The prestigious American university of Harvard developed a Summer School program, in collaboration with Paris Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires. This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of how the principles of biological evolution can be applied to the ever-growing challenges facing large cities, such as Paris, in the twenty-first century.
In this context, students attended Futur en Seine’s conferences cycle “ Human and Technology” lead by Eric Scherer, curator of this edition. Discover students blog posts questioning themselves on the way human and technology interact with one another.
“Blockchain protocol: What’s next after Bitcoin?” – “What new public policies for the citizens of tomorrow?” – “Robots and Artificial Intelligence will replace millions of jobs: how digital is reshuffling the cards of work?”
Connor Bitter, Yvenna Chen & Ivan Cornut
One presentation that really blew our minds in the Futur en Seine conference was the presentation of Nicolas Cary, co-founder of Blockchain. This is a company providing services around bitcoins allowing the use of a bitcoin wallet. Bitcoins can be “mined” by individuals with some computing power and these calculations are used by the system to avoid double spending. This blockchain protocol has a wallet which one can install on their phone. In this system, the wallet is secured and the individual is his own bank. This means there is nearly no cost of transaction and money can be transferred from one account to another across the world in the blink of an eye.
This has the potential for tremendous consequence for money transfer of immigrants to their families back home since it allows what was called “frictionless” money transfer as opposed to classical money transfers where a noticeable amount of fees have to be paid. There is also potential for identity theft. Instead, by using blockchain, all these issues are potentially eliminated. This protocol would also allow us to get rid of the fees that apply to credit cards, and most importantly, would allow people who are “bank forbidden” to still have access to banking services. A course could be offered by the Mairie de Paris on the usage of bitcoin services so that those who need it most can use it.
On the first day of the Futur en Seine conference, we attended a conference called Closing the Gap between Public Policy and Digital Transformation. One speakers, Axelle Lemaire, a member of the French Ministry of State for Digital Affairs, presented the concept that building a smart city means digitalizing institutions. She pointed out that institutions are naturally afraid of change, and consequently, many are reluctant to take part in the digital revolution. However, in order to meet the demands and to keep up with the speed of an increasingly digital society, it is essential that institutions join the digitalization movement.
Lemaire’s presentation inspired us to begin to recognize problems in Paris that can be resolved with digitalization. Specifically, we have been motivated to find digitalized solutions to making some aspect of the city more integrated, inclusive and accessible — the three focal points of our project.
An example of one of our ideas was installing digital interactive maps around the city. This could make navigating around the city easier and more efficient. Maps could show commuters the most efficient subway/bus routes to take, and alert travelers of breakdowns in the transit system and direct them to other ways of getting to their destinations. This technology could also aid people in wheelchairs to find the most accessible way to travel on the streets and to use the public transit system, and aid blind people by vocalizing directions and information, such that handicapped individuals are no longer marginalized in the design of public transportation. In fact, although resistance to digitalization often focuses on how digital technologies can create distance between people, digitalization, on the contrary, can be used to make the Smart City more inclusive and accessible for all citizens.
The idea of digitalization being used to simplify tasks can be thought of more generally as using machines to automate processes normally executed by humans. Automatable processes are those that are algorithmic in nature. Driving vehicles (Hyde, 2015), collecting tolls (Rocheleau 2013), manufacturing (ABB Australia, 2010), and crop harvesting (Hicks, 2012) are examples of algorithmic processes that are completed by humans. But all of these processes — and countless more — are already making the transition to being automated.
Esko Kilpi, researcher on social complexity and the internet, believes that we should be identifying such processes and creating machines to complete them in order to free up people to do the work that cannot be automated. He went on to argue that this would create a more efficient society, relieving a burden on those with monotonous jobs and allowing the creations of new ones that would create machines to complete automated tasks. In essence, he claims that replacing humans with robots for many jobs would allow society to focus on “bigger problems”.
But there is an obvious problem with this idea: what happens to the people who lose their jobs? Panelists encouraged decision makers to consider all of the societal impacts of using automated machines to replace people. As with any change, there are beneficiaries and there are those who pay. We must consider the impacts of automation, and recognize that there is a balance between efficiency and maintaining some sort of human aspect. As a consequence of this presentation, we will take more care in ensuring that our project incorporates automation and digitization in a responsible way.
References:
ABB Australia. « ABB Robot Keeps Trailer Maker Competitive with 60 Percent Productivity Increase. » Ferret. N.p., 20 Sept. 2010. Web. 26 June 2015.
Hicks, Jennifer. « Intelligent Sensing Agriculture Robots To Harvest Crops. » Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 06 August 2012. Web. 26 June 2015.
