve a little time to discuss them in lecture. On the one hand, I think we drew from a wealth of interesting and important texts. On the other, it didn't feel like there enough readings certain weeks. Even for the fantastic reads and videos, the discussion often didn't spill into the classroom. Next year, if materials aren't going to be summed up and critiqued, I'd encourage the class web page to include online forums where interested students could discuss them further.
  
  
• Create and catalogue peer produced notes on both readings and lectures.  Using hackpad as a class was a neat experience, and I think it would be similarly valuable for students to be able to have taken notes on Future Perfect, Wiki Government, Nudge and all of the other great articles, government memoranda and videos we consumed throughout the semester.
  
  
•  Incorporate more direct feedback, be it student or instructor provided. As Stefaan noted in class, the majority of market value that an education delivers is still dependent upon the credential, which is based on a collection of individual class and assignment grades. In most classes, students receive formal feedback along the way that helps them self-assess and course correct in areas where they're not learning at a pace that aligns with the instructor's expectations. In Gov 3.0, I have yet to receive a graded assignment--I'm not saying I'm worried, but if I were committing fatal mistakes, it's much harder to fix them when the semester is already over. Even from a skills development perspective, advice on how to be a better blogger, which is certainly appreciated at the end of the course, would have been even more valuable along the way given that I'd be forced to apply those lessons on future blog posts. 

All in all, I had a wonderful semester--one in which I was really awed by the skills, intelligence and humor of my peers. Y'all are some special folks, and I wish each of you the best in the future. Thanks for a great course.

 

GovPedia take 2

"Only some people know how to find the data now, and they're mostly investigative reporters" 

@JoelGurin talked about making data accessible, and I think along with accessibility needs to go interactivity.  If people were able to visualize the data in a more interactive manner, or tangibly see results in their communities based on their interactions with the data, they would feel more involved in the process.  When people feel a part of a process, I believe they are more likely to trust that process.  Or at least, take ownership and responsibility for that process. 

A project like Map Kibera allows citizens to map their neighborhoods.  The maps shows their community from their perspective, not the perspective of an overseeing entity.  If a process like this could be used to generate data that government agencies could use to map issues and keep people updated as to how they were working towards solving those issues, then you create a system of active data and active civic participation.  How you generate the data is just as important as what you do with it. 

In his lecture, Joel brought up a chart identifying 5 stakeholders who need to be connected: data holders (government), application developers (tech), consumers (average citizen), industry (product), and subject matter experts.  He argued that we need to find ways to bring these stakeholders together to create a better flow of information.  The arrows between government, citizens, and industry is the triangle I think we should focus on, with subject experts and developers sprinkled in the connections. 

Maybe we need an OrgPedia for government agencies.  A place where people could filter through various agencies, see what processes are currently happening, places they could involve themselves, and create an interactive directory.  People could map their interactions within an agency, to allow other citizens to navigate through a governmental agency. 

If government agencies were able to attach a singular person as a point of contact, people would be far more receptive to interacting with that agency.  In my experience working for a NYC agency, most people I encountered just had no idea who to talk to.  I spent 3 years connecting people to different agents around the City, most of the time just by pulling up someone's public number that was buried underneath a hard to navigate government website.  If there was a clear, easy to use website or app - like OrgPedia - for government agencies, then people could reach out and develop those relationships that are being forgotten about.  Two way communication is the key in every arrow we draw from one stakeholder to the next.

Opening Number 10 Downing Street

By: Kevin Hansen

Six months ago, my colleague Sean Brooks and I had the fortunate experience of attending a meeting at  10 Downing Street, official residence and office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom--i.e., the British White House.

Due to security concerns, guests of No. 10 are not allowed to take their cell phones or laptops into meetings. Instead, you have to leave them in one of a bunch of wooden cubby holes that look sort of like this:

For me, less important than the meeting’s specific conversation was its use of technology. Our GovLab team (then operating under the moniker “Opening Government”) was looking to make a statement about how technology could enable more transparency and collaboration in governance. As a result, I was asked to write a special request to the Prime Minister’s information technology and social media staff. In it, I stressed both the principle and value of enabling social media use during the meeting.

On principle, it would be pretty ironic (not to mention hypocritical) for a group called “Opening Government” to have a meeting at No. 10 and have it be cloaked in secrecy. In terms of value, it would be pretty cool if people anywhere in the world could join our conversation, and it would certainly help amplify our future audience (i.e., Twitter followers).

