PublicSpaces Conference: For a Collective Internet

During our 23rd Demo Day on April 18, 2024, Ruben Polderman told us more about the philosophy and method of Socratic Design. It's important for a city to collectively reflect on a good existence. Socratic Design can be a way to think about this together, collectively.
 
Thinking and Acting Differently with Socratic Design
Together with his colleagues at the Digitalization & Innovation department of the Municipality of Amsterdam, Ruben explored how a city should deal with innovation and digitalization. Things were progressing well. The municipality could act swiftly; for example, promising Smart Mobility research and innovation projects were initiated with new partners. However, the transitions are heading in various directions, and progress remains limited. No matter how groundbreaking innovation is, there's a danger in trying to solve problems with the same mindset that caused them. The ability to perceive or think differently is therefore crucial. More crucial, even, than accumulated knowledge, as filosopher David Bohm suggested.
 
Through Socratic Design, we can collectively improve the latter. You work on your own presuppositions, enhance your listening skills, and deepen your understanding of our current dominant narratives to create new narratives and practices. Ruben guided us through examples and exercises to help us understand what narratives and presuppositions entail.

Narratives
"We think we live in reality, but we live in a narrative," Ruben proposes to the group. What we say to each other and how we interact creates a culture that shapes the group and its actions. Narratives are stories that guide our culture, values, thoughts, and actions. They are paradigms so deeply rooted that we no longer question them and sometimes believe there is no alternative. Our current dominant narrative has significant consequences for the Earth and humanity, and although it seems fixed, we can also create new narratives together if we choose to do so.

We must fundamentally seek a good existence within safe ecological boundaries. This should go beyond the transitions we are currently favouring, which sustain our lifestyle but just make it less harmful for the environment. If we want to create new stories with new, positive human perceptions and lifestyles, we must first examine our current narrative and presuppositions. We will need to deconstruct our current ways of living and thinking, much like the Theory U method mentioned during the previous Knowledge Session (see our recap article of this session).
 
Understanding Presuppositions
Ruben showed us various themes and images to collectively practice recognizing presuppositions. For example, a photo of a medical patient and doctors in action demonstrates that our feeling of "to measure is to know" is also crucial in healthcare. The doctors focus on the screen, the graph, the numbers, and therefore have less focus on the patient; the human, themselves. A photo of the stock market, where a group of men is busy trading stocks, also illustrates our idea of economic growth. Here too, there is a fixation on numbers. Ideally, they're green and going up, but meanwhile, we can lose sight of what exactly we're working towards and what exactly it is that we’re ‘growing’.

As a group, we discussed some presuppositions we could find in our field of work. For example, we talked about our need for and appreciation of objective data, and technologism; the belief in solutions rooted in technology and digitalization.
 
Fundamental Presupposition Shifts and New Narratives
If you flip a presupposition like Technologism and suggest that Social Interaction could be our salvation and solution to many of our problems, you set off a fundamental presupposition shift. If you translate this into practical actions or experiments, you can collectively understand how a newly created presupposition functions. As a group, we worked on this. During this session, I myself worked with an example from the field of mobility.

If I were to apply this new presupposition in the field of mobility and we look at the development of cars, perhaps we shouldn't go towards autonomous vehicles (technologism), but look for ways to motivate and strengthen carpooling (social interaction). As an experiment, you could, for example, set up an alternative to the conventional car lease plan. Employees of an organization don't all get the option to lease a car; instead, it's considered who could commute together, and there's a maximum of 1 car for every 4 employees per organization. Just like going to an away game with your soccer team on Sundays as a kid; enjoyable!
 
Read More
This session was an introduction and gave us a good initial understanding of this philosophy and method, but there's much more to discover. The method also delves into how presuppositions are deeply rooted in us, how we validate this with feeling in our bodies, and dialogue methods to collectively arrive at new values and narratives. There's more explained about Socratic Design on Amsterdam's Open Research platform.

Maak jij je zorgen over je privacy en controle van de overheid? Of kan de digitale revolutie je niet snel genoeg gaan? Op woensdag 8 mei gaan we bij Argan in gesprek over de mogelijkheden en gevaren van de smart city: een stad waarbij technologie en data worden gebruikt om de stad te besturen. Een moderne stad moet slim zijn om alle problemen het hoofd te bieden, lijkt het idee. Maar wat is ‘slim’? En om welke problemen gaat het? Meld je aan voor het gesprek, stel je vragen aan het panel en praat mee!

Tijd: Inloop 19:00 - Start 19:30 - Einde 21:00
Locatie: Argan op Jan Tooropstraat 6A
Toegang: gratis
Aanmelden: https://argan.nl/upcoming-events/aanmelden/

Op 6 en 7 juni organiseren PublicSpaces en Waag Futurelab de vierde editie van de PublicSpaces conferentie met als thema 'Taking Back the Internet'. Het tweedaags programma vindt plaats in Pakhuis de Zwijger. Via panels, keynotes, rondetafelsessies, lezingen, kunst en cultuur banen we ons een weg richting een internet waar we gezamenlijk de regels bepalen. 

> Taking Back the Internet!

Anno 2024 is het gros van digitale diensten en platforms in handen van enkele commerciële Big Tech bedrijven. Deze centralisatie van macht is niet in lijn met hoe het internet ooit bedacht is en zorgt zelfs voor maatschappij-ontwrichtende problemen. Van privacyschending en van beïnvloeding van verkiezingsuitslagen tot discriminatie door bevooroordeelde algoritmes: het monopolie van Big Tech raakt iedereen. 

Hoe herwinnen we - als burgers, organisaties en overheden - de controle op onze data en ons digitale leven? Als we zelf willen kunnen bepalen hoe ons digitale ecosysteem eruit ziet, moeten we onafhankelijk beslissingen kunnen nemen over het ontwerp, gebruik en beheer van digitale hulpmiddelen en platforms. Tijdens de conferentie gaan we daarom met sprekers, publiek en kunstenaars in gesprek over eigendom van data, privacy, interoperabiliteit, decentralisatie en meer. Kortom: technologie gebaseerd op publieke waarden. 

Programma
Het complete programma wordt in de komende weken bekend gemaakt, maar de eerste namen zijn al bekend! Staatssecretaris Alexandra van Huffelen zal de conferentie openen. Futurist Karen Palmer verzorgt de opening keynote, en econoom Francesca Bria neemt ons mee in een Europese strategie voor het ontwikkelen van een ethische digitale economie. Verwacht ook bijdragen van Luna Maurer, Mieke van Heeswijk, Bert Hubert, Kumbale Musavuli, Paolo Cirio, Nanda Piersma, Roos Groothuizen, Nastia Cistakova, Astrid Poot, Paul Keller, Toshi Reagon, Julia Janssen, Jan Zuiderveld, The Hmm, Sebastian Lasse, Marlijn Gelsing, Maaike Okano-Heijmans, Reijer Passchier, Tamara van Zwol, Lashaaawn, Benjamin Fro, Marleen Stikker, en vele anderen. 
De conferentie wordt dit jaar gemodereerd door Roland Duong en Abdo Hassan. 

Waar? Pakhuis de Zwijger, Amsterdam
Wanneer? Donderdag 6 juni & vrijdag 7 juni 2024