Can we live like today without fossil fuels?

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Can we live as today without fossil fuels? That is the question David MacKay asked in his book "Sustainable energy: Without the hot air" (available on the Internet).

The book is excellent and the task MacKay set himself is to estimate how much energy we use in our daily lives and compare that to how much energy it would theoretically be possible to generate only with renewable energy sources (wind, sun, hydro etc.). This is a tough challenge indeed since 85% of the energy we use on planet earth currently consists of fossil fules (oil, coal, gas). The big problem with the numbers MacKay uses in his book is that they all refer to Great Britain. What are the corresponding numbers if we would reuse MacKay's categories but count on Sweden instead?

That is the questions I want to have answered and I have thus defined a master's thesis topic that I would like some student to do. That topic is unfortunately not suitable for "my" computer science students and I have therefore posted it to the KTH Degree Project Portal (KTH Exjobbsportal). Since I assume this topic would be most interesting and easy to do for a Swedish-speaking student, I have written up the proposal in Swedish. I can't really be bothered to translate the proposal for this blog post but rather republish it below in Swedish.

Please disseminate the proposal as you see fit. I would love for someone (it doesn't have to be at KTH) to perform this project and write the thesis! I assume that the student in question would have an advisor at his/her "home department" but that I could help out by specifying the task and help out with what I could do in other ways as an informal "extra advisor". Here is the proposed thesis topic:

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Kan vi fortsätta att leva som idag om vi fasar ut våra fossila energikällor och bygger ut de förnyelsebara?

KTH/CSC/MID/STEM-projektet (Daniel Pargman) - Stockholm, Sverige

David MacKays bok ”Sustainable energy: Without the hot air” (”utan skitsnacket”) bryter ny mark genom att ytterst pedagiskt räkna på, sammanställa och förklara allt om alternativen till fossila energikällor. Hur ska vi leva år 2050 och hur kommer vi att producera vår energi om vi måste fasa ut vår användning av fossila bränslen och minska våra CO2-utsläpp med 80% eller mer? Det innovativa greppet MacKay använder sig av är att omvandla all vår samtida konsumtion av energi (transporter, boende, prylar, mat etc.) och alla möjlig framtida (fullt utbyggda) förnyelsebara energikällor (vind, sol, vattenkraft, biobränsle etc.) till en enhetlig skala; energi per person och per dag (kWh/p/d). Går det ens teoretiskt att få ihop det hela? Kan vi leva precis som idag men helt miljövänligt (förnyelsebara istället för fossila energikällor)? Det korta svaret är ”nja”, men mer ärligt är att säga att det starkt lutar mot ett ”nej”.

MacKay utgår från ”the big picture” med uträkningar från grunden och uppåt. Hur mycket regnar det i Storbritannien? Hur högt över havet ligger landet i snitt? Vilken kraft kan man klämma ur vatten som flödar nerströms? Hur mycket energi kan man teoretiskt lägga vantarna på ifall man fångar upp varje regndroppe som faller över Storbritannien? Om vi bortser från land som ligger lågt och där det regnar lite (England) och istället koncentrerar oss på höglandet där det regnar mycket (Skottland), vilken potential finns då kvar hos vattenkraften ifall den byggdes ut maximalt? Svaret är 7 kWh per person och dag i Skottland (jämfört med 1 kWh/p/d i det borträknade England). Hur stor del av denna potential kan tyglas för mänsklig bruk? Sådär håller MacKay på och går igenom alla möjliga och omöjliga källor till förnyelsebar energi i Storbritannien. På konsumtionssidan utgår MacKay istället från den livsstil och energiförbrukning som en genomsnittlig engelsman har i medelklassen eller övre medelklassen (“typical moderately-affluent person”). Hur mycket energi använder denne person för att framställa sin mat (mer för köttätare, mindre för vegetarianter), för att transportera sig själv och sina varor, för att värma upp sin bostad och kyla sin mat och för att framställa alla de prylar och saker som han eller hon konsumerar (1300 kilo prylar per person och år - 4 kilo nya prylar per dag). En typisk engelsk bilägare åker i snitt 50 kilometer per dag och med en typisk engelsk bil motsvarar detta 40 kWh/p/d. 

David MacKays bok är exemplarisk och hela boken finns dessutom tillgänglig gratis på Internet. MacKay var tidigare professor i fysik vid Cambridge och är numera chief scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, DECC. Hans bok till trots så har han inte någon bakgrund inom ett energi-relaterat område. I första hand är MacKay dock folkbildare och en stor pedagog. Han har en blodhunds instinkter att söka upp och få tag på de siffror han behöver och absolut inget får stå i vägen för hans mission att förenkla, förtydliga och förklara. Han höftar och avrundar vilt och använder en sällsynt hänsynslös kombination av räknekonst och sunt förnuft för att tränga igenom horder av skilda enheter och förledande exakta, men obegripliga eller svårjämförliga data och siffror.

Bokens stora “svaghet” är att den helt utgår från förhållanden som gäller i Storbritannien. Detta exjobb går ut på att “översätta” MacKays bok till svenska förhållanden. Gissningsvis finns det stora likheter mellan förhållandena in Storbritannien och Sverige på konsumtionssidan emedan potentialen för att bygga ut de förnyelsebara energikällorna kan mer annorlunda ut i en jämförelse mellan Sverige och Storbritannien. Ditt uppdrag är att undersöka hur! 

En bra start för att ställning till detta exjobbsförslag är att läsa detta 10 sidor långa synopsis av boken (pdf). Du kommer att genomföra och lägga fram exjobbet på din hemma-institution och med en lärare därifrån som handledare. Daniel Pargman (KTH/CSC/MID samt KTH Centre for Sustainable Communications) som har utformat denna exjobbsbeskrivning kommer dock att agera uppdragsgivare för exjobbet. Resultaten från ditt exjobb kommer att vara till stor nytta i ett forskningsprojekt som vi driver i samarbete med Sveriges kommunala energi- och klimatrådgivare. Ta gärna kontakt med mig (pargman@kth.se) om du vill veta mer!

Se även dessa två bloggposter om det projekt inom vilket exjobbet kommer att göras:
- http://danielpargman.blogspot.se/2013/10/improved-energy-habits-though.html
- http://danielpargman.blogspot.se/2014/10/birth-of-research-project.html

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Books I've read (October)

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The four books below were read as part of the small research project "The past 25 years of the future" that I wrote about half a year ago. We are reading books (below) and articles about past visions of the future information society. Here are the books I wrote about in my previous blog post books I've read recently.

