Conversation Overview 3rd of June 2020: Holistic Internet, data & disinformation

Dear community,

Here a short overview of some of the currently ongoing conversations. This week the NGI community trended towards topics on how to read and interpret data, the tactics of disinformation and a holistic approach and view of the internet.

We just had a very interesting discussion session with DeLab’s data scientists and 27 participants to discuss how to gather, read, null and interpret data with a focus on COVID. Many hard questions were asked, one of wish was: “Where can and should critical questions regarding data collation and interpretation be directed?” The answer, of course, is complicated and multilayered, but one place is in the thread bellow which we used to announce and prepare the session and which is still open for concrete as well as meta-methodological questions on the topic:

Disinformation is dangerous, and once it spreads very hard to contain. It is even hard to name. How can we give specific, true and effective names to the different aspects of the troublesome phenomenon of disinformation and improve upon proposed categories?

And for the next step:

Are there communities where mis/dis/malinformation is less prevalent and can we use those as models to build a better internet?

At the moment many big tech companies present themselves as saviours in the crisis and are welcomed with open arms and presented as “Benevolent Dictators”. But “What if we would organize the infrastructure development of the Internet in a similar manner to free and open-source software?” and How?

This leads also back to the question of how to deal with the effective rise of power on the side of such big tech companies in the wake of COVID:

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

Looking at the whole platform I would also like to bring a few more posts to your attention:

First, the newest and most dazzling way to take a step back and see all of Edgeryders unfold is presented here in an animated visualisation of the whole network by @aberto:

Another summary and interpretation of the ongoing conversations can be found here:

And finally: Two Summits:

  1. Edgeryders “Making a Living” Summit

You can follow the developing Summit programme here:

  1. NGI Policy Summit

In September there will also be a summit on NGI policies organised by our partners at NESTA. We have set up a new category in NGI for the development of that summit which opened today. Fell free to check it out and get involved:

Thank you for being here asking hard questions and sharing meaningful information.

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ping @marina, @Heshanij and @Markus_D

ping @lroddy

This reads great

I forgot to say - every wednesday the community managers compile a list of the “best of” threads and posts from different places on the platform.

Brilliant I will bookmark this for future newsletters.

You still want this Friday’s one to be around the EdgeRyder story, right?

Laura

mmm maybe wait with that one? it was supposed to be timed with some other things that are taking longer than expected. Better to do a general one this time

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