A bit to our surprise, the Prime Minister’s staff honored the request. The social media team was actually thrilled by the opportunity--it sounded like they too were hoping to practice more citizen engagement, and we presented the perfect excuse for them to convince the security staff to allow it. Helping our cause, security was less of a concern that day (the Prime Minister was absent) and the meeting itself, though featuring several current and former executive officials, bore no direct connection to the political leadership (presumably reducing the resultant political embarrassment of any hiccups).

The outcome of this request was the first web-enabled meeting in the history of 10 Downing Street. The Number 10 team set us up with a temporary wireless network (charmingly named “welcomeopengov” and a couple of projector screens, which we hooked up to live Twitter feeds (see below).

With the Twitter board operational and many members of the group tweeting at #openinggov, something really awesome happened---the conversation around the table started branching off into multiple conversations online. There was the in-person conversation, to be sure, but some of the more interesting things being said were happening on Twitter--by both people sitting at the table and people sitting in their homes and offices. It was especially fun to see the perplexed look on someone’s face as they saw someone tweeting responses to the statements they'd made (many of which we were quoting and tweeting out from @OpeningGov) in near real-time.

In addition to being a cool story, I take a few things away from this experience:

1. Most governments really do want to engage more with their citizens. After all, the closer they are to the pulse of what their voters want, and the more they make their voters feel listened to, the more likely they are to stay in power.
   
   
2. Government’s fear of embarrassment and failure can be paralyzing. An elected official even creating a social media account used to be radical. Politicians are so used to gotcha journalism and negative campaigning that they fear openness. The logic goes like this: if I carefully control what becomes public, I can make sure that my constituents only see my best side. If I make everything public, I am simply giving my opponents and the press more ammunition to fire at me. Something so basic as letting people use Twitter during a meeting can become an ideological moat.
   
   
3. We need to give governments more permission to fail. The cynic in me says that the press and opposing political figures will continue to use transparent disclosures of unflattering information and failures against them. As a result...
   
   
4. Governments need to adequately communicate this dilemma. How can governments more clearly communicate their dilemma: carefully launch ten successful initiatives, or quickly launch one hundred initiatives--only eighty of which are successful? On the road to success, the fastest drivers are those who can tolerate the most speed pumps. Until the public is more comfortable with failure, government might as well call new initiatives “pilots”, “tests”, and “experiments”, which help set expectations and minimize backlash.
    

Our meeting at Number 10 wasn't exactly lawmaking, but it was a conversation about governance, and opening it up to the public certainly made it more participatory. Moreover, aside from the predictable trolling, we did get our share of retweets and we did achieve a significant degree of engagement.

For a roundup of the action, you can check out our Storify.

Bringing Sexy Back To Corporate Data

By: Alexandros Hatzakis (alexhatz.info | @alexandroshatz)

The stories are true. The hype is real. Data is what's sexy in every sector of our economy (from the scientists at Target building predictive models to better advertise (and sell) prenatal consumer goods to the accelerometer pothole detection in the pockets of the citizenry). Collecting, amassing and interpreting data is the purported "silver bullet" for building insights about and addressing various problems. Even with data and it's manipulation on the rise, there are still concerns about whether the government (the largest creator, collector and manager of data) is releasing enough of it. Luckily, we (a small team from NYU's Wagner School seen here) have the chance to open another potentially telling segment of data with two champions: the Delaware Division of Corporations and the U.K. Companies House. The data we are talking about is corporate registration data. On face value, it's not that sexy. In combination with other relevant data sets, the information can be magical. Let's paint a picture of how corporate registration data is created, stored and distributed:

Ok! I watched the short presentation. I still have questions. How does it work?

Well, you, as a law-abiding, business interested citizen can start your own business entity to support your current (and future) business activity. The options here are end-less and if you have significant questions, consult an attorney (or LegalZ00m). Things you have to decide include: 1. Business name; 2. Officers and Directors; 3. Dissolution details; and, 4. Common Stock offering (dependent on the type of entity). You complete the paperwork, submit said paperwork with fee in hand (electronically, by mail, in-person) and wait. If all is well, you are now the rightful owner of a business entity in the State of your choosing. Ok. Now that we're done with you (you dashing, bright energetic business entity owner) the question is where does your data go? Part of it gets entered electronically into a database in a machine-readable format while the balance is stored in image format (think TIF or PDF). Sometimes it's accessed by interested parties as a matter of "public record" (accessible but no defined principle as to how, stay tuned for another article on this) and other times it's sold to third-party business intel groups who go through the arduous task of converting nearly any and all pertinent information to a machine-readable format. They assemble the various data and develop insight products that can help individuals build small business prospects, understand whether they are going to be paid on time, evaluate debt and reliability of future business partners, and the list goes on.

