Platforms enabled by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), like Uber and Airbnb, are increasingly being seen as looters by cities. They are like Death Stars, extracting great swaths of value from local communities only to transfer that wealth elsewhere. Indeed, it would seem that the original ideas of sharing and peer-to-peer collaboration have been co-opted … Read more
To everyone who shapes technology today We live in a world where technology is consuming society, ethics, and our core existence. It is time to take responsibility for the world we are creating. Time to put humans before business. Time to replace the empty rhetoric of “building a better world” with a commitment to … Read more
The German federal government adopted its first Open Government Partnership (OGP) National Action Plan (NAP) today. With the NAP, the federal government takes important steps to strengthen citizen participation. The 15 commitments in the NAP will provide new ways to increase transparency, open innovation and enhance the effectiveness of governments and administrations. The Working Group … Read more
Teacher George Kalewis slams his hands on the table, and a little orange robot car nudges forward. We are in Athens, and a group of young people has just coded the robot’s sensors to react to sounds. “Good work! Next, we’re going to code the robot car to detect a black line and to follow … Read more
Elections are key milestones for democratic engagement, and referendums such as the UK’s Brexit poll are innovative ways for citizens to be more directly involved in the decision-making process. But voting provides only a limited taste of the variety of ways citizen can participate in government. The real antidote to citizens’ feeling of disenfranchisement lies … Read more
OLPC France (http://olpc-france.org ), a volunteer driven association, has just released a new version of the Sugarizer platform. Sugarizer allows the Sugar Learning Software to be used on any device. More precisely, Sugarizer is a port of Sugar – the open source learning platform distributed on the XO laptops – in web technologies. You can run … Read more
Civil Society Days 2017 – The Europe we strive for! In the recent past the European Union has been facing disaffection from a significant proportion of its citizens. The financial crisis, wars around Europe, terrorist attacks and the large-scale arrival of refugees have led to resurgence in national egoism. The suspension of Schengen, Brexit … Read more
