Council hosts a session at PICNIC 2010, Amsterdam - Sept 24
New ways of decision making: Representative democracy as we know it in the West is becoming a historical position rapidly and will disappear as a direct result of the internet and the internet of things. The recent technological developments have begun to change the content and the formats of the old forms of (social) media production and are now beginning to try themselves out on core functions and core models of organization (institutions, representative democracy, national law, copyright, patent law…) Therefore the internet of things touches on the heart of the political and the relationship between the individual and the collective.
Does it make sense in 2010 to hand over your vote for four years to someone you don't know so he or she can vote for you for more then four years in a city you are not from, if you have more real time data sets on your iphone then those persons?
What do you think?
Moderators: Rob van Kranenburg & Lorna Goulden
Rapporteur: Maurits Kreijveld
With 5 minute presentations of : Ben Schouten, Usman Haque, Natacha Roussel, Francesca Bria, Jo Caudron, Peter van Waart, Constantijn Van Oranje-Nassau
When: September 24, 10:00 - 12:00
Where: PICNIC Amsterdam 2010
Westergasfabriek. Room: Lab room B (outside lab, 50 persons)
Format:
In the first hour we will have short presentations. In the second hour the speakers will team up by two's and break down the audience of 50 into groups.
In a quick and dirty 45 minutes we will follow Usman Haque's format: “Notes on the design of participatory systems - for the city or for the planet”
a. what is the dilemma? Even if you believe that altruistic behaviour is the 'right' thing to do, it is unlikely (or even impossible) that everyone will believe the same thing at the same time, and therefore it is unlikely to succeed. This dilemma (reflected in so-called 'prisoner's dilemma') appears in deliberations concerning climate change as well: which ever country or company makes the first step towards ameliorating environmental conditions will be the one who takes on the most risk and will be (in the short term -- and it's the short term that usually matters most to individual decision makers) most economically disadvantaged. Whether that risk is real or not is irrelevant: it's the perception of risk that prevents the action. Every participatory system needs to acknowledge this limitation: you cannot rely on the end goal being incentive enough to encourage individuals to participate and cooperate on achieving the end goal.
b. Incentives It's even more difficult when you don't have complete agreement, which is the case in almost all situations. A participatory system therefore needs to have intermediary, short term incentives from which participants can gain tangible benefits. This both provides motivation and helps build trust. By enabling participants to engage on a short term basis (they can 'opt out' easily after taking that first step) it doesn't require them to commit to the end goal -- and not requiring commitment opens the door to much wider participation. Even better, it enables those who do take the first step to act as 'evidence', to those who don't, that participation does actually result in tangible benefits (albeit short term).
c. Increments Which introduces a second fundamental requirement in participatory systems: they must be designed such that incremental participation results in incremental gains; they cannot depend on an 'all or nothing' situation. If a proposition depends on everyone initially agreeing; if there is no possibility of movement before everyone has agreed to move; then the likelihood of movement is vanishingly small. More useful is to structure participation so that individuals benefit immediately from participation. Even better is to design a system in such a way that the gains are logarithmically tied to the amount of participation; i.e. so that if 3 individuals participate, they each get more tangible 'benefit' than if only 2 did.
d. Trust & evidence The difficulty in fostering cooperation comes from a lack of trust. So the question is how to build that trust. Trust largely comes from evidence; and self-constructed evidence is the best of all because it doesn't require second-hand knowledge. It also makes participants more directly aware of the issues and limitations of a system. If a participatory system relies on short term incentives (think of sugar-coated vitamins), then evidence of those incentives, and evidence that those incentives will be gained, are most important of all. That is why the first step of the scheme described above requires somebody (probably the designer) to provide that first orange juice: the shopkeepers need convincing that it's going to work!
e. Tools for evidence So one of the most important tasks in designing and building a participatory system is to design and build the tools that enable intended-participants to construct their own evidentiary rationales for participating. Determining indicators for success is crucial. If you can get people to convince themselves that short-term participation is good for them, then your job is already half-done. For noise pollution, provide some means for evaluating the noise level. This might be technological (a sound level meter) or it might just be practical ("see whether you can be heard from across the street").
The last 15 minutes the groups will present their proposed tools for the question at hand; decision making processes in the Internet of Things.
Marleen Stikker of Waag Society and Picnic & Iñaki Vazquez of Deusto University and Morelab will respond to the presentations.
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Join us for this session at PICNIC
Twitter: @PICNICfestival
Official hashtag: #PICNIC10
PICNIC Amsterdam 2010
September 22-24, 2010
See also, interview by Francesca Bria
