a case for accountability-oriented design - keynote 2016 design and the city

A Case for Accountability-oriented Design

Dietmar Offenhuber, PhD Art+Design / Public Policy and Urban Affairs Northeastern University @dietoff

Ezra Stoller, TWA Flight Center, Eero Saarinen, New York, NY, 1962

1. Design is governance, governance is design

Dodge, Martin, and Rob Kitchin. 2004. “Flying through Code/space: The Real Virtuality of Air Travel.” Environment and Planning A 36 (2): 195–212.

Categorizations and design

Morville, Peter. 2014. Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything. Semantic Studios.

“An organization is its language.

Narrowing language increases efficiency.

Narrowing language also increases ignorance.

[…]

To regenerate, an organization creates a new language.”

Dubberly, Hugh, and Paul Pangaro. 2002. Notes on the Role of Leadership and Language in Regenerating Organizations. Sun Microsystems.

(new forms of measurement)

via Katja Schechtner

Manila Improstructure, 2015 Dietmar Offenhuber (NU), Katja Schechtner (ADB), Julia Nebrija (Manila)

Informality is inside, not outside the system

Co-production with residents - Arleen G. Braga, Chairman bgy. 822, Manila

Manila Improstructure, 2015 Dietmar Offenhuber (NU), Katja Schechtner (ADB), Julia Nebrija (Manila)

Main streetlight switch, Bgy. hall 821, Paco Manila

Manila Improstructure, 2015 Dietmar Offenhuber (NU), Katja Schechtner (ADB), Julia Nebrija (Manila)

Improstructure - governance as call & response

Ad-hoc repairs, lighting hybrids (K. Jagsch)

Manila Improstructure, 2015 Dietmar Offenhuber (NU), Katja Schechtner (ADB), Julia Nebrija (Manila)

Infrastructures of Transactionalization

The “Bitcoin End Game”

Barski, Conrad, and Chris Wilmer. 2014. Bitcoin for the Befuddled. San Francisco: No Starch Press.

“Just as robots have helped the world reduce menial physical labor, so cryptocurrency technology now gives us the tools to automate the menial labor of bureaucracy. Optimistically, the entirety of humanity will benefit as a result.”

Barski, Conrad, and Chris Wilmer. 2014. Bitcoin for the Befuddled. San Francisco: No Starch Press.

Bitcoin and Public Infrastructure

“In this future scenario, the roads on which Jen is driving will have also become autonomous actors, doing trades with the

car … They can submit bids to the car about how much they're going to charge to use them. If she's in a hurry, Jen

can choose a road that's a bit more expensive but which will allow her to get into the city faster.

Awesome, right?”

Mike Hearn. The Future of Money - Turing Festival 2013. Edinburgh.

Public good from an economic perspective

ExcludableNon-

excludable

Rivalrous Private goodsCommon

goods

Non-rivalrous Club goods Public goods

Measurement turns a public good into a private good

Bitcoin as a paradoxical commons*

ExcludableNon-

excludable

Rivalrous Private goodsCommon

goods

Non-rivalrous Club goods Public goods

*outside: private good inside: common good

The Commons

deals with limited resources involves conflict requires monitoring and enforcement has to be constantly re-negotiated shared instead of individual perspective

Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge university press.

4. The aesthetics of transactionalization

–Erik Voorhes, Twitter, Oct 1. 2012

Bitcoin “is regulated, only by mathematics instead of politicians.”

A governance conflict typical for common goods https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3adkxc

Karl Gottlieb von Windisch. 1783. Briefe über den Schachspieler des Hrn. von Kempelen, nebst drei Kupferstichen die diese berühmte Maschine vorstellen.

Human agency disguised as algorithms

Gregor Aisch, 2011

Clean outside

Accountability Technologies

collecting data

coordinating volunteers

spreading the message

Guttenplag activity, visualization: User8, reproduced in:

Offenhuber, Dietmar, and Katja Schechtner, eds. 2013. Accountability Technologies - Tools for Asking Hard Questions. Vienna: Ambra V.

Messy inside

Accountability-oriented design

http://www.soofa.co/

http://intellistreets.com

http://intellistreets.com

“Jack Kutner hoped to re-position Bigbelly's solar-powered trash compacting stations beyond trash and

recycling and use them also to provide public space Wi-Fi, advertising, and urban intelligence sensors.”

http://bigbelly.com/is-that-just-a-trash-can-or-might-it-also-be-a-wi-fi-hotspot

http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50059

Accountability-oriented design calls attention to issues of governance

Accountability-oriented design makes systems legible

Chinese bitcoin mine

Ambient Accountability - Dieter Zinnbauer Know Your Rights mural by Dasic Fernández

Memory Matrix - Azra Aksamija Cryptographic Heritage - Dietmar Offenhuber

Accountability-oriented design shapes public discourse by managing visibility

Opacitythrough

transparency

Urban Entropy (2015), Dietmar Offenhuber, Ars Electronica Center

Accountability-oriented design does not explain, it shows

Adrian Pratt Router

Accountability-oriented design acknowledges its own limitations

Workshop Maria Cecilia Loschiavo dos Santos, Professor, University of São Paulo Anne Scheinberg, Noë Waste Measurement Consultants (NWMC), the Hague Dietmar Offenhuber, Assistant Professor, Northeastern University, Boston

Full-day workshop, April 22nd from 9am - 3pm

Join our workshop tomorrow (please)