6research Objectives 7overview of the Research project 8chapter 1 Project overview and theoretical framework 11background 11what is the value of Digital Social Innovation in the context of Future Internet
and solutions for a wide range of social needs and at a scale that was unimaginable before the rise of the Internet'.
'This research aims to explore the potential of the network effect of the Internet (activity
the network effect of the Internet may still be in its early technical phases and early implementation to maximize social good.
The development of open data infrastructures, knowledge co-creation platforms, wireless sensor networks, decentralized social networking,
and reach of commercial Internet models and the relative weakness of alternatives, mainly filling marginal niches
Digital social innovation plays a central role in the development of the Future Internet. One of the motivations underpinning this research is need the to investigate the key role that civil society organisations
and grassroots communities play to enable bottom-up social innovation that leverage the power of the Internet.
participatory web platforms such as Wikigender and Wikiprogress developed by the OECD that facilitate the linking of National statistics to actual individual living conditions;
and Tor that are using bottom up privacy-preserving decentralised infrastructure for the open Internet constituted by open standards, open data, free and open software,
Other projects are exploring the potential of federated social networking, such as D-CENT and Diaspora, and the promotion and diffusion of knowledge systems in the Public domain, such as Communia.
Most, if not all of the above examples of civil society digital social innovation take place via the Internet
and policy recommendations for DSI with the context of the DAE and Horizons 2020. iv 5 Introduction The Internet is approximately 40 years old,
the last 20 years or so have seen the commercialisation of the Internet take precedence. Online innovation developed specifically to effect major positive social change remains
and solutions for a wide range of social needs and at a scale that was unimaginable before the rise of the Internet'.
and the specific impact and added value of the innovation enabled by the Future Internet,
This research is identifying examples of Digital Social Innovations that are exploiting the network effect of the Internet
In particular grassroots communities of civic innovators, web entrepreneurs, hackers, geeks, SMES, open source and DIY makers,
and promoting the generative web-enabled survey). Key activities were conducted also as part of WP4, such as the launch of the project during the Open Knowledge Conference (OKCON) in Geneva 16th-18th september, presentations during the Smart City Fair in Barcelona on November 20th,
and engagement work across social media and community channels to spread the survey and the crowd-mapping exercise.
Consultant Logicadaniel Kaplan Founder and CEO, The next-Generation Internet Foundationsimona Levi Founder, Forum for the Access to Culture and Knowledgemarkkula Markku Committee of the Regions, Rapporteur Europe
aims to explore the potential of the network effect of the Internet (i e. that the benefit of a network and its critical mass of users grows larger than its cost),
emphasising the characteristics of Internet-enabled digital tools that can effectively empower citizens and civic innovators.
A primary example of Digital Social Innovation is the Web itself. As it was based on open digital technologies that could be harnessed by any actor
the Web was able to reach a critical mass of connectivity and exploit the network effect described by the Metcalfe's Law,
The Internet and the Web are the technical underpinnings that represent a densely intertwined techno-social fabric of our societies,
the network effect of the Internet may still be in its early technical phases and early implementation to maximise social good.
The early years of expansion of Internet-based services has generated a great economic wealth. However this growth has resulted in an imbalance between the dramatic scale
and reach of commercial Internet models and the relative weakness of alternatives, mainly filling marginal niches
Most, if not all of the above examples of civil society digital social innovation take place via the Internet
or are enabled highly by the Internet. The intention of this research is to carry out an honest analysis of the field,
How to accelerate innovations that better align the capacities of the Internet to social needs The non-technological elements and the so-called soft innovation
What is the value of Digital Social Innovation in the context of Future Internet in Europe?
The attempt to define a successful DSI model for Europe is contextualised in the broader debate around European Innovation models and the Future of the Internet,
ICT and the Internet are critical to help Europe sustain long-term economic growth and create new jobs.
and redistribution of power amongst the players in the innovation Ecosystemwhile the original advent of the Internet and ubiquitous digital technologies led to a speculative bubble that ended in 2001 now the Internet seems to have more deep inroads into all parts of manufacturing
However, the Internet by itself seems to unable to drive innovation out of the crisis of 2008
More than 5 billion additional people will connect to the Internet globally in the next 10 years.
To fully exploit the potential provided by Internet services a high-speed Internet access is required for all the citizens.
If we observe the evolution of the Internet principles, such as network neutrality, equitable service, and peer-to-peer architecture were crucial to build a universal,
because the Web was built on a set of royalty-free open standards decided through an inclusive and transparent process that,
Open standards have fostered the innovation by allowing the Web to be implemented by anyone over different underlying systems
The emerging cloud model,(proprietary social networks, big data providers, the Internet of things implementation), are currently following a different model that allows us convenience but at the expense of security, privacy and openness:
as apps need access to social data held on third-party sites. The lack of standards forces developers to create multiple versions of the same social application for different closed platforms,
Analysing all the possible Future Internet scenarios (Oxford Internet Institute 2010 we see two opposing innovation models that could emerge (see Figure 5:
A major risk for the Future Internet is the realisation of the Big brother scenario, showing that big industrial players (mainly US based) will reinforce their dominant position by implementing platform lock in strategies,
since we are seeing a consolidation of existing powers and incumbents at every layer of the Internet ecosystem.
The alternative is to accelerate innovations that align the capacities of the Internet better to social needs,
Indeed, the network effect of the Internet may still be in its early phases as well.
and the long-awaited deployment of the semantic web, can potentially serve collective action and awareness.
The Web is today increasingly more enmeshed with our daily lives, forming a universally distributed intelligence constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time,
Distributed and citizen-centric innovation plays a central role in the development of the Future Internet.
Digital social innovation plays a central role in the development of the Future Internet. One of the motivations underpinning this research is need the to investigate the key role that civil society organisations
and grassroots communities play to enable bottom-up social innovation that leverage the power of the Internet.
Adapted from Towards a Future Internet, the Oxford Internet Study 2010 in Sestini, F. presentation Collective Awareness Platforms for sustainability and social innovationa Theoretical framework of Collective Intelligence to Unleash the Innovation capabilities of European DSI organisationsthe rapid evolution of digital technologies
and digital data accessed via the Internet. Digital Social Innovation can deploy collective intelligence by connecting multiple individuals and groups via technology,
In this way, the Internet offers unprecedented opportunities for collective intelligence via its increasing ubiquity and its massive amounts of data available for collective transformation into knowledge.
This type of innovation was unimaginable before the rise of Internet-enabled platforms. In this way, simply labeling images with the ESP game of Von Ahn is digital innovation,
but simply makes it easier for Google to index and search through images (von Ahn and Dabbish 2005).
and in this era must be enabled Internet digital social innovation are needed to create new arrangements between the social
but also facilitate the formation and diffusion of novel collaborative solutions offline in the real world. In this process
social networks of the engaged communities are reinforced. This research will investigate in what conditions the network effect of Internet collective platforms strengthen the social networks of offline communities
and amplify their collective intelligence. It will also address how to develop bottom-up research frameworks
and solutions for a wide range of social needs and at a scale that was unimaginable before the rise of the Internet.'
open source and open hardware developments), leveraging social networks (or distributed social networking, sensor networks and the Internet of things,
and organisational relationships is made available as an open data set on the website for users to download
just as any custom code developed in the course of developing the Website, Database and Dynamic Visualisations will be shared back with the relevant open source communities.
and its structure determines the mapping capabilities of the website. Therefore the survey has been designed so that it captures the relevant data needed to understand the different types of DSI organisations and their activities.
and the generative survey has the potential to evolve into a dynamic DSI community mapping infrastructure and social networking tool.
A digest email encourages users to complete any missing data in respect of this. Therefore, any organisation can exist on the map
the website survey provides the foundation for the empirical results that are to be used in the rest of the project work packages.
Care has therefore been taken to make the website as easy to use as possible with the aim for it to go viral across the European Digital Social Innovation community.
Currently, there are over two hundred organisations that have registered with the website. However, to date, the survey is only available in English,
Thus, the next stage for the website will be to consider how to produce a multilingual version.