**** John Howkins and Robert Valantin's "Development and the information age: Four global scenarios for the future of information and communication technology" (1997) is not so much a book as it is a report. It is only 50 pages long and still at that contains a lot of air ("this page intentionally left blank", large font etc.). It was impossible to get hold of in printed format but it can be download from the Internet. The report describes the results of a high-powered workshop sponsored by the UN (the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development, UNCSTD). The 5 days long workshop that underlies the report had 27 participants and "was held in delightful surroundings at Kelburn Castle in Scotland in June of 2006". Except for the "usual suspects" (from the global north), there was also participants from the global south (Ethiopia, Colombia, India, Malaysia, Jamaica, South Africa, China).

The report represents a "classic" scenario study where the participants started by identifying five development indicators, inherent uncertainties and key trends leading up to a "scenario cross" with four fields. Since the workshop was held 18 years ago and the topic was the future of "the Internet" (global computer networks, telecommunications), it is easy to feel that the results are dated by now but in our study, we are also interested in trying to understand how they thought about the future information society at that time so it still works for us as as chronicle of that time. The highlight of the report itself might very well be the names of the four scenarios; "The March of Follies", "Cargo Cult", "Netblocs", and "Networld".

*************** Adam Greenfield is an insider. He was lead information architect in a web bureau at the time of the dot-com crash. And, he's a sceptic. His 2006 book "Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing" consist of 81 "theses" often not much longer than one page and hardly never longer than three pages. Each thesis is a sentence-long statement and the second thesis explains the title of the book:

"There many forms of ubiquitous computing are indistinguishable from the user's perspective and will appear to a user as aspects of a single paradigm: everyware."

While everyware bears many promises, Greenfield is more interested in the potential problems. And boy, are there many to worry about. From technical and infrastructure challenges, to the interface and the user experience (how do we know these systems will help us rather than endlessly frustrate us?), to the potential for surveillance and repression. The list goes on. 

While Greenfield is prescient in many of his predictions - some are only starting to be discussed only now, 8 years after the book was written - the book also feels slightly anachronistic, like there is a strange time warp at play here. The book was written one year before Apple marketed the first iPhone and modern smartphones as the window/terminal/remote control to the Internet and ubiquitous computing resources and systems isn't really anywhere to find in the book. Despite Greenfield's insights, the book feels "needlessly" but inevitably aged because of that if for no other reason. I still thought it was an interesting book, well worth reading, but I still wish I would have read it some years ago, before the 2010's.

************ I read two scientific articles by Dourish and Bell two years ago ("Yesterday's tomorrows: Notes on ubiquitous computing's dominant vision" and "Resistance is futile: Reading science fiction alongside ubiquitous computing"). Both were excellent. I thought this book would be a continuation/expended version of those articles, and I guess it was to some extent, but not very. Paul Dourish and Genevieve Bell's "Diving a digital future: Mess and mythology in ubiquitous computing" (2011) consists of much heavier, theoretical stuff. I can, on one level, appreciate that since much research in the computer sciences can feel naive and severely social science-deprived. But the book was on the other hand not really for me. I don't really do research in/on ubicomp and are not well versed (or interested) in most of the theoretical perspectives presented in the book. It was still interesting enough for me to find a dozen passages worth quoting (see below). From the back cover of the book:

"The ubicomp research agenda originated at Xerox PARC in the late 1980s ... In Divining a Digital Future, computer scientist Paul Dourish and cultural anthropologist Genevieve Bell explore the vision that has driven the ubiquitous computing research program and the contemporary practices that have emerged - both the motivation mythology and the everyday messiness of lived experience."

PS. Paul Dourish is at UC Irvine and was sort of a nominal (?) colleague of mine this past spring when I was on a sabbatical there. We met a few times but talked but a little. His end-of-the-semester party in his home was great though - we should adopt such practices here in Sweden!

***** Majid Yar's just-published (2014) "The cultural imaginary of the Internet: Virtual utopias and dystopias" is a very sleek book, clocking in at only 80 pages. Yar is a British professor of sociology and his book is a neat summary of hopes and fears about the Internet. I liked it, but just as I started to get into it, the book ended. And, it's crazy expensive (>70 USD). From the back cover:

"Contemporary cultures offer contradictory views of the internet and new media technologies, painting, them in extremes of optimistic enthusiasm and pessimistic foreboding. While some view them as a repository of hopes for democracy, freedom and self-realisation, others consider these developments as sources of alienation, dehumanisation and danger. This book explores such representations and situates them within the traditions of utopian and dystopian thought that have shaped the Western cultural imaginary."


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----- On the the promise of using ICT for development in the 1990's  -----

"While the countries of the [OECD] are becoming more aware of the "haves" and "have-nots" within their own societies, there is a similar but much larger division between "haves" and "have-nots" on a global scale.

Can ICTs help to close the gap? Or will they widen it? Access to the skills, equipment, and networks that allow entry to the information society are largely the privilege of rich countries and, elsewhere, select urban centres and the elite within them. Developments in the North are moving much faster than those in the South. The flow of information, knowledge, and resources is mostly North to South; there is still very little South to North or South to South."

Howkins & Valantin (1997). "Development and the information age", p.3.

----- On developing scenarios  -----

"This publication [presents] four scenarios of ICTs and development over the next 15-20 years. ... The scenario process ... starts with an open brainstorming session in which people put forward their views about a specific situation, specify variables, and raise issues from today to, say, a 15-year horizon or beyond. Sometimes the moderator will ask each person what he or she would ask of an oracle who had promised to answer three questions ... Each scenario starts with certainties and introduces uncertainties. ... the scenarios should not just tell a believable story but should also identify the main decision points faced by decision-makers ... Scenario planning does not demonstrate which scenario is the most likely. The aim is to uncover and articulate the basic parameters in a believable situation, regardless of whether the planners and decison-makers regard them as likely to happen. By spotlighting paths ahead, the process can also help to identify areas that remain in darkness."

Howkins & Valantin (1997). "Development and the information age", p.4-6.

----- On ICT in affluent vs developing countries  -----

"What is the balance between ownership, control, access, and impact? Is having a telephone network owned by a foreign company worse than not having one at all?

...

Tariffs are another important issue. In OECD countries, the average rate for telephone access and for internet access is about 1% of average income (and using both services costs 2% of income). Rates in developing countries are usually higher. Indeed, there is an inverse correlation between per-capita income and the cost of access: the higher the income, the lower the cost. As a result, although many have access in principle, few can afford it. Governments face a challenge: Whether to put the priority on higher charges, to increaser revenues in the short-term, or to reduce charges to increase traffic."

Howkins & Valantin (1997). "Development and the information age", p.22-23.

----- We live in a Cargo Cult world  -----

"The ... participants gave shorthand names to the four scenarios they developed. These ... were called The March of Follies, Cargo Cult, Netblocs, and Networld."

