This Saturday, March 5th,  will be FarmHack at the Microsoft NERD Center. The idea is to get local farmers together with engineers and designers to create tools that will be useful for the farmers.

More info : http://mitpsc.mit.edu/globalchallenge/?p=676

Tuesday, March 8th will be the second Dorkbot Meetup of the year.  It will be held at www.thesprouts.org.

A few weeks ago, Nathan Eagle spoke at the IBM center for social software.  He was one of Pentland’s students at the Media Lab, who first used the cell phone as a tool to obtain high resolution data for social network analysis.  There is a lot of important research coming out from this group, on human behavior influenced by social networks. What is also intriguing is the nature of technology and privacy in this work.  Individual’s positions and cell phone behavior are recorded- this is something that must have seemed a bit invasive when the research was first conducted, but is becoming more natural in our social technological environment, where posting personal information is becoming easier and even rewarding.  Maintaining the trust of the individuals as these technologies develop will be essential.

More info: http://www.necsi.edu/events/upcomingevents.html

Join us for a conversation on how we can help support community participation and involvement, encourage the development of environmentally-friendly communities, create an equitable access to community commons, and much more. What are the mechanisms whereby new policy initiatives can mitigate barriers to well-being — and in the gap between policy implementations, what are the other mechanisms and tools we can create to foster healthy communities?

This is definitely an important topic, and of considerable attention recently.  A few weeks ago Ethan Zuckerman spoke on communities and urban planning, and one of the topics brought up in the Q and A was how the design process for cities misses out on considering values of the individuals of the targeted communities.  The communities will live with the design choices, whether or not good decisions were made, without having a say in the process.

More info : http://globalchallenge.mit.edu/events/view/143

It is designed for IT-experts, designers, students, professionals and development practitioners who want to develop their skills specifically in the area of ICT4D. The degree prepares you for work in the public, private or NGO-sector locally or internationally, or can be a stepping-stone towards a PhD.

The program is critical of the ethics and imposition in design for development, encouraging participatory and culturally, socially, environmentally aware and gender sensitive approaches, i.e. ensuring that the design process includes those who one is designing for, and takes into account their values.

More information : www.gg.rhul.ac.uk/psd/ict4d

What I admire most is their approach.  Before anything is rolled out, they go out and talk to various departments, groups, schools, to get an idea of what would be most useful.  And any software developed here in Boston is going to be shared with other cities, likewise other cities will share their developments here.  And the Code for America fellows facilitate that cross-pollination.

Some of the fellows will be at the health 2.0 code-a-thon, and the Bocoup meetup next week.  Bocoup is an awesome co working space I just learned of- they work on open source web projects, including processing.js, and popcorn (which allows you to edit movies in the browser!).  I’m looking forward to checking out that space.

And now, for the events.

THURSDAY Diversity on the World Stage

http://mit150.mit.edu/events/diversity-world-stage

February 17, 7–9 pm
Media Lab Complex on the MIT Campus
Building E14, 6th floor
75 Amherst St, Cambridge

We’ll explore the competition among a handful of sovereign powers, the exploitation of peoples and global resources, the relevance of economic power, and the efficacy of international institutions created to mitigate conflicts. As we struggle to define a universal set of rights and modes of conduct, diverse peoples of the world take their cues from current global interactions and enter the world stage with their crafts, mores, and world views.

[from mit150]

SATURDAY Health 2.0 Developer Challenge

http://health2challenge.org/code-a-thon/boston/

2/19/11

Health 2.0′s live Code-a-thons occur over the course of one day, bringing together developers, designers and raw data sets to build exciting new applications and tools for improved health care. Developers, designers, researchers and other stakeholders are given an overview of health care issues, tools and data sets, and are asked to creatively design new tools for the health care space. Developers are encouraged to use OpenGov data sets as well as private data sets to create their application. At the end of the day, developers present their application to the group, and the best solution is awarded.