Currently the website is focused on the geographic mapping of organisations. Over the next stage of the DSI report, various info-graphics that highlight important aspects of the data will be added. 22 Chapter 3-Defining DSI Interim Findings An emerging typology
such as the difficulties in detecting the most effective combinations of online and offline organisations and collaboration;
a practice of sharing and collaboration at a scale that was unimaginable before the rise of the Internet,
In East Africa the development of M-PESA (a mobile financial payment system born out of social innovation) has become an avenue for nine million people to gain access to secured financial exchange services.
participatory web platforms such as Wikigender and Wikiprogress developed by the OECD facilitate the linking of National statistics to actual individual living conditions;
Other projects are exploring the potential of federated social networking such as D-CENT and Diaspora, and the promotion and diffusion of knowledge systems in the Public domain, such as Communia.
and Tor are using bottom-up privacy-preserving decentralised infrastructure for the open Internet constituted by open standards, open data, free and open software,
For instance, distributed social networking projects such as Diaspora, Status. net or easy-to run servers like arkos,
while preserving the openness and accessibility of the Internet infrastructure. Furthermore, there's no denying that the ability to access knowledge
Activity type Number listed Delivering a web service 73 Research project 49 Education and training 31 Network 29 Event 27 Incubators and Accelerators 26 Advisory or expert body 15 Advocating
semi-open spaces with clusters of tables and Internet connections for groups and individuals to collaborate and socialise in projects, workshops, hands-on talks, panels.
and distributed group spaces of former years (https://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Chaos communication congress). Maker Fairs are very interesting expressions of this new form of networking events that emerged out of the big diffusion of the Makers Movement.
In the case of Commons4eu partners got together to explore the development of collaborative web projects and bottom-up broadband technologies.
Other interesting examples of multidisciplinary research projects are the Network of Excellence on Internet Science (EINS) that aims to integrate multidisciplinary scientific understandings about Internet networks and their co-evolution with society,
and advocating for Web standards, the P2p foundation that works on promoting peer to peer practices, and the Iot Council promoting an open Internet of things vision are good examples of this.
Examples Open Networks innovative combinations of network solutions and infrastructures, e g. sensor networks, free interoperable network services, open Wifi, bottom-up-broadband, distributed social networks
and digital services adopted by DSI activities such as social networking, social media, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, big data, machine learning, 3d printing, online learning,
A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of spatially distributed wireless sensors to monitor physical conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants,
An Open Sensor Network (OSN) is a Wireless Sensor Network that manages Open information in an Open environment.
Community networking (also known as bottom-up networking) is an emerging model for the Future Internet across Europe and beyond,
While commercial access networks from either commercial telecom companies or by local governments tend to follow a well-known centralized network architecture and operation model
Internet networks have become a key infrastructure for the development of the digital economy due to the democratisation of the access technologies,
and privacy-aware service that bounce Internet users'and websites'traffic through relays run by thousands of volunteers around the world,
and combine successfully different wireless and wired (optical) link technologies, fixed and ad hoc routing schemes,
and obstacles regarding Internet specifications that are exposed by these edge networks. 38 The Guifi. net initiative is developing a free,
open and neutral, mostly wireless telecommunication community network, that started in Catalonia in 2004, and as of January 2012 has more than 15,300 working nodes,
Guifi. net is connected to the Catalan Internet Exchange (CATNIX) as an Autonomous System (AS) via optical fibre with IPV4 and IPV6.
It then invited programmers and developers to make apps and web services based on the data,
and geo tagging function on their smartphones help the research project measure global levels of light pollution,
boosting the diffusion of open data is the Mobile Internet and the increasing number of mobile devices.
Smartphones tablets, PDAS and other devices are becoming smaller, faster, smarter, more networked and personal.
An unlocked Android phone with touch screen, Wifi and GPS that sold for $300 four years ago now costs $30,
RFID-tagged objects and other devices that see, hear, move, and coordinate and reason with each other.
and the smart city that coordinates mobile cellular and GPS data to dynamically allocate resources and direct traffic.
Ordinary people today use blogs, wikis, social network and hundreds of other collaborative platforms to manage their daily lives,
solve social challenges and business problem, and participate in e-campaigns, crowdfunding, crowd-mapping and crowdsourcing.
and knowledge to a social network of peers living with similar conditions. 40 Open Hardware Open source hardware consists of hardware
which will facilitate the anywhere/anytime access to the Internet and to the services it will provide.
which will guarantee access through the Internet to the physical world, to its devices and, most notably, to its services.
The emerging of an Internet of People, i e.,, a trend that includes Web 2. 0, social networks, social computing,
and that promotes Internet as a fundamental channel for allowing an increasingly active role of users (individuals, groups, communities) as providers of data, content,
and services. Cloud computing as a virtualisation infrastructure that offers unique opportunities to reduce the costs of delivering services over the Internet,
thus extending this possibility to much wider classes of actors. What are we learning about the impact of digital technologies on Social Innovation?
we are adopting social network analysis to detect patterns of relations, arguing that causation is located in the social structure.
Social networks are defined formally as a set of nodes (or network members) that are tied by one or more types of relations (Wasserman and Faust, 1994).
By studying behaviours as embedded in social network structures, we will be able to explain macro and meso level patterns that show the dynamics in which DSI organisations and their initiatives create particular outcomes.
In the case of the DSI social network that is emerging from the map the nodes in a graph are communities,
Social network analysis will examine the structure and composition of DSI organisation ties in a given network and provide insights into its structural characteristics,
One of the primary problems facing the mapping of an open-ended field such as DSI is how to direct the multiple diverse streams of data from interviews to social media into a central repository capable of giving a big picture of European
Furthermore, this visualisation of the DSI network, embedded in our website, is interactive and aims at engaging the larger DSI community itself,
as the website currently supports only English) into French and then launching that call to 120 actors involved in social innovation resulted in a net gain of 43 organisations added with 32 new activities.
In general, European funding has invested heavily in core European institutions in terms of digital innovation, in particular the formerly nationalised telecommunications companies as well as national research institutes and traditional universities.
However, even now these institutions are facing crisis due to the ubiquity of the Internet, as the new digital innovations of capitalism in particular, digital innovation as exemplified by Silicon valley threaten their current ability to make profits from their previous innovations.
i e. institutions that have arisen during the rise of the Internet itself. 46 This is precisely why telecommunications companies must reinvent themselves in the presence of new, digitally native companies such as Skype and Google.
or CNRS are threatened by the research divisions of companies like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft who now increasingly dominate premier academic conferences such as the World wide web Conference.
and in fact, private institutions have near-monopolies over social networks and search engine data, giving them nearly exclusive access to the data
these companies are challenged still by new digital actors such as Facebook and Twitter. It is key to distinguish between invention and socialisation as part of the wider process of innovation in a technical system such as the Internet and the Web.
The Internet and Web have defined intrinsic architectures by their open standards that offer themselves as a series of constraints such that‘the choice of possibilities in which invention consists is made in a particular space and particular time according to the play of these constants,
'although ultimately innovation lies in the ability to give these choices technical flesh so that they can interact with the wider world;‘
Many of the inventions that now form the basis of the Web 2. 0 economy
However, before the advent of the Internet their social innovation was limited in its reach, but with the advent of the Internet suddenly these new digital social innovations had a rapid network growth.
Take for example the do-it-yourself ethic, where the amateur is able to create content and share it in a peer-to-peer manner rather than via a top-down hierarchy controlled by experts or some other appointed group.
and sensors Tor provides the best example of how the Internet enables users grow the value of a network with a social purpose through plugging in their devices to a‘network
Another example is the work by Open Garden on facilitating the sharing of Internet between devices.
and Crowd mapping, social networking and democratic decision making tools, are technologies that allow for the quick identification (and dismissal) of issues.
in particular information generated by users (e g. through social networks) or captured from sensors (Internet of things). Interoperable, customised,
plugging into existing and future Internet infrastructures. An ecosystem means that there is an interdependent and dynamic constellation of living organisms acting within a global socioeconomic environment.
By linking differing communities and innovators via a social network, the innovators can more easily find meta-analogies between their problems
each with a track-record of success in their particular neighbourhoods, would be more effective than so-called independent private contractor in determining how to best unify a website that can provide access to information about public resources in the city.
This commission of experts should not simply solidify their position as experts in creating websites,
so that the public service workers in London can maintain their own website without again gathering all the experts from the various boroughs
although filters are in the process of being implemented they are not yet live on the site. The challenge of balancing quality and quantity within the data set is an aspect that we are constantly monitoring
The next stage of Work package 2 will include the Task 2. 2, the development of the website.
Although the website and survey is stable, there will need still likely to introduce minor adjustments in response to user-feedback from the study.
As the block in getting more input seems to be the fact that the website
The way in which the system maps organisations and the linkages between them, has the potential to become an international social network of practice around DSI and associated activity.
Below we indicate the elements that will be possible within the future stage two implementation. 51 Digital Social Innovation web platform www. digitalsocial. eu Crowdmapping DSI organizations
/The website is a Ruby on Rails app, but uses Tripod and Mongodb instead of Activerecord.
In this manner, the website would become not only a data source but also a kind of learning tool to understand what digital social innovation concretely means.
