Self-Enfranchisement by ICT: Illegal Settlements & the 'Informal' Economy

Updated on June 16, 2010 by annlytical

Last month's WiredUK had an article that sent my mind a-racing in several directions.  The article entitled "Organizing Armaggeddon" tracked how smart-phones with apps and geotagging will be used in the future for aid relief.  Not that the Ushahidi platform wasn't enough of a digi-revelation, the first relief workers on the ground in Haiti tagged refugee sites with a GPS, what resources were available and what kind of aid was needed. 

The article describes an aid worker:

"Chaperon stopped at several to talk with the locals. Clipboard in hand, he jotted down key indicators such as access to water, numbers of children, availability of improvised shelter materials, and whether any other aid outfits had already been there. He snapped the occasional digital photo to augment the reports and logged the location of each camp with a GPS unit -- critical in places like Haiti where there never were many street addresses to begin with.

Back at base camp, his findings would be added to those of other assessment teams, along with information from media reports and other sources, in an ever-growing database."

And the article also explains why natural disasters hit less developed countries particularly hard:

"Earthquakes are an even more lethal threat, particularly in poor countries. Portau-au-Prince and its environs collapsed because of the shoddy construction that is the norm in developing-world megalopolises from Mexico City to Chengdu."

Put bluntly, cities in emerging markets and developing countries have a lot 'slums' or 'squatter camps.' In some places these 'camps' are no longer camps-- they have been so long that they have become essentially permanent structures (see Robert Neuwirth Shadow Cities). In South Africa some squatter camps have become townships, some now becoming sub-metropolitan economies in their own right.

And then it struck me: what if aid workers know who was where already? Why couldn't they know that?

Click to read more ...

Creativity, Colocation, & Cities

I just want to pose a question:  if colocation is important for more efficient working, and feeds innovation in business practices, does the style of planning matter?

The reason I ask is this: An article came across twitter this morning (@planetizen) about Cisco's new "cities in a box." Cisco is building its first 'build-it-and-they-will-come-smart-city' in South Korea.  The concept smacks of China's empty cities, modeled on sprawling US suburbia. The Chinese and the Indians too, are expected to be big customers.

Again, read the entire article here.

For a project with @WorkSnug's @leylandrichard, I've been talking a lot with city planner types, and work specialists.  Several of them have mentioned to me that "the Chinese" are repeating our recently realized mistakes in city planning-- sprawl, spacial use separation, car orientated, campus high rises.  The consensus is that colocation is vital for working: within a sector, when workers are colocated, they are more efficient and innovative; but workers today have many identities, so they need to be able to easily colocate with all of the communities they participate in.  I've been pointed at the work of Jane Jacobs who thought cities should grow organically, because when they do, it leads to greater dynamism for the local economy.

Last weekend I was at a conference on climate adaptation planning for city mayors where several smart things were said about community-based participation in economic development and climate adaptation: the tautology that communities should be implementors of policy is not enough, communities must be initiators as well.  Climate adaptation in developing countries will have a strong city planning component. 

Sure, we will need 'smart-cities' and bravo to Cisco for their technological expertise. But will these uber-planned 'cities in a box' allow emerging markets to develop the  dynamic economies they need to provide for the economic well-being of their people?  Put another way, will these cities make space for creativity, innovation, and all those other dynamic economy buzz words? Will people really live in these cities-- sure people may come and try them out, but what's the staying power?  If there's one thing we've learned from web 2.0, it's that content is best when it's user-adaptable.

These cities leave me with a funny feeling.  How about you?

ManTownHuman debate: audio on politics & architecture

I tweeted from the ManTownHuman debate about participatory design, development design, and sustainability on 27 May. Speaker Karl Sharro said that socially responsible design is irresponsible because as he sees it, there is a danger with sustainability now in the mainstream that architects will stop distrupting design with what's actually needed to conform.  Beware conformity and consensus. 

Sharro's point is well taken, but I think maybe his comments go too far in that perhaps disruptive design to the extent he suggests might be too individualistic in thinking when we are in a time that (arguably) calls for a new age with respect to collective thinking.

As far as architecture not being political, I don't buy that at all.

