Projects by IF is a limited company based in London, England. We run this website (projectsbyif.com) and its subdomains. We also use third party services to publish work, keep in touch with people and understand how we can do those things better. Many of those services collect some data about people who are interested in IF, come to our events or work with us. Here you can find out what those services are, how we use them and how we store the information they collect. If you’ve got any questions, or want to know more about data we might have collected about you, email hello@projectsbyif.com This page was published on 25 August 2017. You can see any revisions by visiting the repository on Github.

Mount St. Mary’s use of predictive analytics to encourage at-risk students to drop out to elevate the retention rate reveals how analytics can be abused without student knowledge and consent

An institution has implemented a learning management system (LMS). The LMS contains a learning object repository (LOR) that in some aspects is populated by all users across the world  who use the same LMS.  Each user is able to align his/her learning objects to the academic standards appropriate to that jurisdiction. Using CASE 1.0, the LMS is able to present the same learning objects to users in other jurisdictions while displaying the academic standards alignment for the other jurisdictions (associations).

Moving to a Web of Linked Data for Credential Ecosystems

HarvardX Biomedical Data Science Open Online Training

Thismaynotbestatedexplicitly,butthediscourseoninscribingdigitalrightsashumanrightsininternationalhumanrightslawoftenassumesthattheforceofsuchlawswillguaranteethatindividuals,states,corporations,andotherbodieswillperformthem.Thisassumptionfailstorecognizethathowpeopleexperiencebeingdigitalcitizensandhowtheyperformrightsbybringingthemintobeingthroughenactingthemselvesarethegroundsonwhichrightswillbeguaranteed.Howpeopleexperienceperformingrightsisthekeytounderstandinghowtheyinhabitthatspaceofrightsanddevelopapoliticalsubjectivitynecessarytomakingrightsclaims‘I,we,theyhavearightto’.Withoutsuchunderstandingandwithoutdevelopingconceptsandmethodsappropriatetosuchanunderstanding,mosteffortstoinscriberights,weareafraid,wouldremaininadequate,forthesewouldberightswithoutpoliticalsubjects.Conversely,thesamecanbesaidforthosewhoassumethattheenactmentofrights,ofimaginativelyandperformativelybringingrightsintobeing,wouldguaranteetheirinscription.Withoutunderstandingthelegalityofclaimsandtheirscopeorsubstance,suchenactmentswouldremaininadequate,too.Withouttheforceoflaw,thiswouldamounttosubjectswithoutpoliticalrights.Itisthatspacebetweeninscriptionandenactmentthatprovidescluestounderstandinghowdigitalcitizensareemergingaspoliticalsubjectsofoureraandthosewhosepoliticssidewitheitherinscriptionorenactmentaresomewhatmissingthesignificanceofthatrelation.

First,itisundecidablewhetheranactisindeedcapableofproducingasubjectthatitnames.Forthatreason,withoutguarantees,itmustbedoneregardlessofitsactualeffects,fortheeffectsofcitationanditerationareasmuchaboutbringingthepoliticalsubjectthusnamedintobeingasaboutmakinganattempttoremindourselvesthat‘I,we,theyhavearightto’mustbeperformed.Second,withoutnamingthepoliticalsubject,withoutcitinganditeratingyetagainthat‘I,we,theyhavearightto’,itseventualeffectwillnotbeaccomplished,thatis,bringingtheforceoflawintobeing.

Thecharterincludesnineteenrightsandonesetofduties,whichareimportanttooutline

Rancièrecallsbringingthesetwoaspectsofrightstogetherasdissensus.Itisdissensusratherthanconsensusbecausepoliticsisalwaysacontestationoverwhoiscountedandwhatcounts.ForRancière,apoliticalsubjectinvolvesthecapacityforstagingsuchscenesofdissensus.Thus,‘politicalsubjectsarenotdefinitecollectivities.Theyaresurplusnames,namesthatsetoutaquestionoradisputeaboutwhoisincludedintheircount.’

Kroton, the country’s largest university, has about 2 million students

Open Referral : faciliter l’accès aux services sociaux pour les personnes dans le besoinLa rencontre a permis aussi de s’intéresser à des standards plus « grassroots », élaborés par la société civile en fonction de ses besoins. C’est le cas d’Open Referral, un standard élaboré aux Etats-Unis par Greg Bloom pour répondre à un problème essentiel : les personnes dans le besoin ont le plus grand mal à trouver les informations sur les services sociaux à leur disposition. A l’heure actuelle, tous les services d’aides sociales constituent leurs propres bases de données et se plaignent de leur incomplétude. Pour y répondre, Open Referral propose un standard de données pour déterminer : quel organisme propose quel service social ? Où, quand et comment y accéder ? Plutôt que de proposer une application qui répond à ces questions, Open Referral tente de développer un écosystème autour de ses données pour que les personnes dans le besoin trouvent l’information, quel que soit le service dans lequel elles cherchent. A Chicago, Open Referral a permis le lancement de plusieurs services autour des données ouvertes par Purple Binder, un annuaire des services sociaux. Le standard en est à ses débuts mais, pour Open Referral, l’incertitude porte sur le modèle économique : comment générer des revenus tout en augmentant l’impact social par l’ouverture des données ?

differentplatformsproducedifferentsociotechnicalarrangements—rules,norms,procedures,protocols,code,andalgorithms—inordertocreateaneffectivepresentationfortheirusers.Thesearrangements,orwhatwecallconventions,accomplishnotonlyasenseoffairnessbutalsostronghierarchiesthroughwhichnewsisproduced.[19]Thereisnoreasontobelievethattheseplatformsfeatureflathierarchiesorsmoothspacesofdialogue;rather,theyarehierarchicalandstriated.Theissuesofstatusandgatekeepingareasprominentintheseplatformsastheyareelsewhere.

