Category: #OSE Open Source Everything

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Patrick Meier: Haiti and Crisis Mapping — Campaign of Lies Against Innovation in the Public Interest

Crowd-Sourcing, Geospatial
Patrick Meier
Patrick Meier

Haiti: Lies, Damned Lies and Crisis Mapping

You’d think there was some kind of misinformation campaign going on about the Ushahidi-Haiti Crisis Map given the number of new lies that are still being manu-factured even thought it has been over three years since the earthquake. Please, if you really want a professional, independent and rigorous account of the project, read this evaluation. The findings are mixed but the report remains the only comprehensive, professional and independent evaluation of the Ushahidi-Haiti and 4636 efforts. So if you have questions about the project, please read the report and/or contact the evaluators directly.

Phi Beta Iota:  Those who fear change slander their emergent replacements.  This is reminiscent of Big Tobacco lies and Big Pharma and Big Sugar lies.  The bottom line is quite clear: the Autonomous Internet is emerging, and between CrowdFlower and Ushandi, the way is open, within five years, to displace the corrupt Specialized Agencies and non-government organizations (the Red Cross comes to mind) that deliver less than 20% of donor funds to the real world needy.  This will also scale to illuminate government fraud, waste, and abuse, as well as political high crimes and misdemeanors.  Below is the remainder of the post, well worth a read to see how Epoch A walking dead slander and seek to diminish Epoch B pioneers.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Haiti and Crisis Mapping — Campaign of Lies Against Innovation in the Public Interest”

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Patrick Meier: Using CrowdFlower to Microtask Disaster Response — and Robert Steele on CrowdFlower to Manage Micro-gifting Local to Global Range of Needs & Fulfillment Table to Household Level

Architecture, Cloud, Crowd-Sourcing, P2P / Panarchy, Resilience, Transparency
Patrick Meier
Patrick Meier

Using CrowdFlower to Microtask Disaster Response

Cross-posted from CrowdFlower blog

A devastating earthquake struck Port-au-Prince on January 12, 2010. Two weeks later, on January 27th, a CrowdFlower was used to translate text messages from Haitian Creole to English. Tens of thousands of messages were sent by affected Haitians over the course of several months. All of these were heroically translated by hundreds of dedicated Creole-speaking volunteers based in dozens of countries across the globe. While Ushahidi took the lead by developing the initial translation platform used just days after the earthquake, the translation efforts were eventually rerouted to CrowdFlower. Why? Three simple reasons:

  1. CrowdFlower is one of the leading and most highly robust micro-tasking platforms there is;
  2. CrowdFlower’s leadership is highly committed to supporting digital humanitarian response efforts;
  3. Haitians in Haiti could now be paid for their translation work.

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Using CrowdFlower to Microtask Disaster Response — and Robert Steele on CrowdFlower to Manage Micro-gifting Local to Global Range of Needs & Fulfillment Table to Household Level”

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Michel Bauwens: 3D Printing Merging Physical and Digital

Innovation, Knowledge, Manufacturing, P2P / Panarchy, Politics
Michel Bauwens
Michel Bauwens

As posted by Jean Lievens to Peer2Politics.

3D printing provides an opportunity to change the way we think about the world around us. [1] It merges the physical and the digital. People on opposite sides of the globe can collaborate on designing an object and print out identical prototypes every step of the way. Instead of purchasing one of a million identical objects built in a faraway factory, users can customize pre-designed objects and print them out at home. Just as computers have allowed us to become makers of movies, writers of articles, and creators of music, 3D printers allow everyone to become creators of things.

What's the Deal with Copyright and 3D Printing?

January 29, 2013

This whitepaper is also available as a PDF and can be purchased on the Amazon Kindle Store.

EXTRACT

Ultimately then, the burden is on the community and the organizations that host the community not to blindly assume that copyright covers everything. This is not to say that copyright should be rejected, or that legal orders should be ignored. Instead, it is a reminder of the value of healthy skepticism. If someone is asserting copyright over an object, take a moment to consider if copyright can even apply in that case. Make assertions of infringement public so that the wider community can understand who is claiming what kinds of rights.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  Of scholastic quality and densely footnotes, this is a formidable review of copyright, 3D printing, and community culture.

