Equality in the City

This collection critiques the rhetoric of ‘smart cities’. It seeks to engender a timely debate about what future cities might look like and what their concerns should be. Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, it features acclaimed scholars whose work investigates the proposed networked digital technologies that ostensibly affect planning policies, control infrastructures and deliver and manage city services and systems. The contributors offer insights into how future cities might be envisaged, planned and executed in order to be more ‘equal’.   

Equality in the City

This collection critiques the rhetoric of ‘smart cities’. It seeks to engender a timely debate about what future cities might look like and what their concerns should be. Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, it features acclaimed scholars whose work investigates the proposed networked digital technologies that ostensibly affect planning policies, control infrastructures and deliver and manage city services and systems. The contributors offer insights into how future cities might be envisaged, planned and executed in order to be more ‘equal’

Equality in the City

This collection critiques the rhetoric of ‘smart cities’. It seeks to engender a timely debate about what future cities might look like and what their concerns should be. Using a multi-disciplinary perspective, it features acclaimed scholars whose work investigates the proposed networked digital technologies that ostensibly affect planning policies, control infrastructures and deliver and manage city services and systems. The contributors offer insights into how future cities might be envisaged, planned and executed in order to be more ‘equal’

Human Swarm Problem Solving

Chapter 4 in Cultural-historical perspectives on collective intelligence In the era of digital communication, collective problem solving is increasingly important. Large groups can now resolve issues together in completely different ways, which has transformed the arts, sciences, business, education, technology, and medicine. Collective intelligence is something we share with animals and is different from machine learning and artificial intelligence. To design and utilize human collective intelligence, we must understand how its problem-solving mechanisms work. From democracy in ancient Athens, through the invention of the printing press, to COVID-19, this book analyzes how humans developed the ability to find solutions together. This wide-ranging, thought-provoking book is a game-changer for those working strategically with collective problem solving within organizations and using a variety of innovative methods. It sheds light on how humans work effectively alongside machines to confront challenges that are more urgent than what humanity has faced before. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.Chapter 4 discusses human swarm problem solving as a distinct subtype of CI with biological antecedents in nest siting among honeybees and flocking behavior. Building on recent biological research, this chapter discusses five mechanisms that are also relevant for human swarm problem solving. These mechanisms are decision threshold methods, averaging, large gatherings, heterogeneous social interaction, and environmental sensing. Studies of collective animal behavior show that they often make decisions that build on statistical rules (e.g. averaging, threshold responses). Even when in a group, individuals will often seek and assess information independently of others with the intention of optimizing decisions through the “many wrongs principle” or the “many eyes principle.” Similarly, human ‘wisdom of the crowd’ studies examine similar statistical rules and principles like the importance of making independent contributions. However, while early research on the wisdom of crowds addressed the importance of independent contributions, newer studies also examine the possible positive influence of dependent contributions. The increasing variety of crowdsourcing studies are in this chapter explained with the framework of different swarm mechanisms. In the summary, four basic characteristics of human swarm problem solving are highlighted: predefined problems, pre-specified problem solving procedures, rapid time-limited problem solving, and individual learning.publishedVersio

HEALING COMMUNITIES. What if we collectively had the capacity to overcome any crisis in a matter of days? A method for teams of teams to: listen to each other, agree on priorities, put in commons resources, create few but essential and freely adaptable solutions.

