Human Computation and Convergence

Humans are the most effective integrators and producers of information, directly and through the use of information-processing inventions. As these inventions become increasingly sophisticated, the substantive role of humans in processing information will tend toward capabilities that derive from our most complex cognitive processes, e.g., abstraction, creativity, and applied world knowledge. Through the advancement of human computation - methods that leverage the respective strengths of humans and machines in distributed information-processing systems - formerly discrete processes will combine synergistically into increasingly integrated and complex information processing systems. These new, collective systems will exhibit an unprecedented degree of predictive accuracy in modeling physical and techno-social processes, and may ultimately coalesce into a single unified predictive organism, with the capacity to address societies most wicked problems and achieve planetary homeostasis.Comment: Pre-publication draft of chapter. 24 pages, 3 figures; added references to page 1 and 3, and corrected typ

From Social Simulation to Integrative System Design

As the recent financial crisis showed, today there is a strong need to gain "ecological perspective" of all relevant interactions in socio-economic-techno-environmental systems. For this, we suggested to set-up a network of Centers for integrative systems design, which shall be able to run all potentially relevant scenarios, identify causality chains, explore feedback and cascading effects for a number of model variants, and determine the reliability of their implications (given the validity of the underlying models). They will be able to detect possible negative side effect of policy decisions, before they occur. The Centers belonging to this network of Integrative Systems Design Centers would be focused on a particular field, but they would be part of an attempt to eventually cover all relevant areas of society and economy and integrate them within a "Living Earth Simulator". The results of all research activities of such Centers would be turned into informative input for political Decision Arenas. For example, Crisis Observatories (for financial instabilities, shortages of resources, environmental change, conflict, spreading of diseases, etc.) would be connected with such Decision Arenas for the purpose of visualization, in order to make complex interdependencies understandable to scientists, decision-makers, and the general public.Comment: 34 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

True zero-training brain-computer interfacing: an online study

Despite several approaches to realize subject-to-subject transfer of pre-trained classifiers, the full performance of a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) for a novel user can only be reached by presenting the BCI system with data from the novel user. In typical state-of-the-art BCI systems with a supervised classifier, the labeled data is collected during a calibration recording, in which the user is asked to perform a specific task. Based on the known labels of this recording, the BCI's classifier can learn to decode the individual's brain signals. Unfortunately, this calibration recording consumes valuable time. Furthermore, it is unproductive with respect to the final BCI application, e.g. text entry. Therefore, the calibration period must be reduced to a minimum, which is especially important for patients with a limited concentration ability. The main contribution of this manuscript is an online study on unsupervised learning in an auditory event-related potential (ERP) paradigm. Our results demonstrate that the calibration recording can be bypassed by utilizing an unsupervised trained classifier, that is initialized randomly and updated during usage. Initially, the unsupervised classifier tends to make decoding mistakes, as the classifier might not have seen enough data to build a reliable model. Using a constant re-analysis of the previously spelled symbols, these initially misspelled symbols can be rectified posthoc when the classifier has learned to decode the signals. We compare the spelling performance of our unsupervised approach and of the unsupervised posthoc approach to the standard supervised calibration-based dogma for n = 10 healthy users. To assess the learning behavior of our approach, it is unsupervised trained from scratch three times per user. Even with the relatively low SNR of an auditory ERP paradigm, the results show that after a limited number of trials (30 trials), the unsupervised approach performs comparably to a classic supervised model

Simple kinship systems are more learnable

Natural languages partition meanings into labelled categoriesin different ways, but this variation is constrained: languagesappear to achieve a near-optimal trade-off between simplicityand informativeness. Across 3 artificial language learning ex-periments, we verify that objectively simpler kinship systemsare easier for human participants to learn, and also show thatthe errors which occur during learning tend to increase sim-plicity while reducing informativeness. This latter result sug-gests that pressures for simplicity and informativeness operatethrough different mechanisms: learning favours simplicity, butthe pressure for informativeness must be enforced elsewhere,e.g. during language use in communicative interaction

Service Design in the Public Sector

The digital transformations revolutionizing so many aspects of contemporary culture are also dramatically changing government services. Designers have an important role to play in these shifts. A wide range of government services— from applying for birth certifications to voting and paying taxes; from immigration applications to citizenship and permitting processes—are becoming available in digital formats. This extension of government services from traditional countertop services to digital access means that governments are hiring designers to build these online applications and platforms. This redesign of services, when including human-centric research methods, enables citizens to have a say in the government decision-making process (Stewart, Dubow, Hofman & Stolk, 2016), and has resulted in exciting design opportunities as well as significant challenges. In this thesis, I elaborate on the practice of service design in a government context, from micro and macro perspectives, using three case studies. In the first case study, I will give an example of how governments are transitioning to redesign specific public services using Agile principles. Agile describes how prototyping and development teams experiment with different possibilities in short “agile” periods of time, allowing real end users to contribute their insights. Using rapid prototyping methods such as Agile helps provide simple and useful ways for citizens to find, use, and contribute to the design of government services. This first case study will describe agile practice in the rapid prototyping lab at Ontario Digital Service (ODS), an organization under a provincial government ministry. In the second case study, I will describe how governments practice service design from a broader perspective. This example comes from my work with Public Digital Innovation Space (PDIS), an organization under Taiwan Open Government. PDIS contributes to facilitating public collaboration with citizens and the government under a mandate from the Taiwanese ministry called Open Government. In this case study, the service design organization is tasked with encouraging citizens and other stakeholders to participate in the government decision- making process and social discussions. In the context of my Master’s research, it was important to investigate ethical issues in bringing neo-liberal rapid prototyping methods to government service design (Kimbell & Bailey, 2017). The final case study outlines a workshop I held with fellow design students to investigate one ethical issue in design; power dynamics within multidisciplinary teams. I had realized that there was a lack of discussion around design ethics in the public sector

Ephemeral Journalism: News Distribution Through Instagram Stories

Social media are increasingly integrated into media routines as channels to gain access, verify and spread information. Likewise, as mobile news consumption is standardized, the media experiment with native formats for these platforms. This study analyzes how the media use Instagram Stories, to identify the strategies that they apply, as well as the adaptation and innovation features on this platform. A content analysis was conducted from a sample of 17 online media that use Instagram Stories, both legacy and digital native. The results show an upward potential in ephemeral news production, one that is increasingly developed and unique.This article has been developed within the research project “Digital native media in Spain: storytelling formats and mobile strategy” (RTI2018-093346-B-C33) funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities and co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), as well as it is part of the activities promoted by Novos Medios research group (GI-1641), supported by Xunta de Galicia (ED431B 2017/48). The authors Jorge Vázquez-Herrero (FPU15/00334) and Sabela Direito Rebollal (FPU15/02557) are beneficiaries of the Faculty Training Program funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities (Government of Spain)S