Sounds good, right? What else can corporate registration data do?

That's the multi-million dollar question. Our team is talking with experts and practitioners from all over: foundations, business intelligence, third party registrars, corporate registrars, academics, non-profits...and the list goes on. We've been connecting all the various stakeholder viewpoints together to begin to assemble what is possible, why its possible and what the value is in doing so. We've heard how corporate registration data helps to connect some of the puzzle pieces that make up the complicated corporate landscape and the importance of building this understanding to combat fraud and money laundering.

We're now in the process of putting this together but still need more input and insight. We need readers like you (and your friends, family, other interested parties, dogs, cats, beloved plants, etc.) to get involved and help us explore the factors at play to develop meaningful suggestions.

The ask is small, the cause is great. The question of what corporate registration data is one of multi-million dollar proportions:

• it affects the corporate registrars who maintain the data;
• it affects the global landscape with respect to mysterious shell companies that exist merely to perpetrate fraud and launder money;
• it affects private citizens (advocates, academics, common Joe/Jane) who stand to be better informed about the companies they consume services from and what those companies investments and ownership looks like; and,
• the list goes on...

Interested in joining the liberation of corp data? Watch the recruitment video below:

 

Volunteer #Computing + #Bitcoin Mining = Profit & Good?

By: Alexandros Hatzakis (alexhatz.info | @alexandroshatz)

We discussed w/ Francois Gray, of http://www.itp.nyu.edu/itp/people/people.php?id=3273&group=All&page=H, concepts concerning citizen science and the various ways in which the internet has enabled individuals in becoming engaged in creating new bodies of science. With regard to volunteer computing, the concept of gamification came up. Volunteers find pride in earning points for the magnitude of their computing/processing power and its contribution to solving various problems or crunching numbers.

Take the example of SETI@Home:  the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) @Home via a downloadable screensaver that engages the host computer in computation was great at the time of its release. One approach, known as radio SETI, uses radio telescopes to listen for narrow-bandwidth radio signals from space. Such signals are not known to occur naturally, so a detection would provide evidence of extraterrestrial technology.

Previous radio SETI projects have used special-purpose supercomputers, located at the telescope, to do the bulk of the data analysis. In 1995, David Gedye proposed doing radio SETI using a virtual supercomputer composed of large numbers of Internet-connected computers, and he organized the SETI@home project to explore this idea. SETI@home was originally launched in May 1999.

This signal has been found twice by folks using the downloadable screen saver. That fact resulted in the UC Berkeley team putting it on their list of 'best candidates'. Keep in mind that SETI@home produces 15 million signal reports each day. 

Taking the above example, is there some way to build a shared process whereby a portion of computing power is committed to solving/crunching problems/numbers and another portion of the power is committed to bitcoin mining. Then perhaps, the bitcoins secured by the group attempting to solve a complicated problem with a social focus then also raise funds to support research in other domains outside the computational space.

Those who share their processing power also stand to gain the benefit of potentially completing a bitcoin hash that gets equally distributed amongst the hive/node/mining group. That way, they are contributing to a larger social good but also potentially earning something that they can in turn use in online exchanges, etc. It'd be nominal as those who are hardcore bitcoin miners have serious setups involving top-of-the-line GPUs to get hashes faster as the bitcoin market is regulated.

 

Generate good knowledge while generating coins for good? I think its an interesting prospect without a doubt.

Plotting Yourself

As I reflect on this past semester, the discussions we've had about data - what to do with it, who can do what, where does it come from; the discussions about technology's place and use in today's world - what do we understand, how complicated can we make something before nobody uses it; the discussions about how to redesign processes that have never been redesigned before, how to intervene into systems never thought to be broken, how to re-engineer the plane while we're flying it, as @bethnoveck says. 

As I think about all of these run-on, incomplete sentences, I think back to a design practice taught to me while taking a course at ITP.  Jorge Just @jorgej and Chris Fabian @unickf taught us an exercise best used at the beginning stages of designing your idea.  Draw out a graph, just like you did in 7th grade math class, and on the X axis you chart "local" to "international."  On the Y axis, you're looking at "low tech" to "high tech." 