‘citizenjournalismunderstandspeopleashavingpoliticalroles,interestsandrelationships,andasactivelyinterestedinsharingnewstheydeemrelevant.Itunderstands,orperhapsintuits,thataknee-jerkdefinitionofallformsofjournalismasacquiringanddistributinginformationmissesthepoint.’

‘themorepredictableresultwouldbeagradualdesertificationoftheculturallifeofindividualsnolongerabletoencounterwhatisunusual,unexpected,andsurprising.’[61]Ratherthanindividualizedbubbles,sharingsegregatessocialnetworkusersintoculturalbubblesofpreferences,products,andknowledge

Whileitmaysoundcontradictory,evenpersonalizationisanormalizingaction.Thepersonalizedprofilesor‘filterbubbles’generatedbyplatformssuchasGoogleandFacebookoperateonstandardizedalgorithms;whilethepredictionsabout‘whoyouareandwhatyou’lldoandwantnext’maybeuniquefordifferentsubjects,theyareuniqueonlyinlinewiththerulesofthealgorithm.

Thesedigitaltracesareoftenreferredtoasbigdataandarepopularlydiscussedasaresource,arawmaterialwithqualitiestobeminedandcapitalized,thenewoiltobetappedtospureconomies.Throughavarietyofpracticesofvaluation,corporationsnotonlyexploitthedigitaltracesoftheircustomerstomaximizetheiroperationsbutalsosellthosetracestoothers.Forthatreason,citizensubjectswhouseplatformssuchasGooglearesometimesreferredtonotasitscustomersbutasitsproduct.

atrendthatshecallsa‘modernexampleofatragedyofthecommons.’[33]Justasintheclassicversion,subjectswhoprotecttheirdatacontinuetoreapthecollectivebenefits(suchasinmedicine)ofdataleftinthecommons,yetthosebenefitsarethreatenedandwilldegenerateasdatasubjectsoptout.Othersstrikeadifferentwarning,arguingthattheanonymizationofidentityleadstocrowdbehaviourandsubjectstakinglessresponsibilityforwhattheysayanddoandincreasesthelikelihoodoftheirmisbehaving.[34]Boththeargumentsforandagainstanonymizationasasolutionpresumethatwhatisatissueisprotectingthe‘datadoubles’ofcitizensubjects.

digitaltracesalsogetcirculatedandrepurposedandinthisregardhavesociallivesbeyondthefeedbackloopsoftheirplatforms.[28]Thus,notonlyistrackingincipienttothefunctioningofspecificconventions,butthedatageneratedhasextensitysuchthatitcantravelbeyondandbetweenconventions.

TarletonGillespiearguesthattensionsbetweenusersandthedesignersoftheTwitteralgorithmarepartoflargerstakesinthe‘politicsofrepresentation.’Itisatensionunderscoredbyaconflictbetweenpeople’swilltoknowandbevisibletoothersandTwitter’simperativetodrawnewusersintonewconversations.Butsignificantly,Gillespienotesthatsuchalgorithmsnotonlyarebasedonassumptionsabouttheimageofapublictheyseektorepresentbutalsohelpconstructpublicsinthatimage.Thesamecouldbesaidofotherplatforms

Inthisinstance,criticsprotestedthatTwitterwasinvolvedincensoringpoliticalcontent,butothershaveshownthatthecomplexalgorithmsoftheplatformorganizeandfiltercontentinwaysoftenbeyondtheintentionsoftheirdesigners.Ratherthanasimplemeasureofpopularity,thealgorithmisbasedonacombinationoffactors,andthosethatTwitterhasrevealedincludeidentifyingtopicsthatareenjoyingasurgeinaparticularway,suchaswhethertheuseofatermisspiking(acceleratingrapidlyratherthangradually),whetherusersofatermformatightsingleclusterorcutacrossmultipleclusters,whethertweetsareuniqueormostlyretweetsofthesamepost,andwhetherthetermhaspreviouslytrended

platformssuchasGoogleandFacebookthatoperatelike‘predictionengines’by‘constantlycreatingandrefiningatheoryofwhoyouareandwhatyou’lldoandwantnext’basedonwhatyouhavedoneandwantedbefore

Popularlyknownasthe‘quantifiedself’,datatracesproduceacompulsiontonotonlyself-trackbutsharethisdatasothatsubjectscanmonitorthemselvesinrelationtoothersbutalsocontributetoresearchon,forexample,healthconditions.Ironically,whilegovernmentprogrammesforsharinghealthdatahavebeenscuppered,thesharingofhealthinformationthroughprivateorganizationssuchas23andMe(DNAprofilingofmorethan700,000members)andPatientsLikeMe(healthconditionsofmorethan250,000members)areproliferatingandpromotingdatasharingforthepublicgoodofadvancingmedicine.[62]Governmentsandcorporationsalikecalluponcitizensubjectstosharedataaboutthemselvesasanactofcommongood.Throughdisciplinarymethodstheycompelcitizensubjectstoconstitutethemselvesasdatasubjectsratherthanmakingrightsclaimsabouttheownershipofdatathattheyproduce.

Toputitbluntly,fromourperspective,popularcriticshavebecometooconcernedaboutcyberspacecreatingobedientsubjectstopowerratherthanunderstandingthatcyberspaceiscreatingsubmissivesubjectsofpowerwhoarepotentiallycapableofsubversion.

Or,aswewouldputit,actingthroughtheInternetandmakingconnectionswithothersdoesnotreplace,displace,orsupplantotherwaysofactinginsocialorculturalspacesinwhichweareembedded.

Howcanthecallingtoparticipatethatwehaveidentifiedproducedigitalcitizenswhoseactsexceedtheirintentions?Toputitdifferently,atensionexistsbetweenthewaysinwhichthefigureofthedigitalcitizenisconceivedinhegemonicimaginariesandlegaldiscoursesandhowsheisperformativelycomingintobeingthroughactionsthatequiphertobeacitizeninwaysthatarenotacknowledgedoralwaysintended.