Here's the full audio of what he said (medium HT VoiceRecorder app, iPhone)

Socially Responsible Design Might be Irresponsible by Annlytical

Cities for Climate Resilience Conference 2010: Takeaways

I spent the weekend in Bonn at the ICLEI Cities for Sustainability Conference on Resilient Cities.*  I want to share some highlights before I get to work on the serious journalist articles from the conference: 



The most striking communication from the conference is that adaptation and mitigation, the all important structure for considering developing countries and climate change doesn’t actually have an “and” relationship.  In fact, they are very separate structures and will have different financial sources as well.  With regard to the NAMAs (nationally appropriate mitigation actions), the NAPAs (nationally adaptation programs of action) are the poorer cousin.  The NAMAs have a business sourced financial mechanism in the CDMs, the NAPAs do not, in so far as there is no market instrument to it, though the adaptation fund currently sources its funding from a 2% CDM levy.

Cities, as institutions will arguably be exposed to the most intense processes of change when it comes to adapting and mitigating climate change.  That’s why cities are beginning to structure their own adaptation and mitigation action plans, dubbed LAMAs and LAPAs by urbanists.

Click to read more ...

Convo Starter: Google as a Public Good

When you’ve become a verb, you’re a public good.

Google dominates the internet, it’s got its tentacles in everything.  One of the very first things I learned when I started studying development economics and social justice was to be weary of those that control market access: what institutions regulate access to information, information that economic actors need to make informed decisions, and which institutions have the capability in and of themselves to make markets.  Google now fits both of these descriptions, which concerns me.

Google’s well known, self-styled reputation is that of a social enterprise, and I will give the company the benefit of the doubt that its activities this year come from a place of wanting to spread access to information so that everyone can participate in the global economy on a more level playing field.

But as Danah Boyd rightly points out on her blog “Apophenia,” utilities get regulated because utilities control access to public goods.  Boyd’s post is actually about regulating Facebook, but her point stands.  She accurately contends that legislating something like internet based technology is very difficult because the medium changes so quickly-- it’s hard to regulate a dynamic entity because by the time the legislation is drafted, negotiated, redrafted, and passed, it’s become obsolete.  Witness the UK’s bass ackwards Digital Economy Act.  

But, she points out, “We like the threat of regulation and we hope that it will keep things at bay without actually requiring stupidity.”

Facebook has now shifted gears, pulled back, and responded to its users with clearer, more transparent privacy controls.  Is Facebook a social enterprise? probably. Is it a market maker? in a way. Is it a gatekeeper? absolutely.  

I want to argue that it’s the responsibility of companies, especially those that believe themselves to be first and foremost social enterprises, to self-regulate.  When companies like Facebook and Google, get so large and are so inter-active and multifaceted, they need to think of themselves as more than social enterprises, than money making organizations, they become public goods and with that comes certain responsibilities which might include (I’m floating this:) refraining from activities that it might otherwise undertake if it was solely an enterprise.

Before I get into the things that Google’s been up to that I think warrant this self-examination, I want to remind you of Google’s business model, ironically explained by Cory Doctorow at Google UK late last year:

“I remember when Google bought Blogger, and no one could really figure out why they’d done it, and I asked around and I was writing for Business 2.0 then and I talked to a lot of people on and off the record and there were a couple of answers that really wrung true for me about why Google had bought Blogger...that generally speaking, the more people used the internet, the more money people would make, right? Google had a business model that was based on Internet use going up and Google’s income going up at the same time. They had figured that out. That’s what a digital business looks like. It’s not a business that relies on the totally ahistorical and vastly improbable proposition that internet use will decline.”

The public good argument:

An interesting article from the FT earlier in the year made the case that Google is like a public utility company.  Public utilities provide for the up-keep of non-exclusive (you can’t keep someone from using it) and finite goods; by definition, these are public goods. 

So here’s a few things that Google’s been up to this year that have made the back of my neck-tingle:

NPR’s Marketplace (18 March 2010) and Wired UK (4.10 issue) reported on Google’s newest form of revenue, campaign advising.  Google, it seems, now has a political adverts unit.  And according to Marketplace’s story, the newly elected Senator Scott Brown owes his victory, in part, to Google Ads. 

Peter Greenberger, Google’s political advertising director told Marketplace,

“There are over a half-a-million elected officials in the United States. We think that every single elected official could benefit from using Google AdWords to communicate with their voters.”

The Brown campaign reportedly spent upwards of $250,000. There’s no information how much David Cameron will be spending. Wired UK reports that the Tories will also be paying into Google’s Adwords.  If Google wants to allow candidates access to voters, fine.  But it’s the excludability bit that’s got me.