Hyde, Justin. « Google’s Custom Self-Driving Car Hits Public Streets. » Yahoo Autos. N.p., 25 June 2015. Web. 26 June 2015.
Rocheleau, Matt. « New Toll System Heading to Pike. » Boston Globe. N.p., 25 Aug. 2013. Web. 26 June 2015.
“Blockchain protocol: What’s next after Bitcoin?”
Alex Kaufman, Cecile Crapart & Olivia Chen
Ideas on the precipice of breakthroughs that would cause seismic shifts in how we live our lives everyday are nearly universally met with resistance. This is exactly the case with Bitcoin and the Blockchain protocol. Bitcoin, and other types of virtual currency, has been viewed for some time as a currency that simply facilitates the online black market and other suspicious operations on the internet. While this arena may have been the early adopter of this technology, the technology itself should not be cast aside. In reality, Bitcoins and the blockchain protocol provide a secure means of executing a financial transaction on the internet, while minimizing common risks associated with finance and currency changing hands. I imagine that as Bitcoin becomes more prevalent, it will be viewed as an appropriate and common form of currency that can be a unit of exchange in everyday transactions—fitting in perfectly in a world where seemingly everything can be done online.
The concept of leveraging the collective computing power of the network as a means of providing consensus for the transaction, as is the case with the blockchain protocol struck me as a fascinating concept. The transactions are likely legitimate if the majority of the computers on a network validate the sequence of transactions in the blockchain protocol (by timestamp).
This is similar to how the government could have surveillance of much of America by leveraging individuals’ cell phone microphones and cameras. Other uses of the “collectivization of technology” system could bring many benefits to a smart city approach. I imagine a potential technology where people can use the service/power of nearby cell phones that are not currently in use to assist their own calls or data usage. Then while their own phones are not in use, others in the community can leverage them.
Maryam Arif, Cynthia De Souza, Karolina Ladino Puerto, Jacob Scherba, Stephanie Ying.
The Bitcoin presentation embodied much of what we believe Futur en Seine tried to convey, namely that the integration of technology into even the most commonplace transactions has the potential to markedly change the way we live our lives. Cited specifically in the Bitcoin panel was the reality that moving towards an entirely digital currency removes the need for trusting a larger financial corporation. What is particularly interesting about this reality is that it is largely contrary to what most technology does. Instead of decreasing user autonomy and increasing dependence on institutionalized technology, Bitcoin does the opposite. Power is restored to the person whose money is being managed, and s/he is free to manipulate and transfer those funds as s/he sees fit. The application discussed specifically was Blockchain, which serves as a method to monitor trends in Bitcoin’s value, and it also acts as a Bitcoin wallet, enabling the user to make his or her own transactions using the application. Moreover, many large companies are beginning to accept Bitcoin as forms of payment, and large investment firms, such as Goldman-Sachs, have shown their interest in Bitcoin by investing in it. Bitcoin represents the willingness to advance to a more technologically empowered society and, perhaps more importantly, it showcases the capability to satisfy that desire. This will conceptually serve as a major part of the foundation for our final project, in that it illustrates the impact a simple idea can have when it is married to innovation and the available technologies.
”What new public policies for the citizens of tomorrow?”
Alexandra Fehnel
In the first conference presentation we attended as a group, Quelles nouvelles politiques publiques pour les citoyens du monde qui vient?, Axelle Lemaire, the Secrétaire d’Etat chargé du Numérique, spoke at some length about the need for social inclusion in digital technology. Through speaking about what she dubbed the “Magna Data,” which was essentially the rights of the people to training in digital technologies, Lemaire addressed the growing gap and disparities between those individuals with and without education in digital technologies; those people, and often small business as well, without that same digital advantage are being left behind. Lemaire, thus, emphasized the importance of social inclusion in digital technologies and in France’s digital strategy, which is reflected in the digital strategy for France released June 18th. Our group therefore intends to remain mindful and aware of those often overlooked groups in designing our proposal as improving the city of Paris as a smart city as social inclusion and the creation of opportunities to educate all individuals in digital technologies is necessary to narrow the aforementioned gap. We hope that our proposal can actually reflect some of the goals of France’s digital strategy to “serve a united society” and help “pave the way for greater participation by employees, civil servants, clients, consumers, users and citizens” (French Digital Council). This discussion thus emphasized the need for an accessible education component in our smart city proposal concerning any digital technology we will produce as well as the need to remain mindful of who exactly we mean to serve through our proposal as we should aim for greater inclusion.
