Offering multiple perspectives from many fields of human inquiry that may move all of us toward a more integrated understanding of who we are as conscious beings.
This week's podcast from All in the Mind (Australia) focused on how the internet and social media can be harnessed for everything from taking the emotional pulse of the nation to suicide prevention.
With the rise of smart phones, GPS devices and social media we leave ‘digital breadcrumbs’ wherever we go. Many fear the power of big data and technology in the wrong hands but there's a growing movement to harness this wealth of information and use the power of the collective to better our society. We hear about what the new science of social physics tells us about human connection, how Twitter can check the emotional pulse of a nation, and how sharing personal stories through social media is an effective suicide prevention campaign.
On June 25 and 26, NYU hosted an Open Source Summit in Washington, D.C. The Open Forum Foundation organized more than 11 government agencies for a two-day symposium on open source communities, how to convert closed communities into open communities (day one), and then a discussion on creating new communities (day two).
Here is the organizer's statement:
This year's Open Source Summit will explain how to build, engage with, and maintain open source communities -- and when we say open source, we don't just mean software, we also mean hardware and data.
If you are a federal civil servant that needs to build or engage with an open source community, you should plan on attending.
Be warned however: this is not your average event! The multi-agency planning team is tasked with ensuring that the event provides substantive benefit to federal agency personnel, and the format is uniquely designed to deliver not just abstract content from subject matter experts (of course we have those), but also the opportunity to see this knowledge applied to a specific case study, and then to learn how to apply it to your specific situation. In addition, we will collate the results of the discussions during the event and make them available afterwards so that others may learn from the shared experiences and wisdom of their peers.
So far NYU has posted the sessions from the first day - if they add the second day, I will share them.
NYU Washington, DC June 25-26, 2013 The 2013 Open Source Summit features professionals explaining how to build, engage with, and maintain open source communities -- not only with software, but with hardware and data as well.
From Edge, this is an interesting talk by Albert-lászló Barabási on thinking in terms of networks. Some of the questions he has been asking and seeks to answer here are:
[W]hat does it mean to be part of the network?
[W]hat does it mean to think in terms of the network?
What does it mean to take advantage of this connectedness and to understand that?
[H]ow do you describe mathematically the connectedness?
How do you get data to describe that?
What does this really mean for us?
Some of the implications of this research might be alarming for some. I have no problem with collected data and trying to understand how, when, and why people interact, but I have concerns about what might happen to that data - who is going to use it, and how is it going to be used?
You can listen to the audio link below, watch the embedded video, or read the transcript (the first paragraphs of which are included, but you'll need to follow the title link to read the whole thing).
A Conversation with Albert-lászló Barabási [9.24.12] One question that fascinated me in the last two years is, can we ever use data to control systems? Could we go as far as, not only describe and quantify and mathematically formulate and perhaps predict the behavior of a system, but could you use this knowledge to be able to control a complex system, to control a social system, to control an economic system?
ALBERT-LÁSZLÓ BARABÁSI is a Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University, where he directs the Center for Complex Network Research, and holds appointments in the Departments of Physics, Computer Science and Biology, as well as in the Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women Hospital, and is a member of the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
We always lived in a connected world, except we were not so much aware of it. We were aware of it down the line, that we're not independent from our environment, that we're not independent of the people around us. We are not independent of the many economic and other forces. But for decades we never perceived connectedness as being quantifiable, as being something that we can describe, that we can measure, that we have ways of quantifying the process. That has changed drastically in the last decade, at many, many different levels.
It has changed partly because we started to be aware of it partly because there were a lot of technological advances that forced us to think about connectedness. We had Worldwide Web, which was all about the links connecting information. We had the Internet, which was all about connecting devices. We had wireless technologies coming our way. Eventually, we had Google, we had Facebook. Slowly, the term 'network connectedness' really became part of our life so much so that now the word 'networks' is used much more often than evolution or quantum mechanics. It's really run over it, and now that's the buzzword.
The question is, what does it mean to be part of the network, or what does it mean to think in terms of the network? What does it mean to take advantage of this connectedness and to understand that? In the last decade, what I kept thinking about is how do you describe mathematically the connectedness? How do you get data to describe that? What does this really mean for us?
This had several stages, obviously. The first stage for us was to think networks, only networks down the line. That was about a decade ago, we witnessed the birth of network science. I could say a couple of geniuses came along and did it, but really it was the data that made it possible. Suddenly we started to discover that lots of data that's out there, that we're collecting thanks to the Internet and other technological advances, allowed us to look at connectedness and to measure it and to map it out.
Once you had data, you could build theories. Once you had theories, you have predictive power, you could test that and then the whole thing fitted itself. It suddenly very actively emerged as a field that we now call network science. Going beyond networks, going beyond connectedness, we realized we started to know not only whom you connect to and whom you see and where are your links (the economical, personal, social or whatever they are) but we started to see also the timing of your activities. What do you do with those links? When do you interact?
This interesting article comes from Think Quarterly - a periodic (quarterly, it seems) book project by Google for its partners and advertisers. This first issue, or Book #1, is called Think Data - and it has an interesting assortment of articles.
Like most companies, Google regularly communicates with our business customers via email newsletters, updates on our official blogs, and printed materials.
On this occasion, we've sent a short book about data, called Think Quarterly, to a small number of our UK partners and advertisers. You're now on the companion website, thinkquarterly.co.uk (also available at m.thinkquarterly.co.uk, if you're on the move).
We're flattered by the positive reaction but have no plans to start selling copies! Although Think Quarterly remains firmly aimed at Google's partners and advertisers, if you're interested in the subject of data then please feel free to read on...
Peter Kruse has developed a tool that can tap into the intuitive beliefs that drive social change. By accessing the parts other data can’t reach, it offers you the most valuable insight of all: what’s coming next.
Professor Peter Kruse is the founder and CEO of nextpractice, based in Bremen, Germany. Alongside a team of psychologists, economists, sociologists, computer scientists and designers, he develops customised management tools to support entrepreneurial decision-making and empower collective intelligence. Using the ‘nextexpertizer’ tool, Kruse is able to access the collective intuition of groups, revealing the hidden value patterns underpinning social change. The data that emerges enables us to answer the question: what’s next?
We produce so much data every day that it is becoming difficult to generate genuine insights. How can we use these data streams more efficiently?
The biggest challenge is to reduce complexity by detecting meaningful patterns. Otherwise the risk of sudden and dangerous breakdowns – like the financial crisis we’ve just recovered from – is far too high.
So the question is how to get the right data. Using customers, citizens and other experts as detectors for relevant information maximises complexity reduction in data analysis. This is where the nextexpertizer method comes in.
The mantra of nextpractice is ‘A Matter of Fact in a World of Values’. What does this mean?
In established methods of collecting data, like standardised questionnaires and predefined scales, people give their judgments on the basis of hopefully intelligent questions and simple categories like ‘yes’ and ‘no’, multiple choice, ranking, etc. The respondent can only add value when the intentions of the interviewer are decoded correctly.
But language is a very tricky phenomenon, so the first difficulty to be tackled is the problem of semantics, which adds a lot of noise to every measurement. The second problem is a direct consequence of the first. Interpretation of language is a mainly conscious process that isn’t well connected with a person’s intuitive knowledge and unconscious valuations, which are crucial for complexity reduction.
