Politics – Page 11 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/04/28

Jean Lievens: Open Source Urbanism & “Right to Infrastructure”

Access, Architecture, Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Design, Geospatial, Governance, Innovation, Manufacturing, Materials, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience

The right to infrastructure: a prototype for open source urbanism

Alberto Corsín Jiménez

Abstract. This paper develops an analytical framework to place the rise of open source urbanism in context, and develops the concept of the ‘right to infrastructure’ as expressive of new ecologies of urban relations that have come into being. It describes, first, a genealogy for open source technology, focusing in particular on how open source urban hardware projects may challenge urban theory. It moves then to describe in detail various dimensions and implications of an open source infrastructural project in Madrid. In all, the paper analyses three challenges that the development of open source urban infrastructures is posing to the institutions of urban governance and property: the evolving shape and composition of urban ecologies; the technical and design challenges brought about by open source urban projects; and the social organisation of the ‘right to infrastructure’ as a political, active voice in urban governance. In the last instance, the right to infrastructure, I shall argue, signals the rise of the ‘prototype’ as an emerging figure for contemporary sociotechnical designs in and for social theory.
Keywords: open source urbanism, infrastructures, urban ecologies, urban commons, right to the city, prototypes

Corsín Jiménez A, 2014, “The right to infrastructure: a prototype for open source urbanism” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32(2) 342 – 362

PDF (21 Pages): 2014 Open Source Urbanism Right to Infrastructure

2014/04/282014/04/28

Patrick Meier: Got TweetCred? Use This Tool To Automatically Identify Credible Tweets

Crowd-Sourcing, Geospatial, Innovation, IO Tools, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience

Got TweetCred? Use it To Automatically Identify Credible Tweets

What if there were a way to automatically identify credible tweets during major events like disasters? Sounds rather far-fetched, right? Think again.

The new field of Digital Information Forensics is increasingly making use of Big Data analytics and techniques from artificial intelligence like machine learning to automatically verify social media. This is how my QCRI colleague ChaTo et al. already predicted both credible and non-credible tweets generated after the Chile Earthquake (with an accuracy of 86%). Meanwhile, my colleagues Aditi, et al. from IIIT Delhi also used machine learning to automatically rank the credibility of some 35 million tweets generated during a dozen major international events such as the UK Riots and the Libya Crisis. So we teamed up with Aditi et al. to turn those academic findings into TweetCred, a free app that identifies credible tweets automatically.

We’ve just launched the very first version of TweetCred—key word being first. This means that our new app is still experimental. On the plus side, since TweetCred is powered by machine learning, it will become increasingly accurate over time as more users make use of the app and “teach” it the difference between credible and non-credible tweets. Teaching TweetCred is as simple as a click of the mouse. Take the tweet below, for example.

Read full post with more links.

2014/04/102014/04/10

Rickard Falkvinge: EU Court Trashes Mass Surveillance

Governance, P2P / Panarchy, Politics

Pirate Party Vindicated By Highest EU Court, Killing Mass Surveillance Law

Yesterday, the European Court of Justice ruled the detested Data Retention Directive invalid. Retroactively invalid, even: the court ruled that it had never existed. The directive (a directive is sort of a federal law covering the EU) mandated all EU states to log all communications from all citizens: from whom, to whom, from where, using what method, and when. No communication would be unseen by the Government.

This wasn’t for the usual organizedcrime-terrorism-pedophiles-filesharing mantra. This was for everybody, with the express purpose of using your communications logs against you. The Pirate Party was founded as a direct reaction to this blanket violation; we were quoted in 2006 saying “this is worse than Stasi” in a context depicting us as though we were talking complete rubbish and nonsense.

Yesterday, the European Court of Justice – the highest court of the world’s largest economy – said the same thing in a historic verdict. The blanket violations are intolerable and inexcusable.

Read full article.

2014/03/11

Jean Lievens: LOOMIO – building public infrastructure tool for decision-making, held in the commons

Access, Crowd-Sourcing, Governance, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Software

BRING LOOMIO TO THE WORLD

LOOMIO is free and open-source software for anyone, anywhere, to participate in decisions that affect them.

“The world needs a better way to make decisions together. #Loomio is building it. You can help: http://thndr.it/1kaQhmy”

We’re a small team of open-source developers, facilitators and activists in New Zealand. On Tuesday March 11, we're crowdfunding to build a totally inclusive platform so anyone anywhere can participate in decisions that affect them. It's called Loomio 1.0.

Learn more, support options.

LOOMIO Home Page

2013/12/26

Jean Lievens: Seven Job Creation Strategies for Open Cities

Culture, Design, Economics/True Cost, Education, Innovation, Politics, Resilience

Seven Job Creation Strategies for Shareable Cities

The sharing economy offers enormous potential to create jobs. Sharing leverages a wide variety of resources and lowers barriers to starting small businesses.

Cities can lower the cost of starting businesses by supporting innovations like shared workspaces, shared commercial kitchens, community-financed start-ups, community-owned commercial centers, and spaces for “pop-up” businesses.

Read full article — list, comments, examples.

2013/11/02

Independent Voter: 43% Prefer Zombies to Congress

Crowd-Sourcing, Culture, Governance, P2P / Panarchy, Politics

Zombie Poll

It’s not exactly a vote of confidence in the powers that be: A sizable number of Americans think the undead would do a better job than our Representatives in Washington, D.C.

Americans ages 18 to 64 express slightly more confidence in zombies to run things than in the federal government. Seniors have more faith in the government.

Do over-the-top political attack ads work?

The political advertising cycle is about to heat up again and outrageous attack ads are already hitting the airwaves. A new political advertisement attacking San Diego mayoral candidate Nathan Fletcher is raising eyebrows because it is from a political action committee: Zombies for Responsible Government:

VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWI7sEX3ME8

Two videos from the “Zombies for Responsible Government Opposing Nathan Fletcher for Mayor 2013” were posted within the past week. The group registered with the California Secretary of State in October.

Published reports said the documents filed with the San Diego City Clerk show the group was registered by David Bauer, a treasurer with the conservative Sacramento Valley Lincoln Club. However, those documents are not clear as to who is really behind the group.

2013/09/042013/09/04

Jean Lievens: Enlivenment: Towards a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture, and Politics

Culture, Economics/True Cost, Governance, P2P / Panarchy, Politics, Resilience

Enlivenment: Towards a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture, and Politics

Our mono-cultural worldview is literally preventing us from understanding the deeper causes of our multiple crises. Author Andreas Weber, in the below essay, gives us a glimpse of the different scientific paradigm now coming into focus. He calls it “Enlivenment,” because the new sciences are revealing organisms to be sentient, more-than-physical creatures that have subjective experiences and produce sense.

Enlivenment: Towards a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture, and Politics | Peer2Politics | Scoop.it Weber sees Enlivenment as an upgrade of the deficient categories of Enlightenment thought – a way to move beyond our modern metaphysics of dead matter and acknowledge the deeply creative processes embodied in all living organisms. The framework of Enlivenment that Weber outlines is a promising beginning for all those who stand ready to search for real solutions to the challenges of our future.

Learn more.