Works Cited:
French Digital Council. (2015, June 18). Ambition Numerique: French Digital Council Report to the Government. Retrieved June 26, 2015, from http://www.cnnumerique.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Dossier-presse-AmbitionNumerique-EN-15.06.pdf
Mirhee
In today’s technology-oriented era, data is everywhere. The private sector has been amassing and harnessing this data to optimize costs and generate more profit. So, what does this mean for the public sector? An interesting idea brought up was the idea of governments releasing data to the public so that the public, including researchers and statisticians, can analyze the data and propose better solutions – such as through Paris’s participatory budget. Speaker Constanza Gomez Mont spoke about Mexico City and the problems it faces due to the burgeoning population. According to Gomez Mont, it is a huge metropolitan area comprised of 28 million people where 14 million uses public transportation per day. However, there is no data on this. She discussed the benefits of collecting data in order to better understand the systemic issues of public transit and create better policies based on the data collected. This concept of open data leading to improvements is heavily linked to our own project. The Mairie of Paris already provides some open data on the website http://opendata.paris.fr/ under a free license. So since a challenge our project faces is breaking up the arrondissements to smaller sectors, based on not only geography but also population, we will utilize this open data to identify and create local regions in order to promote more community-based interaction and integration. Furthermore, we can analyze other data such as cultural space density or underutilized space data in order to better enact our proposal.
“Digital detox and meditation: a new lifestyle in an increasingly connected world?”
Ju Hyun Lee, Christopher Li, Nicolas Senecaut
One of the large themes of the conference that is particularly relevant to our project is the way in which technology could be integrated into our daily lives. Particularly in the session on “Mindfulness and Digital Detox,”[1] each of the five panelists presented their own perspectives on the balance between mindfulness and a digital lifestyle. Despite their different interests about technology, the panelists all agreed that technology is not being utilized to its full capacity as a social mediator. As Rafael Calvo pointed out, technology can often induce feelings of isolation and constant obligation of work, when technology could be designed to induce productivity, efficiency, connectedness, and wellbeing—in other words, what he called “positive computing.” Aimed at integrating technology into human psychology to maximize happiness, designs of future technologies should focus on capitalizing on technological improvements not only to make life easier, but to increase the quality of life.
When approaching the use of technology in our proposal for a cultural initiative between the suburbs and the city of Paris, our group must be aware of how we can use technology to bring people together, not isolate them. The goal will be to reinvent underused spaces through technology, introduce cultural opportunities, and increase the quality of life. However, as Calvo’s questions to the audience about the role of technology in daily life revealed, our group must strive to introduce and use technology in a positive, meaningful manner. Our mindfulness of how to use technology available to us will lead to mindfulness of the arts in the community and perhaps even the mindfulness between neighboring communities.
Another important theme presented in the same session is the way in which technology could be integrated into daily lives. Koest van Mensoot posited the idea of a hierarchy of technological integration, from the bottom of the hierarchy where technology is only envisioned, to when it rises to become operational, applied, accepted, vital, invisible, and naturalized. His larger argument, therefore, was that technology, once integrated so seamlessly into society that it becomes naturalized, would not need to be detoxified from users. The idea of integrating technology in a way that layers it as part of human nature is a powerful one. In considering possible improvements for the city of Paris, especially vis-à-vis cultural and social amelioration, we can easily apply concepts of natural and humane technology into our proposal. We can seek to create physical improvements of infrastructure that augment the psychological well-being of the citizens of Paris, and social and cultural events that integrate into Parisian lifestyle in a natural way. Keeping in mind these principles of technological advancement will allow us to create a proposal and effect an improvement that not only is effective but healthy.
One of the clearest examples of a digital technology implemented for the purpose of advancing daily life was the implant party on Saturday evening. Such technologies attempt to replicate the “natural” level of technological integration, such that it physically becomes part of its users. But it is, however, very controversial. As the inventor of the implants pointed out, implants can replace credit cards, keys, and numerical data that we generate, thus simplifying everyday life. Yet what seems ostensibly like a fantastic idea can in reality raise hidden questions and controversies. During the discussions about implants, an audience member raised the question of whether security features were in place to safeguard against the theft of personal data, but the question was largely circumvented with an equivocation that these devices contained no sensitive personal data. Later, however, they ironically remarked that GPS tracking might soon be installed. What is important to understand from the session is that our desire for technological improvements can often hinder our objective evaluation of the very technologies. In developing our proposals, therefore, we can draw from lessons learned from the Implant party and ensure that any proposed plan will seek to create advancements that integrate naturally into society and that are not biased by preconceived objectives.
