A Roadmap for #CitizenScientist Participation in the Time Machine Organization (#TMO)
It started as an innovative #DigitalHumanities and #CulturalHeritage project in Venice, known as The Venice Time Machine. This project’s exciting ideas have blossomed into a massive collaborative research initiative that is among a small pool of worthy candidates to be considered for the most strategic designation as a European Union LSRI, that is, a Large-Scale Research Infrastructure agenda. Such designation ensures significant funding and wide-ranging governmental support. Now known as The Time Machine Project (Twitter/Instagram: @TimeMachineEU), this large and growing consortium of Kindred Spirit research universities, archives, libraries, museums, and cultural heritage organizations have joined together in what is arguably the #DigitalHumanities and #AI/#MachineLearning “moonshot” of the 21st Century.
The goal of this article is to contribute an informal Roadmap for #CitizenScientist Participation in the Time Machine Organization. The #TMO is the governing organization of this large collaborative research and cultural preservation network. By expressing our interest early and often, we want to ensure that independent and non-traditionally trained researchers and historians have a seat at the governance table, and a chance to contribute substantively to this most exciting and most important work in the opening decades of this critical century of the Flight of Spaceship Earth.
What Is the Time Machine Organization?
The Time Machine Organisation is described on its membership solicitation page as aspiring to be the leading International Organisation for Cooperation in Technology, Science and Cultural Heritage.
The Time Machine Organisation has bullet-listed its organizing principles as follows (our bold added to help frame our #CitizenScientist-focused interests):
- Be the institutional framework in order to ensure the sustainability and economic independence of the Time Machine Project
- Be a strong collaborative network of institutions, experts and civil society
- Ensure the powerful further development of technologies for capturing, processing and using historical data in many ways
- Act as a bridge between disciplines and sectors and, in doing so, create strong new alliances
- Run large-scale distributed digitization and computing infrastructures that will connect history and culture across the world in order to make up for the past and prepare for the future. This will pave the way for scientific and technological progress to become a powerful ally to safeguarding the diversity of Europe and therefore realize the primary goals of the Time Machine Project’s deep and wide research-driven vision.
The #TMO has just begun its founding process which will unfold from now through June, and which will culminate with strategic presentations of recommendations and proposals at the upcoming Time Machine 2019 conference to be held this Fall, October 10–11, at the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden, Germany. During this formative period, anyone or any organization may join the #TMO to participate in surveys and forum discussions soliciting prospective members’ opinions on membership categories, membership fees, benefits of the organization for its members, the final text of the constitution, and candidates for the executive bodies of the organization, etc. Given this activity profile, it should be obvious why we #CitizenScientists have identified the importance and opportunity to participate in the #TMO founding process.
What Is the Intl #CitizenScientist cohort of the #TMO?
The @ICScohort is the International Citizen Scientist cohort; a grassroots, self-organizing Interim Membership group of the Time Machine Organization. Our mission during the #TMO’s founding process is to ensure the representation and inclusion of #CitizenScientists within the research and preservation communities that will form the basis of the Time Machine Project’s many and varied Local Time Machine (LTM) projects. LTMs are the digitization and preservation projects that will collectively contribute to the creation of the large-scale simulation and e-Research ecosystem of the over-arching Time Machine Project.
Wait… Aren’t #CitizenScientists Just Part of the #CitizenScience Movement?
These terms are distinctly different and need clarification here. #CitizenScience is the term that is increasingly used to describe a research project’s experimental design where members of the public are enlisted as an “army” of volunteer research assistants. These volunteers do various experiment-related tasks such as data gathering and validation, document transcription, or other voluminous tasks that would be prohibitively expensive or under-staffed if done by more traditional research methods. Such volunteer contributions are often of such volume and loose participant affiliation that the term crowdsourcing is used to describe this voluntary aspect of a #CitizenScience research project.
