Monthly Archives: October 2013

Emotional Infrastructure, Friendly Crowds, Infrastructure, Lighthouse, Smart Cities

Emotional Infrastructure

I am working on this small project, its called Emotional Infrastructure and lives over at the Friendly Crowds site.

A set of paper diaries, produced using Bookleteer.

Record your thoughts on that piece of infrastructure as you interact with it in your everyday life and when you have finished a diary send it back to join the archive.

The first was called ‘The Surveillance Diaries’ but I have added ones on power, water and communications.

A few people are currently filling in some of these early prototypes, including me.

It is whilst I am at the Lighthouse as a part of their beta residency studio project that I am working on evolving these diaries into something more formed.

Please do make and complete a diary and feedback your ideas on the structure of the diaries and concept as well.

UnParty

A Further UnParty UnConference Idea

In the film Sunshine the crew of the ship have to make a decision:

Mace: It’s a lot of assumptions.
Searle: It is. It’s a risk assessment. The question is: does the risk of a detour outweigh the benefits of an extra payload?
Mace: We’ll have a vote.
Searle: No. No, we won’t. We are not a democracy. We’re a collection of astronauts and scientists, so we’re gonna make the most informed decision available to us.
Mace: Made by you, by any chance?
Kaneda: Made by the person best qualified to understand the complexities of payload delivery: our physicist.

And whilst I do not with to dwell on the line ‘We are not a democracy’ I think the idea that those most qualified to understand the complexities of an issue, or a policy should at least be able to discuss it and give their informed response in a public forum.

So, I would like to suggest that expert organisations hold UpParty UnConferences, discuss the ideas that their domain of expertise touches up and shares their insight with everyone else.

So if you are in such an organisation and feel that this kind of discussion would be good to participate in, take part.

CSM, Lighthouse

Central Saint Martins and Lighthouse Gallery

Just a quick note, about some of the things I am up to at the moment, I am now no longer acting in the role of research fellow in digital design at Central Saint Martins Design Against Crime research centre. I have been working out how to work in academia, investigating research calls, publishing routes and the likes.

Today I am also visiting the Lighthouse gallery in Brighton, where I am starting a two month residency as part of their new studio programme. This is a prototype stage where a small group of us have been invited in to work here, on projects that should feed into the Lighthouse’s future programme.

Both are very exciting and lots of learnings and experiences to be shared. So, sorry if I go on about things here :)

Infrastructure, Open Access Journal, Projects, Stacktivism

The Open Journal of Critical Infrastructure Studies

An awful lot of us live lives wrapped in infrastructure, its what keeps many parts of the world functioning in a modern way.

A number of people have started writing, producing work that attempts to examine this infrastructure with the same critical eye that we cast over other components of our lives and the development of such a critical thinking framework is rapidly and increasingly becoming vital as the new infrastructure of the digital, communications network increasingly affects so many aspect of our lives.

Yet this infrastructure is increasingly invisible, from the fact that it uses electromagnetic radiation to transmit information through to the strategic agendas of corporations who wish to mask the underlying operational methods behind their productised solutions to modern life.

‘It Just Works’ being the mantra from Apple and you as the user of the apple product, do not have to understand how it works, just know that it does. Except that often it doesn’t or doesn’t quite and you won’t know why.

@thejaymo is concept curator at @stacktivism and Paul Graham Raven has created ‘Infrastructure Fiction‘.

Vinay Gupta (@leashless) has created Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps and written extensively on the infrastructure that keeps us alive.

We want to create an open access journal to disseminate the new ideas and thinking in this space. This is a blog post on starting the process and I will keep these going until we have one up and running or have decided that the area is already well served.

To this end we need to:

1. Check the landscape, what are the existing journals on infrastructure (critical or otherwise) and what is their approach? Are they papers on the latest implementation techniques for X technology or are they discussions on the implication of installing such a technology with such and environment and what could be the impact on the population of that environment.
2. Decide a domain to cover, is it about critical infrastructure, or is is critical thinking about infrastructure? Is it urban in scope? What does it encompass and what is outside of its remit?
3. Find a name.
4. Define an editorial process. Who will edit, how will review take place, how often will it publish, will it be online only or print and online?
5. Then launch journal.

