Collective Intelligence for Public Space Design and its Licensing
How should a video game developed as an open-source platform for public ideas be licensed so the concept of utilising collective intelligence for the construct of public space can be properly propagated? The following section focuses on the licensing of our proposed video game and how that might impact its subsequent application in the development of the city.
We’ve come to witness a new age of rapid circulation of information where collective intelligence (CI) comes indispensable in the construct of our everyday online experience. Even without us consciously knowing so we’re in fact continuously working in collaboration; from making a post about that yummy lunch on Facebook to reselling the beloved camera on Ebay — we’re collectively writing and putting together contents that contribute to the massive digital infrastructure of the internet, thereby defining its traffics of information.
For architects there exists a classic type of CI that happens in the physical world — public consultation. Valued by some, daunting to many, the conventional method of conducting a public consultation has seen shortcomings that some architects sadly find the desperate need to survive. In light of this our practice CITY COL[lab] proposes to use video game as an alternative method, utilising the concept of CI to open-source public ideas on designing communal space. We advocate higher public interaction, accessibility and overall transparency in a consultation process engaged within the first three Stages of the RIBA Plan of Work 2013. By propagating the constructive effect of CI beyond the digital realm, the game, being readily accessible on smartphones and directly responsive to the actual built environment, becomes a new way that informs the physical construct of the city, i.e. public place-making.
As shared asset in the city by definition, communal space makes a site where public contribution should be fundamentally necessary in the design process. Here some crucial questions then arise: How should this video game developed as an open-source platform for public ideas be licensed so the concept of utilising CI for the construct of public space can be properly propagated? When the design outcome of a project relies closely on the input from the public, should the creations so massively proposed be regarded as intellectual properties and thus protected by copyright accordingly?
Copyright of Architects’ Work
Conforming the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, the work produced by an architect is duly copyright protected from its misuse and infringement once a tangible medium of expression in any form of an innovative material is created. In terms of architectural works including design drawings and plans, they are protected as literary works (under s3(1) CDPA 1988), and as artistic works, like building or model of the building (under s4 CDPA1988). Over the years there’s been news about architects’ work being noticeably similar, with notable mentions being Zaha Hadid’s building in Beijing and its alleged copy by a developer in Chongqing in 2013 and also Kengo Kuma’s Wooden Bridge Museum in Yusuhara and its counterpart in Bangkok just last year. For private developments design originality and copyright issues are of apparent matter because they touch upon commercial and profitable concerns. But considering our case of an open idea-sourcing platform for public space where cross-fertilisation of ideas and constant modification are meant to take place in a constructive manner, we think this ought to be appropriated in a relevant licensing scheme that would sustain the collaborative nature of the proposal.
The licensing of the game is two-fold: its engine license and content license. It is necessary to drawing the distinction because the two correspond to different constituents of the game whose permission to reuse might be fundamentally different.
Game Engine License: Free and Open for Non-commercial Use
With the main objective set in advocating a higher transparency and public involvement in public consultation process, the engine of the video game is to be assembled from and is itself a free and open-source software (FOSS), whose source code is released under a license that would allow the public the general liberty to use, copy, study and even make amendments.
There are obvious benefits of developing the game as a FOSS over proprietary. For one it allows for better collaboration among various parties and individuals with the know-how to develop the most efficient and effective software for its users. Proprietary software on the other hand, is merely meant to generate profits. More organisations and individuals tend to contribute to FOSS projects than to proprietary software owing to its technical superiority. Given with the technical openness of the game, newly established or emerging architecture offices involved in a similar public practice are encouraged to work on the existing software and source-code to devise their own one that is optimised for their design practices. In the long run this facilitates the spread of the software and thus the proposed idea of adopting CI in a more engaging public consultation process.
Looking back in history several video games in the genre of city-building were made as FOSS and were released under GNU General Public License, with the aim to speed up innovation through the mix of divergent perspectives and collaborations from a large number of different programmers the license thereby granted. Similarly we propose to develop the game under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA). This license allows others to build upon the software non-commercially, as long as they credit the creator and license their new creations under the identical terms. Non-commercial use means that this open-sourcing platform is to be used only for public space projects only. Doing so avoids it being hijacked and monetised by private developers for their own commercial use.
Game Content License: Proprietary
Although the source code of the game was free and open to future non-commercial remix, its contents, meaning design ideas submitted by the public, are to be protected as unique assets to the game and should be deemed proprietary or restricted in use. There ought to be a mechanism that ensures only the source code to be reused by any third developer while copyrighting the content unique to the particular plot unlocked in-game for public submission. In this respect, a kind of End-user License Agreement (EULA) applies and by downloading, installing or using all or any portion of the video game, users would acknowledge that their idea and creation submitted to become the game’s and thus our practice’s property, i.e. our office in turn becomes the legal owner of their submission and will be responsible of filtering, processing, representing and eventually reproducing the proposals.
Indeed there are also possible arguments for opening up players’ contributions for future redistribution and reuse, claiming that for public space and shared infrastructures like park facilities, the reproduction of a good design could be rightly justified because a wider public could then benefit from the public goods. Despite its relevance in this context its potential is not further discussed here because we believe it’s safer to firstly enforce complete protection on our players’ personal data and submission.
Transparency of Application through Swarm AI
To ensure transparency of the open-sourcing operation both during and after the open period for public submission, it’s important that not only for the creations submitted to be clearly integrated and updated within the game’s interface (as illustrated by my colleague above), there should also be a reliable algorithm to accurately analyse the collected data before coming to a valid design proposal that holistically took into account public opinions as a whole. This is where Swarm AI finds its relevance.
Swarm AI is a system with feedback loops between the Swarm interface and the AI engine in which the behaviours of people influence the AI and vice versa. Together they create an artificial expert in which by weighing the alternatives, evaluating the options and making tradeoffs, would make the best solution for the information at hand. In the case of processing public proposal submissions, several physical parameters could be setup to inform the way all proposals could be read and compared. Taking the design for a park as an example, these parameters could include: the choice of an overall plantation colour palette, preferred coverage of green areas, number of communal facilities like benches and pavilions etc. By harnessing such machine learning mechanisms, behavioural data and complex deliberation are turned into quantifiable insights.
Conclusion
As designers for the general public goods, our practice as architects is no longer confined by our own artistic aspirations and decisions, but one that is continuously extending towards an integrated public involvement, where we work vigorously with the public to summarise, analyse and post-process public opinions before reaching the final proposal. With the aid of a compatible license, creations by CI could be encouraged and sustainably fostered for a better and more open built environment.
