Group items tagged

"As technology-especially computer, information, and Internet technology-permeates all aspects of our society, people who understand that technology need to be part of public-policy discussions. We need technologists who work in the public interest. We need public-interest technologists. Defining this term is difficult. One Ford Foundation blog post described public-interest technologists as "technology practitioners who focus on social justice, the common good, and/or the public interest." A group of academics in this field wrote that "public-interest technology refers to the study and application of technology expertise to advance the public interest/generate public benefits/promote the public good.""

"The United States needs to invest in a new digital public sphere-a new civic infrastructure-if it hopes to sustain democratic practice and informed participation."

The standard for public code is a set of criteria that supports public organisations in developing and maintaining software and policy together

"Physical public spaces are increasingly being digitised through technologies such as surveillance cameras and facial recognition."

An essay, in the form of an FAQ, about the possibility of digital social spaces built with taxpayer dollars.

"PubHubs is the name for a new Dutch community network, based on public values. PubHubs stands for Public Hubs. It is open and transparent and protects data of the network's participants. PubHubs aims to connect people, in different hubs, such as your family, sports club, school class, museum, local library, neighborhood, or municipality. In each such hub, a relevant part of one's own identity plays a role. PubHubs focuses on reliable information, if necessary with digital signatures, and on trusted communication, if necessary with guarantees of the identity of participants."

Christian Fuchs's talk on the public service internet

Kromtech Security Researchers have discovered another publically accessible Amazon S3 repository. This time it contained medical data in 316,363 PDF reports in the form of weekly blood test results. Many of these were multiple reports on individual patients. It appears that each patient had weekly test results totaling around 20 files each. That would still be an estimated 150,000+ people affected by the leak.

"rather than try to build the next Google, should we not focus on building the infrastructures that prevent the next Google instead?"

Wearable sensor technology has the potential to transform health care and our understanding of our own bodies and habits. The investigation and testing of these sensors in the commercial sector offer an unprecedented opportunity to leverage biometric data, both to improve individual health through the development of better products and to advance the public good through research. However, research with wearable sensor data must be done in a manner that is respectful of ethical considerations and consumer privacy

"At the 3rd International Open Data Conference in Ottawa on 28 May, the Open Data Institute published a short discussion paper to stimulate a public debate about data infrastructure."

"FACEBOOK. Instagram. Google. Twitter. All services we rely on - and all services we believe we don't have to pay for. Not with cash, anyway. But ad-financed Internet platforms aren't free, and the price they extract in terms of privacy and control is getting only costlier. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows that 93 percent of the public believes that "being in control of who can get information about them is important," and yet the amount of information we generate online has exploded and we seldom know where it all goes."

Twitter archives are a rich source of data for doing research into numerous things: Learning about social media and interaction networks, gaining insights into movement patterns based on geolocations and even doing sentiment analysis based on the tweets. And the best part of it: Unless you have a protected Twitter account this data is already public. So why not share it? The TwArχiv takes in your Twitter archive and generates interesting visualizations from your own tweets, including tweet volume over time and your interaction/movement patterns.

In support of our mission to benefit people and society, the Partnership on AI intends to conduct research, organize discussions, share insights, provide thought leadership, consult with relevant third parties, respond to questions from the public and media, and create educational material that advances the understanding of AI technologies including machine perception, learning, and automated reasoning.

"Croquet eliminates dedicated servers and server-side code from online multiuser apps. Instead, users connect through our worldwide network of public reflectors. Every input is mirrored by the reflector to a shared virtual computer that runs bit-identical across every client, so everyone stays perfectly in sync"

"Individuals should not have to rely on whisper networks for justice. The Tech Worker Handbook is a collection of resources for tech workers who are looking to make more informed decisions about whether to speak out on issues that are in the public interest. Aiming to improve working conditions, direct attention to consumer harms, or otherwise address wrongdoing and abuse should not be a solo or poorly resourced endeavor."

"Personalisation is no longer reserved for commercial parties like Spotify and Netflix. For the last few years public services have hopped on this trend, but the BBC is now taking the lead by creating a central open-source recommendation and data control service called My PDS. "