An iRevolution reader very kindly pointed me to this excellent conceptual study: “The Theory of Crowd Capital”. The authors’ observations and insights resonate with me deeply given my experience in crowdsourcing digital humanitarian response. Over two years ago, I published this blog post in which I wrote that, “The value of Crisis Mapping may at times have less to do with the actual map and more with the conversations and new collaborative networks catalyzed by launching a Crisis Mapping project. Indeed, this in part explains why the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) exists in the first place.” I was not very familiar with the concept of social capital at the time, but that’s precisely what I was describing. I’ve since written extensively about the very important role that social capital plays in disaster resilience and digital humanitarian response. But I hadn’t taken the obvious next step: “Crowd Capital.”
Both humanitarian and development organizations are completely unprepared to deal with the rise of “Big Crisis Data” & “Big Development Data.” But many still hope that Big Data is but an illusion. Not so, as I’ve already blogged here, here and here. This explains why I’m on a quest to tame the Big Data Beast. Enter Zooniverse. I’ve been a huge fan of Zooniverse for as long as I can remember, and certainly long before I first mentioned them in this post from two years ago. Zooniverse is a citizen science platform that evolved from GalaxyZoo in 2007. Today, Zooniverse “hosts more than a dozen projects which allow volunteers to participate in scientific research” (1). So, why do I have a major “techie crush” on Zooniverse?
Oh let me count the ways. Zooniverse interfaces are absolutely gorgeous, making them a real pleasure to spend time with; they really understand user-centered design and motivations. The fact that Zooniverse is conversent in multiple disciplines is incredibly attractive. Indeed, the platform has been used to produce rich scientific data across multiple fields such as astronomy, ecology and climate science. Furthermore, this citizen science beauty has a user-base of some 800,000 registered volunteers—with an average of 500 to 1,000 new volunteers joining every day! To place this into context, the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF), a digital humanitarian group has about 1,000 volunteers in total. The open source Zooniverse platform also scales like there’s no tomorrow, enabling hundreds of thousands to participate on a single deployment at any given time. In short, the software supporting these pioneering citizen science projects is well tested and rapidly customizable.
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One of the most attractive features of many microtasking platforms such as Zooniverse is quality control. Think of slot machines. The only way to win big is by having three matching figures such as the three yellow bells in the picture above (righthand side). Hit the jackpot and the coins will flow. Get two out three matching figures (lefthand side), and some slot machines may toss you a few coins for your efforts. Microtasking uses the same approach. Only if three participants tag the same picture of a galaxy as being a spiral galaxy does that data point count. (Of course, you could decide to change the requirement from 3 volunteers to 5 or even 20 volunteers). This important feature allows micro-tasking initiatives to ensure a high standard of data quality, which may explain why many Zooniverse projects have resulted in major scientific break-throughs over the years.
Winston Maike (RIP) was the earliest adopter of the OSS.Net concepts and contributed in many ways over the years from 1993 onwards. He corrected the Latin in the first motto, E Vertiate Potens (From Truth, We the People Are Made Powerful), and was the principal mind and drafter of the Earth Intelligence Network topic summaries and forecasts, offered below, as well as the consolidator of headlines across all 30 topics that were then distilled into a weekly report, one sample of which is provided below.
We are loading all of the top cited authors, top centers of excellence with web sites, and forecasts, at the original Earth Intelligence Network website, which is offered as a humble example of one very low-cost approach to thinking about the future as a whole.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US economy created 236,000 new jobs in February. If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I’ll let you have at a good price.
Then there are 23,700 new jobs in retail trade, which is hard to believe considering the absence of consumer income growth and the empty parking lots at shopping malls.
By offshoring manufacturing and professional service jobs, US corporations destroyed the growth of consumer income, the basis of the US economy, leaving the bulk of the population mired in debt. Deregulation was used to concentrate income and wealth in fewer hands and financial firms in corporations “too big to fail,” removing financial corporations from market discipline and forcing taxpayers in the US and Europe to cover bankster losses. Click for Amazon Page.
The real puzzle is 20,800 jobs in motion picture and sound recording industries. This is the first time in the years that I have been following the jobs reports that there has been enough employment for me to even notice this category.
The BLS lists 10,900 jobs in accounting and bookkeeping, which, as it is approaching income tax time, is probably correct; 21,000 jobs in temporary help and business support services; 39,000 jobs in health care and social assistance; and 18,800 jobs in the old standby–waitresses and bartenders.
That leaves about 50,000 jobs sprinkled around the various categories, but not in numbers large enough to notice.
The presstitute media attributed the drop in the headline unemployment rate (U3) to 7.7% from 7.9% to the happy jobs report. But Rex Nutting at Market Watch says that the unemployment rate fell because 130,000 unemployed people who have been unable to find a job and became discouraged were dropped out of the U3 measure of unemployment. The official U6 measure which counts some discouraged workers shows an unemployment rate of 14.3%. Statistician John Williams’ measure, which counts all discourage workers (people who have ceased looking for a job), is 23%.
