Experimental Modes of Civic Engagement in Civic Tech

Experimental Modes of Civic Engagement in Civic Tech
Author: Laurenellen McCann
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2015-09-30
Genre:
ISBN: 9780990775225

Experimental Modes of Civic Engagementin Civic Tech is an investigation into whatit means to build civic technology with, not for, real people and real communities. It answers the question, "What's the difference between sentiment and action?"The project was conducted by Laurenellen McCann, and it deepens her work in needs- responsive, community-driven processes for creating technology for public good.This is a project of the Smart Chicago Collaborative, a civic organization devoted to improving lives in Chicago through technology. It was funded by a Knight Community Information Challenge Deep Dive grant given to The Chicago Community Trust by theJohn S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Participatory Budgeting and Civic Tech

Participatory Budgeting and Civic Tech
Author: Hollie Russon Gilman
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 40
Release: 2016-05-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1626163413

In a time when citizens are deeply dissatisfied with the basic institutions and elected officials that govern them, the participatory budgeting movement empowers citizens to get results for pressing community needs. It creates a transparent process where citizens can propose projects through traditional community meetings or use civic technologies to provide input online, work with elected officials to craft budget proposals, and vote on where and how to spend public funds. Unlike other forms of civic engagement, participatory budgeting involves spending real public money on the priorities that the community identifies. In this brief work, Hollie Russon Gilman explains the history and concepts of participatory budgeting. First used abroad, participatory budgeting has been piloted in Chicago, New York City, Boston, and several other cities across the United States since 2009. She relates participatory budgeting to other forms of civic innovation and proposes ways for new digital tools to increase entry points for civic engagement. This brief and accessible work is an ideal introduction to participatory budgeting for students, scholars, and practitioners. Georgetown Digital Shorts—longer than an article, shorter than a book—deliver timely works of peer-reviewed scholarship for a fast-paced world. They present new ideas and original content that are easily digestible for students, scholars, and general readers.

Civic Tech

Civic Tech
Author: Andrew Schrock
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2018-04-06
Genre:
ISBN: 9781732084803

The term ¿Civic Tech¿ has gained international recognition as a way to unite communities and government through technology design. But what does it mean for our shared future? In this book, Andrew Schrock cuts through the hype by telling stories of the people and ideas driving the movement. He argues that Civic Tech emerged as a cultural movement to address inequality and a wide range of social problems. The collaborative approaches and early successes of ¿techies¿ exemplify a powerful civic alternative. Ultimately, Civic Tech draws our attention to the challenges of democratic technology design and public ownership¿vital goals for the years ahead.

Shock of the New

Shock of the New
Author: Chad Udell
Publisher: Association for Talent Development
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2019-04-02
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1947308815

Find the Leading Edge in a Disrupted World. Planning our response to disruption seems impossible. Most new and emerging technologies have been in development for decades, but as soon as they land on our doorstep, they inspire “the shock of the new.” How do you, as a learning professional, prepare for what you don’t know is coming? How do you judge what is important and what is just a fad? In Shock of the New: The Challenge and Promise of Emerging Learning Technologies, Chad Udell and Gary Woodill create a new framework for anticipating emerging learning technologies, outlining six key perspectives you should consider with any new technology. They examine some of the day’s most commonly discussed emerging technologies and pose the questions that will point the way to your own strategy. These insights aren’t limited to specific applications; they give you an approach you can apply to any new tech coming your way, so you’re always braced for the shock of the new. Udell and Woodill optimistically point out that emerging technologies will help us make sense of our increasingly complex world; many more changes will occur over the next decade, so buckle up! What was once science fiction has just become real—and now is your opportunity to be on the leading edge.

Feminist AI

Feminist AI
Author: Head of Department Frankopan Director of the Centre for Gender Studies Jude Browne
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2023-10-05
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0192889893

Chapters 5, 12, and 18 of this work are available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International open access licence. These parts of the work are free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data and Intelligent Machines is the first volume to bring together leading feminist thinkers from across the disciplines to explore the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and related data-driven technologies on human society. Recent years have seen both an explosion in AI systems and a corresponding rise in important critical analyses of these technologies. Central to these analyses has been feminist scholarship, which calls upon the AI sector to be accountable for designing and deploying AI in ways that further, rather than undermine, the pursuit of social justice. This book aims to be a touchstone text for AI researchers concerned with the social impact of their systems, as well as theorists, students and educators in the field of gender and technology. It demonstrates the importance of an intersectional understanding of the risks and benefits of AI, approaching feminism as a political project that aims to challenge various interlocking forms of injustice, social inequality and structural relations of power. Feminist AI showcases the vital contributions of feminist scholarship to thinking about AI, data, and intelligent machines as well as laying the groundwork for future feminist scholarship on AI. It brings together scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, from computer science, software engineering, and medical sciences to political theory, anthropology, and literature. It provides an entry point for scholars of AI, science and technology into the diversity of feminist approaches to AI, and creates a rich dialogue between scholars and practitioners of AI to examine the powerful congruences and generative tensions between different feminist approaches to new and emerging technologies. It features original and essential works specially selected to span multiple generations of practitioners and scholars. These contributors are also attuned to conversations at industry-level around the risks and possibilities that frame the drive to adopt AI. This collection reflects the increasingly blurred divide between the academy, industry and corporate research groups and brings interdisciplinary feminist insights together with postcolonial studies, disability theory, and critical race studies to confront ageism, racism, sexism, ableism, and class-based oppressions in AI.