Mossbergeretal.,forexample,understanddigitalcitizenshipastheabilitytofullyparticipateinsocietyonline,whichrequiresregularaccesstotheInternet,withadequatedevicesandspeeds,technologicalskillsandcompetence,andinformationliteracy.[21]Equippingthusincludesnotonlyhardware,suchasinstallingcomputersinclassroomsandlibrariesandexpandinghigh-speedbroadbandservices,butalsodevelopingskillsandcapabilitiesthroughtrainingcoursesincomputing,coding,andprogramming

Theempoweringpossibilitiesofaccessingandworkingwithdataalsounderpin‘opengovernmentdata’programmes.Opennessisextendedtomakinggovernmenttransparentthroughapublicrighttodataandfreedomtoinformation,aversionthatisalsoadvancedbycivicorganizationssuchasmySociety.[19]Thesecallforthanimaginaryofcitizensasdataanalystsequippedwiththeskillsnecessarytoanalysetheircommercialtransactionsandthusmakebetterdecisionsortoanalysethetransactionsofgovernmentsandthusholdthemtoaccount.

Inequalityisexpressedasleadingtotwodivisions:betweenthosewhodoanddonothaveaccessandbetweenthosewhodoordonotcontributetocontentorleavedigitaltraces.

Wecannotsimplyassumethatbeingadigitalcitizenalreadymeanssomething,suchastheabilitytoparticipate,andthenlookforwhoseconductconformstothismeaning.Rather,digitalactsarerefashioning,inventing,andmakingupcitizensubjectsthroughtheplayofobedience,submission,andsubversion

‘Theforceoftheperformativeisthusnotinheritedfrompriorusage,butissuesforthpreciselyfromitsbreakwithanyandallpriorusage.Thatbreak,thatforceofrupture,istheforceoftheperformative,beyondallquestionoftruthormeaning.’[22]Forpoliticalsubjectivity,‘performativitycanworkinpreciselysuchcounter-hegemonicways.Thatmomentinwhichaspeechactwithoutpriorauthorizationneverthelessassumesauthorizationinthecourseofitsperformancemayanticipateandinstatealteredcontextsforitsfuturereception.’[23]Toconceiveruptureasasystemicortotalupheavalwouldbefutile.Rather,ruptureisamomentwherethefuturebreaksthroughintothepresent.[24]Itisthatmomentwhereitbecomespossibletodosomethingdifferentinorbysayingsomethingdifferent.

We also downloaded Twitter user profiles, such as the size offollowers, along with their profile description.

We deleted non-directed tweets, but itshould be acknowledged that non-directed tweets may also bear implications for knowledgesharing and can be examined in future studies. The data cleaning procedure also excludedretweets and tweets that serve as quoting.

A Python script was used to download tweets through Twitter API.

The company's API for scoring toxicity in online discussions already behaves like a racist hand dryer.

Addressing implicit and explicit cultural biases in data is going to be a huge challenge for everyone who is trying to build a system dependent on data classified by or about humans.

what are our best, shared hopes for DH? What tasks and projects might we take up, or tie in? What are our functions—or, if you prefer, our vocations, now

The learning analytics and education data mining discussed in this handbook hold great promise. At the same time, they raise important concerns about security, privacy, and the broader consequences of big data-driven education. This chapter describes the regulatory framework governing student data, its neglect of learning analytics and educational data mining, and proactive approaches to privacy. It is less about conveying specific rules and more about relevant concerns and solutions. Traditional student privacy law focuses on ensuring that parents or schools approve disclosure of student information. They are designed, however, to apply to paper “education records,” not “student data.” As a result, they no longer provide meaningful oversight. The primary federal student privacy statute does not even impose direct consequences for noncompliance or cover “learner” data collected directly from students. Newer privacy protections are uncoordinated, often prohibiting specific practices to disastrous effect or trying to limit “commercial” use. These also neglect the nuanced ethical issues that exist even when big data serves educational purposes. I propose a proactive approach that goes beyond mere compliance and includes explicitly considering broader consequences and ethics, putting explicit review protocols in place, providing meaningful transparency, and ensuring algorithmic accountability. Export Citation: Plain Text (APA

importance of data discoverability: an informatics issue that was not considered by WWARN's designers in the initial phase, when it was assumed that access for external users would be limited to the summary data shown on the WWARN Explorer. Discoverability - the ability of potential outside users to find the data set and easily understand what it contains - is critical if the data are to be reused by any investigator with a legitimate research question that may be addressed by data held in the resource. WWARN took care to develop data management tools that included a full audit trail for the variables that they standardised.

OxTREC Reference: 593-16

protocol available at doi: 10.7910/DVN/V1TKIO20

Documents considered to be highly relevant by either investigator were processed as below.

wewillspecifydigitalacts—callings(demands,pressures,provocations),closings(tensions,conflicts,disputes),andopenings(opportunities,possibilities,beginnings)—aswaysofconductingourselvesthroughtheInternetanddiscusshowthesebringcyberspaceintobeing

Deleuzethinksthat,bycontrast,incontrolsocieties‘thekeythingisnolongerasignatureornumberbutacode:codesarepasswords,whereasdisciplinarysocietiesareruled...byprecepts.’[67]Heobservesthat‘thedigitallanguageofcontrolismadeupofcodesindicatingwhetheraccesstosomeinformationshouldbeallowedordenied.’[68]ForDeleuze,controlsocietiesfunctionwithanewgenerationofmachinesandwithinformationtechnologyandcomputers.Forcontrolsocieties,‘thepassivedangerisnoiseandtheactive[dangersare]piracyandviralcontamination.