"Issues of equity and access are hardly considered. Technical specifications and standards are almost entirely determined by OECD governments and corporations, and by the intergovernmental organizations tat they finance and dominate. Developing countries have little input. ... talented young people who want to work in software development are forced, because of the lack of local training schemes and local opportunities, to go to the USA, Europe, or Singapore. ... There is a lack of local translators and adaptors [and] most of the content comes from outside."

Howkins & Valantin (1997). "Development and the information age", p.29-35.

----- On "everyware"  -----

"This book is ... about a vision of processing power so distributed throughout the environment that computers per se effectively disappear.

...

Although aspects of this vision have been called a variety of names - ubiquitous computing, pervasive computing, physical computing, tangible media, and so - I think of them as facets of one coherent paradigm of interaction that I call everyware."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.1.

----- On the promise and the threat of ubiquitous computing  -----

"My intention here is simply to ... describe what ubiquitous computing is; establish that it is a very real concern for all of us, and in the relatively near term; explore some of the less-obviouos implications of its spread as a paradigm; and finally, develop some ideas about how we might improve it.

...

If we make wise choices about the terms on which we accept it, we can extend the utility and convenience of ubiquitous computing to billions of lives addressing dissatisfactions as old as human history. Or we can watch passively as the world fills up with ubiquitous systems not designed with our interests at heart - at best presenting us with moments of hassle, disruption, and frustration beyond number, and at worst laying the groundwork for the kind of repression the despots of the twentieth century could only dream about."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.5-6.

----- On our bodies as a field of/for computation  -----

"Of all the new frontiers opening up for computation, perhaps the most startling is that of the human body.

...

It's strange, after all, to live in our bodies for as long as we do, to know them about as intimately as anything ever can be known, and to still have so little idea about how they work. The opacity of our relationship with our physical selves is particularly frustrating given that our bodies are constantly signaling their status beneath the threshold of awareness, beyond our ability to control them. In every moment of our lives, the rhythm of the heartbeat, the chemistry of the blood, even the electrical conductivity of the skin are changing in response to evolving physical, situational, and emotional environment."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.48.

----- On awareness and agency when computers surround us  -----

"There are at least three modes in which this lack of agency in [ubiquitous computing] becomes relevant.

...

I wasn't aware of this system' extent, domain of operation, capabilities, or ownership. I had no idea that this store tracked my movements through it and would mail me coupons for products I stood next to for more than ten seconds but didn't purchase. I didn't know that this toilet would test my urine for the breakdown products of opiates and communicate its finding to my doctor, my insurers, or law-enforcement personnel."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.66.

----- Welcome to a more complicated and confusing future  -----

"Perhaps my living room has two entirely separate and distinct voice-activated systems, say, the wallscreen and the actual window - to which a command to "close the window" would be meaningful. How are they to know which window I mean?

...

It's not that such situations cannot be resolved. Of course they can be. It's just that designers will have to explicitly anticipate such situations and devise rulesto address them - something that gets exponentially harder when [systems are] made by different parties."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.75-76.

----- On what technology "wants"  -----

"technologies do contain inherent potentials, gradients of connection.

...

it wouldn't have taken a surplus of imagination, even ahead of the fact, to discern the original Napster in Paul Baran's first paper on packet-switched networks, the Manhattan skyline in the Otis safety elevator patent, or the suburb and the strip mall latent in the heart of the internal combustion engine.

...

Somewhere around [five cents], it becomes economic to slap [RFID] tags onto just about everything: every toothbrush, every replacement windshield wiper or orange-juice carton in existence. And given how incredibly useful the things are - they readily allow the tracking, sorting, and self-identification of items they're appended to, and much more besides - there are likely to be few persuasive arguments against doing so. RFID "wants" to be everywhere and part of everything."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.98-99.

----- On "software-sorted regimes"  -----

"What is currently done with guards, signage, and physical barriers ranging from velvet rope to razor wire, can still more effectively be accomplished when those measures are supplemented by gradients of access and permission

...

if you're having trouble getting a grip on how these would work in practice ... there's a panoply of ubiquitous security measures both actual and potential that are subtler stil: navigation systems that omit all paths through an area where a National Special Security Event is transpiring, for example, or subway and buses that are automatically routed past. Elevators that won't accept requests for floors you're not accredited for; retain items, from liquor to ammunition ... that won't let you purchase them, that simply cannot be rung up. Context-aware differential permissioning used as a security tool will mean that certain options simply do not appear as available to you, like grayed-out items on desktop meny - in fact, you won't get even that backhanded notification, you won't even know the options ever existed.."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.108-109.

----- On falling prices and the resultant lavish use of computing power  -----

"As the price of processors falls dramatically ... we can afford to spend that power freely, even lavishly, with the result that computing resources can be brought to bear on comparatively trivial tasks. We arrive at the stage where processor power can be economically devoted to addressing everyday life: As Mark Weiser put it, "where are the car keys, can I get a parking place, and is that shirt I saw last week at Macy's still on the rack""

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.115.

----- On complexity and (lack of) control  -----

"Before they are knit together, the systems that comprise [ubiquitous computing] may appear to be relatively conventional, with well-understood interfaces and affordances. When interconnected, they will assuredly interact in emergent and unpredictable ways.

...

We should never make the mistake of believing, as designers, users or policymakers, that we understand exactly what we're dealing with in an abstract discussion of [ubiquitous computing]. How can we fully understand, let alone propose to regulate, a technology whose important consequences may only arise combinatorially as a result of its specific placement in the world?"

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.143.

----- On empowering technologies leading to atrophying mental skills  -----

"Marshall McLuhan taught us, in his 1964 Understand Media, "every extension is [also] an amputation." By this he meant that when we rely on technical systems to ameliorate the burdens of everyday life, we invariably allow our organic faculties to atrophy to a corresponding degree. ... Elevators allow us to live and work hundreds of feet into the air, but we can no longer climb even a few flights without becoming winded. Cars extend the radius of our travels by many times, but it becomes automatic to hop into one if we're planning to travel any further than the corner store

...

"Amputation," though, implies that a faculty had at least once existed. But it's also the case that the presence of an ambient informatics might interfere in learning certain skills to begin with.

...

Children ... Able to rely on paraphernalia like personal location icons, route designators, and turn indicators, whether they will ever learn the rudiments of navigation ... is open to question. Even memorizing street names might prove to be an amusingly antiquated demonstration of pointless skill"

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.148-149.

----- Hello Siri!  -----

"It may turn out that ubiquitous voice recognition has more power to enforce crisp enunciation than any locution teacher ever dreamed of wielding. This is problematic in two ways. First, of course, is the pragmatic concern that it forces users to focus on tool and not task, and thus violates every principle of an encalming pervasive technology. But more seriously, we probably weren't looking to our household management system for speech lessons. Why should we mold something as intimate, and as constitutive of personality, as the way we speak around some normative profile encoded into the systems around us?"