Should Google be participating like this in politics?

Campaign spending has always been an electric issue in US politics.  The US Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that corporations, when it comes to campaign donations, are like people has sparked fury amongst progressives.  In the cultural mythology surrounding American democracy, you had ought to be able to come from nothing and run for the Presidency.  But the reality is that campaign spending determines elections.  And now corporations have a greater ability to have more political sway than before.

In context, what if we think of Google like media (market maker, less public utility)? For my British readers, US media large enough to command national attention haven’t taken sides in elections (explicitly) since before World War II (it’s that whole illusion of an unbiased media Americans like to keep). To declare support (overtly) for a candidate is unheard of.  Private companies are free to do what they like, to donate to campaigns, and back candidates.   Likewise, campaigns could purchase adverts in newspapers.

But Google is providing an advisory service, almost like a marketing agency. And Google is more pervasive, more a part of everyday life than newspapers (media outlet, if you like).  

There is something intensely unsettling about Google advising political campaigns on advertising and selling Adwords and search engine results to political campaigns. No it’s not out and out endorsement, and they are being paid but the internet is a public good in a way the newspaper is not.  And Google is such a norm of the internet that it’s like infrastructure.  

Returning to our definition of a public good:
Non-exclusive: search engine, internet
Finite: Google, the FT article notes, has 80-90% of the online ad market.

Google is expanding into clean energy, even advocating for it. Which in and of itself is great, especially as Google is a market maker.  Google.org and The Climate Group recently led a 45 strong company letter to Obama that advocates for green energy.  And while this is fantastic, the companies on that list are large telecoms-- data gatekeepers.  Google is making big investments in clean energy, and one day soon we’ll be able to monitor our energy use and even control it via the internet, no doubt through a Google branded energy service.  

I’m moving soon.  It occured to me when I went off to Copenhagen last December that I pretty much had everything with me that I needed: my Macbook Pro, my iPhone, and all my digi-journa gear. The ‘stuff’ in my flat, and it’s mostly books and unseasonal clothes, I really don’t need.  The only valuable things I have are my digi-journa kit, but it occurs to me my Macbook and all my cameras are just mediums for my data.  And my data is mostly in digital land now.  

Who controls my data? Me? Or the services that currently host it?

Google needs to have the public good conversation, especially now that it looks like Google is one of the first market movers to Africa. This conversation should be public.  I recommend a livestreamed debate panel, several in fact, followed by a lot of blogging, tweeting, and facebook campaigns to keep them in check.

I’ve been reading a lot of Umair Haque lately, he’s become a favorite.  I like his “Betterness” for business model.  Under this model, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to imply that companies will legitimately and effectively be able to self-regulate in the near future.  (Calm down, not saying government shouldn’t regulate at all, I like government regulation, I’m just saying) In an age of social media and new found stress on social responsibility, business betterness strategy will hopefully be able to check problems before lawsuits become necessary.  Google (and Facebook) seem to be leading the way.

Perspective, China's Currency Moves

The Chinese signalled today that they will be moving the yuan peg to a basket of currencies, rather than a straight dollar peg.  This development makes sense for a number of reasons:

China declared some months back that the yuan would no longer be prohibited from being used as a currency of account: previously only a few provinces could use the yuan to settle cross border trade accounts between mainland China and Hong Kong and ASEAN countries.  Companies that conduct cross border trade invoice in strong currencies for ease of trade (reliability guarantee) and international payments.  When a government  currency of account, in other words, means that you're confident about the strength and stability of your currency.

China is now a member of the ASEAN trading area, as of earlier this year.  And use of the yuan won't be limited to Asia either-- it will extend to Latin America as well, as China imports raw materials from those countries.

China's currency via its deficit with the US has been over exaggerated (the Roubini Global Economics blog had an excellent article pointing out the flaws with this very superficial argument), most pundits in the US forget that the US isn't the only country China trades with.  China is importing so many raw materials these days that it's actually moving towards a trade deficit. And let's not forget that the value of a currency is based on different metrics and discounting rates-- it depends on which rates you use to discern whether or not a currency is under-valued (or over-valued).  For example, according to Goldman Sachs estimates, the yuan is only 0.4 percent under-valued.

The reality is that China is facing inflation and an over-heating banking sector and workers that are demanding higher wages.  Pegging to a basket of currencies allows for a more manageable and stable currency, especially in China's transitionary period from being a neophyte economy to perhaps, a mature teenager.