Create better visualisation with the current relational data that can be exported (see here an example of the current visualisations) Better internal search system Addition of social network functionalities to the DSI mapping,
and projects Adding Twitter login option and other social plugins Improve organisational profiles (they can add pictures,
or easily share events, funding opportunities etc from other sites) Add a section to the site that shows
161ouishare 165p2p Foundation 169patients Like Me 173peerby 179raspberry Pi 185safecast 191smart Citizen Kit 197tor 201ushahidi 207zooniverse (citizen science web portal of CSA) 213 Case studies
Over 300,000 official Arduinos has been produced commercially Website: http://arduino. cc/Organisation Name Arduino Short description The core to an Arduino is a simple, ultra-low-cost circuit board, based on an open-source design, armed with a microprocessor
and robotics the availability of Arduino hardware design blueprints for download has meant users who ordinarily might not have been able to afford
Arduino supports@Heart partners through promotion of their brand, products and content on its site and social networks with links to documentation and tutorials.
On its website, it posts all of its trade secrets for anyone to take all the schematics, design files,
has taken 155,896, 453 actions since January'07, in 194 countries Website: http://www. avaaz. org Organisation Name:
According to the Avaaz website, their model of Internet organising allows thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be combined rapidly into a powerful collective force.
and organising offline protests and events as part of their bid to have the voice of the world's people enter
Researchers also believe that particular groups on the Internet may benefit from the strategic opportunities offered by e-petitions,
like Internet theorist Evgeny Morozov, have claimed Avaaz promotes a form of slacktivism, claiming that they encourage previously tenacious activists to become lazy and complacent.
Similarly, their site encourages the use of both online and offline channels to generate the greatest impact of members'campaigns.
Speaking directly on their influence in the proceedings brought against Rupert Murdoch Avaaz's founder, Ricken Patel has said their activism played a critical role in delaying the BSKYB deal until the recent scandal was able to kill it.
According to this same report, another potential area of impact of Social Computing sites such as Avaaz, is the potential for adoption by a large number of organisations belonging to the so-called third-sector
According to the IPTS, the most urgent need is certainly for new metrics to address the emergence of new social media,
According to the Avaaz website, the organisation employs a technical team to make sure the website is constantly secure.
The site is verified also by Geotrust, a world leader on Internet security verification. The Avaaz donation pages have addresses beginning with https://rather than http
://thus signalling they are secure pages. 64 The site is integrated well with other social media platforms,
According to Matt Holland Avaaz's Online Director, like other high-capacity web services Avaaz's hosting platform is complex
within as little as 24 hours, is something that could not have been possible without the Internet. It can do this well beyond the bounds of a particular country,
As part of this half a million emails were sent out imploring its members those who have signed previous petitions,
Avaaz Community Petitions is a new web platform that gives people around the world the power to start
It is a crowd-sourced part of Avaaz, the largest-ever global web movement bringing people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.
Hours after the initial attack, the organisation made a public appeal on its website, revealing that a 44-hour distributed denial of service (DDOS) strike hit the organisation's IT infrastructure.
taking the site down for a total of 14 minutes. The FBI has also been informed about the attack.
While Datagram (the site's hosting company Croscon (who perform ongoing security audits of the site's servers)
and Arbor networks (who provided defensive hardware which helped fend off the attack) all supported the organisation throughout the attack,
Avaaz's site shows that almost 42,000 people have donated to this campaign. According to Ricken Patel (Founder of Avaaz), the specifics of how the generated funds will be used are still being planned
and upgrading capacity of firewalls. In addition, the fundraiser will also have a wider range of objectives,
In Reykjavik, Iceland, 40%of citizens use the Your Priorities platform Website: https://www. yrpri. org/Organisation Name Citizens Foundation (including the Your Priorities platform) Short description Your Priorities is based a web platform developed by the Icelandic Citizens Foundation.
The platform enables groups of people to develop and prioritize ideas and together discover which of these ideas are deemed the most important to implement.
and in many senses the design and functionality of their websites, products and services might be thought of as an attempt to redesign democracy itself.
As Gunnar Grímsson, one of its founders explains‘The key metric of success for our websites is participation.
During the election, 10%of Reykjavik voters voiced ideas on the site, 43%of voters viewed the site,
As a result of its popularity during the campaign, it became integrated permanently into the city's administration, in the form of the Better Reykjavík website,
The Your Priorities website enables citizens to voice, debate and prioritize policy ideas, budget decisions and micro-issues affecting their neighbourhood.
For example on the Better Reykjavik website, each month the top ideas in all categories are gathered by city officials,
They hold that the Internet is the best way to reach out and motivate this younger generation to participate in democracy,
Indeed the main reason the Citizens Foundation was awarded a European e-Democracy Award for their Better Reykjavik website was because of its perceptible impact in 2011, at the time of the award,
the site involved 40%of Reykjavik's citizens and obtained direct implementation of many proposals in political programmes. 69
and free for anyone to download and use, which has led to the spread of the model via the Internet beyond Iceland.
Open Active Democracy is the software that powers Your Priorities. As well as being made available on Github
users are encouraged also to translate the site's contents if they are able to do so.
The fact that Citizens Foundation's website, Better Reykjavik is integrated well into the official political structure means that citizens can observe how their opinion has the capacity to shape real political debate.
While users can use the website totally free of charge, the website features an integrated tool to make donations to the Your Priorities project.
As a nonprofit organisation, donated funds ensure continual development and maintenance of the Your Priority software.
and websites like Better Reykjavik to operate properly. 70 Marketing and PR: If you build it they will come is a famous quote from the early days of the Internet this was never quite true
and certainly is not today. Marketing and promoting a website is a lot of hard work and costs money.
As‘democracy nerds'the Citizens Foundation team are worried that most of our social lives are being run by one company, Facebook.
But as entrepreneurs they point to a tendency to always try to turn problems into opportunities.
Doing so has enabled them to exploit Facebook, finding that it is one of the best ways to attract people to electronic democracy both via sharing and Facebook advertisements.
User interface: There needs to be as little friction as possible for taking part. Therefore, the team have made,
and participate using their Facebook login. The user interface has been simplified in every generation of the software to enable more people to participate more easily.
Citizen Foundation websites enable people to earn‘Social Points'for writing up points for or against ideas that many people think are helpful these can be used to buy promotions for ideas that appear as banners at the top of the page.
Importantly, neither the Your Priorities nor the Better Reykjavik websites were Citizen Foundation team's first attempt at creating an‘electronic democratic'web platform.
Rather, these websites are a‘better iteration'of their pilot project, Shadow Parliament a project which aimed to document and scrutinise the actions of the government.
Besti flokkurinn) early adoption of the Citizen Foundation Web tools which they used as a guide for their policy focus.
as well as the most popular ideas in each of thirteen categories on the website. Citizens involved in supporting a particular 71 proposal are given regular updates from the city council regarding its viability and processing.
using the most popular ideas on the website as a guide for questioning the government,
Firstly, their websites'impact, because they involved 40%of Reykjavik's citizens and obtained direct implementation of many proposals in political programmes.
Citysdk consist of 23 partners, 9 countries, 3 open source APIS Website: http://www. citysdk. eu/Organisation Name City Service Development Kit (Citysdk) Short description City SDK is a European consortium of partners helping cities
the Internet, as a way to collaborate, disseminate knowledge and data. Open source Software, which enables the uptake and extension of the software by the development community forgoing stifling discussions on IP and closed development silos Open Data,
video conferences and Google docs for communication and Github to share code and specifications. Citysdk itself would not have been possible even five years ago.
As part of the project the consortia developed Europe commons, a catalogue of applications with demonstrable impact Website:
sensors integrated in Wi-fi networks and other technologies based on fibre optics to the home (FTTH).''The overarching Commons4eu project focuses on networked collaborative projects for use online and with mobile devices, based on the experience of Code for America,
They develop collaborative web projects following the methodology of Code for America‘based on principles rather than on sectors and by opening existing code in the participating cities and leveraging the European EPSI (European Public sector Information) platform.'
Projects should be based around web/mobile applications. Applications should enable cities to connect with their constituencies in ways that reduce administrative cost
‘Super Wifi, Sensor integration into wifi networks and fibre deployment as commons (both new techniques such as aerial as well as fibre bandwidth management'.
is evidenced by the host of custom-tailored web applications that have emerged to address specific,‘local'needs.
a website with a broader scope than either the Bub or Code for Europe projects.
From the‘Super Wifi, Sensor integration into wifi networks and fibre deployment as commons'(which includes new techniques such as aerial as well as fibre bandwidth management),
to the web applications developed by fellows for Code for Europe these smaller projects tend to be reflective of the local needs of the partner city or of the fellow's own technological preferences.