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.150.

----- On complex systems sprouting "insolvable" problems  -----

"Let's consider the example of a "smart" household-management system, to which all of the local heating, lighting, ventilation, and plumbing infrastructure has been coupled. In the hope of striking a balance between comfort and economy, you've set its winter mode to lower any room's temperature to 60 degrees Fahrenheit when that room has been empty for ten minutes or more, but to maintain it at 68 otherwise.

When the heat fails to come on in one room or another, which of the interlinked systems involved has broken down? Is it a purely mechanical problem with the heater itself, the kind of thing you'd call a plumber for? Is it a hardware issue - say, a failure of the room's motion detector to properly register your presence? Maybe the management interface has locked up or crashed entirely. It's always possible that your settings file has become corrupt. Or perhaps these systems have between them gotten into some kind of strange feedback loop.

...

Diagnosis of simple defaults in ubiquitous systems will likely prove to be inordinately time-conuming by current standards, but systems that display emergent behavior may confound diagnosis entirely."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.152-153.

----- On the ethical challenges of designing ubiquitous computing systems  -----

"If we wish to design ubiquitous systems that support people in all the richness and idiosyncrasy of their lives, that address the complications of those lives without introducing new ones, we should bear in mind how crushingly often our mistakes will come to haunt not us but the people on whose behalf we're supposed to be acting."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.157.

----- On the the "value proposition" of ubiquitous computing  -----

"As yet [ubiquitous computing] offers the user no compelling and clearly stated value proposition.

...

Gene Becker describes the issue this way: "The potential uses and benefits of ubicomp often seem 'obvious'; most of us in the field have spun variations of the same futuristic scenarios, to the point where it seems like a familiar and tired genre of joke. 'You walk into the [conference room, living room, museum gallery, hospital ward], the contextual intention system recognizes you by your [beacon, tag, badge, face, gait], and the [lights, music, temperature, privacy settings, security permissions] adjust smoothly to your preferences. Your new location is announced to the [room, building, global buddy list service, Homeland Security Department], and your [videoconference, favorite TV show, appointment calendar, breakfast order] is automatically started.' And so on. Of course, what real people need or want in any given situation is *far* from obvious."

...

There are days, in fact, when it can seem to me that the entire endeavor has arisen out of some combination of the technically feasible and that which is of interest to people working in human-computer interaction. Or worse, much worse: out of marketing and the desire to sell people yet more things for which they have neither a legitimate need nor even much in the way of honest desire."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.191-192.

----- The chair and the iPod - a parable of different technologies  -----

"just about the only way the chair can truly fail is to suffer some catastrophic structural degradation that leaves it unable to support the weight of an occupant. Nobody need to be told how to use the lounge chair. ... The same can be said of most domestic furniture

...

You needn't configure the chair, or set its preferences, or worry about compatible file formats. You can take it out of one room or house and drop it into another, and it still works *exactly* the same way as it did before, with no adjustment. It never reminds you that a new version of its firmware is available and that certain of its features will not be available until you do choose to upgrade. As much as I love my iPod, and do, none of these statements is true of it."

Greenfield (2010). "Everyware", p.228-229.

----- On the origins of ubiquitous computing  -----

"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a team of researchers at PARC led by computer scientist Mark Weiser ... anticipated a world suffused with information technology, in which daily life might bring some people into contact with many, interconnected digital devices, large and small."

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.2-3.

----- On mess and mythology in ubiquitous computing  -----

"This book, then, is about ubicomp. It is about the stories that have been told, and all the stories that haven't been. It is about the research that has been done, and the research that should be done. It is about what computer science has been, at the intersection of daily life and computational technology, and what it could be. It is then a book about the myth of ubicomp and its messy reality and, by necessity, about the tensions between those two very different vantage points.

...

In attempting to understand what ubicomp is today, however, we need to understand it not just technically but also culturally, socially, politically, and economically."

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.5.

----- On the use of visions of future technologies  -----

"to the extent that ubicomp was a visionary proposal when first articulated [in the late 1980s], it told a story of an as-yet-unattainable technological future, but that story is one firmly rooted in its own times. Such visions, after all, are interesting not just for what they say about the future but also for what they say about the present.

...

What this opens up as a topic of inquiry, then, is how new futures get to be imagined and incorporated into a research agenda such as ubicomp, and what kind of work has to be done to mark out past triumphs, current problems, and future opportunities. ... Weiser's vision of the future is not only by this point an old one but also an extremely North American one."

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.20-21.

----- On visions of the future trumping the present mess  -----

"the framing of ubicomp as something yet to be achieved allows researchers and technologists to absolve themselves of responsibilities for the present; the problems of ubicomp are framed as implementation issues that are essentially someone else's problem, to be cleaned up afterward ... The future framing allows us to assume that certain problems will simply disappear of their own accord; questions of usability, regulation, resistance, adoption barriers, sociotechnical backlashes, and other concerns are erased."

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.22.

----- On "using ethnography" to design better computer systems  -----

"there is still considerable debate over what ethnography is and how it can best be employed in research, design, and deployment contexts. For the most part, ethnography has come to be regarded as a toolbox of methods, divorced from a larger set of theoretical and methodological concerns that give it form and rigor. Ethnography is too often seen as an approach to field investigation that simply generates requirements for systems development by providing a clear sense of "what the user want." This is perhaps ironic given that most ethnographers cringe at the very notion of users

...

The term "ethnography" indeed is often used as shorthand for investigations that are to some extent in situ, qualitative, or open-ended. We have both read and reviewed papers where "ethnography" was used to mean that the researchers had spoken to a test subject outside the context of a usability lab."

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.63-67.

----- On the "power differential" between engineering and social sciences ("who works for who?")  -----

"While it is obviously important, in a design- and technology-oriented field, to be concerned with highlighting and correcting problems in current technologies, for a range of reasons ethnography is not necessarily best oriented toward the creation of new sorts of technological or computer artifacts. Sometimes, after all, the most effective outcome of a study might be to recommend what should *not* be build."

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.71.

----- On invisible technologies (i.e. infrastructure)  -----

"to become infrastructure is a mark of a successful technology - it becomes unremarkable. This was certainly one of Weiser's explicit goals in his original statement of ubicomp's vision. His opening remarks speak to the nature of infrastructure: "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it" (Weiser 1991, 94). This is not the "disappearance" of rapidly miniaturizing technology that becomes so small it literally shrinks from view; instead, this is an infrastuctural disappearance, a form of easy habituation and invisibility in use that follows from casual familiarity."

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.95.

