Harnessing Collective Intelligence For Sustainable Development

Harnessing Collective Intelligence for Sustainable Development

Stuart Macdonald

EDINA & Data LibraryUniversity of [email protected]

ICT and e-Knowledge for the Developing World, Shanghai, China, 27 September 2010

PC powered by car battery charged by solar panels

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).

ICT4D – Information & Communication Technologies for Development

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 conceptsWeb 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, music- sharing, 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

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

Socio-technical concepts

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 InitiativesKiva – 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.

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

Citizen Science

Mashups and APIsUshahidi – 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.

Submit an incident

Category of incident

RSS, email, mobile

Images of missing people

Person finder tool

OpenStreetMap visualisation of reported incidents

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 inBiomedical 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 technologiesDelay (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….

• 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!!

External issues which impact on ICT4D include:

Thank You

[email protected]

EDINA National Data Centre: http://edina.ac.uk

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