This flexible approach to technology is reflected in the wide range of technologies employed by the different fellows who will work with their own preferred web platform (using open source languages like 83 Python
and Ruby on Rails) to build their open web applications. On a larger scale, this might be indicative of how Commons 4 EU looks beyond more traditional‘big tech solutions'to offer a simpler, much looser set of solutions;
websites like Europe Commons and collaborative tools like Github offer a glimpse to digital technology's potential for collaboration
Commons4eu also works with other social innovators on more specific challenges as part of an informal global network and conversation about how technology might be used to rethink the way we approach city governance.
In the case of Europe Commons the site's open source coding is hosted on Drupal. org,
where like Code for Europe interested civic developers can contribute to the site's code in a similar way to Github.
Established in 10 EU Member States Website: http://www. communia-project. eu Organisation Name COMMUNIA Short description COMMUNIA The European Thematic Network on the Digital Public domain, is an international association based in Brussels. The overarching aim
blog posts, participation in consultations, drafting of policy papers, amendments and statements. COMMUNIA believes if they manage to change the law to recognize
The Internet prompted the creation of the association. Without the opportunities presented by the Internet,
the association would not exist. After decades of measures that have reduced drastically the public domain, typically by extending the terms of protection.
as the Internet and digital technologies enable people to access, use and redistribute culture with an ease and a power unforeseeable even just a generation ago.
Website: http://confine-project. eu Organisation Name Confine Short description The Confine Testbed experimental facility supports experimentally-driven research on Community-owned Open Local IP Networks.
Funkfeuer, Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network, The OPLAN Foundation, Comunicació per a la Cooperació Pangea Fraunhofer institute and Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology.
The background to the project is that recent technological developments have pushed forward the Internet and its possibilities, leading to a seemingly omnipresent Internet.
cost-effective and high quality Internet connection, with coverage for all citizens is still a challenge. Often this stems from economic causes,
as Internet provision in a metropolitan area is usually more economically attractive than providing access in rural areas.
is an emerging model for the Future Internet, where communities of citizens build, operate and own open IP-based networks.
and obstacles regarding Internet specifications that are exposed by these edge networks. It supports an integrated and multi-disciplinary effort to address
and sustainability of community networking as a model for the Future Internet. Five research projects:
and collaboration on community networking, starting from the FIRE (Future Internet Research and Experimentation) community nourished by the EC.
Actually, the open data efforts will be focused more on the Future Internet context of CONFINE rather than the test bed itself.
The CONFINE project addresses the need to explore bottom-up future sustainable Internet infrastructures. Since this aim requires contributions from all social groups,
The project makes uses of social networks to organize its activities, to make the knowledge addressing,
Nodes connect using affordable and accessible wireless IEEE 802.11 a b/n technology, using equipment from various manufacturers,
In Melbourne, Australia, Melbourne Wireless is a quickly growing community network (Braem et al. 2013). 94 95 Desis Network At a glance:
and hackerspaces, Operating a web service Key facts: Members active in Europe, America, Asia, Australia, and Africa Website:
http://www. desis-network. org Organisation Name Desis Network Short description DESIS (Design for Social Innovation towards Sustainability) is a network of design labs,
and website management. 96 History and Mission The DESIS Network originates from three main international activities in the 2006-2008 period:‘
and shared their detailed report on the DESIS UK website. This is just one instance that demonstrates how DESIS has forged useful alliances between academic institutes and government authorities. 99 Everyaware At a glance:
Research project, network, operating web service providing education & training Key facts: 3-year project EU funded with € 2. 1m Website:
http://www. everyaware. eu Short description The Everyaware project aims to empower citizens to engage actively in improving their own environment and making it more sustainable.
and information presentation to users by means of mobile and web-based devices such as smartphones, computers and sensors.
a smartphone controlling the data acquisition and a modular sensor box with several pluggable sensors.
At the same time, web-interfaces allow users to easily upload their sensor readings, and equally easily tag these with subjective information.
It is a web platform for gaming and social computation. It helps researchers to devise web games/experiments,
and offers a platform for others to join in, meaning the public can both enjoy
and contribute to the scientific research. 101 The web platform is built to engage social computation, letting the different organisers of projects collaborate
The data storage system and the gaming platform are the two main components of the Everyaware web-based infrastructure,
Widenoise is an iphone and Android app that helps people to understand the soundscape around
Sensorbox, Airprobe, a dedicated Web server and Web application, together form a system that measures concentrations of pollutants in the air and localises them through a GPS.
This enables users to see the measurements in real time by using a Bluetooth and Airprobe app on their smartphone,
In their research and practical work, Everyaware focus on sensing, mobile and location-based technologies, as well as data visualisation.
Mobile and location-based technologies: Cell phones and PCS incorporate sensors of increasing accuracy: GPS sensors, cameras, microphones, accelerometers and thermometers are already a default equipment in most of the mentioned devices.
Networks have accompanied also this process, by expanding the availability of an Internet connection throughout daily life.
Online communication platforms: It is developed within the Web2. 0 paradigm to provide users with the opportunity of collectively categorising,
social networking tools, which allow effective data and opinion collection, and real-time information spreading processes. In addition, theoretical and modelling tools developed by physicists,
Use of mobile phones for this purpose seems a particularly powerful way of getting ordinary people involved,
Over 250 individual fabrication projects done in Fablab Amsterdam Website: http://fablab. waag. org/Organisation Name Waag Society Short description Fablab Amsterdam is a Fab Lab (short for fabrication laboratory),
Fablab Amsterdam is also part of a global network of standardised open hardware setups. Type of organisation Fablab Amsterdam is part of the international Fablab community (there are now Fablabs in most parts of the world, from inner-city Boston through to rural India, South africa and the North of Norway.
The only requirement for using Fablab Amsterdam in open days is to document the work and project on the Fablab website and share the designs with the rest of the community under a Creative Commons license.
25,000 phones sold in less than 6 months. 50,000 followers on Facebook. Website: http://www. fairphone. com/Organisation Name Fairphone Short description Fairphone is a start-up company producing the world's first ethically sourced smart phone,
initiated at Waag Society in The netherlands. History and mission Fairphone was founded as a social enterprise in 2010.
The organisation can't be described as an ordinary smartphone manufacturer. It started as a joint project between Waag Society,
Action Aid and Schrijf-Schrijf in The netherlands as a campaign against the dire conditions endured by people working in sections of the global and often very complex electronics goods supply chain.
cobalt and tantalum mines (materials used in mobile phones) of the Democratic Republic of congo (DRC), many of which are controlled by armed groups,
creating and producing its own smart phone. Through its own phone production Fairphone sought to take the next step in uncovering the story behind the sourcing, production, distribution and recycling of electronics,
and demonstrate how a more transparent supply chain could be developed. 112 What does it do,
Thereby creating an alternative in the smart phone market and raising the bar for the industry.
The project is not about the phone itself, instead Fairphone aims to open up the supply chain behind making the smart phone,
and create full transparency around how the product is made. The phone is a storytelling icon
and the starting point of a conversation about transparency in production processes and supply chains. By connecting the dots for consumers about the social and environmental impacts of the electronic products they purchase
To achieve its goals Fairphone is created as an open platform using mainly social media; anyone can step in
Production of a fairer smartphone: Fairphone aims to prove that it is possible to build a reasonably priced,
sourced from the same countries mobile phone companies would normally source material and assembly from, but by supporting independent miners and manufacturers who guarantee basic standards to their employees.
On November 13 2013 Fairphone announced that it had sold the first batch of 25,000 smartphones, using only social media for marketing.
The Fairphone team sees this as a unique achievement, as this means 25,000 people were willing to buy a phone that has not been produced yet from a company that has produced never a phone before,
based on belief in the values and mission behind the company. The organisation aims to deliver the phones by the end of December 2013.
The tin and tantalum in the first edition Fairphone are sourced from conflict-free mines outside of the control of warring parties in countries such as the Democratic Republic of congo,
and partners on the ground to achieve similar assurances about other materials used in the phone
In the DRC for example Fairphone looks to ensure that the raw materials that go into the phone do not fund the warring parties in the country.
Through the online platform (50,000 followers on Facebook) every step in the research and development is communicated. Fairphone has received many research requests
Fairphone see the smart phone as a practical starting point for telling the story of how the economy functions,
It's not our aim to become the biggest phone company in the world it's our aim to influence the biggest phone companies in the world, Tessa Wernick, Fairphone communications director.