Update on May 20, 2010 by annlytical

Ran across this article this morning, which is a little covered perspective on China's currency revaluation:  it would suit other major Asian economies (Japan in particular) if China did not revalue its currency. It's funny, from the press coverage, you would think the world was united behind the US's position on the matter: China's currency value poses a clear and present danger to the world economy.

There's a paywall on the article so I'll summarize: in major Asian economies, many of whom are now invoicing in Yuan, recovery would be threatened if China devalues its currency.

Agencement Exposed: when the 'black box' failed

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 1,000 points on Thursday.  In that time billions of dollars was lost.

Thursday evening when the news came across Twitter, I was sitting in a make-shift press room with one of my favourite fellow journalists Chris Milton, who remarked, "I'll bet somebody tripped over a cord."  In other words, somebody momentarily unplugged the electric supply to a trading machine in some important someplace.  The next day a WSJ headline about the plunge used the words "fat fingers" to describe the cause of the incident.  While the romantic in me would like to think this was some ingenius work by supertheives with hacking skills, taking pennies off millions of trades and transferring them into a bank account, the answer is probably a lot less nefarious. 

The continuing puzzlement over the cause of the plunge reminds me of a truly excellent study of financial markets by Donald MacKenzie at the University of Edinburgh.  In Material Markets: How Economic Agents are Constructed, MacKenzie uses a discussion of agencement (Callon via Deleuze) to illustrate just how participants in financial markets shape the construction of the market, which has feedback effects, such that the market construction evolves with unintended (misunderstood?) consequences.  As MacKenzie's theory as it applies to the financial crisis suggests that as pricing models were used to predict market prices, the more those predictions shaped the market, making the predicted prices less predictable-- pricing models based on historical data, the future would no longer resemble the past.  (please don't stop reading here, that was the most complicate bit, promise)

MacKenzie quotes Callon and Caliskan (2005) to explain agencement:

"Agencement denote socio-technical arrangements when they are considered from the point of view of their capacity to act and to give meaning to action."

This is also called "actor-network" theory.  In other words, in financial markets, a stock trader with a calculator (MacKenzie's example) may be more effective than a stock trader without one, but give the trader without one a calculator and they will still not have the same knowledge capacity.  Experience aside, it is the physical surroundings, relationships to tools and to other actors that shapes the full knowledge capacity of the trader.  This is agencement.

Agencement involves (say Callon and Latour as qtd in MacKenzie) a said market participant (stock trader, economic actor, what-have-you) sitting on a ‘black box’ process-- “a device the internal structure of which is opaque or can be disregarded, and which can be treated simply as transforming given inputs into predictable, appropriate outputs” (MacKenzie, Material Markets, p34). What happened Thursday involved black-box failure and sounds like it will resulting in a re-examination of the black box bit of agencement.

What I want to convey about the incident is that it is a reminder about agencement : we depend upon financial markets which depend upon the humans and machines active in them-- but we often forget that who is acting on (using?) what can be clouded by continuous, little-noticed adjustments in our relationships that only become noticeable when something fucks up.  But at this point, it’s usually too late, the Dow has plunged 1,000 points, which spurs overseas markets to plunge as well-- billions of dollars are lost on a ‘black box’ error.

Full Audio Nick Clegg Speaks to Protesters

Full Audio of Nick Clegg speaking to Take Back Parliament "fair votes now" protesters today.  Demanding electoral reform and reassurance from Clegg that they will get it, protesters marched from Trafalgar Square to Smith Square's Transport House and demanded to speak with Clegg, who didn't disappoint. 

Clegg speaks to "Fair Votes Now" Protesters

Ann Danylkiw's Podcast

Update on May 9, 2010 by annlytical

I just posted some pics in my photo_work section.  This picture summarizes the protest for me. 

Judging by the slogans the protesters chanted "fair votes now" and "don't sell out" while descending upon Transport House (Smith Square) and demanding to see Clegg, all they were looking for was reassurance that Clegg would stand for electoral reform-- that was their message to him.  Clegg, in his turn, acknowledged the protesters and praised them for their efforts.  The protest broke up within ten minutes of Clegg coming out to speak to them.

They went away satisfied, but still uncertain (see man, scratching his head). The little girl is almost turning back, dragging her purple balloon (the "fair votes now" protest colour).  She's waiting to see what Clegg will do.