Wehaveidentifiedthisasthecontradictionbetweensubmissionandsubversionorconsentanddissent.JacquesRancièrecapturesthisasdissensus.[27]Wewillreturntodissensusinchapter7.Second,whilearticulatingaparticulardemand(forinclusion,recognition),performingcitizenshipenactsauniversalrighttoclaimrights.Thisisthecontradictionbetweentheuniversalismandparticularismofcitizenship.

Ifmakingrightsclaimsisperformative,itfollowsthattheserightsareneitherfixednorguaranteed:theyneedtoberepeatedlyperformed.Theircomingintobeingandremainingeffectiverequiresperformativity.Theperformativeforceofcitizenshipremindsusthatthefigureofthecitizenhastobebroughtintobeingrepeatedlythroughacts(repertoires,declarations,andproclamations)andconventions(rituals,customs,practices,traditions,laws,institutions,technologies,andprotocols).Withouttheperformanceofrights,thefigureofthecitizenwouldmerelyexistintheoryandwouldhavenomeaningindemocraticpolitics.

Givenitspervasivenessandomnipresence,avoidingorshunningcyberspaceisasdystopianasquittingsocialspace;itisalsocertainthatconductingourselvesincyberspacerequires,asmanyactivistsandscholarshavewarned,intensecriticalvigilance.Sincetherecannotbegenericoruniversalanswerstohowweconductourselves,moreorlesseveryincipientorexistingpoliticalsubjectneedstoaskinwhatwaysitisbeingcalleduponandsubjectifiedthroughcyberspace.Inotherwords,toreturnagaintotheconceptualapparatusofthisbook,thekindsofcitizensubjectscyberspacecultivatesarenothomogenousanduniversalbutfragmented,multiple,andagonistic.Atthesametime,thefigureofacitizenyettocomeisnotinevitable;whilecyberspaceisafragileandprecariousspace,italsoaffordsopenings,momentswhenthinking,speaking,andactingdifferentlybecomepossiblebychallengingandresignifyingitsconventions.Thesearethemomentsthatwehighlighttoarguethatdigitalrightsarenotonlyaprojectofinscriptionsbutalsoenactment.

whenweconsiderTwitter,forinstance,wecanask:Howdoconventionssuchasmicrobloggingplatformsconfigureactionsandcreatepossibilitiesfordigitalcitizenstoact?

Butthefigureofcyberspaceisalsoabsentincitizenship

First,bybringingthepoliticalsubjecttothecentreofconcern,weinterferewithdeterministanalysesoftheInternetandhyperbolicassertionsaboutitsimpactthatimaginesubjectsaspassivedatasubjects.Instead,weattendtohowpoliticalsubjectivitiesarealwaysperformedinrelationtosociotechnicalarrangementstothenthinkabouthowtheyarebroughtintobeingthroughtheInternet.[13]WealsointerferewithlibertariananalysesoftheInternetandtheirhyperbolicassertionsofsovereignsubjects.Wecontendthatifweshiftouranalysisfromhowwearebeing‘controlled’(asbothdeterministandlibertarianviewsagree)tothecomplexitiesof‘acting’—byforegroundingcitizensubjectsnotinisolationbutinrelationtothearrangementsofwhichtheyareapart—wecanidentifywaysofbeingnotsimplyobedientandsubmissivebutalsosubversive.Whileusuallyreservedforhigh-profilehacktivistsandwhistle-blowers,weask,howdosubjectsactinwaysthattransgresstheexpectationsofandgobeyondspecificconventionsandindoingsomakerightsclaimsabouthowtoconductthemselvesasdigitalcitizens

Coexisting, but rarely (if ever touching).

In fact, it has been argued that the networks that offer the sort of social capital that could transition into economic capital are insular, and quite hard to become a part of. 

of belonging to those who may otherwise feel isolated.  Transgender teenagers, for example, are able to find support and understanding

remote connections comprise a social network that offers a degree of social capital without some of the demands that go along with social networks in closer quarters.

We do not rely on neighbors and geographically convenient groups and organizations to piece together our social networks as heavily as we once did. 

enterprise-wide systems that gather and analyze data to help institutions improve their performance and student outcomes.

We found that data citations appear in the references section of an article less frequently than in the main text, making it difficult to identify the reward and credit for data authors (i.e. data sharers). Consistent data citation formats could not be found. Current data citation practices do not (yet) benefit data sharers.

Genetics and Heredity is the top field with almost 2.3 million records (representing public datasets, software, data studies, and data repositories).

Given that researchers benefit from publicly shared data through data reuse in their own research, researchers who provide access to data should be acknowledged for their contributions, much in the same way that authors are recognized for their research publications through citation. Researchers who use shared data or other shared research products (e.g. open access software, tissue cultures) should also acknowledge the providers of these resources through formal citation. At present, data citation is not widely practiced in most disciplines and as an object of study remains largely overlooked.

Third, the space acted as a recruitment tool for participants and served as a source of solidarity as members rallied around the space. This emphasis on actively inviting new members drew attention to the group's latent desire for open-access, a radical shift from the often insular nature of hacker culture.

The most important shift in learning during this period was members' relationship to knowledge. GeekSpace attempted to democratize hacking and move towards a more inclusive model. This stands in contrast to Jean Burgess' observation that hacking "as an ideal, permits rational mastery ... but in reality, it is only the technical avant-garde (like computer scientists or hacker subcultures) who achieve this mastery" (Burgess, 2012, p. 30). Individualized encounters with software gave way to making and hardware tinkering where users learned by doing (Rosenberg, 1982). Collaborative work in the space took place in small groups clustered around a project, or the projects were passed from person to person to solve specific problems. The frustrations members had with the first phase of the space organically shifted to a set of practices based in materials, routines, and projects. "Collaboration on ideas and [their] physical manifestations," in the words of a GeekSpace director, is "how you tell somebody's part of the community."