Ever since I was young, I have sought to find how to contribute meaningfully to the community, while being fully myself. Called to different interests than my peers, I began to explore the mysteries of group dynamics. Many cycles of study and practice led me to an awareness: suffering, misery (physical and spiritual), violence, are often generated by stories we learn as children, and pass on through generations. I became convinced that, within months, we could ensure that all people could live decently and in harmony, if we dared to listen – literally and symbolically – to our Heart, to the Other’s. We would commit ourselves to a path that celebrates our Humanity, connects us to Nature within and beyond, and nourishes our Souls. Indeed, tackling complex, wicked challenges requires abandoning the logic of a machine-body, the illusion of technical solutions built without personal commitment, so that we can raise our collective, human consciousness. This means providing ways for the whole population to listen to their different realities, and to quickly reach a popular consensus on how to overcome these challenges in ways that strengthen solidarity. According to the creator of Captcha tests, a million people could translate Wikipedia into a new language in 80 hours. Let us imagine what such a group could achieve if they had the capacity to sincerely agree on essential common projects, and implement them in a matter of days – free/libre and open source knowledge and infrastructures that could easily be adopted, reproduced and enriched across territories? This five-part thesis documents six years of intense creation and research that enabled me to design how such a process could unfold. * * * First, I present my journey to the PhD, and how my research took shape through cycles of prototyping. I introduce the idea of the commons, which is to understand that people – not corporations or the state – have all the resources needed to overcome the challenges we face. This builds on the oeuvre of Elinor Ostrom, who showed that ordinary people can self-organise efficiently to preserve resources, and Stefano Rodotà, who pledged that any resource that meets basic needs must be managed in a participatory way, regardless of who owns it. Secondly, I talk about Breathing Games, a commons I co-founded to make respiratory health fun. I show how this initiative, which initially objectified the children concerned – by thinking their health in their place –, then opened up a space for young people to share their subjective experience in a playful way that was beneficial to their comrades. I share how an ethic and aesthetic of commoning enabled us to engage over 450 volunteers, and mutualise resources from Canada, Switzerland, France, Italy, and South Korea. Thirdly, I propose four levers to build solidarity-driven ecosystems. We need to: — bring diverse people together for ludic events to overcome loneliness. For example, the online hackathons that mobilised 150,000 people at the start of the crown-crisis. — generate collective value to overcome material limitations. For example, the autonomous networks of makers, who shared designs and manufactured over 48 million medical supplies while industry was at a standstill. — facilitate agreements across teams of teams to overcome power games. For example, the Emerging Change, developed in Quebec schools and a Swiss multinational, enables teams to thrive and excel by establishing a ritual dialogue between the whole team and its leader, thus avoiding competition between individuals. — revisit collective narratives to break free from self-servitude. For example, challenging the belief that an authority – parent, teacher, employer, politician, caregiver – can take care of our needs better than we can. Fourthly, I present the Geneva festival ’taking care together’, a nine-day event created in 122 days thanks to 115 co-hosts. I quantify the collective value created by the Breathing Games and the festival at 2.2 million Swiss francs, 4/5 of which was generated by volunteer contributions. Next, I provide a step-by-step facilitation method that could help thousands of people coordinate their efforts around a limited number of modular projects. I then outline how this model could re-create education, eradicate systemic corruption, resurrect democracy, and heal our dis-ease when we over-invest in the mind. Finally, I summarise what I have learnt, and list about 600 references that inspired me. This creation-as-research can be freely reproduced and enriched (Creative Commons BY-SA licence, editable LaTeX format). Concordia Salus

Create a platform to ensure citizens participation in design of the cities of the future. Preparatory action

There has been a recent shift in Europe towards empowering citizens to shape Digital Transformation and Future cities. However, current methods of participation are unsuitable or unhandly for many people. In this paper, we report on the DT4REGIONS platform, a web based platform to exchange knowledge, real cases and decision making to citizens through DTStories and DTSolutions. Investigating the extent of Living Lab methodologies while addressing barriers to participation in conceptualization. The research contributes to both Digital Transformation citizen involvement and planning future cities. The platform leverages citizen knowledge, allowing high level expertise interactions, encouraging citizens to reflect and comment on their environment. Taking a case study approach, the paper discusses the divergences in citizen participation on the decision making process, focusing the design and deployment of the platform to tackle those blanks, in a city and regional level, through a survey with 38 city or region administration leaders and a workshop with 50 experts. The paper discusses the potential of the DT4REGIONS platform to address more conceptual issues, based on real study cases and concludes by a discussion on how the degree of this participation might be

Digital Interaction and Machine Intelligence

This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access. This book presents the Proceedings of the 9th Machine Intelligence and Digital Interaction Conference. Significant progress in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and its wider use in many interactive products are quickly transforming further areas of our life, which results in the emergence of various new social phenomena. Many countries have been making efforts to understand these phenomena and find answers on how to put the development of artificial intelligence on the right track to support the common good of people and societies. These attempts require interdisciplinary actions, covering not only science disciplines involved in the development of artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction but also close cooperation between researchers and practitioners. For this reason, the main goal of the MIDI conference held on 9-10.12.2021 as a virtual event is to integrate two, until recently, independent fields of research in computer science: broadly understood artificial intelligence and human-technology interaction