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SchwartzReport: Truth by Design & Tipping Points

Architecture

schwartz reportWhat Will “Truth” Mean in the Future?

New technologies are changing what we can consider real.

Brad Allenby

Slate, 22 February 2013

EXTRACT

The engineers designing our planet and working on Human 2.0 are doing a lot of highly technical things with real tissues and materials and circuits and material cycles and built things. They are constrained by physical laws, less so by existing infrastructures, by economics, and by a whole suite of plans, roadmaps, and design objectives. But out of an unimaginable and vast universe of potential choices, the Earth 2.0 and Human 2.0 line will arise—and they will reflect the dreams, the archetypes, the conflicts, the cultures, the science fiction, the hopes, of humanity. The engineers and their networks and firms and technology systems and research institutions are the working Star Trek planet, and they will give you what you ask for. This is beyond the common lament of “playing God” of the anti-biotech campaigners, however, for what is being designed is everything—from the Earth itself to the designer herself. And it is your fantasies, your fiction, your hates and fears, your loves that guide the design, and the building, and the new truths.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Truth by Design & Tipping Points”

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Patrick Meier: SMS Code of Conduct for Disaster Response

Crowd-Sourcing, Geospatial, Mobile
Patrick Meier
Patrick Meier

Launching: SMS Code of Conduct for Disaster Response

Shortly after the devastating Haiti Earthquake of January 12, 2010, I published this blog post on the urgent need for an SMS code of conduct for disaster response. Several months later, I co-authored this peer-reviewed study on the lessons learned from the unprecedented use of SMS following the Haiti Earth-quake. This week, at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2013) in Barcelona, GSMA’s Disaster Response Program organized two panels on mobile technology for disaster response and used the event to launch an official SMS Code of Conduct for Disaster Response (PDF). GSMA members comprise nearly 800 mobile operators based in more than 220 countries.

. . . . . . .

To connect this effort with the work that my CrisisComputing Team and I are doing at QCRI, our contact at Digicel during the Haiti response had given us the option of sending out a mass SMS broadcast to their 2 million subscribers to get the word out about 4636. (We had thus far used local community radio stations). But given that we were processing incoming SMS’s manually, there was no way we’d be able to handle the increased volume and velocity of incoming text messages following the SMS blast. So my team and I are exploring the use of advanced computing solutions to automatically parse and triage large volumes of text messages posted during disasters. The project, which currently uses Twitter, is described here in more detail.

Read full post.

Phi Beta Iota:  Apart from the pioneering and preparatory effort, this is the first time we have seen a reference to a pre-crisis arrangement for crisis mass broadcast to all cell phones providing a code (or multiple codes) for use in populating the crisis map.  What this really means is that Dr. Meier has now set a precedent for using SMS to populate a Local to Global Range of Needs (and Fulfilment) Table.  This spells the end of the Specialized Agencies (SA) and the Red Cross, among others, as inefficient intermediaries delivering less than 20% of donor dollars to end-needy.  The way is now open for a self-organizing system that engages the 80% of the rich that do not donate to charity now (most because they have learned not to trust charities — the Red Cross and Katrina will long be remembered) and can address needs in near real time down to the household level.  As the price point of precision-guided micro-parachutes drops, the way is open for chartered flights to literally “rain” manna from the heavens.  The work of Dr. Meier and his colleagues is inspiring, and more importantly, a clear break from the past and present inefficient and unresponsive bureaucracies of government and non-governmental organizations.

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John Maguire: Sally Goerner on “Rethinking Captalism”

Economics/True Cost, P2P / Panarchy

Published on Apr 17, 2012. This is the first half of an Occupy Chapel Hill Teach-In presentation by Dr. Sally Goerner with Mayor Randy Voller entitled Rethinking Capitalism: Replacing Trickledown with Healthy Networks. Examples of Democratic Free-Enterprise Networks (DFENs) and their deployment are illustrated.

Published on Apr 19, 2012. This is the second half of an Occupy Chapel Hill Teach-In presentation by Dr. Sally Goerner with Mayor Randy Voller entitled Rethinking Capitalism: Replacing trickledown with Healthy Networks. Examples of Democratic Free-Enterprise Networks (DFENs) and their deployment are illustrated.