My friend Fabrizio Barca has a rare combination of characteristics: a first-rate intellect, an impressive network in policy making circles, and a keen interest in justice. He has lately become intrigued by inequalities: what they are, how they are changing, what we can do about it. So, he started a group called the Forum on inequalities and diversities. The Forum recently released a report called 15 proposals for justice (Italian only), which is making waves. The report gives prominence to the consequences of technical innovation on inequalities and justice.
So, here is the idea. @nadia and I would like to organize a small meeting to look in more depth at the issue of how equality and justice are encoded in technological choices. Specifically, it would be interesting to look at the main technologies being developed in the NGI debate (blockchain folks, decentralists, the fintech crowd etc.), and see how each impact on indicators of equality and justice. Putting in the same room technologists, economists and social scientists should allow for a more holistic perspective. For me, the interesting question is: are some technologies more likely to lead to an outcome of increased justice than other technologies? If there are, we might consider
Hopefully, we can provide some material to the people in charge of the next round of NGI Open Calls, and whoever is looking to fund new technologies that are human-centric, trust-enhancing and so on.
We are talking Brussels, October 2019. What do people think? @teirdes, would you be interested? What about @zelf? Others?
I think @luciascopelliti@zoescope and Gunnar Camner might be interesested in this. Lucia is at the execution end of policy in practice. Also @max_valentin.
Zoe has a significant body of work weaving through manufacturing, tech and social justice.
Gunnar’s doing interesting work in fintech/ mobile money that touches on exclusion from access to banking services outside Europe while Max Valentin has interesting experience from working with Romani buskers in Sweden. And before this Max set up a crowdfunding platform for culture with the twist that public funding would co-finance the projects that succeeded to get enough financial backing from the general public.
We will organise a one-day event in Brussels at End of November, 2019.
Day session: focuses on Ai as tech. Key audience is MEPS, parliamentary assistants and key people at EC. Location is Near European Parliament. Exact format t.b.d. In partnership with: …feel free to add your own suggestions here (I am discussing with FEPS).
Evening session: focuses on tech & socialecological sustainability. Key audience is the tech/hacker scene. Details T.b.d with @rmdes re: a collaboration with Digityser.
I will be in the driving seat to make it happen together with our outreach teams as this is a topic that touches on both the Internet of Humans and Wellbeing in Europe initiatives. And it makes sense to have it as a focal point if we want this work we are doing to have some kind of political impact right now - i can explain during our next call.
To prepare and drive engagement towards this event, we want to have a focused campaign to surface experiences, people, projects, places and collective insights that will feed into this event
Can we organise the next IOH community call around co-designing this event and the process leading up to it? What do you think @johncoate and @MariaEuler ?
How about we set up the next two community calls, on August the 20th and September the 3rd of September as “How to get involved with the Edgeryders festival” meetings for the whole community (directly inviting members who we would like to participate to clear up the process with them and see if maybe there is some overlap with other so they ould team-up.)
The next one on September 17th could be about discussing the concrete topics and ideas of those who will participate before they start writing their preparation threads.
From there we could see if we want to talk more about one of those threads/topics already ahead of the festival or what the next steps for the calls would be.