Thursday 02/24/11 Bocoup Open Civic Data Meetup

https://bocoup.eventwax.com/open-civic-data-meetup

Open Civic Data is a standards group working towards an international civic data vocabulary so that civic apps can work in any city or town around the world.

At the The February Boston Open Civic Data Meetup, concerned citizen will break into groups based on civic categories to create standards.

A little background on Zuckerman – in the 90′s he was one of the co-founders of tripod, later created Global Voices, and he is currently a fellow at the Berkman Center.

Cities are Serendipity Enginges

The urbanization rate is increasing in cities. By 2008, over half of the world’s population was living in cities. Take a step in the past, back to London when it was one of the world’s densest cities.  Its hard to imagine why people would move into that city given the possibility of tragedies. Fires spread quickly, burning through the city. The population suffered cholera outbreaks.  It wasn’t a very pleasant place.  But people still went to the city.  People wanted the possibilities and the opportunities a city could provide.

Cities provide the infrastructure for chance encounters, and among so many possible interactions there is opportunity. Cities are serendipity engines.

But this is not necessarily how we are experiencing them. Our experiences are heavily determined by who we are and what we do.  Take Zach Seward‘s post in the WSJ.  The majority of his movements in the city are confined to specific points.  This is pretty surprising, but it is true of most people- though we feel the freedom to be in many places, our actions are highly predictable [I saw a connection with Barabasi's paper on Human Dynamics, as well as Sandy Pentland's Reality Mining].  Taking a look at the other places he visits in the city,  he finds that he goes to racially white places (scroll down to the Black population heatmap).  He does not do this intentionally, and he is certainly not the only one who self-sorts.

This is not only in New York.  Bill Rankin produced city maps highlighting racial population, and its pretty clear there are divides within many cities.

Homophily is the scientific term to describe the simple concept that birds of a feather flock together. A similar process is happening with racial distributions within cities, but such phenomena extends to virtual space as well.  Through recommendations, we see what we want, and one focus (of Zuckerman’s work) is the potential for ‘us and them’ sorting- do we better understand the world or reinforce domestic prejudices?

Our media is us/them polarized, even more so with language barriers (Zuckerman pointed out a recent article regarding students from China hacking Google. A tiny university was posited to have been involved. If any of the American newspapers read the Chinese papers, they would know the tiny university was nothing close to a technical university with the resources of hacking Google).

What do you mean by Serendipity?

In thinking of search, there are three kinds:

• Curated : The content is forced on you. (ex, NYTimes)
• Search:  You know what you want to know. (ex. Google)
• Social: Create a tool to socially exchange information.  We might get the serendipity back. (ex. Twitter)

Serendipity is not chance.  it is the studied opportunity for chance, it is an intelligent way to introduce chance.  The question is- how do you engineer serendipity?

The key is to think of ways to get out of the flocking, the segregation, and psiloing that can happen.  Urban planners have been working on these big questions- so there is the opportunity to provide design principles in the software world.

For instance, Jane Jacobs found that the accidental encounter was immensely important, and the random possibility of interaction was a huge party of a healthy, functioning community.  The ‘sidewalk ballet’ is the collection of interactions a sidewalk can encourage- whose emergent effects include information spread, security, community building.  No longer is the fastest trip from A  to B the most important, it is the journey in between that matters too, because it allows for serendipity.

So what is a structure that will encourage serendipity?  Think about library books- you look for a book you need, and around that book are similar books, radiating outward.  Consider other ways to organize books, for instance, by size, and now we’ve got a way to separate out image focused books.  Think about curation within cities- like walking tours that can give a new historical perspective on what is familiar.

Facebook is taking away the anonymity of the internet- and the ability to have non-geographic interactions based on interest.  It seeks to reinforce offline interactions.  How will this further affect our interactions within cities and the further segregation of communities?

Imagine when friend reviews from Facebook get superimposed on maps as you look for a restaurant.  This will reduce the chance of unexpected meals- since you will gravitate to what your friends recommended.  It is possible that the one star restaurant could be your new favorite place. What do people totally different from you recommend?  If you were seeking out an Ethiopian restaurant, maybe you would want to know where Ethiopians in the area are eating.

