2020
Why may next year may be a special year?
Many reasons can support claims that 2020 will be a special year. From my personal point of view, it will surely be a year to celebrate as I will mark ten years of living in one of the most vibrant cities that I know. When I first moved to Edinburgh as a PhD visiting student to spend a semester working on my theoretical framework (Social Shaping of Technology), I was far from predicting that I would be living in Scotland for the next ten years, that I would achieve my PhD and work in the University of Edinburgh, making Edinburgh my home, and that gives me reason to anticipate 2020 as a special year.
It is now almost a decade since I moved from Lisbon to Edinburgh in order to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between Technology and Society and how they shape each other. It did not take long to realise that that relationship is far more complex that is often imagined, as it has been shown again and again that there are unforeseen side effects that often go hand in hand with the development, diffusion and adoption of technology. Many things seem obvious to us, but the underlying forces that may determine trajectories remain invisible until we start to unpack all the factors that may determine important societal changes, and it is here where I place myself as a social researcher with a background in Media and Communication and in Science and Technologies Studies.
My journey, not only brought me to Edinburgh but also took me to other continents such as Africa and Asia. Researching the use of mobiles phones to tackle poverty and foster innovation and further socio-economic development allowed me to get to know countries such as Tanzania and India and the cities of Nairobi and Hyderabad. I walked through the Maasai Mara National Reserve amongst members of the Maasai tribes, and I learned that users in developing areas play an important role in driving the innovation journey. The grassroots or below-the-radar innovations are two important strands for sustainable development and recent decades has seen the emergence of a new class of entrepreneurs, whom I call the “street entrepreneurs”, critical actors in boosting socio-economic activities, and therefore tackling poverty, problems that the public policy is currently struggling to do so, in some cases worldwide.
These have been important lessons that I learned from my PhD journey, which explored the role of mobile phones in transforming the livelihoods of two groups of pastoralists ( the Maasai and Wasukuma) when reshaping both production and trade dynamics, consequently redefining the livestock market in Tanzania. However, the role of science and technology is far broader than just the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), the arena where I continue to develop most of my academic skills. Recently I had the opportunity to broaden the scope of my intervention. Currently, I am a research associate in the Design Informatics team in the University of Edinburgh and enlarged my knowledge in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), expanding my intervention to the field of blockchain technologies, autonomous devices and distributed energy systems. My most recent research output draws on a study of a smart kettle to illustrate how the future of energy may be, namely how flexible energy systems will enable the end-user with the possibility to push-pull electricity and to trade or share electricity with neighbours in an altruistic way.
Presently, I am working in the field of social innovation in collaboration with Mydex and supporting a fascinating project: Seamless Access to Inclusive Digital Services. This project makes use of a tool (Web-App Generator) that was developed by Mydex, a Community Interest Company, through the Stage 3 Social Innovation Fund Project (funded by European Social Funds and the Scottish Government). It offers a new way to approach public and third sector organisation’s services, allowing for an autonomous and dynamic channel to share information using personal data stores (PDS) accessed by web-apps. The project aims to support the development of local clusters that serve a common group of citizens and digitally enable transactions that may have historically been manual or paper based. This supports the vision of Mydex as a Community Interest Company, namely “the emergence of a world where individuals are in greater control of their lives with the freedom to choose how and what personal data to share in order to have a balanced relationship with each other, society as a whole, governments and organisations”. My role as a social scientist is to conduct an ethnographic study of the project and to understand the implications inherent to technology development, diffusion and adoption. I am excited about this project, and this also gives me reasons to believe that 2020 will be a special year.