Unfortunately, many well-meaning mainstream reporters use the blanket term of #CitizenScientist to refer to any and all volunteer participants in a #CitizenScience experiment or research study.
To those of us who self-identify as #CitizenScientist, the term is more specific. And our role carries a weightier list of behavioral requirements than that of a volunteer research assistant for a #CitizenScience project.
A #CitizenScientist will generally exhibit many of these characteristics:
- an identified and widely-recognized domain of research interest that goes beyond involvement in any specific #CitizenScience research experiment or study
- participation in researcher social networks and professional organizations, as well as relevant conferences, workshops, and webinars, etc., specific to the #CitizenScientist’s domain of interest
- authoring and submission of original research papers, posters, and event presentations specific to research and contributions of the #CitizenScientist to his or her domain of interest
- the ability to identify the names and expertise of members of the #CitizenScientist’s #PLN (Personal Learning Network) who serve as mentors, and potentially as collaborators, as the non-traditionally educated and experienced researcher pursues self-determined learning in their domain of interest
To be sure there is a need for, and value in, having both #CitizenScientist people and #CitizenScience projects within the scope of the Time Machine Project’s activities. And the @ICScohort most certainly supports inclusion and support of both facets of modern research science.
It is the intent of the @ICScohort, however, to represent the needs and interest of non-traditionally trained #CitizenScientist people as a prospective membership group within the #TMO and within the many and varied research activities of the Time Machine Project.
A Roadmap for #CitizenScientist Participation in the Time Machine Project
While we anticipate that individual members of the @ICScohort will seek out and engage in research networks and projects specific to their individual domains of interest, the @ICScohort nonetheless has an evolving “roadmap” for anticipated group-specific activity intended to contribute to the overall success of the #TMO and the Time Machine Project.
Among the group-wide activities of the International Citizen Scientist cohort of the Time Machine Organization, we will endeavor to contribute the following in the spirit of the Time Machine Project mission:
- Develop selection criteria, process, and promotional activities to solicit nominations and to award two annual #CitizenScientist of the Year awards for service to the Time Machine Project. These awards will be named after two remarkable and until recently under-appreciated #CitizenScientists; the (John) Harrison Prize for Innovation in Technology & Research Methods, and the (Rupert) Gould Prize for Cultural Preservation.
- Develop and maintain a Registry of #CitizenScientists Contributions to Science, Technology, and Culture as will inevitably be uncovered by the various Local Time Machine projects. The group’s activities will include development of a Time Machine Project-wide #CitizenScientist identification process. Once an LTM identifies a prospective entry for the Registry, @ICScohort members skilled and motivated to document biographies and contributions of #CitizenScientists will offer assistance to relieve individual LTMs of the additional workload of contributing to the Registry.
- Encourage the democratization of digitization of historic documents and artifacts through support for the Time Machine Project’s widespread use of the READ project’s ScanTent portable and affordable digitization hardware and software. In addition to mobilizing Intl #CitizenScientist cohort members to participate in any LTM Scanathon events, the @ICScohort will amplify the value of LTM Scanathon activities by adopting and maintaining the Scanners Without Borders project. Scanners Without Borders is envisioned as a personal and community cultural preservation “emergency response” social network of ScanTent owners willing to make their tents available for rapid response delivery to locations suffering natural or human-made disasters.
- Solicit sponsors to endow the #CitizenScientist Time Machine Project Presentation Fund to be made available through a competitive award process enabling attendance of @ICScohort members at workshops, conferences, and related events where they have been selected to present their research, cultural preservation technologies, and project experiences. These need-based awards may include bursaries to pay for travel, per diems, and event registration or related fees.
- Develop and maintain the Office of #CitizenScientist Engagement whereby any institutional #TMO consortium member may post the availability of mentoring support, research fellowship opportunities, and education fellowships available to @ICScohort members. A special emphasis will be placed on developing Visiting #CitizenScientist programs with academic and research institutions interested in contributing to the advancement of self-determined education methods and research opportunities appropriate for nurturing the emerging new generation of #CitizenScientists.
