S06E01 of Connection Problem: End times? No thank you.
Fence by Kōno Bairei (1844-1895)
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Hi there & welcome back,
So while I had ducked for a bit, the world started spinning into the end times apparently. But I say no thank you, we’ll get through this, and might as well try to have a good time doing so.
Your mileage may vary, but I’ve been trying to read a lot (if not very successfully, given there’s a toddler to be entertained), I managed to put my online research skills to good use hunting down the last bits of home gym equipment out there in the depths of the internet, and been catching up on podcasts out in the sun while pushing a stroller. It’s not too bad, especially since we managed to skip the first few weeks of isolation in the city.
We’re just back from a trip that was unexpectedly a little longer, and very different, from our original plans. Instead of a vacation in Costa Rica followed by a wedding in the US, we ended up staying in CR a lot longer than anticipated. The country’s response to Corona was exemplary; after just a handful of cases the government started shutting down things quickly, and we were in a very remote part of the country anyway: Quite literally on the tip of a peninsula, as far from many people as possible. Self isolation was easy. But when the US part of our trip had been cancelled, and direct flights to Germany too, we had to adjust a little.
Social distancing is easy when you're distant from just about anywhere anyway.
So we prepared for a much longer stay. Rented a house, a vehicle (an all-terrain golf cart of all things, because that’s what we could find and it was great!), a surf board. Stocked the fridge, and also bought all the things we heard were hard to find in Germany but were easily available in Costa Rica, from toilet paper to hand sanitizer. Then the government ramped up their anti-Corona measures by also closing down the beaches, leaving us with nowhere to go throughout the day: With a 2.5 year old, a garden with scorching sun (it was the hottest time of the year in CR) might as well not exist. So at this point, no more 6am surfing, no more hanging out outside, no more iced coffee from the lovely café down the road. No more driving after 5pm. It was a good response, but it made our plans to sit out the worst in the sun obsolete. If we’d be stuck inside a building all day, it’d better be our own. So when the German government announced plans to bring back Germans from abroad, we went for it.
It took some time, and there were some technical glitches, but the German state department and the embassy in San José did an impressive, wonderful job, and soon after we found ourselves wandering the hallways of empty airports in San José and Frankfurt: Ghostly, beautiful, and very relaxing. If it wasn’t for the health risks for all involved, this is what air travel should be like.
Which is just a long way of saying: It’s good to be back, both at home and at this newsletter. This week’s episode is extremely lightweight, I’m just including a couple of items below. A full catch-up of the last few weeks seems impossible; so let’s ease back into it, shall we?
What have you been up to? I’m curious. Send some notes or pictures!
P.
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If you'd like to work with me or bounce ideas, let's have a chat.
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Project updates
I shared this before, but just as a reminder, two reports I co-wrote are out and might otherwise be drowned out by more urgent news:
Towards a European AI & Society Ecosystem, a ThingsCon and Stiftung Neue Verantwortung collaboration commissioned by Luminate, explores how Europe can/should position itself in regards to its AI efforts. The super short version is: by prioritizing the role of civil society. (I shared some more background in this blog post.)
Smart Cities: A Key to a Progressive Europe is part of A Progressive Approach to Digital Tech — Taking Charge of Europe’s Digital Future, a report initiated by the Foundation of European Progressive Studies that tries to answer the question how progressives should look at digital technology, at a time when it permeates every aspect of our lives, societies and democracies. (Again, a little background here.)
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Society Centered Design
Over at Projects by IF, Sarah Gold put together a great manifesto to shift the focus of design efforts to the societal angle. It’s great, and I’m very happy that Sarah kindly invited me to co-sign the manifesto, which I happily did. Thank you, Sarah!
The guiding principles are:
- Put care first
- Earn trust
- Empower collective agency
- Reimagine public value
- Design for people’s rights
- Ensure fair and just oversight
- Redistribute the power of technology
- Create compassion at scale
- Design for regenerative action
- Confront uncertainty
You can imagine this is right up my alley, and it certainly aligns with our work at ThingsCon and the other things I work on.
Read the Society Centered Design manifesto.
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Book recommendation: Veil
Eliot Paper kindly sent me an advance copy of his new book, Veil. I just pretty much ripped through it. It’s the perfect kind of distraction — Without spoiling anything, I’d say it’s climate change meets geo engineering meets collaboration, with a good chunk of adventure and some science thrown in. It’s got the page turning quality of a techno thriller minus the boring, predictable characters. In Eliot’s books you won’t find some beefy all-American white dude hero single handedly defending the world by beating the crap out of some baddies. Instead, here you’ll find a global and diverse cast collaborating on challenging and complex issues — and it makes all the difference. It’s hard to not spoil things here, so I’ll leave it at this: Veil is available for pre-order right now. (And, footnote, the Breach-Bandwidth-Borderless trilogy kicked ass, too!)
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Miscellanea
At the Museum (Youtube): A friend pointed me towards this series of mini documentaries (around 10 minutes per episode) by the Museum of Modern Art which is just glances behind the scenes, and it couldn’t get more chill than this. If you ever wanted to witness a detailed discussion between curators of how to hang an artwork or wanted to watch someone trying to transport a slightly large small-scale model in an elevator and failing in the most minor ways, this is for you.
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If you’d like to work with me or have a chat to explore collaborations, let’s chat!
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Currently reading: The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin.
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What's next?
My pipeline mostly consists of a lot of unplannability, which is totally a word. I’ll be moderating a roundtable on AI & Society hosted by Humboldt Institute’s newly launched AI & Society Lab (for which I did a tiny bit of advisory work pre-launch) and the European Commission. Currently it’s scheduled for August, but y’know. I’ll be teaching a class, remotely, at Hochschule Darmstadt. There are likely to be some ThingsCon Salons and other events, likely also remotely — everything’s in the air, we’re improvising like everyone else.
Also, somewhat surprisingly to me, I was invited to a tender analyzing AI for communal government, and might or might not make the time to participate; if you’re deep in local government and/or have strong credentials working in/with urban governments in the global south and might be interested in tackling this together, let me know? Those two aspects are the key: Either know local government in Germany/Europe really well; or strong global south/development cooperation experience.
After something like 5 years, it was time to move offices once more. My lovely landlords, a company I had sublet space from for all this time, had outgrown the space. The timing couldn’t have been better: I moved out before the lock down, and I now have all my equipment at home during home office times. Afterwards, when society resumes eventually, I’ll be joining the fantastic community at Origin Berlin. When I looked at the place I saw so many familiar faces I hadn’t even known were all working from the same location, it just made me smile. So that’ll be my next HQ. I’ll share details once I’ve officially moved in.
Yours truly,
Peter
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Who writes here? Peter Bihr explores how emerging technologies can have a positive social impact. At the core of his work is the mission to align emerging technologies and citizen empowerment. To do this, he works at the intersection of technology, governance, policy and social impact — with foundations, public and private sector. He is the founder of The Waving Cat, a boutique research and strategic advisory firm. He co-founded ThingsCon, a non-profit that explores fair, responsible, and human-centric technologies for IoT and beyond. Peter was a Mozilla Fellow (2018-19) and an Edgeryders Fellow (2019). He tweets at @peterbihr and blogs at thewavingcat.com. Interested in working together? Let’s have a chat.
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