Undoing Optimization

Undoing Optimization
Author: Alison B Powell
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-04-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0300258666

A unique examination of the civic use, regulation, and politics of communication and data technologies City life has been reconfigured by our use—and our expectations—of communication, data, and sensing technologies. This book examines the civic use, regulation, and politics of these technologies, looking at how governments, planners, citizens, and activists expect them to enhance life in the city. Alison Powell argues that the de facto forms of citizenship that emerge in relation to these technologies represent sites of contention over how governance and civic power should operate. These become more significant in an increasingly urbanized and polarized world facing new struggles over local participation and engagement. The author moves past the usual discussion of top-down versus bottom-up civic action and instead explains how citizenship shifts in response to technological change and particularly in response to issues related to pervasive sensing, big data, and surveillance in "smart cities".

Politics Recoded

Politics Recoded
Author: Aure Schrock
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2024-09-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 026254945X

The first detailed history of Code for America that examines how democratically designed government systems can collectively improve technology’s impact on society. For decades, tens of thousands of volunteers and employees of Code for America have taken a different path to institutional change: through designing and implementing infrastructure. In Politics Recoded, Aure Schrock employs a robust, organizational ethnography to analyze how Code for America’s infrastructural organizing changed how politics get exercised, showing how we citizens can work directly with the government on projects to improve our collective livelihoods. Drawing from theories of organizing, social infrastructure, racialized organizations, technical cultures, and intersectionality, Schrock argues that our “post-techlash society” must no longer presume that corporate platforms or social networks can level social inequities. An underrecognized yet influential organization, Code for America emerged from a tech culture background that prioritized networks and publicity over the long, slow work of institutional change. But its evolution demonstrates how to push beyond the fundamental flaws of tech-forward organizing. This, the first history of Code for America, shows how promoting agentic citizenship and brokering in empathy let the organization influence policy at all levels of government—and demonstrates why we need to bolster institutions to ensure that everyone is justly represented and receiving the benefits. Appealing to those in political science, communication, and information studies, Politics Recoded will empower practitioners and activists to revolutionize technological design and participate in alternative forms of civic engagement.

Design Justice

Design Justice
Author: Sasha Costanza-Chock
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2020-03-03
Genre: Design
ISBN: 0262043459

An exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival. What is the relationship between design, power, and social justice? “Design justice” is an approach to design that is led by marginalized communities and that aims expilcitly to challenge, rather than reproduce, structural inequalities. It has emerged from a growing community of designers in various fields who work closely with social movements and community-based organizations around the world. This book explores the theory and practice of design justice, demonstrates how universalist design principles and practices erase certain groups of people—specifically, those who are intersectionally disadvantaged or multiply burdened under the matrix of domination (white supremacist heteropatriarchy, ableism, capitalism, and settler colonialism)—and invites readers to “build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.” Along the way, the book documents a multitude of real-world community-led design practices, each grounded in a particular social movement. Design Justice goes beyond recent calls for design for good, user-centered design, and employment diversity in the technology and design professions; it connects design to larger struggles for collective liberation and ecological survival.

Nature-Based Solutions in Supporting Sustainable Development Goals

Nature-Based Solutions in Supporting Sustainable Development Goals
Author: Haozhi Pan
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2024-11-27
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0443217831

This book catalogs the evidence based on the social, economic and environmental effectiveness of Nature based Solutions (NbS) to face environmental challenges and simultaneously provide a better understanding of associated social-ecological interactions.NbS are reframing discussion and policy responses worldwide to environmental challenges. The concept builds on and complements other closely related concepts, such as the ecosystem approach, ecosystem services, ecosystem-based adaptation/mitigation, disaster risk reduction, sponge cities, and green/blue infrastructures. The quantification of existing NbS' effectiveness, their operationalization and replication in different environmental settings are presented here in such a way that allows them to be both widely accepted and incorporated in policy development and in practical implementation. - Explores the nexus between Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and global SDG, thus leading future research and practice worldwide. - Presents novel conceptualizations, pathways, applications, evidence-based cases, and experiential assessments - Offers best practice portfolios for practitioners (city managers, policy-makers, civil servants, environmental engineers) to guide the practices of NbS towards SDG.

From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen

From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen
Author: Marcus Foth
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 541
Release: 2011-11-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0262297558

Studies from around the world show how the social media tools of Web 2.0 are shaping engagement with cities, communities, and spaces. Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, wikis, and photo sharing and social networking sites, have made possible a more participatory Internet experience. Much of this technology is available for mobile phones, where it can be integrated with such device-specific features as sensors and GPS. From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen examines how this increasingly open, collaborative, and personalizable technology is shaping not just our social interactions but new kinds of civic engagement with cities, communities, and spaces. It offers analyses and studies from around the world that explore how the power of social technologies can be harnessed for social engagement in urban areas. Chapters by leading researchers in the emerging field of urban informatics outline the theoretical context of their inquiries, describing a new view of the city as a hybrid that merges digital and physical worlds; examine technology-aided engagement involving issues of food, the environment, and sustainability; explore the creative use of location-based mobile technology in cities from Melbourne, Australia, to Dhaka, Bangladesh; study technological innovations for improving civic engagement; and discuss design research approaches for understanding the development of sentient real-time cities, including interaction portals and robots.