Think of your current idea.  That idea that you know is going to change the world.  Plot it on your map.  Where does it fall? 

 

 

Feel free to use my map as your starting point.  This sketch, for those following along at home, would probably be plotted on the bottom left corner, maybe a little higher up on the Y axis since it's a white board.  A paper and pen would be lower tech.  But it is extremely local, since it's in my apartment (also, yes, I white boarded part of my wall, something I recommend to everyone).

How would I scale that up and move it along each axis?  A chart that's on a computer would go higher on the tech side.  But if it's my computer, still stay local.  However, by putting this picture on this blog, it's now wider spread and thus less local.  So it spreads on the X axis.  If there was an app to chart things, that would move even farther in both directions. 

The point is to reimagine your idea in both directions.  What I've found to be true is that a good idea can move in any direction on this map.  It's all about how you want to intervene in the world.  The design world uses the world intervention, which I personally adore because it means you're causing a ruckus but in a good way.  Before you do, think about where on this graph you're intervening.  Then think about what it would be like all the way to the left.  Then the right.  I promise you'll think of new problems and eventually new solutions in your designs of programs and experiments and ideas. 

By: Asher Novek

Put the (e)Mailroom of the U.S. Congress Online

After spending my last blog post ruminating on how open data could improve New York City’s taxicab industry, I’m tasked this week with applying social media to the crowdsourcing of citizen input into the legislative process. Specifically, this post is about how to increase the role of the public in setting the U.S. legislative agenda by categorizing, aggregating and publishing data on citizens’ communication efforts with different Members of Congress.

Background: from One-to-Many to Many-to-Many. Historically, as has been widely acknowledged, the advent of the Internet is fueling the disruption of the “one-to-many” communication models of our past. As an example, in the past, one publisher like The New York Times would deliver the same newspaper to the doors of its many millions of subscribers. Today, we see social-media enabled “many-to-many” communication models in which many individuals become publishers (either by re-sharing content or by creating their own) with “many” potential audience members--in other words, audience members are all now publishers, and publishers are all now audiences. When I refer to social media, I thus broadly refer to the communication phenomenon of the masses communicating back and forth with the masses, as opposed to exclusively reaching large numbers of people through central publishers.

Many-to-Many Governance. In the U.S., as abroad, steps have been taken to increasingly shift the one-to-many authority of government into many-to-many collaborations for governance. One example of this shift is Madison, a tool created by the Open Gov Foundation that lets citizens add their comments to proposed Congressional legislation or collaboratively co-create their own legislation. Acceptance of volunteer-drafted legislation has yet to take off, but the power of large-scale, many-to-many collaboration can be seen in the open source software revolution and in the proliferation of crowdsourced systems like Wikipedia. To be sure, society still needs some platform (currently, representative democracy) to make the values-based decisions necessary to choose among competing priorities and protect the public good from private interests, and California’s struggles with direct democracy advise caution. Still, from an information standpoint, the submission of more ideas and perspectives from a wider array of citizens can only make us smarter.

Another step forward in many-to-many legislative collaboration is We the People, an online initiative of the Obama administration that promises an official White House response to any online petition signed by a threshold number of U.S. citizens. Sure, few petitions have resulted in a real policy change. In fact, most receive no response. But even among those whose petitions had no change, a surprising 78% surveyed found the response from the administration helpful, while 90% indicated that they were likely to create or sign another petition. Simply by showing citizens it’s listening, even when it doesn’t agree, government can make citizens feel more engaged. According to Tech President's Micah L. Sifry:

"Roughly two to three percent of [We the People's qualified petitioners surveyed responded], and by and large their comments were positive--even if they had just been told why their petition had been rejected. Nearly nine in ten said they would create or sign another petition, 78% said the response from the administration was helpful to hear, and half said they learned something new."

 

(Sample infographic from We the People, via WhiteHouse.gov)

A citizen reaching out to the U.S. Congress should have an experience that mirrors We the People. At the Congressional level, much of citizen-to-government communication still takes place through letters, e-mails, and phone calls, most of which simply enter the black boxes of congressional mailrooms where they are tallied and responded to by low-level staffers and interns. An elected official may feel like they get a better pulse of their citizenry, but the rest of the country remains unenlightened.