However, it is important to note that Fairphone do not see the phone as a solution in and of itself,
instead they see it as a vehicle for change, through the revelation of its story,
understanding how phones are made and producing an alternative. Through mobilizing 25.000 potential consumers, Fairphone feels it has demonstrated how collective action can be made to count
Fairphone grew from a community platform to the first open mobile phone manufacturer. It is a great case of the open design movement creating grounds for new relations between product, manufacturers and consumers.
basically a large group of followers on Facebook and twitter. Since this started as a very collaborative project Fairphone has depended on the community for feedback and input.
and marketing solely through social media. Every step in the development process every decision the company makes,
This open approach extends to plans for the phone itself and the software, although there is some way to go on this. 114 How is funded the organisation?
and produce its smart phone, it has received funding from Bethnal Green Ventures to participate in a startup Bootcamp
The phone itself is being sold in a pre-sale model and in batches of 25,000 at a time. 5000 people order
and pay for the phone before the company decides to go into production. This way a healthy relationship with the manufacturer can be built,
Operating a web service Key facts: The platform has 4 million users worldwide Website: https://github. com/Organisation Name Github Short description Github, a San francisco-based company, was started in 2008 as a way for open source software writers in various locations to rapidly create new
and better versions of their work collaboratively. It has grown since to be the largest social coding repository in the world.
in the majority of cases the projects people use Github to collaborate around are code for websites and software solutions.
To make it easy for developers to collaborate Git has developed a number of features such as a Web-based graphical interface, wikis and basic task management tools for every project.
there are over 5 million other projects on the site involving 3 million coders. However it seems Github wants to stretch digital collaboration and transparency to its limits
Instances of Github can be licensed to run on private servers inside a company's firewall under the Enterprise plans ($5000/year/20 seats.
but requires them to give up use of Github's‘distributed global network of talent.''In July 2012 Github received its first ever external funding,
and downloads (pushes and pulls) to Github. Though developed for software code, any types of files can be part of a Github repository,
Github is also a kind of social network, providing collaborators an easy way to discuss issues in a project,
In essence this people-centred approach to programming has meant Github has become a social networking site for programmers.
Healthcare. gov is intended a platform to enable users to navigate through its site, and to choose the most suitable healthcare package.
The code for the informational part of Healthcare. gov the frontend of the site was written by a Washington, D c. startup (Development Seed) and a small team of consultants.
According to Preston-Werner (a Github founder), the main problem is the site's forbiddingly technical approach.
Operating a web service Key facts: 14.000 registered users, launched 100 successful projects and sourced more than 700 nonfinancial contributions Website:
http://goteo. org/Organisation Name Goteo Short description Goteo. org is an open source social network for crowdfunding as well as distributed collaboration based in Spain.
The explicit mission of Goteo. org is to help finance and support the independent development of creative and innovative initiatives that contribute to the common good, free knowledge,
when Platoniq (a collective of cultural activists, open source practitioners and Internet researchers) came together to explore initiatives for giving monetary support online to different people and causes with a social purpose.
This included looking at new models for financing ventures such as the micro credit site Kiva, P2p lending models and emerging crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter.
This meant both replicating some features of crowdfunding from other sites, but also adding new features such as optimum and minimum costs needed, petitions for collaborations as well as monetary help,
At its simplest Goteo can be described as a social network that helps facilitate both the collective funding of and distributed collaboration or crowdsourcing of projects.
As an example, Nodo Móvil is a campaign to create a mobile wifi connection unit for social movements and public spaces.
which allows people to follow the wrap as it is used on future presents with web geolocation,
and significant social media attention as well (the platform has more than 8, 000 Twitter followers and 3000 Facebook likes).
Most importantly more than 100 open projects have been funded fully and supported to date via the platform, raising a total of nearly €350, 000, with more than 700 offers of different types of contribution and collaboration from volunteers.
just as social media and networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Youtube are a crucial part of launching,
Modern crowdfunding and its ability to quickly mobilise large groups of often very geographically dispersed people online around a common cause, would not have been possible before the emergence of the Internet.
Operating a web service Key facts: Landshare has got 55,000 members worldwide Website: http://Landshare. net Organisation Name Landshare Short description At its simplest, Landshare can be described as an open platform that allows people to share land.
Anyone who wishes to be involved in the Landshare project can register and to search the list of other Landshare Members to identify people who they may wish to contact to assist them (whether as a grower, landowner or helper) in setting up their own landsharing arrangements.
by using its site as a social network where interested D. I. Y. growers can join forces to form a growing collective,
Having said that, the site boasts over 73,000 members, and claims to have a community of over 60,
In August 2010, Landshare launched a free iphone app. The app featured a‘landspotting'camera tool
The app was developed by KEO Digital. 127 The Landshare. net website includes some built-in social networking features such as message inbox, forums,
This same feature is available to those who opt to use the website. The website also includes a number of sharing
and support platforms that promote digital collaboration related to finding or sharing land, finding groups in a member's local area,
By entering in your postcode to the searchable map on the website members are presented potentially with a number of helpers, sharers or growers in their area.
Individual Landshare initiatives have been funded using Landshare's sister site the crowdfunding platform Peoplefund. it, which, like the Landshare website and app, was also set up by KEO Digital.
Peoplefund. it works in a similar way to crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. As an example the platform was used to successfully raise £4, 401 (109 per cent) of the £4, 030 target for the proposed Dyfi Landshare.
website fees; travel expenses and Welsh translation services. Recently, Landshare. net has decided to run a trial to test the inclusion of some‘contextual advertising'to help pay for the continued development and maintenance of its website.
According to the site, the income from these adverts will help to fulfil the initiative's primary objective:
to connect as many growers with available growing space in the UK and beyond. What really helps reach goals?
Operating a web service Key facts: Used by the pirate party in Germany to source policy from members Website:
http://liquidfeedback. org/Organisation Name Liquid Feedback Short description Liquid feedback is free open source software
and time consuming to work efficiently, before the advent of the Internet. Finally, the open source approach,
165,000 people attended the two flagship Maker Faires in in 2012.30,000 people attended the Rome 2013 Mini Maker Faire Website:
social networks, crowdsourcing and 3d printing, and the benefit of participating in such open innovation environments for DIY product designers.
The Maker Faire creates a real-time sharing platform that is offline. Lots of products or projects that will be shown in Maker Faire have a strong focus on using digital social innovation technology such as open hardware,
but the faire provides an offline stage where makers can share their digital creation face-to-face.
Operating a web service Key facts: The Whatdotheyknow app has helped over 130,000 Freedom of Information requests.
The Fixmystreet app has helped report more than 250,000 problems reported Website: http://www. mysociety. org/Organisation Name mysociety Short description mysociety's key mission is to help people become more powerful in the civic and democratic parts of their lives, through digital means.
Since 2004 they have launched various websites that made it easy to do tasks such as identifying which politician (s) represent you,
tangible benefits'that e-commerce sites give people, but in the civic and democratic parts of their lives.
Building websites that make it easy for people to write to their politicians to get potholes fixed,
and organisations around the world who want to build copies of the sites mysociety builds. Some of the most prominent websites and software solutions developed by mysociety are listed below.
Fixmystreet-Fixmystreet Platform is built open-source software to help people run websites for reporting common street problems
like potholes and broken street lights. It has been used in many countries around the world, from Norway to New zealand to Georgia to Italy-where versions based on the original UK Fixmystreet website have been built.
ALAVETELI-Magnify the power of Right to Information laws in your country. Alaveteli is the popular‘Right-to-Know
Alaveteli powers mysociety's busy Whatdotheyknow. com website. MAPIT-Mapit Global's API uses Openstreetmap data to‘establish the location of different administrative boundaries, anywhere in the world.'
'Boundaries data is essential for anyone creating geographic web and mobile services that rely on locating a particular point within the correct country, district, county, city or region.
In 2012 mysociety worked closely with Kenyan NGO, Mzalendo, to relaunch Kenya's independent parliamentary monitoring website.
The core features of this website are: 139 A structured database that links people to places, organisations and roles.
and socially share individual pages Twitter streams on the home page and a blog for news items The Pombola code has been
since been used to run sites in Ghana, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. What is the social impact it is seeking,
because they believe that the Internet can meaningfully lower the barriers to taking the first civic or democratic steps in a citizen's life,
so at scale. mysociety's UK sites are the best showcases in terms of pure volume and engagement:
One of the candidates running for President in the 2013 Kenyan Election contacted the site personally to query the data behind their scorecard rating. mysociety emphasize the fact that,
if Presidential candidates care about how they are being represented on the site, then that is an indicator of impact not least because awareness that they will be held to such a level of scrutiny in the future could help drive higher standards of behaviour.
mysociety's sites are all open source. Some of the mysociety codebases have been worked on extensively to make them easy to use for the newcomer.
those interested in setting up a site using Pombola in their own country are encouraged to first contact the team to get more information.
mysociety's websites seem to have used technology to achieve their objective of holding governments more to account,
It is questionable how an organisation like mysociety could have had such obvious results in the absence technological advances made with the Internet.
