Building Intelligent Cities
Supported by Co-op Foundation and The Federation, in partnership with Luminate.
What does Just enough Internet look like for a city in the UK? How can civil society organisations help to define this? And is it possible some UK cities don’t have enough? Help us find out by taking part in the Collective Action Labs.
Firstly, what do I mean by “Just enough Internet”?
It’s a Goldilocks test: just enough to make services run more efficiently, not too much to deepen existing inequalities, not so much that it turns us all into algorithm-driven zombies. The idea is inspired by my search for a digital equivalent to Michael Pollan’s famous mandate: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
You can read more about the idea here and here, but — to summarise — as well as being a quest for moderation, Just enough Internet is also a rebellion against the notion that governments and corporate tech platforms need to defer corporate tech platforms to define “good”.
Don’t collect the data if you don’t need it. Don’t digitise it if it works better offline. Don’t force users to upgrade their technology to use your service. Don’t make your service look like a magic trick.
It’s a plea for common sense.
The Collective Action Labs
The Collective Action Labs are an opportunity to translate the “Just enough Internet” concept into a real-world concept: what does “just enough” technology look like in a City?
Digital projects tend to focus on user needs and jobs to be done. As Cassie Robinson has explained, this leads to zooming past the individual to focus on tasks, which in turn obscures the bigger picture. What are the moral needs? Who and what needs protecting? What is the collective impact? These are questions that civil society organisations are uniquely placed to answer and explore.
The first workshops, taking place in April and May, are focussed on supporting civil society organisations to translate “Just enough Internet” into a real-world concept before the Labs begin in June, July and September. We’ll start with remote events and — depending on public health advice — aim to transition to “in real life” workshops as the project progresses this year. Sign up here.
Just enough Internet for cities
Smart cities are high-stakes, big money projects that attract a lot of technocratic visions and blockchain bingo.
I’ve sat around a lot of tables in the last few years listening to property developers and technology companies talk about turning the pavements into pots of contactless payment gold, or hearing people sing the praises of predictive analytics for healthcare and crime prevention. I’ve occasionally heard artists present mind-boggling alternative reality experiences, or crypto currency experts explain how we’ll pay with our retinas. I’ve often been in those rooms as a token privacy advocate or “tech ethics” person.
And I can’t think of a single smart city meeting I’ve been to that has also involved people who run playgroups or food banks, or people from charities that support older people or young offenders; I can’t remember anyone who organises a carnival or a street party or a local football game, or faith leaders, or support workers from domestic violence charities. I’ve mostly heard from businessmen and people who think the Internet is really cool.
Civil society organisations have a mass of, often-neglected, expertise on how life is really lived and the kind of society people want to live in. As Lucy Bernholz says (similar to Catalyst’s mission), “Civil society must create or call for digital systems that reflect civil society’s values”, not just be expected to tidy up when tech goes wrong or take part in performative post-it noting.
The Intelligent City
In “A City is Not a Computer”, Shannon Mattern talks about “urban intelligence”, borne out of “site-based experience, participant observation, sensory engagement.” I’ve been wondering what other kinds of intelligence the breadth of civil society organisations can and should bring to discussions about technology, and how to build confidence in, and support that.
The space between the market and the state is vulnerable in the technology landscape: it gets squeezed by big organisations, tight timescales and incomprehensible jargon. The Collective Action Labs offer a chance to nurture and invite other organisations in to help build digital civil society.
Everyone hates the phrase “smart city”; it speaks of a “chips in everything” approach that could, in reality, look as different as Barcelona’s democratic revolution or Xiongan’s totally connected “smart city brain”. And the reality is, culture, politics and people shape a smart city as much as the technology.
For instance, Gebied Online is a decentralised social network for Amsterdam, owned and managed by the communities that use it, that is more a product of the place and the people than it is of its (fairly generic) software. Sidewalks Labs in Toronto is the gateway to the Googleverse; it is full of fancy technology, corporately owned and lacking transparent governance.