One concrete question is this: what are more algorithms for serendipity that we can develop that move beyond social ties and similarities?  How can we create toolkits to allow others to explore embodiments with their values?

Design for Many

A few important points were raised during the question and answer period.  Simply, urban planners and architects design cities, and the rest of the people in a city must live with the results. They are all deeply affected by what is created, having played no part in the process.  With respect to the internet,  there are relatively few who understand how to build things on the internet, and people must live with the few companies which manage to scale up, whether they want to or not.

One member of the audience felt that personal music players, mobile devices, and a virtual world to mirror the real world only encourages less interactions within public between strangers- like in public transport.  This may be true, but I feel the virtual world has also provided the tools to create spaces of conversation, for instance, broadcasting this talk, which itself creates a place to meet and connect with strangers.

Themes

The main purpose of the talk was to draw the analogies in social software and urban planning, in designing interactions, and to start the dialogue where those involved with the development of social software can understand successful principles in planning and hope to apply them to their products.  Zuckerman also highlighted the point that software is designed from fixed values that are far from universal, and software developers must be aware of these values.

This talk relates to the discussion of the Carr readings earlier in the class- in addressing the way in which recommendation algorithms can further segregate individuals and contribute to an ‘us and them’ mentality.  Serendipity is a way to bring groups together, and provide more opportunities for both individuals and the system as a whole.  I find it pretty exciting urban planners are brought in the conversation, and even more so after Jacobs was highlighted for her principles on designing for interpersonal interactions and cities.

… we explore the specific phenomenon of DDoS attacks on independent media and human rights organizations, seeking to understand the nature and frequency of these attacks, their efficacy, and the responses available to sites under attack.

Next Generation Democracy:What the Open-Source Revolution Means for Power, Politics, and Change

Wednesday, January 26, 7:00 PM

Jared Duval will be speaking about his latest book at the Harvard Book Store.

We can use our vast size and complexity to our advantage. Drawing on the lessons of open source technology, Jared Duval offers a call to action. Next Generation Democracy chronicles some of the watershed events, such as Hurricane Katrina, during which centralized leadership was not enough, and then tells the success stories of the leaders, both inside the government and out, who are finding effective, directly democratic ways to address our public challenges. Telling the stories of participatory organizations such as SeeClickFix and America Speaks, Duval describes a new approach to solving complex problems that draws on the contributions of vast and diverse communities of engaged citizens.

I find this talk exciting not only in the sense that it discusses themes of this class within political structures, but it also falls in line with what I research within complex systems- designing bottom-up solutions for complex issues.

Corvid College Darkterm Hoedown
Sunday, January 30, from 5-8 pm
Corvid College is an education space in Boston thats pretty unique in a city full of universities- in the sense that it emphasizes the principles of deschooling and joyful learning.  This will be a good event to check out to learn more of the group.

At Encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Avenue, UNITE-HERE building, 5th floor, in Boston’s Chinatown.

Sherry Turkle: Alone Together at the Harvard Bookstore

February 4, 2011 3:00 PM

Sherry Turkle will discuss her latest book, Alone Together, at the Harvard Bookstore.  I heard her recently on the NYTimes Bits Podcast and it was very intriguing.  Its in line with the Carr peices we read in the beginning of this course- in that it accepts the incredible benefits of connectivity and recent technology, but presents a critical view in highlighting drawbacks.

There are a few readings left in the syllabus, and after that we can pursue many directions.  One idea is to go through chapters in Making Things Talk, by Tom Igoe (who came and spoke for Design for Empowerment a few months ago), and another is to focus deeper on personal projects and prototyping them.

I’m also thinking that exploring some material out of the Open Government literature could be cool too.  I’m imagining we’ll take some steps beyond the discussion format, without losing it completely- discussing the readings has been a great source of inspiration.

For the upcoming week or so:

1/11 Tech Tuesdays Meetup

At Microsoft NERD Center.  Seems like a pretty open technology/making cool things meetup.  Haven’t gone yet, would love to year how it is.