Coleman (2010) asserts that previous literature such as Taylor's "fails to substantially address (and sometimes even barely acknowledge) is the existence and growing importance of face-to-face interactions" (p. 48). For example, Vichot (2009) notes how communities of hackers that coalesce online use "real space" to gain visibility needed to accomplish their collective political goals.

The grassroots nature of HMSs provides a contrast to the less popular FabLabs (Gershenfeld, 2005), which operate as franchises that require expensive tools, and Computer Clubhouses (Kaf ai, Peppler, & Chapman, 2009), which are extensions of schools. Hacker and maker space backers such as Mitch Altman claim that hands-on interactions with technology enable a more flexible and personalized learning experience than an institutionalized curriculum (Baichtal, 2011 ).

We’re delighted to announce that the California Digital Library has been awarded a 2-year NSF EAGER grant to support active, machine-actionable data management plans (DMPs).

Textbook maker Pearson is also getting in on the action by developing adaptive learning software and launching virtual tutors for students as they “read” through digital textbook resources.

The president of the university requested the list of 26 names be on his desk the next day so he could take direct action to make sure they stay, Bell says. There it is. Instead of a helping hand for struggling students, imagine the outstretched fingers of a—better, faster, arguably more engaged—machine.

test

shining a light on the strengths they demonstrated.

I began meeting with each student individually, focusing on remediation that targeted their areas for growth based on the data for each domain.

We would enter the raw scores into a spreadsheet and send it to the department head at the end of the semester. No meetings, no discussions, no impact on instruction. Many of us were confused—this seemed more about compliance than helping students.

that can be daunting.

get the data needed to design instruction isn’t easy.

Signposting is an approach to make the scholarly web more friendly to machines. It uses Typed Links as a means to clarify patterns that occur repeatedly in scholarly portals. For resources of any media type, these typed links are provided in HTTP Link headers. For HTML resources, they are additionally provided in HTML link elements. Throughout this site, examples use the former approach.

How might civic hackathons be improved? Balsamo does not deny contradictory influences exist in these spaces nor avoid engaging because they are “neoliberalist.” Rather, she suggests that sites of messy innovation are also potential sites of learning. Accordingly, my hope is that civic hackathons might be treated more seriously as moments for education and public engagement around the politics of technology. This can be a radical notion because culture, narratives, myths, rituals, expressions, and knowledge might still be reworked.

Civic hackathons are undeniably fraught. Our projections about civic futures are entangled with collective fantasies abouttechnology. This is a story at least as old as science fiction, yet never ultimately removed from our social realities. In some cases small tasks stimulated the civic imagination on larger public problems. In others, cultural reproduction led people to imagine technology that was already racialized, reflecting collective fears that rise to the top. Yet, I resist dismissing civic hackathons. Donna Haraway would certainly see the fallacy in demanding we return to the deliberation of Tocqueville’s town hall meetings. Plus, as anyone who has participated in local government can tell you, city council meetings are hardly a gold standard for civic participation. Mills reminds us that our rationalities are bounded and exist within a particular historic context. We might never get technology out of politics, or the politics out of technology. In a sense, civic technology may itself be a cyborg formed from our collective hopes and fears, one that we might better learn to live with.

Put slightly differently, if we want civic hackathons to produce ideas that improve society, we need to more deeply and sincerely shape choices, thought processes, and activities that might make technology civic.

After we were done, pictures were taken of the group and distributed online to groups in other cities performing similar activities, contributing to the spectacle of the day.

The discussion of the rich social life of data behind the scenes stimulated a discussion for a spin-off project on aggregating geographic data about environmental issues in city. The apparently rote task of transcribing the presence of open data was an inroad to broader questions about how data was constructed behind the scenes and ways residents might add to it.

We failed to assemble a pitch because the civic imagination could not simply float alone. It needed a technological metaphor to give practices traction. Many of the pitched projects had the opposite problem. They started with an existing technology and grafted the goals of the city to it, essentially transposing a model of informed citizenship onto it. These technologies were not so much re-drawing government as increasing its utility.

An audience member yelled out, “what skills does a hack require?” Abhi shook his head. “Not much,” he replied, “you could solve a problem through marketing.” When asked, only around a third of the room raised their hands to identify as software developers.

In addition to moments of the expression of civic imagination, I am attentive to failure — times where conceptual roadblocks were encountered, spectacles failed, and cultural reproduction turned ugly. Being attentive to failure is necessary because civic hackathons tend to be universally celebrated as successes in popular literature. As Anne Balsamo noted in the case of Xerox PARC (p. 55), sites of technological production tend to also be involved in their own hype and myth-making (Also see: Balsamo, 1996). It is necessary to see what is entangled with the fiction.

At least since Doug Engelbart’s “mother of all demos” the introduction of new products has been accompanied by showmanship. Demonstrations are theater where possible uses for technology are presented (Smith, 2009). Hackathons have been argued to be the “front stage” for data and can be contrasted with the murky “back stage” of data production, munging, and interpretation (Gregg, 2014b). The difference with Balsamo might be that she does not put performance in scare quotes.

A more diverse range of participants attended, as civic hackathons were more frequented by community organizers, activists, and students than seasoned software engineers. Those who turned up were also more diverse in ways other than occupation – racially, ethnically, and by gender. These events were largely run by Hack for LA with a wide range of partners. Rarely did sponsors emphasize working code

the civic hackathon violated the very conventions of hackathons. It had “no hacking” in the traditional sense of creating or modifying working software. This curious disappearing act of code in hackathons over the last several years was controversial among programmers. Thea Aldrich of Random Hacks of Kindness wondered aloud when I interviewed her in 2013, “don’t community organizers already have ways to engage politically?” To Thea “civic hacking” was a form of civic engagement particular to the technically adept.

civic hackathons in Los Angeles were rich spaces for observing communication about technology throughspeeches, group collaboration, and pitches.