The Toronto project might appear to be “smarter”, but it definitely lacks “urban intelligence”. Gebied Online, meanwhile, is made of urban intelligence. A liveable city is more than a technocratic vision of just-in-time bus distribution, targeted ads or on-demand rubbish collection. It’s a place for people, shaped by people, and the labs will be a starting point for mapping how that looks in Manchester.
Too Much Internet
“Ask for forgiveness not permission” is the old mantra of the digital disruptor, and it is frequently used as an excuse for attempts at normalising “Too much Internet”. Getting apologies can be difficult though, and these incursions are often made with the intention of stretching the existing social contract, and increasing public tolerance for surveillance and data extraction.
London’s Coal Drops Yard and the surrounding neighbourhood (coincidentally home to both Google and DeepMind) is one of the new developments at the vanguard of fully automated luxury consumerism. Private ownership of public developments like this one has seen surveillance increase across the city in recent years, and in 2019 the developers came under pressure from both the Mayor of London and the Information Commissioner’s Office over their “historic” use of facial recognition technology, subsequently stating they had ““no plans to reintroduce” it.
Tech Reset Canada describes itself as “a group of business people, technologists, and other residents advocating for innovation that is focused on maximizing the public good”. With leadership from civic tech reformer Bianca Wylie and alongside organisations like Digital Justice Lab, they are putting the oxygen of good governance back into the Sidewalk Labs development. As Wylie says, “A city is not a business”, but challenging that requires relentless hard work. Wylie’s Medium posts show a litany of evidence-giving and holding to account; the energy required to force a course correction for such a well-funded corporate initiative is significant. Sidewalk Labs is owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company and one of the biggest companies in the world; that Tech Reset has influenced public opinion and led Sidewalk Labs to scale back is a major achievement.
It takes a forcefield of determination to meet super-slick public affairs and policy teams head on. A stronger role for civil society would help to form a digital social contract, so that public norms and expectations could be safeguarded as a matter of course — rather than desperately fought for after the fact.
Not enough Internet
“Too much Internet” and the surveillance economy is only one half of the story. Many British cities are more adversely affected by data not being collated, and by systems not inter-operating.
There’s lots of talk about “levelling up” in Britain right now, and this is as true for data and underlying digital infrastructure as it is for more traditional economic investment. For instance, the National Infrastructure Commission’s report Data for the Public Good estimates that public service open data creates £8.9bn worth of savings — which could increase with better and broader data sets for all kinds of physical infrastructure.
While all Londoners moan about the buses, it’s easy to forget that TfL offers a Rolls Royce, single-operator service across the city, meaning that London also benefits from contactless payment, fare capping and reliable data feeds that can be pushed out as text alerts and to bus-stop displays, and made available to 3rd-party services like CityMapper and Google Maps. TfL estimates that making this data available saves between £15m and £58m of public time per year.
But benefits of this kind are simply not available elsewhere in the country. Tom Forth from ODI Leeds makes a very compelling case for why franchising Great Manchester buses would greatly improve the available data, leading to a better and cheaper customer experience while also making it easier to achieve the region’s social, environmental, and economic goals.
In a recent workshop I facilitated with all kinds of brilliant people from across technology and civil society, no one could think of an equivalent data set that existed for civil society.
Responsible data collection and governance could lead to better foresight, the creation of better services and better quality of life for more people. Without the expertise of civil society, data collection will be driven by the market and the state, and not reflect the richness of society or the real gaps in service provision.
Looking ahead
The UK needs a resilient digital civil society.
As we get to grips with Covid-19 and what “social distancing” means over the coming months, many of us will spend more time on video calls and grappling with unreliable home internet connections than ever before. When this ends, we will have learnt to live and work differently, and the convenience of constant connectivity will have altered the fabric of our social interactions a little bit more.
We’re living through a time of profound shock, but in reality the potentials of technology are changing our communities and how we relate to one another all of the time. A strong civil society is essential to renegotiating and reinforcing the digital social contract. This series of labs in Manchester is an opportunity to strengthen and invigorate that. I hope to (virtually) see you there.
Sign up for the initial workshops.