1/12 Sprout Spaghetti Dinner

This upcoming Wednesday, with the theme: Not Your Typical Library. Held at sprout, starts 7:30, 10$ suggested donation.

We all know what public libraries are and that they’re in trouble.  Even in Somerville, we’re hearing about the funding battles and support campaigns underway.  At this month’s sprout spaghetti dinner, we’re going to look at a different set of libraries and library services–not your typical libraries.  Maybe they don’t traffic in books; maybe they aren’t run by the government; maybe they’re just bookcases in someone’s living room.  Whatever it is that sets these libraries apart, we want to hear their stories and how they handle issues that we traditionally associate with Public Libraries: access, censorship, safety, sharing, curation, and more.

[www.thesprouts.org]

1/12 Project Night at Sprout

**THIS WEEK AND NEXT**

The GovData Project: Accessing and Visualizing Massive Data Sets over the Web

This seems super cool.  A free course at MIT (this week) and at Harvard (next week).  It gets pretty hands on, and will teach you all you need to know to start contributing to the whole gov 2.0 movement.

Day 1 — Government Data 101: A tour of the Open Government Initiative & GovData platform.

Day 2 — High-powered data APIs with Python, MongoDB, GeoDjango, and Apache Solr.

Day 3 — Hands-On Coding Experience: Parsers

Day 4 — Interactive Visualizations with Javascript, HTML5 and processingJS.

Day 5 — Hands-On Coding Experience: Visualizations

Here is an older version of the talk, still pretty similar http://senseable.mit.edu/engagingdata/presentations/ED_SIII_Eagle.pdf

Nathan Eagle is the CEO of txteagle Inc. His research involves engineering computational tools, designed to explore how the petabytes of data generated about human movements, financial transactions, and communication patterns can be used for social good. He holds three engineering degrees from Stanford University and a PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory. His academic work has been featured in Science, Nature and PNAS, as well as in the mainstream press.

[from his website]

He began with the privacy issue, and the need to raise awareness of it.  A lot of negative things can be done with this sort of big data, but he’s trying to figure out how to leverage for social good.  The rest of the presentation focused on specific projects to show this.

A few things jumped out at me- mostly moments where he decided to shift his focus back to his original intentions of the greater common good.   One of the first applications after he earned his PhD on machine learning was a tool to help connect socially awkward singles in NY.  He wasnt satisfied with that, so he began thinking of other, wider applications of his tools.  He started projects focusing on development- teaching on creating apps for simple cell phones. And soon moving on to teaching teachers, a much more scalable model.  Here he noticed the power of teaching individuals about programming simple mobile phone apps in the developing world. (http://www.media.mit.edu/ventures/EPROM/)

Another pivot I noticed was with txteagle, a company he started using crowd sourcing.  After reading the Carr pieces for an earlier discussion in DFEX, my ears perked hearing crowd sourcing, thinking does this really help the individuals who are providing information via cell phone.  txteagle became an outsourcing venture, but Eagle realized that outsourcing doesn’t work for the greater common good- it moves work from one area to another where it is cheaper, and labor can become devalued.  Labor arbitrage does not contribute to the positive social good.  Instead he focused on work that could only be done on location, work that couldn’t be outsourced.  These involve information like local pricing and language.

Another major point for Eagle was a criticism of academia- that many problems that are computationally tractable aren’t real problems.  The harder, most important questions  are not universal laws that will land you into Science and Nature, but solving difficult social problems like determining crime patterns in Philadelphia, or spread of disease in society; problems that are not immediately amenable to analysis.  He is interesting in research grounded in applications in the real world.

Seeing the measures he was able to extract from mining the cell phone data, like socio-economic status observable in cell phone usage, and the wide applications of his techniques, were very inspiring.  I highly recommend checking out the slides.

http://ess.santafe.edu/pdfs/Eagle_Science10.pdf

http://reality.media.mit.edu/pdfs/network_structure_hidden.pdf