Opening the (e)Mailroom. The pitch: why not create a platform through which citizens could monitor what other citizens are communicating to Members of Congress? In the same way that We the People transparently allows the public to see how many signatures different petitions get, and where the signees reside, what if citizens could also see how many letters different Members of Congress are receiving, and what topics each letter mentioned?

(Sample geographic dispersion of secession-related petitions, via Tech President)

Congressional offices already tally the number of phone calls, emails and letters they get by topic, so from an operational standpoint, the idea of standardizing that categorization and aggregating the results shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. As a starting point, the easiest way to track, aggregate, and publish this information would probably be to put in place automatic e-mail scanning software, which would eliminate the need for staff to spend any extra time on this activity. Such software could be used to generate aggregate data tracking the number of times e-mails mentionedkey search terms (e.g., “guns” or “immigration”) individuals/organizations (e.g., “Eric Holder” or “DOJ”), and items of legislation or policy (e.g., “CISPA” or “Obamacare”). If not automatically filtered, citizens could also log into a third party portal to send their email, opting in to the content of their emails being made public.

Ultimately, one could imagine a portal that provided information on the volume of e-mails received by each Member’s office, coded with:

• Tags for each key topic mentioned (to plot absolute and relative interest)
• Dates (to show time trends)
• Media sources (to eventually break out telephone and social media posts)
• Geographic location (to plot by Member districts, possibly using IP addresses as locational proxies)
• Number of unique senders of emails (to separately analyze repeat-mailers, using individual email addresses and/or IP addresses as proxies)

The point of tracking and publishing such information would be to gauge citizens’ interest in various public policy topics, with the goal of improving the power of citizens to shape the national legislative agenda. Citizens’ ability to influence Congress’ legislative agenda would be improved in the following ways:

• Distinguishing between local, state and national citizen agendi. Members of Congress and the public would see which topics were primarily concerns of constituents living in individual districts, versus those topics that had broader levels of state and national interest. Plotting this data on a map would allow for better geographic targeting of public awareness campaigns, and enhance efforts to win hearts and minds.
  
  
• Gauging the relative level of interest in a topic across different Member districts. Members of Congress and the public would see how interest in a topic varied across different members’ constituencies, providing valuable intelligence and leverage in determining the likely stakeholders and persuadables of a particular bill.
  
  
• Measuring citizen interest in topics across time. As compared with a poll,  the level of interest in a topic could be plotted over time to evaluate the immediacy of certain issues.
  
  
• Tracking overall citizen engagement via email over time. Interesting trends would undoubtedly emerge with regards to when and where citizens choose to send emails.
  
  
• Empowering citizens to recognize disconnects between legislators’ actions and their advocacy. A system as described above would be one more data point for plotting disconnects between citizen advocacy and their representatives’ votes. Moreover, as opposed to an opinion poll, which is an indication of passive belief, such a system would represent acts taken by citizens. If citizens sent thousands of emails with the phrases “require gun background checks”, they likely would feel more outraged if their representative failed to take action, increasing the political price of a representative disobeying their constituents. At present, citizens merely know that their letter was sent--what if they knew exactly how many thousands of others had been, too?

Undoubtedly, some will oppose this initiative over privacy fears. But private e-mails are already sitting on public servers--is the idea of aggregating them and noting how many e-mails contained the word “Obamacare” really that scary? If successful, putting e-mail data online would undoubtedly open other doors. As artificial intelligence advances, the public might be able to see even more insights into the content of the letters--what percent of e-mails were positive vs. negative, or how passionately the author argued their case, for example. Here, recent efforts by Google and Twitter give us a peek at this emerging field known as “sentiment analysis”

Moreover, citizens don’t even need Congress’ approval to start implementing such a system. Someone could just build a third party website where citizens’ emails would be forwarded to Congress after securing the author’s approval.Citizens could tag their own e-mails, and share the fact that they had just sent an email on Facebook--proudly showing their friends how civically active they are. As distinct from a petition site, this sort of system could be designed for customized emails, not form letters, and collect more data on citizen responses.

Ultimately, in many ways, social media is changing the nature of information-sharing by shifting more power from the center to the crowd. As it evolves, it may increasingly make communications such as e-mail and phone calls obsolete. Still, in the meantime--and beyond--building a system to collect and analyze data about citizen-to-government communication would bring us toward a more truly citizen-driven democracy.