----- Does information want to be free?  -----

"the experience of the Internet's use in countries such as China, Turkey, and Singapore, where information flows are subject to considerable state restriction, put lie to the idea that "information wants to be free" (Turner 2006); technological arrangements and commercial interests can allow exactly the same sort of restriction and management that are deployed around "old media."

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.97.

  ----- Who do we design for?  -----

"the cities that are the sites of urban computing research are typically quite similar. First-world "world cities" with significant infrastructures and capital investments, like San Francisco, New York, London and Tokyo, feature prominently; strangely absent are such metropolitan centers as Kuala Lumpur, Sao Paolo, Seoul, Singapore, Detroit, or Calcutta. We would note further that the contexts of mobility have been similarly constrained. The urban resident is frequently pictured as young, well-heeled, techno savvy, and above all engaged in discretionary movement through and consumption of urban space.

...

By way of contrast, let us think of other residents of urban space whose orientation toward mobility might be quite different - the homeless, for whom movement is a way of avoiding problematic encounters with authority; parolees, whose movement is constrained and monitored; taxi drivers, for whom mobility is a form of labor; or low-wage employees who spends upward of four hours a day on public transit to reach employment"

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.122-123.

  ----- On the necessary infrastructure to support mobility  -----

"In Bell's research, we hear a great deal about what it took to be mobile in the early twenty-first century. It necessitated infrastructure in various forms: transportation (train lines, highways, cars, bikes, footpaths, etc.), utilities (phone lines, electricity, etc.), high technology (mobile phones, laptops, phone cards, credit cards, etc.) and low (wheeled bag, phone cord etc.), accessible consumer installations (Kinko's, Gap store in every town etc.), resting and fuelling points (gas stations, fastfood restaurants, hotels, ATMs, cafés, beer gardens, mobile phone stores, etc.), and personal/personnel (travel agents, administrative assistants, spouses, family members, etc.)."

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.125.

  ----- On privacy and deception online  -----

"How are people engaging with online space, applications, and experiences so as to ensure privacy? ... Of the range of privacy practices engaged, perhaps the most interesting centers on the use of providing false information as a protective privacy strategy.

...

People lie on any number of websites and services about their demographic particulars: age, gender, and date of birth. Some of these lies are necessary for participation. ... For example, researchers at Cornell University have found that 100 percent of those participating in online dating lie about something; men lie about their height, systematically overestimating it by an average of two to three inches, and women lie about their weight, undercalling it by on average three to five pounds. ... one might even assert that microblogging systems like Twitter, ringing with detailed descriptions of mundane activities, concentrate on the charms of small acts of confabulation rather than social history in the making. ... what might actually be left unsaid? What might be hiding in plain sight on Twitter and other sites like it?"

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.147-148.

  ----- On ubicomp researchers' limited powers of imagination  -----

"According to U.S. government statistics, nearly four million women in the country experience a serious assault by a partner during an average twelve-month period yet ... violence, abuse, rape, and incest are not the experiences that comfortably populate our research imaginings of the domestic. ... In much of the writing about and designing for smart/digital homes ... this set of realities is erased in favor of depicting occupants as a happy heterosexual nuclear family, with its safe relationships and sanitized patterns of occupation.

...

A perusal of the research literature would suggest that the primary problem for ubicomp technology to solve in the home is the proliferation of media devices that clutter the living room, or perhaps something to help us remember our recipes ... A much different view of domestic technology might accompany an understanding of homes in terms of the dangers they potentially enclose, rather than those that they must be designed to exclude.

Dourish and Bell (2011). "Divining a digital future", p.177-178.

  ----- On hopes, fears and the Internet  -----

"the Internet has rapidly become the space into which utopian and dystopian visions of the present and future are now projected.

...

This book aims to explore the meanings and narratives that shape our views of the virtual world. Its focus extends well beyond scholarly discussions to examine the wider imaginary manifest in popular culture, including film, television, novels, and press reportage. In doing so, it seeks to uncover how our collective hopes, fears and fantasies about the future are now increasingly centred upon the virtual world."

Yar (2014). "The Cultural Imaginary of the Internet", p.2.

  ----- On four different visions of utopias  -----

"different utopian schemes have tended to flourish at different points in the cultural history of Europe .... First, the 16th and 17th centuries saw an upsurge of religious utopianism which linked Christianity with communistic egalitarianism

...

A second form of utopian vision was connected to the so-called voyages of discovery associated with European imperial expansion.

...

Third, we see the emergence of 19th century of 'utopias of justice and equality' ... a vision of large-scale social transformation [where] industrial production and modern instrumental rationality are appropriated for the benefit of all

...

a fourth mode of thinking ... is associated with techno-scientific utopias [that] promise indefinite progress and material abundance enabled by the development of science and technology

Yar (2014). "The Cultural Imaginary of the Internet", p.9-11.

  ----- On virtual utopianism  -----

"Below I excavate and examine what I identify as the 'five modes of virtual utopianism' - cultural discourses focused upon the internet that envisage its capacity to transform society for the better across various domains of social life. These five modes relate to (1) the dream of democracy, (2) the rediscovery of community, (3) achieving equality, (4) the realisation of the self and (5) the transcendence of the human."

Yar (2014). "The Cultural Imaginary of the Internet", p.31.

  ----- On the city first as utopia and then as dystopia  -----

"the city has long featured as the site and space of utopian existence ... The city stands for all that modernity affords in the name of progress, in contrast to the country which denotes the shackles of tradition and stasis

...

However, over the past 50 years ... the city has undergone a dramatic reversal and has become indelibly associated not with the dream of techno-scientific progress but with the nightmare of its failure. The city is now imagined as a space of dysfunction, division, exclusion, separation, alienation and incivility; it has become something of a leitmotif for all that is supposedly missing from modern life - community, solidarity, intimacy, connection, reciprocity."

Yar (2014). "The Cultural Imaginary of the Internet", p.35-36.

  ----- On the (non-)value of Facebook activism  -----

"The main benefit of this so-called slacktivism is that it offers its participants a sense of instantaneous gratification as they 'post', 'share', 'like' and 'retw'eet their way to a reassuring sense of their own engagement with serious and worldly matters, all from the comfort of their armchairs.

...

For its detractors, online engagement is a perfect mirror of consumerist individualism, a practice in which individuals invest little and risk nothing, while reaping the satisfaction that they are 'doing the right thing'. All this sharing of one's predilections and preferences also offers the perfect mechanism for commercial exploitation through data profiling and targeted advertising, turning the stuff of ethical and political commitment into yet another vector for lifestyle marketing."

Yar (2014). "The Cultural Imaginary of the Internet", p.63.

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KTH Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

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KTH will organise a pedagogical conference in March, "KTH Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 2015". "The main purpose of the conference is to stimulate our teachers to develop their teaching and learning by documenting and sharing their educational efforts." The information about the conference has not been top notch, we were a little unsure about a couple of different things but still decided to make an effort and submit a bunch of papers before the December 15 deadline.