In other words, the real rate of unemployment is 2 to 3 times the reported rate.
Nutting believes that the U3 unemployment rate has become too politicized to have any meaning. He suggests using instead the work force participation rate. This rate is falling substantially, reflecting the discouragement that occurs from inability to find jobs.
John Williams (shadowstats.com) says that distortions in seasonal factor adjustments overstate monthly payroll employment by about 100,000 jobs. The jobs data that is not seasonally adjusted shows about 1.5 million fewer jobs in the economy.
In a recent communication, statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that the rigged official annual rate of consumer inflation (CPI) of 1.6% is in fact, as measured by the official US government methodology of 1990, 9.2%. In other words, the rate of inflation is 5.75 times greater than the reported rate. If Williams is correct, the interest rate on bonds is extremely negative.
Couple Uses Massive Lottery Payout to Build Community Infrastructure
By John Robb
Here's a great story.
Mark and Cindy Hill, from Dearborn, Missouri, recently won a quarter billion dollar lottery payout. What makes them different from the typically lottery winner is that it doesn't look like they will spontaneously combust due to excessive consumption. Instead, from all accounts, they plan to continue to live modestly and will continue the small town routines that they currently enjoy. As smart as that is, what makes Mark and Cindy really different is that they plan to invest their money in community infrastructure. Here's what they are putting their money into the following:
A new fire station with better highway access.
A ball field for local kids.
A sewer treatment plant.
I liked this story a lot. It got me thinking about what I would community improvements I'd invest in if I had a boatload of extra cash to do so. I'd do things a bit differently than Mark and Cindy. My investments would be in productive, 21st century infrastructure. The type of infrastructure a community needs to have in order to prosper in the future.
What would that include? Here's some of suggestions I've covered recently:
I've got LOTs more. Lots of ways to enable people to do more locally while connecting to the world to find out how. Thing is, it doesn't take winning the lottery to build this infrastructure. Almost everything I've listed is something that can be done relatively inexpensively as a bootstrap. What would be on your list?
You are cordially invited to attend the 2013 Organizational Learning, Knowledge and Capabilities conference (OLKC) April 25-27, 2013 in Washington, D.C., USA. The OLKC annual conference provides a meeting point for those interested in the field and offers an excellent opportunity for leading scholars, young researchers, and scholar-practitioners to profit from discussion and lively exchange of ideas related to their theory, research and practice. Approximately 200 participants from all over the world are expected to attend this conference. The venue of the conference will be located at the GWU historic Foggy Bottom Campus in the heart of Washington, DC.
Keynote Speaker
We are pleased to announce our keynote speaker: Dr. Barbara Czarniawska. Dr. Czarniawska is Professor and Chair of Management Studies at Gothenburg Research Institute, School of Business, Economics and Law.
Theme
The theme of the OLKC 2013 Conference is: Translation, Transition & Transmission. The theme builds upon scholarly conversations around the dimensions of social knowledge and learning including translation, or how we interpret knowledge, transition, which involves evolution and recombination processes, and transmission, the dissemination and diffusion of knowledge across time and space. These dimensions of learning assist us in framing and exploring three key questions: how do we relate to each other, how do we know, and how do we socially integrate. This scholarly exploration has the potential to further serve as a foundation for translational research and transdisciplinary lines of inquiry to advance theory and research on social knowledge and learning and its impact on practice.
WHAT DO “WISE DEMOCRACY” AND POWERFUL DIALOGUE AND DELIBERATION PROCESSES HAVE TO DO WITH PEERNESS?
P2P systems generate self-organization out of similarities and power equity: People eagerly move into productive/enjoyable relationships because of passions or needs they share with similar others when their interactions are not unduly hindered by arbitrary power-over dynamics. These relationships form naturally, needing little if any management and only simple forums to facilitate the connections.
Tom Atlee:
“There is a seeming contradiction between p2p systems and the approaches to wise democracy that I've been advocating.
P2P systems generate self-organization out of similarities and power equity: People eagerly move into productive/enjoyable relationships because of passions or needs they share with similar others when their interactions are not unduly hindered by arbitrary power-over dynamics. These relationships form naturally, needing little if any management and only simple forums to facilitate the connections.
Certain high quality group processes generate collective wisdom out of diverse people who may or may not have diverse levels of power in hierarchical systems: Such people need to be consciously brought together because they are normally and willingly separate. We actively seek people with different views, interests, roles, personalities, demographic characteristics, etc., because it is the positive use of that diversity that generates the wisdom (a “wholeness” to the resulting decision or understanding).
Yet both of these innovations – p2p systems and wisdom-generating forums – are leading edge social developments. Can some shared logic or coherent synergistic potency be found between them?
