Transcript Slide 1

Harnessing
Collective
Intelligence for
Sustainable
Development
Stuart Macdonald
EDINA & Data Library
University of Edinburgh
[email protected]
ICT and e-Knowledge for the Developing World,
Shanghai, China, 27 September 2010
ICT4D
– Information & Communication Technologies for Development
The application of computing within
the field of socioeconomic or
international development.
• ICT4D 0.0: 1950s to late-1990s.
Main-frame computing / data
processing.
• ICT4D 1.0: late-1990s to 2010.
Millennium Development Goals and
Internet
• ICT4D 2.0: 2010 onwards –
emergence of mobile technologies
and the focus on the poor as
producers and innovators with ICTs
(as opposed to just consumers of
information).
PC powered by car battery
charged by solar panels
Harnessing Collective
Intelligence
One of Tim O'Reilly's seven principles
in the noteworthy 2005 article, What Is
Web 2.0.
“the synergistic and cumulative
channelling of the vast human and
technical resources now available over
the internet to address systemic
problems” *
Collaboration of people’s knowledge,
web technologies and information for
the common good!
* Harnessing Collective Intelligence to Address Global Climate Change (2007), Malone, T.W. & Klein, M.,Innovations: Technology, Governance and Globalization,
Summer 2007, Vol. 2, No. 3, Pages 15-26. URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/itgg.2007.2.3.15
Socio-technical concepts
Web 2.0 (or participatory web) – tools and
services that enable user interaction and
collaboration, information sharing,
interoperation between applications using the
web as a platform
Social media / social networking –
Channels and technologies include: blogs,
picture-sharing, vlogs,email, SMS, musicsharing, social networking sites, data
visualisation tools, virtual communities, and
voice over IP etc.
Crowdfunding – the collective cooperation of
people who pool their money together via the
Internet to support efforts initiated by other
people or organisations.
See Smarter Money - http://www.smartermoney.nl/
for a list of crowdfunding platforms
Socio-technical concepts
Crowdsourcing - a large group of people or volunteers
(‘the crowd’) who individually do a small amount of work to
complete a larger task
Citizen science - individual volunteers or networks of volunteers,
many of whom may have no specific scientific training, who perform
research-related tasks such as observation, measurement or
computation.
Mashups / APIs - the combining (“mashing”) of two or more pieces of
complementary data or functionality to create a new web application or
service. This is usually achieved through the use of an Application
Programming Interface (API).
Open Access – a ‘technological ideology’ whereby access to
scholarly output via the Internet is free for all to read and use
Social Media
Kabissa – http://www.kabissa.org/
a volunteer-led NGO that promotes ICT
to connect people and organisations for
positive change in Africa using a social
media platform.
• 1500+ organisations in the Kabissa network each with their own profile
• Kabissa members can set up their own groups to suit their own needs
(private or open collaboration spaces, community blog, announcements, etc)
• Public posts to all Kabissa groups can be browsed via common tags
• Public groups – ICT Peer learning, ICT Trainers complete with discussion
forums and blogs to discover relevant technologies, tools and training manuals,
workshops
• Kabissa Internet Relay Chat Room
• Twitter Dashboard, RSS feeds, recent public posts to discussion lists
Crownfunding Initiatives
Kiva – http://www.kiva.org/ - combines microfinance with the
internet to create a global network of people connected through lending:
1. Kiva partners with microfinance organisations (Field partners - FP)
2. FPs know the local area & distribute loans to entrepreneurs from their
own pocket
3. FPs collect entrepreneur stories, pictures, loan details and post to
Kiva.org.
4. Lenders browse loan requests and select those they’d like to fund.
5. Kiva aggregates funds from lenders & gives them to the FPs replenishing
the loan they made to the entrepreneur.
6. FPs also collects repayments from entrepreneurs as well as interest due.
Interest rates are set by the FP.
7. Kiva doesn’t charge interest to FPs & doesn’t provide interest to lenders.
8. Kiva repay lenders from FP accounts. Lenders can re-lend, donate to Kiva
or withdraw funds via PayPal.
