*Please distribute to interested people and lists* *Civic Intelligence in an Uncertain and Threatening World *
*~~~ UPDATE ~~~~~* *Although the deadline for position papers (June 1, 2017) has not changed, we want to encourage people who would like to attend the workshop to submit their position papers (to doug...@publicsphereproject.org <doug...@publicsphereproject.org>) as soon as they can. This will help with both workshop and conference planning. If you're interested in attending the workshop but would rather not write a position paper please let us know via email at your earliest opportunity. Thanks!* Call for Workshop Participation / Communities and Technologies / commtech.community Troyes, France June 26, 2017 (the first day of the five-day conference, June 26-30) *The future of our shared civic intelligence depends on how well we use our existing resources to challenge dangerous and disempowering shifts, and improve the capacity of citizens to use information, form voluntary networks of action and coordinate responses that reinvigorate democratic principles.* Grazia Concilio, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, Anna de Liddo, Open University, UK, Douglas Schuler, The Evergreen State College, USA, Justin Smith, Washington State University, USA This workshop is a follow-on to the Collective Intelligence for the Common Good workshop that we convened at C&T 2015 in Limerick, Ireland. That workshop resulted in a special section in the AI & Society journal. We also plan to find a suitable book or special issue/section of a journal to publish the work of this workshop. More information can (soon) be found at ci4cg.org/. *Motivation * Efforts to secure the common good are facing significant challenges worldwide. Nationalistic, anti-scientific, anti-intellectual, and anti-democratic values are gaining popularity in political discourse. Promises of international cooperation and democratic principles of inclusion, rational (public) discourse, and collective problem-solving are increasingly threatened. Will the people of the world have adequate civic intelligence* to resist these threats and learn to manage its affairs and its ecosystems more prudently? Coordinated resistance in the U.S. and elsewhere suggest that civic intelligence is alive. It is demonstrated through rallies and marches, citizen mobilization, dialogue, independent media, academic research and reporting, fact checking, challenges to elected officials, and much more. Yet more civic intelligence will be necessary in the coming days, months and years as citizens, civil society and others attempt to challenge and reverse these dangerous trends. *Workshop Agenda* In this workshop we will explicitly examine technologies having the potential to enable civic intelligence at different scales, from the local to the global, approaching them as components of the wider ecosystem of common goods that we as practitioners and citizens can help create. While technology can't solve these issues by itself, it can and should play a vital role in supporting the activation and mobilization of civic intelligence worldwide. However, it needs to focus on the facilitation of collective problem-solving—not just an app for this or an app for that. This means presenting information that reveals the systemic relationships of the social and ecological life of our planet, trends in nature (such as climate change) and the activities of humans (deforestation, urbanization, political freedom, migration, etc.). It also means opening access to news, data, and the ability and willingness to communicate complexity to improve people's scientific, collaborative, and critical reasoning skills. Such an endeavor will likely force each one of us to consider our roles as citizens of the planet. At the same time we also need to consider the myriad ways that technological systems can degrade or defeat civic intelligence and consider how to overcome these challenges as well. Artificial intelligence, for example, could be used as a tool to further distance people from control of their lives. This also includes trends in collective problem-solving that seek overly simplistic solutions to inherently complex situations. Finally we also question normative views of dominant consumer culture that suggest that peoples' lives ought to be centered on entertainment, personal gratification, convenience, or consumerism. *Workshop Goals* >From the vantage point of a world in need of new tools and paradigms we envision several related aims. The first is helping to understand the social (information and communication) landscape that we inhabit. Second, is the sharing of ideas, proposals, issues, and other work that the workshop participants are undertaking or hypothesizing. Third, is the development of common frameworks and other integrative approaches that tie our viewpoints and seemingly disparate efforts into a more coherent ensemble. And, finally, identification of specific coordinated action items that we can implement to help us meet our goals, and to engage fruitfully with other people and institutions that are part of this struggle for civic intelligence. We hope that these efforts will contribute to the building of a robust network that works across disciplinary and geographic boundaries to improve the capacity of citizen everywhere to successfully address problems of mutual concern. *Participation* Researchers and scientists, policy makers, citizens, professionals, mediators, public officials, ICT specialists, journalists, artists, policy consultants, and anybody having a strong civic orientation and perspective are welcome! Participants are encouraged to submit a brief position paper that addresses the following points: (1) Why they're interested in the topic; (2) What they'd like to get out of the workshop; (3) What they have to contribute to the workshop — and in the longer run; and (4) List 3-5 goals that they'd like to work towards that would help build the civic intelligence socio-technological research and action program. We will be working with these points to help develop collective documents that address the current and desired future states. Please submit your position paper (doc or pdf) via email to doug...@publicsphereproject.org by June 1, 2017. Questions or comments in relation to this workshop can also be sent to that address. * Civic intelligence is the ability of groups of people to perceive, communicate and act to address shared challenges both efficiently and equitably. It is holistic — it includes a constellation of capabilities including compassion, creativity, and courage. It highlights the importance of building capacity for people to deal with problems, large and small. Moreover, civic intelligence varies from place to place, situation to situation and it changes over time—sometimes very rapidly, and sometimes for the worse.
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