Brigheil Lalor, Patrick Pan, David Arturo Cortes Pineda & Monika Kumar
An interesting tension in arising technology is the one between productivity and mindfulness, efficiency and well-being– most technologies are aimed to speed things up, to enhance the amount of tasks that one can complete in a given amount of time, the number of interactions, etc. Consequently, people are feelings more and more tethered to their electronic devices and the constant notifications that come with that lifestyle (adults receive ~150 notifications per day), attending to goals that have more to do with comparison and efficiency than reflection and prioritization of what’s important in life. Giving up technology has been a proposed method to remedy this issue, but it’s not a sustainable or realistic solution, given how dependent our society is on it, and how much it does improve our lifestyle in many ways.
It was interesting to learn how much of an impact technology and its goals can have on our behavior– an experiment in which participants were given superman-like flight, for instance, made them behave more altruistically, while violent video games have had the opposite effect (Carey). Subtle cues and goals have a real impact on people’s behavior. This principle is something that we should take into consideration—our project has the potential to impact people’s behavior through the goals we present to them. Making or promoting technologies that attend to goals related to community engagement, mindfulness, etc, would promote these values in people’s everyday lives. It’s not about completely separating technologies aimed at productivity from those aimed to promote well-being, but instead about integrating them. The futuristic ideas that were presented at the Futur en Seine to promote mindfulness, the “new species” of technology with a focusing on de-stressing (the app “Innerly”, or the weightless flotation tank, for instance), while effective, do not seem to be practical and universal solutions (they’re not accessible to all). Instead of making extra technologies focusing only on mindfulness, we should make more of a systematic change to the goals we have when developing technologies in general, keeping in mind the goal of accessibility and evaluating success in different ways. When you evaluate success in terms of common measurements (“most viewed”, “most used”, measures of productivity or speed), it doesn’t take into account the user’s experience.
Humane technology for empathy and wellbeing: « backpocket apps » and « modern monasteries »
Jennifer
The concept of « humane technology » has been an undercurrent throughout Futur en Seine, and it was made explicit in the panel on « Digital Detox and Meditation. » At its best, humane technology is an example of « dedicated integration, » which promotes psychological well-being and social empathy, rather than treating them as simply positive byproducts. The expert panelists gave a comprehensive view of this subject, (1) establishing the philosophical and historical bases of humane technology, (2) clarifying the balance between « digital detox » and utilization of technology in the real world, and (3) providing examples of recent, relevant innovations.
- At its core, humane technology seeks to fulfill the « narrative quest, » the desire to find meaning in one’s experiences and life trajectory. Apps to promote self-reflection, for instance, can help people take time to consolidate their memories and share them with others.
- By implementing human technology, it is unnecessary to entirely cut out technology for « digital detox. » Even « modern monasteries, » which one panelist seeks to establish for CEO’s and corporate teams, promote a few hours of meditation each day or a few retreats per year, rather than complete abstinence from technology.
- Recent projects to implement human technology include « backpocket apps, » which do not require interfaces. They instead use sensors to, in the words of No Interface advocate Golden Krishna, « end our slavery to screens. » These interface-less technologies can solve many problems that arise from overuse of screens, such as traffic accidents, sleep disruption, and lack of creativity. Other apps, such as Lockitron, Square, and Ginger. io, can serve as an alternative to keys, wallets, and stock brokers, respectively. Moving forward, we hope to implement our projectwith the purpose of improvingwell-being and bringing out the humanity in Smart City citizens. Indeed, our current idea of a platform for intergenerational education directly addresses both physical and mental health, as well as the narrative quest of all generations.
Idea: Technology should be integrated into our lifestyle, not disrupt it.
Christine
A common theme in many of the presentations at Futur en Seine was that technology can, at times, disrupt human lifestyles even while attempting to improve them. Various presentations—especially the Digital Detox presentation—were concerned with how the advancement of new technologies should be properly integrated into human life in such a way that people’s mental and physical health, communication abilities, and happiness in their daily lives are at least maintained, if not improved.
Many tech companies these days are more interested in designing for efficiency and productivity, not for promoting wellbeing. As a result, although some technologies may improve our lives in one facet, the inconvenience they may cause in others makes them not worth using long-term. Some speakers at Futur en Seine discussed ways of making sure that new tech does good while also creating less harm and disruption, like the “the best interface is no interface”[2] approach taken by Golden Krishna of Zappos, or Mensvoort’s idea that the most successful technologies are ones that are “invisible” and completely naturalized into our lifestyles[3].
For our project, this is an important ideal to keep in mind, because no matter how well-intentioned or theoretically effective an idea is, if it is too difficult to integrate into the everyday lifestyle of Parisian citizens, there is no point in creating it, because it won’t be used. Therefore, when designing our project, we must not only do so with an output or goal in mind, but also with principles of practicality and accessibility.
[2]http://www.goldenkrishna.com
[3] http://www.nextnature.net/2014/08/pyramid-of-technology/