Kopernik – http://www.thekopernik.org – an on-line store of innovative
technologies (e.g. solar powered products, water purification devices)
Samasource – http://samasource.org - aims to bring
small amounts of computer-based tasks (‘microwork’) to women, youths and
refugees living in poverty. Services include data entry, book digitisation,
audio transcription, video captioning. Samasource forms partnerships with
local organisations that provide computers and basic training.
Grameen Foundation – http://grameenfoundation.org –
provides micro-lenders in poor communities access to
the capital they need to make micro-loans to women
who want to start a business.
The GF Application Laboratory provides services using
mobile technologies which allow people to access
information on topics such e.g. through text messages a
farmer can receive tips on treating crop diseases, learn
local market prices, get advice on preventing malaria.
Citizen Science
Africa@home –
http://africa-at-home.web.cern.ch
- a website for volunteer computing projects
which contribute to African humanitarian
causes
Volunteer computing utilises the spare capacity
of home PCs when idle to solve scientific or
resource intensive problems
Volunteers download Berkeley Open
Infrastructure for Networking Computing
(BOINC) software from the web.
The Malaria Control Project is a grid computing
project run by Africa@home – harnessing
computing power from 1000s of PCs around the
world to improve the ability of researchers to
predict (through simulations) the spread of
malaria in Africa
Mashups and APIs
Ushahidi – http://www.ushahidi.com – provides a
free and open source platform for aggregating information from the
public for use in a crisis response.
Any person or organization can use to set up their own way to collect
and visualize information.
Core platform will allow for plug-in and extensions so that it can be
customized for different locales and needs
The Ushahidi platform allows
anyone to gather distributed data
e.g. SMS, RSS, email, digital
photograph, microblog entry and
visualise it on a map or timeline.
RSS,
email,
mobile
Submit an
incident
Category of
incident
OpenStreetMap
visualisation
of reported
incidents
Images of missing
people
Person finder tool
Open Access
HINARI (World Health Organisation) –
http://www.who.int/hinari/en/
HINARI provides free or very-low cost online
access to more than 7000 major journals in
Biomedical and related social sciences to local,
Non-profit institutions in developing countries.
Institutions in countries with GNI per capita below $1250 are
eligible for free
Institutions with GNI per capita between $1250 - $3500 pay
$1000 p.a.
Eligible categories of institutions include: universities, research
institutes, teaching hospitals, government offices, national
medical libraries
Examples of enterprising technologies
Delay (or Disruption) Tolerant Networking (DTN) - technical solution to create
continuous connectivity across networks operating in mobile or extreme terrestrial
environments.
Multiple Mice – In developing countries children often don’t have access to individual
computers. Research in rural India showed that with shared computers there are clear
patterns of inequality for children based on who controls the input. UC Berkeley and Microsoft
Research India have developed multiple mice. They found that children learned more in
shared modes with multiple devices than they did even when each child had a dedicated
computer.
Ruggedized computers - specifically designed
with robust and simple components to operate in
harsh environments, such as extreme temperatures,
and wet or dusty conditions.
Audio Wiki – a repository of spoken content that
can be accessed and modified via low-cost
telephone and is accessible to illiterate
Users create, edit and listen to content without
having to read any text using a hybrid of keypad
navigation and speech recognition
Steps in the right direction but….
External issues which impact on ICT4D include:
• ICT policy from local/national
government
• Infrastructure such as roads, health
services, power
• Corruption/exploitation
• Illiteracy
• Lack of exposure to basic technology
and subsequent training
• Socio-cultural aspects such as
religion specific to indigenous
communities
Improve quality of life for people on their own cultural terms!!
Credits: All images are CC Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0
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CC images by M. M. Alvarez, T. Shinbrot, F. J. Muzzio, Rutgers University, Center for Structured Organic Composites
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Thank You
[email protected]
EDINA National Data Centre:
http://edina.ac.uk