As mentioned above all of its sites and applications use Github Issues for tracking bugs and feature requests,
while developing‘a reputation as a software company that can solve problems that more traditional web companies can't.'mysociety Ltd.,
many socially focused websites set up at similar times were expected to deliver immediately, and then were killed off by virtue of short term budgets.
so that even in the‘lean times'the organisation could afford to keep sites running for years at a time.
To grow the open-source communities around some of their core websites and components so that they are of ever greater value to larger numbers of people.
To upgrade their UK sites to make sure that they are always serving the needs of local users as best as is possible,
Operating a web service Key facts: has released 160 datasets which has lead to the development of more than 109 apps Website:
https://open. wien. at/site/Organisation Name Open Government Wien (Vienna henceforth) Short description Open Government Vienna is part of the Smart City and Open Government
strategies of the City of Vienna. Open Government is defined as the comprehensive redesign of politics and administrative activities according to the principles of modern Public Management and Public Governance.
collaboration and participation has seen a whole host off web and phone apps emerge to enhance how citizens engage with the city.
Type of organisation The Open Government Vienna strategy is part of the Smart City strategy of the City of Vienna,
Due to the new structures, the city administration makes increased use of Internet technology. A summary of the city's Open Government activities and the first edition of the Open Data catalogue are available online,
to be accessed via an all-new web portal. Presently 109 apps and visualisations have been made that make use of Open Government Data Vienna,
'the City of Vienna offers‘a comprehensive range of e-government options',‘with about 600 official e-government web pages and a variety of administrative services available online.'
'Yet advances in public management of this sort would doubtlessly be impossible without the improvements in computing storage and high levels of Internet penetration.
while the Open Government project looks to more‘conventional'digital communication channels such as Twitter, Facebook and emails, there are public life platforms where users can chat
or meet the experts of the City of Vienna, as well as an online forum. In 2012 two participation projects based around ideas of‘collaborative democracy'took place:
Operating a web service Key facts: Five citizen driven law proposal have reached support from 50.000 people
and have subsequently been debated in the Finish Parliament Website: http://openministry. info/(The Finnish language platform is at http://avoinministerio. fi/)Organisation Name Open Ministry (Avoin Ministeriö in Finnish) Short description The Open Ministry
While it was proposed that citizens could submit draft proposals onto an official Ministry of Justice website due to be launched in Autumn 2012
To gain 50,000 votes broad campaigning on social media and beyond is required, needing directed energy from many people.
Importantly, the Open Ministry goes further than the Ministry of Justice web platform by providing citizens with the tools
and boasts an Internet penetration rate of 89.3 percent, according to data released by the International Telecommunications Union in June 2012) more needs to be done to understand some of the potential barriers that might exist
if other countries with less Internet penetration were to adopt or replicate this model. What technological methods and tools is it using and
what did technology enable that was not previously possible? The Open Ministry website was developed using a YUI API a free, open source Javascript and CSS library for building interactive web applications.
Demographic metrics are gathered using Quantcast. The site's source code is also available on Github where anyone can fork the project,
contribute to it, or use it in other countries. 150 As part of its aim to crowdsource legislation,
To ensure the site was compliant with security standards the National Communications security Authority audited the site's code,
its security policies and its service/hosting providers to ensure that the details of citizens are safe
so that people can sign the initiatives online with the online banking codes or their mobile phones.
Undoubtedly this would not have been possible in the absence of the Internet and the online platforms that Open Ministry has been built on.
Part of the functionality of the website has had to be discontinued because not all banks were enabling Open Ministry to use their ID verification for users.
This meant that certain users were 151 able to use the site for free to sign particular initiatives,
Instead users can now use the website to sandbox ideas find support amongst the community of users,
and support existing initiatives on the official Ministry of Justice website, which is approved where initiatives are hosted.
to provide easy access for people not using Internet or not yet accustomed to e-Democracy.
Operating a web service Key facts: Created open data sets with more than 60 million companies registered Website:
http://opencorporates. com/Organisation Name Opencorporates Short description Opencorporates is the largest open database of companies in the world.
It is a website which shares data on corporate entities as open data under the share-alike attribution Open Database Licence.
The site also shows groups of companies that are legally part of the same conglomerate, which helps provide transparency on networks of corporate subsidiaries
Today the site has grown from 3 territories and a few million companies to over 75 jurisdictions and 60 million companies,
The core business of Opencorporates is to collect data on companies through web scraping tools
Web scraping data: The main activity within Opencorporates is to collaborate with Scraperwiki, a platform for doing data science on the web,
to help get the company data. The basics that are needed in order to create a company record at Opencorporates are the company number, the jurisdiction and the company's name.
Web scraping (web harvesting or web data extraction) is a computer software technique of extracting information from websites.
The site also has a Google Refine reconciliation function that matches legal entities to company names.
It would not be possible without a huge number of open source programmes, tools and resources, such as Twitter Bootstrap and Linux.
Within five years the database has expanded to over 61 million companies, without the Internet and the participation through Internet,
Technical specs behind the website: Opencorporates is built on the Rubyonrails framework, uses the Mysql and Neo4j databases, on servers running Linux.
Famfamfam icons and flags, Twitter Bootstrap, and Justvector icons are used also. The Scraperwiki allows people to write scrapers in Python
Operating a web service Key facts: 3 million users in 2013, which is tripled from 1 million a year before registered Website:
http://opengarden. com Organisation Name Open Garden Short description Open Garden is based a San francisco start up,
focusing on innovating in Internet use, through its mobile app and network building, and creating new ways to grow the Internet.
The simple mobile app enables users to connect to each other seamlessly and share their Internet connection.
With the largest scale implementation of a mobile Mesh Network, Open Garden is pioneering work on exploring ubiquitous connectivity.
and sharing the Internet. The business is based on an understanding that with the ubiquitous mobile Internet,
mobile consumers have become data users, and data transfer activities are constantly taking place among mobile users.
Skyrocketing consumption of mobile data is becoming curbed by a finite amount of licensed spectrum and the capacity limitations of cellular networks.
They can result in slower or incomplete downloads for content such as games or music, and video chat sessions that are intolerable due to poor quality
Seeing all these limitations, entrepreneur Micha Benoliel, Internet architect Stanislav Shalunov and developer Greg Hazel, decided to make the mobile web fit that could address this challenge.
when downloaded and installed on a smartphone, laptop, tablet or other compatible device, helps turn the hardware into a router.
Working with similarly equipped devices within a range of approximately 20 meters, the mesh app then discovers,
shares and coordinates access to any available Internet off ramp, optimizing users'Internet access. By crowdsourcing connectivity, Open Garden enables users to connect to the mobile web more frequently and with better results.
The Open Garden App can be turned into an open network, which improves the experience of mobile Internet users,
optimizes the service of wireless carriers, as well as benefits the handset and tablet manufactures. The Open Garden app is free for anyone to install on his or her smartphone, tablet or computer,
and it also licenses its technology to carriers, device manufacturers and Organisations. For consumers this has the potential to offer:
It also enables users to access the Internet as cheaply as possible. Faster Downloads: Users can find the fastest connection and most powerful signal without checking every available network,
and can move between networks seamlessly. Open Garden provides a way to access more data at faster speeds in more locations.
This means higher quality streaming video and audio and faster downloads. For carriers the benefits according to Open Garden are:
Faster Downloads and Stronger Coverage: Open Garden provides a way to access more data at faster speeds in more locations.
3g or 4g and Wi-fi: It enables seamless handoffs and simultaneous use of multiple networks, providing the strongest and fastest connection available.
Multi-Hop Wi-fi Offloading of Their Network: Its multi-hop Wi-fi offloading solution crowd sources bandwidth via existing residential and business Wi-fi connections.
Open Garden creates an overlay mesh network using Bluetooth and Wi-fi connections across a range of mobile devices, from smartphones to tablets to laptops and desktops.
Operators can boost their offerings even as they offload traffic from their networks, particularly in urban areas where cellular coverage can be inconsistent.
Open Garden believes that everyone should be able to access the Internet easily. On the one hand, there are still places that people have poor Internet connection,
on the other hand, there are also capacity and spec 159 trum limitations, which requires the network provider to go beyond the traditional mobile data solution.
Open Garden therefore wishes to speed up innovation from both the technology perspective and social perspective,
to create a new way of Internet sharing through users installing a mobile app, and to build up a community network where more people see the need for innovation,
where all users could share their Internet to make it much more accessible. Together with these benefits it is creating an ecosystem among consumers, wireless carriers, and manufacturers.
Using technologies such as Multi-Hop, Channel Bonding, Bluetooth and Wi-fi Direct, Open Garden's technology provides an opportunity for carriers to address the shortcomings of cellular networks even as they deliver a superior experience for mobile data users.
It enables faster, more efficient data transmissions without requiring users to manually sift through available networks to find the best one available.
reducing power consumption, enabling Wi-fi offloading, channel bonding and multi-hop connectivity. 160 What helps to reach goals and overcome barriers?
