Open Data: how do we want things to change?
Notes prepared for Data City: Doom or Boom - are pervasive digital devices and open data changing the way we interact with the city?
Cities are heterogeneous, that’s why we like them. People always find ways to distinguish themselves from each other - this is the cause of both conflict and creativity. Clearly, technology, which is a manifestation (and delimiter) of social relations, will affect the way we construct our cities. Ubicomp/pervasive computing/situated technologies/or whatever you want to call ‘em offer both citizen-led sense-making and authoritarian control structures. So the question is not “will things change?”, nor “how will they change?” but “how do we want them to change?”…
- i *think* the side i’m supposed to be taking, because i’m CEO of Connected Environments Ltd and founder of Pachube.com, which provides an open API for data connectivity, that collects and connects data from sensors, energy meters, weather stations, building management systems, air quality monitors — almost anything that produces data around the world. i *think* i’m supposed to be espousing the view that open data is going to lead to more wonderful, fuller and productive, sustainable lives/environments/cities.
- but that’s a misunderstanding of what pachube is all about; and i’m concerned that the motion is misleading
- so the first thing i’m going to do is reject the boundaries of the motion entirely - to frame the conversation in terms of asking whether open data will change how we interact with our cities is problematic on so many levels.
- first: of COURSE technology changes our relationship to our cities. cities accrete technology, and technology is a manifestation (and definer) of social relationships.
- second: the question (‘will xyz change the way we interact with cities?’) contains within it the idea that our cities are abstract entities separate from ourselves… that we can somehow “interact” with cities as things that are separate from ourselves. on the contrary: cities ARE interaction, or cities are the accretions of interactions, they are not some static solidified entity that we, as consumers, simply ‘interact’ with. we create, and recreate our cities with every step we take, every conversation we have, every nod to a neighbour, every space we inhabit, every structure we erect.
- of course, what we consider ‘conversations’, ‘neighbours’, ‘spaces’ and ‘structures’ have and will continue to change.
- the question is not ‘will things change’ but ‘how do we want them to change?’
- opening up data, which is very much the rage right now, is certainly a useful process, in that it enables a level of accountability that was not previously evident.
- but it’s worth bearing in mind that, simply opening up data is not enough. when a government organisation ‘opens’ up its data, laudable as it is, should not detract from closer inspection. we have to question how and why they opened up that data - is it because it’s non-threatening? how was it compiled or measured? what was the dynamic range? what data was left out? how might it have been used to obscure something else? in essence: how was the data created?
- opening up data can be considered itself a control structure — a means of saying you’re doing something without doing anything at all; while continuing to justify mass privacy invasions of data created by and belonging to citizens.
- the real question, it seems to me is not about making data public, but about finding ways for the PUBLIC TO MAKE DATA.
- how do we all, citizens, contribute to the data collection process? how do we learn and understand our environments through the data that we create (or craft) – because data collection is at its heart a craft? how can it help us question the standards of evidence - evidence that we are asked to believe and comply with by authority figures, by politicians, scientists, media figures, religious figures. (this isn’t to say that what they say is wrong: it’s to say that it’s more important to convince ourselves; that way we understand much better and we can also be part of the process of improving things).
- which is why i launched pachube: it’s not so simply about making data ‘open’ it’s about developing a platform that makes it as easy as possible for everyone — citizens, organisations, companies and city managers alike — to produce, aggregate, share and compare environmental, sensor, energy and any other sort of arbitrary data you want, generated by devices, buildings, energy meters or even virtual environments. it’s about data crafting – a platform that works for players small & large.
- what is worrying right now is the asymmetricality of the conversations between all these entities — and its Pachube’s task to encourage and make possible greater horizontality.
- the ‘internet of things’ is coming - it’s clear we’re going to be inundated with cities replete with sensor networks and all sorts of weird, wonderful and worrying data systems — but what concerns me most is how we, all, can be part of the process of defining what that data is, how it is collected and what is done with it.
- So again, the question is not “will things change?” but “how do we want them to change?”
1 year ago • 6 notes