Civic hackathons have been hotly debated in recent years. Critical studies scholars have lambasted civic hackathons for aligning with middle-class citizenship(Irani, 2015)and co-opting participant labor (Gregg, 2014a). Silicon Valley is often the fait accompliin these perspectives, bringing a flawed ideology that seduces organizers and participants into transposing technological language onto civic issues (Also see: Barbrook & Cameron, 1996; Morozov, 2013). In this paper I refer to this perspective as an “imposed civic ideology.” The second perspective comes from design scholars interested in material participation (Marres, 2012) as cohering publics to work on particular social issues. Lodato and DiSalvo (2016) suggested that civic hackathons served two purposes. First, they help people think through civic issues using props — “objects, services, and systems that engage with issues” (p. 16). Second, they cohere ephemeral proto-publics for short-term engagement on issues of public concern. As they summarized, "what is important is not the inventiveness of a particular prototype product or service, but rather, how the event fosters opportunities for collaborative or collective issue articulation" (p. 15). They drew attention to how outcomes of civic hackathons may more likely be social and cultural than functional material objects. I refer to this design perspective as an “emergent civic subjectivity.”

interaction of two actors.

nsulated from the other network

The projection score - an evaluation criterion for variable subset selection in PCA visualization

Unlike that of other hacker-spaces, members’ focus was not primarily hobbyist engineers. They built HackerMoms to serve mothers. Although as hobbyist engineers, writers, illustrators and artists these moth-ers could ostensibly join any other “traditional” hackerspace, members of HackerMoms claimed those sites became unaffordable or unmanageable without opportunities for childcare. The HackerMoms environment promised not only childcare but also a safer space to breastfeed and express milk, a sliding scale for membership dues, and access to a community of restless and curious moms.

In fact, the manner in which providers negotiate this transition (how they handle the power shift) matters to the future success of technology and to the likelihood that users will further adopt and experiment.At the end of the repossession stage, a new or modified technology becomes availa-ble, upon which new rounds of adoption, appropriation, and repossession take place

Users do new things in new ways. Users explore new possibilities, including some beyond what motivated initial adoption. For instance, users personalize devices and applications to integrate them within their practices. Some users will re-arrange devices in ways that reflect their personalities

The baroque succeeded because it expressed something all Latin American people (Indians, Africans, mestizos, and even sons and daughters of Spaniards born on the con-tinent) had in common: the rejection of the domineering and distant center. Carpentier (1995) explains that to understand “Why is Latin America the chosen territory of the baroque?” we must look at the people and processes that allowed them to finally own the continent: “Because all symbiosis, all mestisaje engenders the baroque. The American baroque develops [...] with the self-awareness of the American man [...] the awareness of being Other, of being new, of being symbiotic, of being a criollo” (p

Likewise, the interplay between economic, cultural, and political tensions remains largely unexplored.

Surman and Reilly (2003) focus on appropriation of networked technologies in a strategically, politically, and creatively innovative manner oriented toward social change. In this context of advocacy, effective technology appropriation includes strategic Internet use for collaboration, publishing, mobilization, and observation. Here, the delineation between the use and appropriation occurs when technology is adapted to reflect goals and culture. Camacho (2001) describes appropriation by civil society organizations at the pinnacle of a technology use ladder. In the middle of the ladder, organizations focus on adoption of conventional technology. Toward the bottom, organizations and individuals with constrained access or slow adoption rates lag behind and seek access to technology. At the pinnacle, however, pioneers and activists appropriate technology to promote causes, for instance, creating flash mobs through mass text messaging to instantaneously organize large groups of people for social protest

Appropriation considers both learn-ing-by-using and learning-by-doing as central to the development of new processes (Rosenberg, 1982). Learning-by-doing in particular assumes that knowledge emerges through bricolage—tinkering with and recombining technology elements, thus enhancing one’s understanding (Lévi-Strauss, 1966). For Tuomi (2002), learning through appropria-tion is a user-centered process whereby users meld culture with material resources to innovate.

Over the course of many years, every school has refined and perfected the connections LMSs have into a wide variety of other campus systems including authentication systems, identity management systems, student information systems, assessment-related learning tools, library systems, digital textbook systems, and other content repositories. APIs and standards have decreased the complexity of supporting these connections, and over time it has become easier and more common to connect LMSs to – in some cases – several dozen or more other systems. This level of integration gives LMSs much more utility than they have out of the box – and also more “stickiness” that causes them to become harder to move away from. For LMS alternatives, achieving this same level of connectedness, particularly considering how brittle these connections can sometimes become over time, is a very difficult thing to achieve.

privacy controls over student data,

Inconsistencies in ideological perspective are not uncommon in activities which attempt to balance individualism and communalism. These very frictions might belie possibilities for a greater imagination or shared experience. However, we argue that it is only in the disputes and frictions between pluralities of publics that democratization emerges. Dissensus across making and hacking communities allows people to experiment, eventu-ally finding communities and processes in which they feel comfortable and can identify. These very migrations, connected by fluid narratives and practices, drive the capacity of communities to develop and innovate.

.Theopendatadefinitionthatemergedfocusedoneightqualitiesofdata:completeness,pri-macy,timeliness,easeofphysicalandelectronicaccess,machinereadability,non-discrimination,useofcommonlyownedstandards,licensing,permanence,andusagecosts.

civic hackers often act as the “slow food movement” of digital political action, embracing local sourcing, ethical consumption, and pleasure of community work. Civic hackers are hardly responding to a new narrative of technological change.

Might “utopian realist” be applicable to the practices of civic hackers, intertwined with particular repertoires, technologies, and affective publics? McKenzie Wark (2014) sug-gests that the relationship between utopian and realist might be mutually constitutive rather than dialectical. He re-frames utopia as a realizable fragment or diagram that re-imagines relations. From this perspective, civic hacking gets traction not because they were ever intended to be the sole “solution” to a problem, but they are ways of acting and creating that are immediately apprehensible. Prototypes capture the imagination because they are shards of a possible future and can be created, modified, and argued about (Coleman, 2009).