My colleague Björn Hedin was instrumental in prodding us to write 300-400 words abstracts and I believe me and my colleagues at the Department of Media Technology and Interaction Design submitted no less than six abstracts. Below are the two submissions where I am a co-author:

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Seminar or support group? Responding to students’ emotions in sustainability education

Elina Eriksson and Daniel Pargman

Keywords:  Sustainability, emotions, worldview

There are almost 250 courses at KTH that are tagged as ESD courses (environment and sustainable development). Some courses are mandatory, and the student group can then be heterogeneous in terms of their level of understanding and investment in sustainability. We teach such a course for media technology students and have earlier discussed how value-laden the subject of sustainability can be (Pargman and Eriksson 2013). Sustainability is an inherently difficult and complex subject matter, and, some of the facts (Stocker et al. 2013) can be disturbing or even threatening the individual’s sense of well being (e.g. the potential for mass extinction or sea level rises). As teachers we have noticed that presenting such information can provoke strong feelings, as exemplified by the students who approached us after a lecture on climate change, and, with tears in their eyes asked if we could say something more optimistic.

There are many emotional barriers to difficult issues such as climate change, as described in Norgaard’s (2011) book on the social construction of climate change denial. By talking about climate change and resource scarcity, we also to some degree raise topics and open up discussions that go against the ingrained default belief of us living in the best of times, continuing our march towards a future of unlimited progress (Greer 2013). These discussions to a high degree contradict the (meta-)message that students get from other courses at KTH. One way we have handled these issues is to use the seminars as an opportunity for the students to vent their emotions, if necessary allowing the discussions to digress from the pre-planned theme. This opens up questions concerning our roles as teachers. How can we find a balance in our roles as domain experts versus acting as therapists?

References:

Greer, J. M. (2013). Not the future we ordered - Peak oil, psychology, and the myth of progress. London, UK, Karnac Books.

Norgaard, K. M. (2011). Living in denial: Climate change, emotions, and everyday life, MIT Press.

Pargman, D. and E. Eriksson  (2013). “It’s not fair!”-making students engage in sustainability. In Proc. EESD'13

Stocker, T., D. Qin, G. Plattner, M. Tignor, S. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P. Midgley, Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Summary for Policymakers,  2013

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Educational use of Social Annotation Systems for Peer Feedback 

Daniel Pargman and Björn Hedin

Keywords: social annotation systems, peer feedback, technology enhanced learning

Social annotation systems provide a way for several students to annotate shared documents in an online environment (Novak, Razzouk & Johnson, 2012). We have for a number of years used social annotation systems in order to allow students to comment on each other's work, and have very positive experiences for using it in academic writing in bachelor theses (Hedin, 2012; Pargman, Hedin, & Hrastinski, 2013). In this roundtable we present and demonstrate the method that is used, and add the experiences from using social annotation systems in two other courses, with more strict guidelines for what constitutes good feedback practice inspired by Nicol & Macfarlane-Dick (2006), and by  De Bono’s “Six thinking hats” (De Bono, 1999).

After introducing social annotation systems in bachelor thesis writing, the throughput has increased from 78% to almost 100%, even though a causal effect cannot be established. The attitudes of the students have been very positive, where both giving and receiving feedback to and from fellow students has been seen as activities well worth the effort. The feedback guidelines have increased the quality of the feedback given by freshmen students.

References:

De Bono, E., 1999. Six thinking hats. Taylor & Francis.

Hedin, B., 2012. Peer Feedback in Academic Writing Using Google Docs. In: Proceedings of LTHs 7:e Pedagogiska Inspirationskonferens, Lund 2012. Lund.

Nicol, D.J. and Macfarlane‐Dick, D., 2006. Formative assessment and self‐regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice. Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), pp.199–218.

Novak, E., Razzouk, R. and Johnson, T.E., 2012. The educational use of social annotation tools in higher education: A literature review. The Internet and Higher Education, 15(1), pp.39–49.

Pargman, D., Hedin, B. and Hrastinski, S., 2013. Using group supervision and social annotation systems to support students ’ academic writing. Högre Utbildning, 3(2), pp.129–134.
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Energy and climate advice beyond "one size fits all"

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I'm part of a research project, STEM, that has to do with "Improved energy habits through Quantified Self". At a recent meeting, we (Björn Hedin, Daniel Pargman and Henrik Artman) sketched out a project that media technology students of ours could work with either as part of the Individual Course in Media Technology (4th year students - 3 hp) or as the topic for their bachelors' Degree Project in Media Technology (3rd year students - who would get an extra 3 hp on top of their 15 hp bachelor's theses). I will use this blog post to sketch out what it would mean for a student to participate in the proposed project that would run from mid-January to mid-February because this is also a recruitment ad!

We imagine that this task is particularly suitable for students who are interested in and who read courses in human-computer interaction, interaction design and/or sustainability. The task concerns sustainability but the methods are taken from HCI/IxD. Seen as an individual course in media technology, students would:
- read up on relevant sustainability/sustainable HCI literature
- use HCI/IxD methods that they have learned in other courses
- develop design concepts (mock-ups/prototypes)
- hone their project management skills

The project itself would start at the very beginning of the next term. The time schedule below is adapted so as to fit the schedule for the degree project, i.e. the outcome of this project has been coordinated timewise with the third year students' degree project/bachelor's theses. Below I sketch out a rough outline of what it would mean for a student to be part of this project (course). We will direct students to this blog post and after reading it they should have enough information to be able to decide if to join the project (take the course) or not!


Phase 1 - preparations (before Jan 13)
--------------------------------------------
Read up. Read this blog post carefully to start with. We have selected a few articles that students should read in preparation for an initial meeting - perhaps a group discussion(?) - between interested students and the STEM researchers (Björn, Daniel, Henrik) on Tuesday Jan 13 between 13-15. Students should prepare for the meeting by summarising initial thoughts and by preparing questions about the project that they feel have not been answered by this blog post. We might also divide the students into teams at this meeting. A best-case scenario for us would be three-person groups with one 4th year students taking the individual course in media technology and two 3rd year students who will use the output of this project as input for their bachelors' thesis (that our students write together in pairs).

Phase 1 should not take more than two full days of preparations for the students. Students should, before the meeting, read the following scientific articles:

• Brynjarsdottir, H., Håkansson, M., Pierce, J., Baumer, E., DiSalvo, C., & Sengers, P. (2012). Sustainably unpersuaded: how persuasion narrows our vision of sustainability. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). ACM.
• Strengers, Y. (2014). Smart energy in everyday life: are you designing for resource man?. interactions, 21(4).
• Knowles, B., Blair, L., Walker, S., Coulton, P., Thomas, L., & Mullagh, L. (2014). Patterns of persuasion for sustainability. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS). ACM.
• The Common Cause values online handbook and in particular the section about "How values work".

