Crowd-Sourcing – Page 38 – Public Intelligence Blog

jf lisee — Jean-Francoise Lisee
Quebec Foreign Minister

USE Google Translate (top of middle column above) to read in other languages.

Libre-échange: Et si on essayait la transparence ?

Le BLogue de Jean-Francois Lisee

Publie le 2 octobru 2012

Au moment où vous lisez ces lignes, une cinquantaine d’invitations sont en train d’arriver chez des membres de la société civile: organisations de citoyens, syndicales, d’entreprises, chez des chercheurs, des journalistes spécialisés. des élus du gouvernement et de l’opposition.

Ils sont invités par mon collègue des Finances Nicolas Marceau et moi-même à un exercice de transparence.

Au cours des prochaines semaines, la négociation visant un accord de libre-échange dit de « nouvelle génération » entre le Canada et l’Europe pourrait arriver à destination. Fortement initié par l’ex Premier ministre Jean Charest, l’accord a été négocié depuis deux ans dans une relative opacité, soulevant craintes et grincements de la part de plusieurs, y compris de l’opposition péquiste.

Ouvrir les fenêtres

Continue reading “Jean-Francois Lisee: Quebec Example of Transparent Public Governance”

2012/10/032012/10/03

Tom Atlee: Collective Thinking About Public Affairs

Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Economics/True Cost, Innovation, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy, Politics

Collective thinking about public affairs

(NOTE: In this essay I intentionally subsume the thinking processes of official decision-makers into the thinking processes of the citizenry as a whole. I realize that official decision-makers can and do make decisions independently of the will of the people, unless that public will is united and organized. But elite decisions made independently of the public do not qualify as “public thinking” – at least in any democratic sense – and in this essay I am attempting to explore the nature of public thinking so that it can be upgraded and empowered to impact public policy. So here we will look at the thinking processes of the entire population and mini-publics thereof as they go about living a relatively democratic life.)

How can we think clearly about the collective thinking processes of a whole population in a democracy? How do populations reflect on public issues and come to conclusions about collective action and public policy? What follows is one framework for sorting out the different dimensions of public thinking and the quality of that thinking process.

Atlee Public Wisdom Circles — Click on Image to Enlarge

The most basic form of public thinking is, of course, what goes on in the minds of individual citizens as they think about public affairs. We see manifestations of this – commonly called “public opinion” – in polls, in voting, in online “citizen input” sites, and in various other visible forms of citizenship that reflect the opinions of individual citizens in the population as a whole.

Public opinion evolves in a message-rich environment that includes – at the next higher level of public thinking – news media and commentaries from pundits and partisans, on talk shows and blogs, and in online forums, letters to the editor, and public hearings. This public thinking often takes the form of mediated or witnessed conversations: Diverse (often polarized) voices express their views to each other while being directly or indirectly witnessed by the public. Our society depends heavily on this kind of media-driven interaction to collectively reflect on its public issues and shape the views of its citizens and decision-makers.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Collective Thinking About Public Affairs”

2012/09/202012/09/20

DefDog: Bottom Up Sharing of Books – A New Model?

Crowd-Sourcing, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy

Further to the comment on Owl's previous post, “displacing the advertising model of book publishers; and those who pay for localized printing will be incentivized to donate the books to their local library….” it may be that the official libraries, too few and limited as they are, will be displaced as well.

The man who turned his home into a public library

By Kate McGeown

BBC News, Manila, 19 September 2012

If you put all the books you own on the street outside your house, you might expect them to disappear in a trice. But one man in Manila tried it – and found that his collection grew.

Hernando Guanlao is a sprightly man in his early 60s, with one abiding passion – books.

They're his pride and joy, which is just as well because, whether he likes it or not, they seem to be taking over his house.

Guanlao, known by his nickname Nanie, has set up an informal library outside his home in central Manila, to encourage his local community to share his joy of reading.

The idea is simple. Readers can take as many books as they want, for as long as they want – even permanently. As Guanlao says: “The only rule is that there are no rules.”

It's a policy you might assume would end very quickly – with Mr Guanlao having no books at all.

But in fact, in the 12 years he's been running his library – or, in his words, his book club – he's found that his collection has grown rather than diminished, as more and more people donate to the cause.

Read full article with photos.

2012/09/112012/09/11

Yoda: Mind-Mapping Advances–Listening Does Not

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Crowd-Sourcing, Government, IO Impotency, IO Mapping, P2P / Panarchy

yoda with light saber — Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Behold the Awesome Science of Mind-Mapping An Instructionalicious Guide

Mindmapping is a very serious and well researched subject, or art … or something . Whatever it is a map of the mind is definately something to be valued and this ‘instructionalicious' guide is no exception. Allow this infographic to simultaneously blow and map your mind.