Civic hackers might be most appropriately described as utopian realists (Giddens, 1990: 154), a term Giddens employed to capture how assuaging negative consequences in a risk society required retaining Marx’s concern of connecting social change to insti-tutional possibilities while leaving behind his formulation of history as determining and reliance on the proletariat as change agents. He positioned utopian realists as sensitive to social change, capable of creating positive models of society, and connecting with life politics.

That “hackers” can model beneficial process disrupts the often presumed subversive nature of hacking as much as it does easy assumptions about a Foucaultian notion of governmentality. Prototypes act as working evidence to lobby for changing government process, particularly those that improve digital infrastructure or direct communication with citizens. The capa-bility of code to act as a persuasive argument has long been noted, and modeling can produce charged debates about the very meaning of “civic.”

The most popular apps to date have been highly instrumental ways to request services to fix city infrastructure, such as SeeClickFix, a platform that lets residents take pictures of issues that need repair, that are delivered to the appropriate city department as an actionable item. We might think of this as a base-level civic act similar to picking litter off the ground or paint-ing over graffiti. Other activities are thicker modes of participation by generating data or metadata. The primary effort of the 2014 CodeAcross effort was to map exist-ing sources of open data. The leader of the event, D.W. Ferrell, described “our role as citizens is to complement” efforts by the government and organizations such as CfA. Contributing to data repositories served purposes for multiple stakeholders:

dis-putes over community as a particular category threatens to distract from a general focus on solidarity by activating “social bases of discursive publics that engage peo-ple across lines of basic difference in collective identities” (p. 374). A mutable, popu-larized hacker identity may have this potential, capable of processing and interpreting abstract systems of regulation.

Civic hackers widely view machine-readable data as more useful because it drives a wider variety of potential uses, even as the shift from informational uses raises the bar to the literacies required to interpret it. In civic hackathons, knowledge of government operations was as useful as technical knowledge.

Data activism and advocacy ranges from civic engagement (Putnam, 2001) to more oppositional activism (Jordan, 2001). In this sense, it is a spe-cific association of technologically mediated participation with particular political goals (Lievrouw, 2011) resulting in a wide range of tactics. Although open government data is still evolving and is constrained by predictions for economic growth and self-regulation, I argue it enables civic hackers to participate in civic data politics. This is particularly important because data-driven environment is often distanced from pro-viding individuals a sense of agency to change their conditions (Couldry and Powell, 2014). Data activism and advocacy can take place through organizing on related top-ics, online through mediated data repositories such as Github, and in-person events such as hackathons.

Open data, like open information before it, promised fixes for bureaucratic problems and leveling power asymmetries (Fenster, 2012). Municipal governments strapped for funds and in dire need of more efficient frameworks have, of course, welcomed the message that open government data can alleviate time-consuming FOIA requests, make services easier for residents to use, and drive hack-athons as a form of public outreach.

The open data definition drafted at Sebastopol describes data’s completeness, primacy, timeliness, ease of physical and electronic access, machine readability, non-discrimination, use of commonly owned standards, licensing, permanence, and usage costs. This description made it clear what the proper-ties of data were, even as outcomes, fitting with an open-source model, were more

His stance was not cyberlibertarian (Barbrook and Cameron, 1996). As his successive refutation of transparency in this shift toward open data indicates (Lessig, 2009), he was quite concerned about efforts with software becoming distanced from tangible outcomes. Lessig might regarded as a hacker in the mold of Tim Jordan (2008), taking a progressive perspective on how we might regulate technologies—alongside laws, norms, and markets—that affect behavior.

First, FOIA provided accessible tools to put abstract ideas into practice. Everyday citizens started to attach various political notions to these activities. Second, information flowed into a journalistic ecosystem that was prepared to process and interpret it for everyday citizens. Information obtained through FOIA was being interpreted in stories that changed public opinion (Leff etal., 1986). Third, ability for individuals to request information led to alternate uses for activ-ists, public interest groups, and non-profit organizations.

Yet, the natural equating of “openness” or government transparency (Hood and Heald, 2006) with accountability increasingly became dubious (Tkacz, 2012). The move to “open data” was often an imperative that didn’t make clear where the levers were for social change that benefited citizens (Lessig, 2009). Still, I argue that civic hackers are often uniquely positioned to act on issues of public concern; they are in touch with local communities, with technical skills and, in many cases, institutional and legal literacies. I conclude by connecting the open data movement with a specific set of political tactics—requesting, digesting, contributing, modeling, and contesting data.

In each case data was framed as repressive of notions of civil society or enforcing an impoverished or constrictive notion of citizenship. The perspectives of Tufekci and Cheney-Lippold provide valuable insight into how algorithms and data are powerful shapers of modern life. Yet, they leave little room for a different form of algorithmic citizenship that might emerge where indi-viduals desire to reform technology and data-driven processes. As Couldry and Powell (2014) note, models of algorithmic power (Beer, 2009; Lash, 2007) tend to downplay questions of individual agency. They suggest a need to “highlight not just the risks of creating and sharing data, but the opportunities as well” (p. 5). We should be attentive to moments where meaningful change can occur, even if those changes are fraught with forces of neoliberalism and tinged with technocracy.

Civic hacking can broadly be described as a form of alternative/activist media that “employ or modify the communication artifacts, practices, and social arrangements of new information and communication technologies to challenge or alter dominant, expected, or accepted ways of doing society, culture, and politics” (Lievrouw, 2011: 19). Ample research has considered how changes in technology and access have created “an environment for politics that is increasingly information-rich and communication-inten-sive” (Bimber, 2001). Earl and Kimport (2011) argue that such digital activism draws attention to modes of protest—“digital repertoires of contention” (p. 180)—more than formalized political movements

Organizations such as Code for America (CfA) rallied support by positioning civic hacking as a mode of direct partici-pation in improving structures of governance. However, critics objected to the involve-ment of corporations in civic hacking as well as their dubious political alignment and non-grassroots origins. Critical historian Evgeny Morozov (2013a) suggested that “civic hacker” is an apolitical category imposed by ideologies of “scientism” emanating from Silicon Valley. Tom Slee (2012) similarly described the open data movement as co-opted and neoliberalist.