Since Open Garden aims at working on providing everyone everywhere fair access to Internet it motivates all kinds of groups to join into the community and to experiment
Developed CKAN Website: http://okfn. org Organisation Name Open Knowledge Foundation Short description The Open Knowledge Foundation is a global movement to open up knowledge around the world
Web and Software Development: Through developing software OKF are trying to create tools that support a global open knowledge and open data community.
discoverable and presentable on the web by providing tools to streamline publishing, sharing, finding and using data;
Some of the most prominent users of CKAN include the UK's data. gov. uk website, the United states government's Data. gov and the Australian government's data. gov. au.
A variety of technologies are being used in Open Knowledge Foundation, mostly web and software development related.
Its core activities are focusing on using the web and online technologies to better open
None of which would have been possible without the advance of the Internet and the ability to aggregate
or develop new web services and events related to the open knowledge agenda. What are the main barriers to innovate
English and Spanish under a Creative Commons license Website http://ouishare. net Short description Ouishare is a global collaborative consumption network.
Different members of the global network have specific areas or projects they are responsible for such as our online magazine, a local community,
create and share on the web. Ouishare calls this paradigm shift and the sum of these developments‘the collaborative economy'.
'The network was born in January 2012 out of a Facebook group in Paris, Ouishare now counts 400+members from 20 countries in Europe,
either offline or on specific online topics) is now bootstrapping Ouishare and co-designing this collective adventure with the community.
In its early stages, the Ouishare community was a Facebook group created in April 2011 to connect people who believed in the potential of the collaborative economy
Ouishare is an open knowledge network using social networking channels to promote collaborative consumption. Ouishare draws on the input
A network, A research project, Operating a web service Key facts: A‘wiki'with nearly 8000 pages of information,
Website: http://p2pfoundation. net/Organisation Name P2p Foundation Short description The P2p Foundation is registered a institute with the aim of studying the impact of peer-to-peer technology
The primary activity P2p foundation undertake to achive its goal is running the P2p foundation wiki, a website with with nearly 8, 000 pages of information on the P2p economy.
and organisations to create custom social networks) with a few hundred members, and a number of mailing lists,
Moreover, the P2p Foundation maintains a P2p Lab based in Ioannina (Greece), a blog and a wiki in Greek,
which aims to map the entire Internet, and thereby identify vulnerable off switches that governments could use to pull the plug on their society's online world.
The project was initiated a response to how some regimes‘turned off'the Internet during uprisings in the middle East in 2011,
and any form of identity and organisation which makes sense for the people involved The zero node website,
i e. the site of the P2p Foundation, would have a website with directories, an electronic newsletter and blog,
In the context of the above, the primary impact of P2p Foundation is demonstrated through traffic on the site.
and the P2p blog alone reached about 35,000 unique users in 2012. In addition to this the foundations work on Choke Point was recognised with a‘The next Idea'award (previous recipients include Wikileaks) by the organisation Ars Electronica in 2011.
The main technologis applied directly by P2p foundation include Wiki, blog, the Ning social network platform and standard mailing list. 172 However,
and knowledge exchange in ways not conceivable prior to the advent of the Internet, and more specifically the‘digital commons.'
what the P2p Foundation do continued on a basis by donating in a similar way to that adopted by Wikipedia with users being given the option to donate preset or other amounts through a Paypal platform.
Operating a web service Key facts: Online community with More than 220,000 members, has 2, 000+conditions, 35+published research studies,
and over 1 million treatment & symptom reports registered Website: http://www. patientslikeme. com/Organisation Name Patientslikeme Short description Patientslikeme is a free patient network where people can connect with each other to better understand their diseases,
or, as Ben Heywood, one of the sites founders has described it‘Our goal ultimately is that every patient's decision is informed by every patient before them'.
The primary service provided by Patientslikeme is a social network for people living with a long term health condition.
a US government funded site which provides access to information on publicly and privately supported clinical studies to members of their system,
Members of the site can search for trials for which they are eligible free of charge; the company also offers a commercial service to actively message potential participants for clinical trials.
In the United states, approximately 10 percent of newly diagnosed ALS patients register on the site each month
Operated as a web-based community where it shares open knowledge and generates an database that is being used to return the benefit to the community. 176
The main technological feature of Patientslikeme is the creation of an online social network that specifically targets people living with a long term health condition.
Internet: Patientslikeme has used to Internet to cooperate online and to allow for greater democratisation of patient medical data.
Social networking and Community Power: Peer-to-peer networks are becoming the cornerstone for a new era of patient-centered health care.
Patientslikeme allows people to directly report on their disease experiences. As patients come together to share treatments and symptoms in a structured way,
Different online social networks involve different social contracts for participants and different sets of tools. Patientslikeme's tools allow people to manage their health,
Operating a web service Key Facts: About 15,000 members in September 2013 Website: https://peerby. com Organisation Name Peerby Short description Peerby is a Dutch for-profit start-up that operates a peer-to-peer sharing service for products.
Users can share or request items from people in their neighbourhood online, via the Peerby website, their mobile or social media channels.
The platform was launched in Beta as a service targeting people in Netherlands in August 2012,
and how he wanted to facilitate this for others by creating a website for the neighbourhood that would allow people to meet
'Once a request has been posted using either the Peerby website or app the Peerby seeks to further encourage the matching between people looking for an item
Networking infrastructure and high-bandwidth penetration reaching a level allowing Social networks and Consumer-to-consumer marketplaces,
The service is based on Internet and the principles of open knowledge and the sharing economy.
Thanks to the social web, people can now share anything with anyone in the world.
however, with the Internet acting as a facilitator, there is a growing trend of websites that offer to facilitate peer-to-peer rental transactions.
All of these sites are encouraging something academics call collaborative consumption in other words, peer-to-peer sharing or renting.
While a user's skill level will naturally vary from person to person there's a user forum on the Raspberry Pi site,
These are defined as devices that wrap computing peripherals around a cellphone hardware core; meaning that such devices can be produced for just a few tens of dollars.
which included 6 Raspberry Pi's. These have been networked via a switch to a wireless router to facilitate access to RACHEL (one of the Raspberry Pi's dedicated educational servers).
and students can now access large amounts of educational content with having to rely on poor and expensive Internet connectivity.
It actively encourages collaborative coding for instance the open source coding for its collaborative project with Google,
Typically this sort of processor was used in mobile phones five years ago. Apart from the graphics processor, which is propriety to Broadcom,
DSI network effect Due to Raspberry Pi's programmable and simple open source model, a variety of Pi projects have emerged on the Web.
Raspberry Pi has collaborated also recently with Google to deliver a new open source coding tool called Coder.
users can develop their own apps for the web and then host them on a miniature server located directly on the Raspberry Pi.
The overall cost for the DIY programming project, using Google's recommended materials, is under $50 and, importantly,
and connect to a shared Wi-fi to access Coder through Chrome. The whole process, according to the developers, should take just 10 minutes.
Coder is designed also to work alongside instruction from other programming websites like Codeacademy and Khan academy.
users can host their own websites via Raspberry Pi or zip them to share with friends. 189 How is funded the organisation?
In late January 2013, Google announced it was giving the Raspberry Pi Foundation a grant worth an estimated £670
Offline Environments: While the Pi's design ensures it is suitable for off-grid environments,
For this reason Khan academy Lite was developed as an offline version of Khan academy‘s curriculum of free learning materials.
and a Wi-fi dongle, allowing for the MP4 lectures that make up the core of Khan academy's material to be brought to areas with poor Internet connectivity.
where the Internet didn't come until 1999, and coverage is still very minimal, so an offline solution like this is vital. 190
What really helps reach goals? Raspberry Pi's success has been the largely the result of the board's very low price
and hackerspaces, Operating a web service Key Facts: In 2013 over 10,000, 000 individual data points collected.
Website: http://blog. safecast. org/Organisation Name Safecast Short description Safecast is both the name of a Geiger counter built by the open source community as well as a global sensor network where Safecast owners can map
and freely share their radiation measurements in open data sets. The overarching aim of Safecast is to encourage people to actively contribute to the generation of a body of data that might alleviate environmental problems.
The history of Safecast is very much one of global network of people using social media and open tools to come together around a common cause.
The team behind Safecast initially connected on Twitter, and have described in interviews how they managed to connect with people through social networks
whenever they were trying to address a new challenge in the development of Safecast. For example, Dan Sythe, who ran International Medcom-a high quality geiger counter manufacturer,
and people at the Tokyo Hackerspace took part in the initial twitter discussion about building the device.