DuckDucklGo Mind-Mapping

Phi Beta Iota: Tens of billions of dollars are being spent on covert surveillance including the recording of all emails, telephone conversations, and other forms of exchange, but most of this is not being processed. Worse, it is not being processed toward making sense in the public interest. It is one thing to focus on the needle in the haystack threat warning. It is quite another to focus on harnessing the distributed intelligence of the public. That will be the next big leap for “national intelligence.”

2012/09/102012/09/10

Michel Bauwens: Sustainable Societies, True Cost Economics, and Appropriate Governance

Crowd-Sourcing, Economics/True Cost, Innovation, Knowledge, Money, P2P / Panarchy

220px-Michel_Bauwens_crop — Michel Bauwens

“The “Principled Societies” concept outlined in the book Creating Sustainable Societies is a blueprint for sustainable financial, economic, and governance systems, intended for local implementation. The book starts by pinpointing the central problems within our financial, economic, and governance systems that have lead to high unemployment, massive debt, environmental degradation, mistrust of Congress and big business, and hyper-inequities of wealth and political power. It then proposes a practical, bold plan for addressing these concerns and creating meaningful change.

EXTRACT: From the Foreword, by Bernard Lietaer:

“I have spent the past 30 years studying monetary systems, both conventional and innovative. During this time, I have written more than a dozen books, have spoken to thousands of audiences around the world, and have taught in half a dozen universities in the United States and Europe. Everywhere, I find dissatisfaction and hunger for a breakthrough to another way of working, of cooperating, of contributing. People are eager for change and are awake to the need for change, even if most public officials, constrained by politics or timidity, appear incapable of rising to the challenges of our time.

In distilling the results of my investigations, I arrived at the sad conclusion that the missing piece in all our monetary arrangements is appropriate governance. This is true for both the official money system (the Federal Reserve and all other central banks in the world) and innovative systems of complementary currencies. This missing piece is what John Boik brings to the table. At first glance, his proposal might appear to center on a complementary currency system, but more accurately it centers on appropriate governance. On the one hand, it proposes a means for collaborative direct democracy as applied to finance, corporate behavior, and social organization: the “Principled Society.” On the other, the very mechanics of the proposed monetary and corporate model, including its transparency, are a manifestation of democratic ideals.”

Wiki Outline of Book . Amazon Page for Book

2012/09/022012/09/04

Michel Bauwens: Fractional Scholarship

Access, Crowd-Sourcing, Economics/True Cost, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy

White Paper on Fractional Scholarship

So, I've been working with the incomparable Sam Arbesman to write up some thoughts on the concept of “fractional scholarship.” Basically, the idea is that there are a lot of people out there who have the expertise and the interest to contribute to scholarly research, but for whom, for whatever reason, the seventy-hour-a-week academic lifestyle just doesn't work. We need to develop mechanisms that will allow people to participate in research at ten, twenty, or thirty hours a week, and to get paid for doing it.

Obviously, someone working only ten hours a week would get paid a lot less than a university professor, which is part of what makes this such a powerful model. Keep in mind that a typical university professor probably does not spend much more that ten hours a week actually doing research anyway, what with all the personnel-management and bureaucratic tasks that take up so much of their time.

Basically, all the people out there (and there are tens of thousands of them) who got a PhD, but then dropped out of academia (e.g., to have kids) represent a vast underutilized intellectual resource that is trading well below its actual value. Tapping in to that resource is one of the things that we hope to do with the Ronin Institute.

Check out the full white paper at the Kauffman Foundation website, here. [Also Below]

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2012/08/072012/08/07

Patrick Meier: Traditional vs. Crowdsourced Election Monitoring: Which Has More Impact?

Crowd-Sourcing, Geospatial

Traditional vs. Crowdsourced Election Monitoring: Which Has More Impact?

Max Grömping makes a significant contribution to the theory and discourse of crowdsourced election monitoring in his excellent study: “Many Eyes of Any Kind? Comparing Traditional and Crowdsourced Monitoring and their Contribu-tion to Democracy” (PDF). This 25-page study is definitely a must-read for anyone interested in this topic. That said, Max paints a false argument when he writes: “It is believed that this new methodology almost magically improves the quality of elections […].” Perhaps tellingly, he does not reveal who exactly believes in this false magic. Nor does he cite who subscribes to the view that ”[…] crowdsourced citizen reporting is expected to have significant added value for election observation—and by extension for democracy.”

My doctoral dissertation focused on the topic of crowdsourced election observa-tion in countries under repressive rule. At no point in my research or during interviews with activists did I come across this kind of superficial mindset or opinion. In fact, my comparative analysis of crowdsourced election observation showed that the impact of these initiatives was at best minimal vis-a-vis electoral accountability—particularly in the Sudan. That said, my conclusions do align with Max’s principle findings: “the added value of crowdsourcing lies mainly in the strengthening of civil society via a widened public sphere and the accumulation of social capital with less clear effects on vertical and horizontal accountability.”

Read full post with screen shots.