Remember those tedious high school philosophy classes? Trying to distinguish ‘a posteriori’ from ‘a priori’? Figuring out what actually is a deductive argument? What’s the deal with Kant? Those classes were hardly the highlight of the high school week for me. Hence, I left the philosophers where i thought they belonged; on dusty shelves.
But I have rediscovered philosophy in the most peculiar place: open data and policy.
To begin with, in the dawn of the 2010th, one of the things that drew me to open data was actually it’s philosophy. The concept of promoting transparency, accountability and value creation by making as much data as possible public. Simple, appealing and yet a little provocative.
Throughout our second Hackathon cycle — as the O4C-team in Karlstad ventured beyond the data-sets, API:s and metadata standards in the health care system — into the realms of policy; I found four lessons from my high school philosophy that helped me better understand and explain how to promote, and not to promote open data as a goal and tool for policy.
Lesson 1: The Category-mistakes of open data policy
It might be a fairly simple concept, but on a policy level open data is often viewed in a somewhat one-dimensional way. In many organizations for instance; it’s about putting some statistics on one of the organisations sub-webpages. Preferably in a locked visualization environment. To maintain that as long as we do that, we are working with open data… This is, that philosophy calls, a category-mistake!
According to philosopher Gilbert Ryle a category-mistake is when one thinks of things of a certain kind as belonging to a category to which they do not belong. An example is when you offer a person a tour around your university. You show her the library, the student quarters, the main building etc. Then the person reply: this is all well and good, but when are you going to show me this University; thinking that a university is a specific building, not realizing that it is a concept of several buildings, structures and concepts.
Open data is a process that requires wide perspectives on both technology, legal matters and stakeholder ecosystems. But more than often, key policy makers will tell you they support open data, when what they really support is posting some quarterly pdf:s online or some tool to visualize aspects of their data.
To avoid a category-mistake be sure to introduce your policy-stakeholders to Tim Berners-Lee Five Star categorization of open data. — And try to get them to visualise how they, if they where researchers, start-up entrepreneurs or interested citizens, would like to access data from their organisation.
Lesson 2: Open Data and the Philosohper Kings
Philosopher kings, remember them? All-knowing, knowledge-loving public servants described in Platos republic. Basically the idea is if you want to create an utopian society, “philosophers must become kings, or those now called kings must, genuinely and adequately philosophize”.
Much can be said about this elitist view of governance. Deviations of this concept harbours the seeds of some pretty nasty ideas of who is fit to rule and govern, and who is not. A later day philosopher, Karl Popper, actually blamed Plato and his philosopher kings for the the rise of Hitler and Stalin. Probably not without right. Many totalitarian leaders have sought justification in poetry of the the Republic.
Despite the fact that as a politcal science major, I have been taught the dangers of Platos ideal state, I can’t help but hope that some benevolent open data-king will arise and set matters and standards straight. But beware! Such elitist view on data might exclude the one’s who might possibly benefit the most from open data — the citizens. If policy becomes a design challenge for technocrats, chances are that the policy might end high-fling and not down to earth.
Lesson 3: Tell your Policymakers: Sub Specie Aeternitatis
Sub specie aeternitatis. Literally, this phrase is translated as “under the aspect of eternity.” Sometimes it is used to describe a situation from “from a God’s-eye point of view” and it means that you, as a philosopher, need to detach yourself from the present to view things from a bird’s-eye-perspective.
Policy makers have a tendency to focus too much on the present. However, open data, its impact and philosophy needs to be viewed through a holistic lenses. If one can get the “people in power” to take a step back and view the role of open data not merely as a function within everyday operation, but as an act of posterity, you might empower them to great deeds in the name of open data. Make their mantra: Sub specie aeternitatis.
Lesson 4: Be Patient.
Last but not least, we turn our eyes to the East. The great Buddha Siddhartha wisely said “Be patient. Everything comes to you in the right moment”. Even if this statement can be overly optimistic, I firmly believe that you need to be patient in order to promote open data in a policy context. Don’t stress, listen and be humble. The more buddhist the better — both for the process and for your own health. And remember; philosophy don’t belong to dusty shelves.
Petter Falk is a strategical project manager and service designer @RISE Service Labs. RISE ServiceLabs is an operations project partner for the County Council of Värmland and ExperioLab in the Horizon 2020-project Open4Citizens. Read more at www.open4citizens.eu
Learn more about RISE ServiceLabs at www.servicelab.se
Learn more about Experio Lab at www.experiolab.se