Spread information via Social media: While Geiger counters make it possible to produce narratives of nuclear risk as numbers,
Volunteer Geiger counter users and social media users among others are necessary to produce specific type of nuclear risk knowledge.
while other prototypes can be linked to a mobile phone). These counters are available at different costs,
Social media: Social media has helped Safecast in two main ways. It was through Twitter that many of the first connections were made between the original founders and developers of Safecast.
Building on this, it is through social media channels such as Twitter that Safecast publish their findings.
Engagement through visualisation and apps: Finally, Safecast visualizes measurement data on the Safecast Map in six coloured layers.
This provides information for people on the level of nuclear radiation in areas across Japan.
Building on this, one case study of Safecast from researchers at University of southern california describe how the collaboration around Safecast through 195 social media
The web-based online platform also enabled a sharing of data collected by citizens, to citizens, at a scale not possible before the advance of the Internet.
the Safecast community is one large global network. The richness of radiation data grows as people use
and hardware as well as social media has been instrumental in the success of Safecast. In addition to this, it can be argued that the success of the network was a combination of the identified unmet need,
A network, operating a web service Key facts: More than 400 active users and more backers Website:
http://smartcitizen. me/Organisation Name Fablab Barcelona Short description The Smart Citizen Kit is a set of tools (mostly sensors) built on an Arduino open hardware platform.
equipped with sensors that can capture data on air quality, temperature, noise, humidity and light. The board also contains a solar charger
and a Wifi antenna that enables the direct upload data from the sensors in real time to the online platform Anyone who has owns a kit,
the Internet and relies on a range of open hard and software tools. Open Hardware:
The web platform is developed with Open-Streetmap, Leaflet, Raphaël, jquery, Cakephp, and many more. The actual project is open source and available on the open source platform Github.
developing additional features for the smartphone app to interact with the hardware, and finalizing a 3d-printable, resilient enclosure.
Internet freedom and security Technology Trends: Open networks DSI activities: Operating a web service Key Facts:
Tor has a staff of 30 paid developers, researchers, and advocates, plus many dozen volunteers who help out on a daily basis. In a year Tor has grown from 500,000 daily users worldwide to more than 4 million users.
Website: https://www. torproject. org Organisation Name The Tor Project Short description The Tor project is a nonprofit organisation that conducts research and development into online privacy and anonymity.
It has developed software tools designed to stop people including government agencies and corporations learning web users location or tracking their browsing habits.
It offers a technology that bounces Internet users 'and websites'traffic through relays run by thousands of volunteers around the world,
making it extremely hard for anyone to identify the source of the information or the location of the user.
with a separate version available for Android smartphones. Type of organisation The Tor Project is a US 501 (c)( 3) nonprofit dedicated to research, development,
Tor, or The Onion Router, is a cryptographic technique first implemented by US NAVY research to permit intelligence agents to use the Internet without being traced,
by encrypting and routing communications through many different Internet servers. Subsequently Tor has been developed by the US University MIT and by the California Internet rights watchdog the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Today, it is used every day 202 for a wide variety of purposes by normal people, the military, journalists, law enforcement officers, activists,
the Tor project's emphasis was on protecting Internet users'privacy from corporations rather than governments.
We were concerned increasingly about all these websites-in the 2000/01 dotcom bubble, everyone was offering free services,
And let you take decisions about do you trust Google, do you trust Amazon, do you trust the BBC, whatever.
normal people who want to keep their Internet activities private from websites and advertisers; those concerned about cyberspying;
Tor notes that its technology is used also by military professionals the US NAVY is still a key user as well as activists and journalists in countries with strict censorship of media and the Internet.
and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features.
The Tor network's 3000 volunteer relays carry 16 Gbps for upwards of half a million daily users.
stronger cryptography capabilities and exciting new tools designed to probe for censorship on the Internet.
Internet freedom and anonymity: The Internet offers exciting new opportunities for individuals to express their views,
parody politicians, celebrate their favourite movie stars, or criticize businesses. Not everyone feels the same way though.
and governments more vulnerable to analysis. Using Tor protects you against a common form of Internet surveillance known as traffic analysis. Traffic analysis can be used to infer who is talking to whom over a public network.
and destination of your Internet traffic allows others to track your behaviour and interests. This can impact your chequebook if, for example, an e-commerce site uses price discrimination based on your country or institution of origin.
It can even threaten your job and physical safety by revealing who and where you are.
and lead to a harmful balkanization of the Internet. Internet users around the world must be able to trust that their information,
communications and documents are safe and secure. The alternative is a race to the bottom where only those users who seek out complex,
the connection between a global network of volunteers who help reroute traffic would not have been possible with technological advances in sensor networks and the development of the web itself.
and free for anyone to download and use. Enhancing collaboration and engagement: DSI network effect The strength of the Tor network relies on being able to relay traffic through a large network of routers owned by a global network of volunteers.
As more routers are connected the strength of the network and its ability to provide privacy grows.
How is funded the organisation? Tor's success is in large part thanks to the funding partners,
The majority of people using Tor are citizens who may simply want to stop advertisers from following them around the web.
It's an issue that people are just beginning to think about now especially in the context of sites like Facebook that attract advertisers with personal data that people opt to share.
Dark web: The cloak of anonymity provided by Tor makes it an attractive and powerful for criminals.
but also host their websites via its hidden services capabilities, which mean sites can only be accessed by people on the Tor network.
This is the so-called dark web element, and it's not unusual to see Tor pop up in stories about a range of criminal sites.
We work with law enforcement a lot, Lewman told the Guardian. They are fully aware of bad guys on Tor.
However, the criminals already have all the privacy they could ever need because they're willing to break the laws:
The main enabler behind Tor is the access to a global network of volunteers who make the out the network, that is the backbone of the service. 206 207 Ushahidi At a glance:
is a website that was developed initially to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.
In the aftermath of the election the Ushahidi was used to collect eyewitness reports from‘citizen journalist'of violence reported by email
and text message and placed them on Google maps. This website had 45,000 users in Kenya,
and was the central to the Ushahidi team realising there was a need for a platform based on it,
The main services provided by Ushahidi are three free software products that enable social activism and public accountability, through crowdsourcing of information from citizen observers by mobile phones or the Internet.
including SMS, email, Twitter and the web The Swiftriver Platform: Swiftriver is an open source platform that aims to democratize access to tools for filtering
The site allows the use of Openstreetmap maps in its user interface, but requires the Google maps API for geocoding.
Ushahidi is often set up using a local SMS gateway created by a local Frontlinesms, a free open source software that can be used to distribute and collect information via text messages.
Solutions, was identified to take over the website including overall management of the call/SMS centre function,
browsers as well as Internet communication security policy as significant obstacles to accessing the UHP website and data streams.
Finally, lack of Internet connection and mobile phone networks that are down (which was the case in parts of Haiti after the earthquake) has also been cited as a barrier to using the platform in rural areas
and areas hit by a natural catastrophe. 212 213 Zooniverse (citizen science web portal of CSA) At a glance:
and utilise Internet-based‘citizen science projects'in order to further science itself, and the public understanding of both science and of the scientific process.
CSA's projects are housed on Zooniverse the‘home of Citizen Science on the web.''Type of organisation Zooniverse is a project of the run by the Citizen Science Alliance (CSA) via its web portal.
The CSA is a collaboration of scientists, software developers and educators primarily coming from universities and public institutions. 214 History and mission Zooniverse grew from the original Galaxy Zoo project first launched in July 2007.
Following Galaxy Zoo's visible success, the applicability of this‘open knowledge'model is evidenced by the fact that the Zooniverse site now hosts more than a dozen projects
Unlike many early Internet-based citizen science projects (such as SETI@home which used spare computer processing power to analyse data, known as volunteer computing,
using the web to provide a means of reaching a much larger audience willing to devote their free time to collaborative projects through crowdsourcing initiatives like Zooniverse.
with the shift to an open source development model (as of February 2013) it is hoped that a community of volunteer developers will be able to assist in the localisation support of the site (translating the content into other languages) thereby having a positive impact on the outreach of the Zooniverse projects.
highly scalable application built in Ruby on Rails that runs on Amazon web services and uses Mongodb, Redis and a few other technologies.
Pretty much all of the site's requirements point to having a shared API (Ouroboros) that serves a large number of projects.
when the site is busy while also spending significant amounts of time monitoring the application performance
the number of servers they're running can be scaled back to a minimal level(‘automagically'on Amazon web services).
who still provide some of the images in the site today. With so many galaxies, it was assumed it would take years for visitors to the site to work through them all but within 24 hours of launch the site received almost 70,000 classifications an hour.
In the end, more than 50 million classifications were received by the project during its first year, contributed by more than 150,000 people.
but also to assist in the site's localisation support (translating sites into multiple languages. This latter point demonstrates how this process of collaboration can aid in the scaling up
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011