Phase 2 - design interactionary (one day, Jan 21)
--------------------------------------------------------
For one whole day during the subsequent week (on Wednesday Jan 21) students will work in three-person teams. In the STEM research project we are working with the Swedish municipal energy and climate advisors and we want three-person teams of students to explore and develop an initial design concept for a system that will support these advisors in their work. We however work with the assumption that energy and climate counselling today makes "one-size-fits-all-ish" assumptions about citizens' motivations for asking for advise (for example being primarily motivated by economic incentives - "how much money can I save by doing X?" ). With this proposed project, we want to expand the space for counsellors to "meet" citizens that have different and widely varying motivations.

Based on the Common Cause values online handbook and the "Schwartz value circumplex, we want different three-person student teams to design systems that target groups of people that have very different motivations for wanting to change their energy and climate habits.

On Wed Jan 21, we will organise a full-day activity that partly resembles a "hackathon", but with mock-ups, prototypes and interaction design at its core rather than computer code and hacking. We will use the "Interactionary" format to get a lot of brainstorming and creative thinking done in a short period of time. Interactionary is originally a competitions format where the task is to compete in interaction design "live" - in front of an audience and with very tight time frames. We here tone down the competitive element and borrow from hackathons that are all about generating and exploring new ideas. See this Interactionary FAQ and the Interactionary guidebook for more information about the Interactionary format.

Student teams will also have access to users and experts of various kinds throughout the day such as MID4S teachers/researchers. We will also invite researchers from CESC as well as try to recruit representatives from companies and organisations (Ericsson, design bureaus, energy and climate advisors etc.).

The goal is for different student teams to develop a variety of design concepts that will work for people who have different motivations for wanting to decrease their energy consumption and/or their climate impact.


Phase 3 - questions, inquiries and answers (one week - Jan 30)
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The Interactionary exercise (phase 2) will result in each group of students producing a design concept (mock-up/prototype). As a by-product, we also expect that different questions will come out of the Interactionary exercise that cannot be answered then-and-there (during that particular day). Some of those questions might mean that we (the STEM researchers, e.g. Björn, Daniel and Henrik) will have to work and help the students find answers, for example by conducting a fast-and-loose survey among our friends or by helping the students put together a survey of their own and help disseminate it. It might also be the case that we will need to help the students to get in touch with relevant persons (for example energy and climate advisors or other "experts"), set up a test, to suggest new things the students should read up on, or, in any other way "open doors" and help students continue their work. The third phase of the project thus consists of trying to answer those questions that come out of the second phase.


Phase 4 - New-and-improved design concept (one week, Feb 6)
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Based on the activities in phase 3, the students will have one more week to revise the design concept they came up with in phase 2. This might include rejecting or revising parts of their concepts and developing and enhancing other parts so that they can present a new-and-improved design concept (mock-up/prototype).

The students should at this point also hone not just their design concepts but also their arguments. They should be able to describe what worked and what didn't work in the first version, what has been changed, how is this an improvement, exactly how they know that is the case etc.


Phase 5 - Report (one week, Feb 13)
--------------------------------------------
As part of the individual course in media technology, students have to write a report. For students who instead will write their bachelor's thesis (in pairs), the output should also be a specification for their bachelor's thesis (should they choose to continue to explore these issues also within their bachelor's thesis).

There is a very good reason for the compressed schedule sketched out above and that is of course the need for this project to end at about the same time that the third year students will start to work on their bachelor's theses. The idea is that the output of this project can become the input to a bachelor's thesis (or several bachelor's theses in parallell, each working to satisfy the needs of a specific group of users).


The most important audience for this blog post is not regular readers but rather students who might be interested in actually doing the project we propose above! If you are such a student and would like to know more, please announce your interest/sign up by sending a mail to me (pargman<at>kth.se) as soon as possible! We will then get back with more information right after the New Year holiday.
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Future of the digital commons - invitation to final presentation & book intro

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This is a two-for-one blog post (re-using last year's template). First an open invitation to tomorrow's (Dec 17) final presentation of The Future of the Digital Commons and the Sharing Economy, followed by the introduction to the limited-edition book we are publishing on that topic.

1) December 17 final presentation at 13.00-17.30 in lecture hall F1

You are invited to the final presentation in the course Future of Media. This year's theme is The Future of the Digital Commons and the Sharing Economy. Sign up here!

The course is given for the 12th year and I think this year's presentations might be the best and the most ambitious ever. Do note that the 12 project groups span a very wide area and will present concepts, ideas and scenarios that, for example, treat the future of trust and reputation online, the future of identity, of surveillance, piracy, shared energy, shared urban farming - and more!

Here are twelve trends for the next 10-20 years that we have identified and that has had an impact on the scenarios of different project groups [further developed in the book introduction below]:

- Always online
- More computational power
- Augmented reality
- 3D printing
- Automatisation, mechanisation
- Economic uncertainty, decreased economic growth
- Increased unemployment
- Higher environmental consciousness
- More sharing
- On- and offline identities merge
- Reputation as an alternative currency
- Reduced privacy

Welcome!

/Daniel Pargman & Malin Picha

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Below are two of the 12 projects that will present their results on December 17 - and who isn't interested in the future sharing of 3D blueprints (left) or or the future crowdsourced self-surveillance (right)?

2) Book introduction, "The Future of the Digital Commons"

This book is the result of a project course, “The Future of Media”, given at the Department of Media Technology and Interaction Design at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Information, communication, media, and media technologies have become increasingly important in today’s society and in people’s everyday lives. Media technology can broadly be characterized as technologies and methods for supporting communication between people across distances in time and space.

The KTH Royal Institute of Technology has offered a Master of Science in Media Technology since 1999.

The Future of Media

In the project course “Future of Media”, advanced graduate students in Media Technology and Media Management explore the relationship between technology, economy and social factors in processes of technological innovation and development.

The course load corresponds to a third of a semester and runs throughout the autumn semester. This year, 2014, the course is given for the 12th time, and for the third time in English, with participating international students. A special effort has been made to document the work, and to make the results of the course available on the Internet. The results include this book, “The future of the digital commons and the sharing economy”, a webpage, as well as concrete practical “design representations” such as for example movies and prototypes that have been created by different project groups within the course. The results of not just this year’s course, but of previous as well as successive courses are available on the internet at http://futureofmedia.se/archive.