(Somewhere in there we will attempt to find funding as well).

Since these discussions are already collaborative, if you have any thoughts on scope or ideas or name or anything, then please take part.

Events, Ideas, UnParty

Scaling the UnParty

It seems slightly odd to write this now, we have yet to hold the first UnParty UnConference but it has been raised in response to the last post, why not deal with Global Politics and thus global citizenship with these UnConference meetings.

To which my initial response is why not, people should and will bring the policies, ideas and issues that affect them, the things that concern them. If that is about an issue that is local then that is fine as it is engaging them and they are participating.

If the issues that concerns the people at the UnConference are issues around climate change or international arms trading then they can bring these concerns to the table.

Everything is recorded digitally and everyone can contribute and discuss online.

So, we could tag everything local or hyperlocal through to global.

When I started LazyGov I thought, a space to share ideas about what government is, what it should do, policy, regulation etc. I was told by some that ideas are what we have plenty off, it was tools and ‘projects’ that we needed.

I would suggest that whilst we may have plenty of ideas what we do not have is the breadth of possible discussion, in an inclusive way as possible. At least, we have some amazing tools online to do clever things and eventually everyone will be online, eventually.

LazyGov only worked if you had your own weblog, James’s OpenPolitics manifesto only works once you understand how Git/GitHub works, we need better interfaces into the digital space we are creating to record, shape and disseminate these ideas on policy and issues and governance.

The simplest interface to this digital world is talking.

Returning back to the global point that was the start of this response, I would expect within an UnConference that ideas would be raised that addressed local issues and some would be global in scope.

The trick is to look at each from both ends, to examine a local issue and pick out the points that can be abstracted to a global guidance and within a global idea look at the issues that would allow its local implementation.

If we reduce things down to rules (algorithms for global governance) then problems will arise, instead if we work along the idea of case law, case studies, examination and recording. One size does not fit all.

Of course there is nothing to stop someone running an UnParty UnConference and suggesting that for that meeting they look at Global Ideas.

Events, Ideas, UnParty

holding an UnParty UnConference

Have you heard Mark Thomas’ The Manifesto? Its been on Radio 4. The set up is simple, Mark visits various parts of the country and people are invited to submit their ideas to join the Peoples Manifesto. Some are very funny, some are a bit odd and others are very interesting. Mark will do research on some of the ideas, asking experts for their opinion etc.

You might also have seen a project by James Smith (@floppy) The Open Politics Manifesto hosted over on GitHub. Using the tools developers use to record, edit and ‘discuss’ manifesto ideas.

Yes, you do need a GitHub account and know how to use it a bit, James has written notes on how to participate but it can be seen as a hurdle.

Of course, participation in the Mark Thomas project is also limited, in fact I am not sure if it is still running,

Years ago I started a site called LazyGov.org, which was based on the code that was written by Ben Hammersley to run a site he owned called LazyWeb.org, which in turn was based on an idea by Matt Jones. The idea was simple, using trackback you could post something on your weblog and it would get reflected on the lazyweb/gov page, linking to your post.

Again it was a digital tool when, in reality the number of us online was still low. It is not totally inclusive.

So the next intervention I propose is to hold an UnParty UnConference, or a lot of them all over the country and as often as needed.

Basically,

  • Find A Venue
  • Tell people about it
  • Get policy ideas recorded online for discussion
  • Someone to facilitate the meeting
  • Hold the meeting, discuss and record

The only rule should be that you need to be non-partisan. This is not ideology lead, it should be a space to discuss ideas rationally and calmly. Use the tools of deliberation, debate, research. Encourage people to go out and find and present the facts to support or not an idea, be willing to compromise.

Once your meeting is over, record and share the conversations online, update the policy ideas.

Yes, there are plenty of steps to take next, from ideas though to action. This is just a stepping stone.