Chapter 3 From Big to Democratic Data

Datasets have come to play a significant role in the technical and political realities of our overdeveloped world. This chapter indicates how invisible data processes pose a threat to the health and safety of the global public and argues for the democratic potential of data practices. This potential is set to become even more influential due to the central role data plays for training contemporary AI and technologies such as machine learning. Our case study explores the role patient datasets have for machine learning research in healthcare and shows that publicly available datasets are central to advancing data analysis research; they can act as a counterbalance to datasets full of absences, biases, and disconnects that often corrupt the quality of data. Given this, we argue for the introduction of ‘data solidarity’ as a principle of data governance and an effective critical data practice that focuses on the democratic (instead of economic) potential of data; a potential that is far too often overlooked

Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things

"Through algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), objects and digital services now demonstrate new skills they did not have before, right up to replacing human activity through pre-programming or by making their own decisions. As part of the internet of things, AI applications are already widely used today, for example in language processing, image recognition and the tracking and processing of data. This policy brief illustrates the potential negative and positive impacts of AI and reviews related policy strategies adopted by the UK, US, EU, as well as Canada and China. Based on an ethical approach that considers the role of AI from a democratic perspective and considering the public interest, the authors make policy recommendations that help to strengthen the positive impact of AI and to mitigate its negative consequences.

Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things

"Through algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI), objects and digital services now demonstrate new skills they did not have before, right up to replacing human activity through pre-programming or by making their own decisions. As part of the internet of things, AI applications are already widely used today, for example in language processing, image recognition and the tracking and processing of data. This policy brief illustrates the potential negative and positive impacts of AI and reviews related policy strategies adopted by the UK, US, EU, as well as Canada and China. Based on an ethical approach that considers the role of AI from a democratic perspective and considering the public interest, the authors make policy recommendations that help to strengthen the positive impact of AI and to mitigate its negative consequences.

Communication

Machine communication - to interact not just via but also with machines - has transformed contemporary communication. It puts us not just in conversation with one another but also with our current machinery. By analyzing the alienness of this computational communication, through a close reading of interfaces and a field study of software development, this volume uncovers what it means to "communicate" today

Inner Voice

"This book explores the future of critique in view of our planetary condition. How are we to intervene in contemporary constellations of finance capitalism, climate change and neoliberalism? Think we must! To get to the symptoms, the book's 38 terms ranging from affect and affirmation to world and work provide the reader with a critical toolbox to be continued. Negativity, judgment and opposition as modes of critique have run out of steam. Critique as an attitude and a manner of enquiry has not." (author's abstract

Die fünfte Gewalt: Über digitale Öffentlichkeit und die Neuausrichtung von Journalismus und Politik

Die Digitalisierung hat den Resonanzraum des Journalismus erweitert und verschoben: Digitale Öffentlichkeit, Politik und Journalismus bilden nun ein neues System wechselseitiger Kontrolle, in dem die digitale Öffentlichkeit die Rolle der fünften Gewalt einnimmt

‘The Returned’: on the future of monographic books

This article evaluates the current state of academic book publishing based on the findings of the Hybrid Publishing Lab's business model research. With students relying more and more on Google and Wikipedia, the role of books within today's university studies is a difficult one. From the perspective of publishers, open access (OA) embracing the digital is seen as one potential way to bridge this gap between online search engines and traditional monographs. To illustrate this further, the article delivers an overview of its findings, which highlight changes in academic publishing: publishers have switched their emphasis from delivering a product to creating a service, whereby the author rather than the reader becomes their most focused-on customer. Research frameworks, funding and conventions about academic careers, however, often still need to adjust to this new development. If these frameworks acknowledge and foster OA publishing, and new experiments with collaborative book productions flourish, the monograph will have a future