Conversation Overview 27th of May 2020: Asking questions

[MariaEuler]

Dear community,

Here a short overview of some of the currently ongoing conversations. Last week the community has returned to some of the key questions of the Next Generation Internet debate.

Does Alexa have linguistic authority? is the question asked in this interview with DR. Britta Schneider. The discussion follows to explore AI translation. How have those touched your live, what are your theories regarding how AI influences language and vice versa?

Does Alexa have Linguistic Authority? An Interview with Dr. Britta Schneider

You give it a training dataset, I guess. For automated translation, I hear many companies train their algos with European Commission open datasets (example). The EU pays a small army of translators to render official documents into 20+ languages, so it is a precious resource (and free – the data are open). If that’s true, it’s not surprising that algos skew towards a professional, rather than personal, use of language.

Could COVID lead to the second coming of big tech? Join us in the discussion of how the crisis has affected tech giants, powerstructures and “remote work class” perception. How could remote work and internet development be more independent from big tech? Do you have examples?

A Second Coming of Big Tech in the age of COVID-19?

@katjab has published a very interesting long read on how SARS-COV-2 is affecting the evolution of the Internet. Hers is a nuanced reflection, to which I cannot fully do justice here. Nevertheless, I would like to comment on one of her points: that the pandemic, as it ravaged so many human lives and endeavors, has strengthened large tech companies. The obvious big winner of the COVID-19 crisis so far has been Big Tech. Where most sectors of the economy have seen demand collapse, many large tec…

Nice graph, but how did you get there, and what does it tell us? DeLab has create large trove of data on COVID-19, which seems to hold important knowledge if we could just unlock it. So, we propose an experiment. Join us on the 3rd of June for an online webinar to discuss and interpret COVID-19 data together.

Webinar: Making sense of a COVID-19 world: applying collective intelligence to big data (3rd of June)

[36] [delab] Join the webinar to get introduces to giant research of Covid19 related data and interpret and discuss it live together. How to read and interpret data? As we at NGI Forward watched SARS-CoV-2 cut into our worlds, we felt the same as everybody else. We feared for loved ones, and for the long-term freedom and prosperity of our societies. We felt powerless, and anxious in the face of uncertainty. We still do. But, at some point along the way, we realized there was something we co…

Please feel free to already explore DeLab’s website and post or bring any questions you wanted to ask data experts directly in the last few months to the thread above or directly to the webinar!

“How can we make a live(lihood)?” Is the question we are asking for our Summit this autumn:

Sneak Peek: Covid19 + Resilient Livelihoods: An Online Summit

This summit is part of a series of activities aimed at co-designing experimental new social, business and investment models to withstand the shocks which will be soon be upon us as climate crisis and ecological devastation unfold. Ecosystems of economic resilience and regeneration. Register your interest now for the Resilient Livelihoods Summit, hosted by Edgeryders. When: Pre-summit events starting on 2nd week of June, Summit takes place in mid september. Tickets: Fill in this form Program…

The full summit will take place in September and October, but you can already get involved in proposing or shopping sessions. You can find the preliminary program here :

Summit Program

Event program: Resilient Livelihoods in the aftermatch of Covid19. A 2hr process of online activities that accelerates offline activities. This event follows a format designed to gather together people who deploy policies, infrastructures, tools, business activity and community projects that can form an essential support system for build and sustaining livelihoods in times of crisis. Discussion The EdgeRyders events process begins when an idea or solution is posted on the platform, sparking…

In June and July, we are going to have a few Pre-summit listening sessions. The first one is happening next week and going to be extremely tasty and essential. It asks for community-oriented solitons for food businesses challenged by the current crisis.

After covid19: while food businesses are failing, can community oriented food projects be the way forward?

3 June 2020 at 17:30 CET (Brussels time) Curated by: @yannick, founder of Fermenthings (Brussels), @noemi, co-founder of Edgeryders How to register: Registration Page Whare the session happens: we will send you the link to join the video session a few days before the event. Summary The corona virus crisis is bringing home the message for consumers to start buying local and for entrepreneurs, to rely on local ingredients and production sources for their food projects. Unfortunately, the cris…

Please also have a look at threads like this one in preparation for summit events:

Which asks: How can we have meaningful work instead of Bullshit jobs?”
https://edgeryders.eu/t/paid-duct-taping-vs-unpaid-creation/13597

And finally a very hands-on question from our community member @erik_lohnroth: “Do you want to be my website developer”. A concrete job opportunity to strengthen the community:

My community looking for a website developer

I live in a small community in Sweden and we have a small association (community, ngo) which is trying to make life exciting with various activities close to us. We have now a budget to create a website, but need a web developer to help us create it and maintain it. Ideally creating some sort of collaboration with Edgeryders around this. I want to contract someone affiliated with ederyders to develop and strengthen the community. I will be your project lead together with a woman from my commu…

Thank you very much great to have you here. Looking forward to your thoughts next week

[MariaEuler]

ping @Heshanij, @marina here the weekly overview. Go up usually on Wednesdays. What is the platform handle of Marcus?

[marina]

It’s @Markus_D. We are having the outreach TF call today and we’ll have a chat about this. My idea is in addition to the pings on the platform also send these updates which can be used for the newsletter (or other purposes) via e-mail.

[Markus_D]

@MariaEuler

Goa up usually on Wednesdays

Thanks Maria! Just to say that these are really great. Also written up in a nicely accessible format, which makes it easier to work into our newsletter. Looking forward to your future updates!

[xaver]

@MariaEuler

The obvious big winner of the COVID-19 crisis so far has been Big Tech

Yes, I think so too.