Successive waves of activists saw the Internet as a tool for transparency. The framing of openness shifted in meaning from information to data, weakening of mechanisms for accountability even as it opened up new forms of political participation. Drawing on a year of interviews and participant observation, I suggest civic data hacking can be framed as a form of data activism and advocacy: requesting, digesting, contributing to, modeling, and contesting data

heart of sociological thought is the belief that we are all  a part of a vast tapestry of social connections.

aspect of an average person’s life to very soundly prove their point.

encounter we make, relationship we build, or key-stroke on our technological device builds a network.

ask people to list those in their social circles who have intervened in abusive situations, people they have talked to about bystander intervention, or people whose opinion on intervening is important to them.

Projects, as an entanglement, are “open, partial and indeterminate” (Hodder, 2012, p. 159).They might be being showed off at the next open house, orentirely forgotten. Peter noted that his hard drive was filling up with “functionally dead” shelved projects that got boring or require expertise from outside the space. Yet, to Peter failure was an indication of project success. He believed, as scholars of innovation do, that embracing failure contributed to better ideas. Projects also carried an ethical charge. Michael, a quiet member and software professional, reflected at length on what he called the “philosophical” side of projects. He saw them an inroad to “participation in the fabrication process” that was empowering. In his words, projects were “manufacturing liberation.”

These more formalized gatherings were an attempt to get people working and collaborating in a space that had mainly turned into a spot for hanging out, drinking and foosball. The shift to the new space was seen as an opportunity to encourage members to use the space in a more productive way. The space needed members as much as members needed the tools. Members echoed a liberalist concern with increasing freedom of individuals to act, while retaining hobbyist cultures’ engagement with materialities. Often hackerspace members also described the need for a hackerspace as part of a shift in their city’s economy

Interactions through things, and perceptions about their potential, were ways to negotiate between seemingly conflicting imperatives of the individualism and communalism (A. L. Toombs, Bardzell, & Bardzell). Members would deliberately design activities that were incomplete to encourage a playful material improvisation. In these ways, the “material sensibilities” of members were particularly important. Similarly, reading a history of craft into software hacking, Lingel and Regan (2014) found that software hackers identified their work with craft as process, embodiment, and community. These sensitive readings of interactions with stuff seemed to more accurately capture the genre of hackerspaces, more so than action was guided by culture.

This work perceptively suggested that people often don’t arrive at hackerspaces with an identity fully-formed. Tools and projects, as socio-material assemblages, shepherded new arrivals in and helped them understand

That hackers are created, not born, is hardly a new claim. In Coding Freedom Gabriella Coleman described how an open-source hackers’ identity emerged from a fervent brew of digital connectivity, technological concepts, and shared work (Coleman, 2012). Political awareness was connected to liberalism through open-source and code over time. Put simply, being a hacker is a trajectory with multiple points of origin and destinations. Neither is suggesting that hackers are ordinary meant to discard a concern with exceptional hackers. We should be concerned with the Chelsea Mannings and Edward Snowdens of the world, and the causes they have championed.

Members often toutthat “anyone can be a hacker.”While this claim is dubious– participation is limited by technical inclinations, skills, and comfort hanging around rowdy spaces –hackerspaces certainly helpproduce an “ordinary hacker.” Theyare sites where we can observe hacking’s movement from subculture to mainstream, and from an edgy to popular identity.

the 2016 Inside Higher Ed Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology.

Figure 1. K2 light curve of HD 3167 from Vanderburg et al. (2016).

Embracing a culture of sharing that breaks down silos while maintaining ethical and privacy standards will be paramount.

This has much in common with a customer relationship management system and facilitates the workflow around interventions as well as various visualisations.  It’s unclear how the at risk metric is calculated but a more sophisticated predictive analytics engine might help in this regard.

In fact, academics now regularly tap into the reservoir of digitized material that Google helped create, using it as a dataset they can query, even if they can’t consume full texts.

BMI

Anti-GPCR Obesity Anti-GPCR Obesity Sample pack , Unconjugated antibody

loss of function allele

Partial loss-of-func- tion alleles cause the preferential loss of ventral structures and the expansion of remaining lateral and dorsal struc- tures (Figure 1 c) (Anderson and Niisslein-Volhard, 1988). These loss-of-function mutations in spz produce the same phenotypes as maternal effect mutations in the 10 other genes of the dorsal group.

Obesity rs8043757 intron FTO 16 : 53,779,538 5.000 x 10-110 NHGRI 23563607

Obesity was highly prevalent among the study sample; 64.6% of females and 41.2% of males were obese according to Polynesian cutoffs (BMI ≥ 32 kg/m2). Females were less likely than males to have hypertension (31.7% vs. 36.7%) but equally likely to have diabetes (17.8% vs. 16.4%).

‘Metabolically Healthy Obese’

Chr16:53779880 (GRCm38)

Samoans have been studied for >40 years with a focus on the increase in, and levels of, BMI, obesity, and associated cardiometabolic conditions due to economic modernization

((obesity[Disease]) NOT type 2 diabetes mellitus[Disease]) NOT cardiovascular diseases[Disease] AND 1[s_discriminator]

‘Precision Education’ Hopes to Apply Big Data to Lift Diverse Student Groups

Visualizing Distributions

Most proposals (148) were for a new study and publication, with confirmation of original studies’ results (3) being quite uncommon.

Introduction to R for Data Science