This year’s theme: The Future of the digital commons and the sharing economy

Each year, the theme of the course is different, although it always deals with a topic related to media and the future. Past themes have for example included The Future of TV, The Future of Books, The Future of Music, The Future of Radio, The Future of Magazines, and the Future of News. This year’s task has been to analyze, reflect upon, review, refine and further develop the Future of the Digital Commons and the Sharing Economy, from a media technology perspective.

The digital commons is a wide concept, including services and resources owned together rather than privately owned. It is difficult to draw a sharp line between what is included and what is not included in the commons, but as a guideline we think of the historic tradition of local communities that managed their common resources such as land, water or forests in a shared manner with everyone’s best interest in mind. The commons basically means “what we share” and refers to a wealth of valuable assets that belong to everyone. In present-day society, this could include the sky (the atmosphere), the earth, parklands, roads, sidewalks, museums, archives, scientific knowledge and the internet. Some elements of the commons are old, and some are new – for example internet services such as Wikipedia.

Everyone can use the commons, as long as there are enough resources left for everyone else. This implies that the commons must be sustainably managed. Here, of course, the theory around the commons connects well with the discussion of sustainability and sustainable development. The digital revolution creates a foundation for the modern form of the commons – in particular the digital commons with its non-rival resources that can be endlessly copied and shared. The Internet and people’s increasing access to this global communications network provides a necessary infrastructure to expand and innovate new services within the sphere of the digital commons. The digital commons also offer a chance to unite people who are concerned with the common good, such as environmental sustainability and the preservation of natural resources.


In the course Future of Media, we have this year thought long and hard about technological, economical and other aspects connected to the digital commons and the sharing economy – what it was (past), what it is today (present), and what it will become tomorrow (future). What are the effects of the expansion of the digital commons? Could the digital commons overthrow traditional business models? And what will the future bring us? How will the digital commons emerge and develop in the future? These are issues that have been discussed, leading up to our main question: what will the digital commons look like 10 or 20 years from now?

No less than twelve groups of students have explored twelve different futures for the digital commons and the sharing economy during the autumn of 2014. The students presented their suggestions and the results of their projects in front of a live audience on December 17, 2014, but the results are also available here, in this book, as well as online, http://futureofmedia.se/digitalcommons

A framework for all project groups has been to aim for a future that will happen sometime in the next 10-20 year, i.e. sometime between 2023 and 2033. All projects have also had to limit themselves to, or at least orient themselves towards, a Swedish (Western, relatively affluent) context

Despite widely different ideas, there are still a number of trends that the twelve project groups have to position themselves in relation to.

Trends within the digital commons and the sharing economy

Below are 12 trends that we have identified in the course and that are of importance for The
Future of the Digital Commons and the Sharing Economy. Each trend is important for at least a few groups, and sometimes for many project groups.

Technological developments

1. Always online
People will “always” be connected to the Internet all the time in the future. This will make it possible to monitor and record a lot of information, including actions and transactions of various kinds. It might be that today’s smartphones will be replaced by more “intimate” technology - for example a chip in the wrist.

2. More computational power
Computation will more powerful and more plentiful in the future. This means that computers will be able to do much more than today, including voice, image and pattern recognition and other tasks where humans were previously thought to have unique advantages compared to computers.

3. Augmented reality
Augmented reality will be widespread in the future through some variety of today’s Google glasses or through contact lens that can display a layer of information “on top of” the world around us.

4. 3D printing
3D printing will be faster, less expensive and therefore more accessible in the future. It will be possible to print larger objects quicker and to combine materials much easier than today.

5. Automatisation, mechanisation

Blue-collar work has been automatized during the 20th century. This trend will continue and will be joined by increased automatization also of white-collar work replacing people with algorithms wherever possible.

Societal developments

6. Economic uncertainty, decreased economic growth
Economic uncertainty, decreased economic growth

Due to climate change and more scarce (expensive) resources, we will see decreased economic growth, no economic growth or negative economic growth (shrinking economies). Due to higher energy prices, food and transportation costs have increased. It therefore makes more sense to provision more goods and services locally.

7. Increased unemployment
Due to the previous two trends, there will be very high unemployment and especially so for youths. This trend can already be seen in several countries in Southern Europe today (Greece, Spain etc.)

8. Higher environmental consciousness
People are more aware of and concerned about environmental issues. Sustainability has a higher priority both on a personal and political level and such thinking is better integrated into peoples’ every lives.

9. More sharing

Due to the previous three trends, there is an increased impetus for bottom-up sharing of information and other resources (gadgets, physical space). Some sharing (e.g. physical objects) works best on a local level and other sharing (e.g. information) works fine on a regional, national or international level.


Developments online

10. On- and offline identities merge
On- and offline identities merge

Our identities will tend to become a combination of online and offline identities. I can be hard to distinguish between them or to separate them. What you do offline has effects on your life online and vice versa.

11. Reputation as an alternative currency
Reputation will rival financial capital as a currency to be taken into account in online transactions. Your reputation and your track record online will at times determine if people are willing to cooperate, share or make business with you. There might be one universal reputation currency or a variety of platforms that calculates your “reputation capital” across multiple platforms, perhaps issuing “certificates” that vouch for your character.

12. Reduced privacy

Intense sharing of information and resources also means that you willingly (or unwittingly) share a lot of information about yourself online. This means that people will also expose and reveal more information about themselves, leading to reduced privacy. No entity (government, corporations) can know everything about everyone, but more entities (including private persons) over time can get to know more about more people. 

Work process

During an intense six-week long start-up phase (beginning of September – mid-October), the whole class read selected literature about the digital commons and the sharing economy, worked with related issues in seminars, and welcomed around 20 guest lecturers from industry and academia. These guests had a variety of backgrounds and presented us with a wide variety of perspectives, over-all giving us a well-rounded picture of the history of the digital commons and the sharing economy, the present situation, as well as suggestions for trends and possible future developments.

At the end of this start-up phase, twelve project groups were formed around the course participants’ emerging interests. During the second half of the autumn semester, these groups independently explored different aspects of this year’s theme; The Future of the Digital Commons and the Sharing Economy.

The result of each group’s effort is a proposal and a scenario connected to the theme. The results are presented as a chapter in a book (printed in a limited edition), as well as in a presentation that was held on December 17 in front of a live audience of more than 200 persons, consisting of younger students at the educational program as well as teachers, guest lecturers and people from the industry.

The texts in this book

The twelve scenarios that are presented in this book are not written in a purely academic form. They aim at being somewhere in between an academic and a popular text. These texts are meant to inform and entertain, but should also be grounded in references to relevant literature and the students’ own original research and inquiries.

The chapters in this book have been produced as a part of a university course and under many constraints and severe time pressure. We apologize for any errors in the texts.

Sincerely,

Daniel Pargman and Malin Picha Edwardsson,
Head teacher and assistant teacher for the course DM2571 Future of Media.

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