While the above bullet list is a challenging set of commitments to be made by an embryonic self-organizing network, we feel that this informal roadmap is representative of the depth and breadth of what we #CitizenScientists aspire to contribute to the Time Machine Project.
An Invitation to #CitizenScientists and Friends of #CitizenScientists
Just about one year ago we approached Andreas Maier, Head of the Pattern Recognition Lab at FAU Germany and a member of the Steering Committee for the Time Machine Project.
In our introductory email we described our #MAGAZINEgts applied research and why we were so passionate about obtaining official involvement, as #CitizenScientists, to be part of the explosively growing and awesomely inspiring Time Machine Project. As busy and energy-consuming as his multi-faceted professional life is, Andreas read and responded to our rather atypical email.
As it has evolved through the typical path of EU-funded research grants and infrastructure program support, the Time Machine Project was organizational-centric. Consortium members were institutions interested in participating in the growing project, and individual researchers were assumed to be affiliated with those institutions. Intrigued by our work and our passionate commitment to contributing to our domains of research interest, Andreas’ reply was encouraging and asked two simple questions; How many of you #CitizenScientists are there? and What kind of involvement do you envision for participation in the Time Machine Project?
We replied that both of these were excellent questions that were somewhat difficult to answer largely because of the loose use of the term #CitizenScientist by the popular press. We know a small number of #CitizenScientists through our research-related social network activities. But to put a credible number to this emerging demographic a formal research study is needed to determine the extent of this phenomena.
In the meantime, we are calling for #CitizenScientists to self-identify and join the @ICScohort.
To #CitizenScientists, Step Up and Join the @ICScohort of the #TMO
If you are a #CitizenScientist and have an interest in participating in the Time Machine Project, definitely please step up and make yourself known to us as prospective members of the Intl #CitizenScientist cohort of the Time Machine Organization. We have set up a Medium publication to serve as our group’s collaboratory for folks to express interest and exchange ideas for this group’s mission and activities. And of course we’ll keep an eye out for Kindred Spirits through our personal participation in Twitter, LinkedIn, and Medium, etc.
Our best recommendation for immediate action by self-identified #CitizenScientists is to join the Time Machine Organization as Interim Members, submitting your membership application with these two specific clarifications:
- In response to the prompt for Name of Institution* fill-in Intl #CitizenScientist cohort (@ICScohort), and
- for Type of Institution* select Civil Society Organization from the form’s drop-down list of choices.
Complete the rest of the form simply fill in as you representing yourself. If you are unclear on why the @ICScohort is a (self-organizing) Civil Society Organization, please visit this Wikipedia page to explore the intersection of ideas that this organizational structure implies.
To #CitizenScientists and Members of the Executive Team of the Time Machine Project
What do you think!? Seriously. We need and want to hear from you. Whether by ageism, automation, or outsourcing, the global human-labor market is, and will continue to be, the subject of unrelenting business- and relationship-disruptive external innovations related to the proportional shift from the Real World to the Digital “Mirror World.” Timlynn and I feel we are among the early “tremors” of a seismic shift of “who does what for, or with, whom?”
While the numbers of the proposed @ICScohort of the Time Machine Organization may not be large initially, we are proposing the exploration of creative ways to channel the passionate personal interests of self-directed #CitizenScientists into activities that are the essence of what makes each of us strive to be all that we can be.
As in all things, Timlynn and I welcome comments, questions, insights, and criticism in the spirit of refining and improving the opportunity for adoption of this unsolicited “Roadmap for #CitizenScientist Participation” as part of the proposed Time Machine Organization (#TMO).
Happy-Healthy Vibes from Colorado USA,
-: Jim Salmons & Timlynn Babitsky :-
#CitizenScientists & Founding Members of the @ICScohort of the #TMO :-) :-)
05 May 2019
