It’s a little odd to use a concept like vertical integration but that seems to best explain what IBM is doing. IBM calls what Watson does “cognitive computing,” heralding an age of machines that supposedly think. What the company has not figured out is how to make this into an engine of growth. The tech giant has had years of shrinking revenue, but says its investments in Watson will take time to bear fruit. It will be picking up more talent in the deal.
As part of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) distinguished lecture series, Sriganesh Lokanathan, Team Leader- Big Data Research at LIRNEasia will be giving a talk in Delhi (Ramalingaswami Conference Hall, International Development Research Centre, 208 Jor Bagh, New Delhi 110003) on Monday, 2nd November 2015. Sriganesh will be speaking on the topic of “Leveraging mobile network big data for developmental policy: opportunities & challenges.” Anyone who wishes to attend should RSVP to Pratibha Shukla – email pshukla@idrc.ca or call +91-11-2461 9411 (extn: 7406) Program: 11.00 am Welcome and introductions: Dr.
I spent two challenging days at the first face-to-face meeting of the Privacy Advisory Group of UN Global Pulse in Den Haag. BIt was challenging because it was scheduled adjacent to a privacy commissioners’ conference and because the location was in Europe where privacy protection has been elevated to quasi-religious status. We as researchers are trying to solve problems that affect millions of people in developing countries such as traffic, unresponsive and poorly planned cities, the spread of diseases and so on. To us privacy and other harms matter, but in the foreground of our thinking we always place the social problems we are trying to solve. We attack the privacy problems because they get in the way of the larger purpose.
LIRNEasia CEO participated in two more events at the ITU Telecom World 2015 held in Budapest, Hungary. The ICT Economic and Industry Round Table aimed to look to the future to imagine with digital development would be. Helani spoke about state investment into the backhaul infrastructure, and about private sector entry into connecting the unconnected through zero rating. The other panel today was titled The Data Rich, Decision Making Poor: How to use Big Data for Improved Government Action. Helani showcased LIRNEasia’s Big Data research and our research inputs into the the Western Region Megapolis plan in Sri Lanka.
Last week, Moinul Zaber and I were privileged to discuss the potential of mobile network big data with a group of senior government officials assembled by the Access to Information Unit of the Prime Minister’s Office. The Planning Commission, the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, Bangladesh Computer Council, and the Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Commission were among those represented. The audience was fully engaged and wanted to identify priorities and establish a coordinating committee. Now that awareness and interest exists, the next step is gaining access to the data. The slideset.
Colombo was recently the host of the South Asian Urban Forum 2015 that was held from 21st-23rd September 2015. The main objective of this event was to encourage researchers to approach the rapid urbanization of South Asia from the viewpoint of South Asians. LIRNEasia researchers working on the Big Data for Development research participated in the forum and presented our ongoing research at the Researchers’ Forum that was held on the third day at the Department of Town and Country Planning of the University of Moratuwa. The audience included experienced researchers in urban infrastructure and planning, was held at the department of town and country planning of University of Moratuwa. Danaja Maldeniya and Kaushalya Madhawa presented their ongoing work.
It was a long way to come for a one-day workshop so I was hoping it would be a good event. It was. The Joint Research Center is described as the European Commission’s in-house science service. Within it exists an Institute for Prospective Technological Studies. I guess it was inspired by the Office of Technology Assessment that the US created in 1972 and shut down in the Gingrichian frenzy in the mid 1990s.
Maldeniya, D., Kumarage, A., Lokanathan, S., Kriendler, G., & Madhawa, K.
Madhawa, K., Lokanathan, S., Samarajiva, R., & Maldeniya, D.
Madhawa, K., Lokanathan, S., Maldeniya, D., & Samarajiva, R.
The European Union Joint Research Center-Institute of Prospective Technological Studies is convening a workshop in Sevilla on Big Data for the analysis of Digital Economy and Society on 22 September 2015. LIRNEasia has been invited to speak on Big data for development: New opportunities for emerging markets. The slideset is here.
Our intervention in the most widely read English daily in Sri Lanka emphasizes the “smart” in smart cities. A middle option focuses on citizens moving through time and space in the city as the primary sensors. They generate the big data that when analyzed constitute the feedback that is the essence of a smart city. Experimentation and learning are integral to this low-cost approach. It is especially appropriate for the organically developed, congested cities in developing countries where the costs of installing and maintaining city-owned sensors would be quite high.
Dr Srinath Perera, who heads research at WSO2 and serves as an advisor to our big data team, has written a blog post with the above heading, where he makes reference to our work. Understand social dynamics like people geographic distribution, demographic distribution, mobility patterns etc to aid in policy and urban planning. This can be done through data sets like Census, CDR data, social media data ( in the right context) etc. The good news is this is already underway by Lirneasia ( see Big Data for Development Project, http://lirneasia.net/projects/bd4d/).
A recent write up by IDRC featured our big data work. Similarly, private telecom companies’ data on mobile phone traffic has become a crucial resource for researchers at the Sri Lanka-based think tank LIRNEasia, a long-time IDRC research partner. Using phone data that tracks traffic flows can be a low-cost means of helping governments decide where to invest in road and public transport upgrades, says LIRNEasia chair Rohan Samarajiva. Since mobile phones are ubiquitous in Sri Lanka and phone traffic data is anonymous, studies are less likely to be biased in favour of the rich, he says. “We see that a mobile phone travels down a highway at a certain speed, but whether it’s rich or poor, travelling in a car or bus or motorbike — we don’t know.
In the context of LIRNEasia’s big data work, we intend to wrestle with these issues. If we are not getting our hands dirty with the data and the stories we extract from them, I fear the conversation will be sterile. First, students should learn that design choices in algorithms embody value judgments and therefore bias the way systems operate. They should also learn that these things are subtle: For example, designing an algorithm for targeted advertising that is gender-neutral is more complicated than simply ensuring that gender is ignored. They need to understand that classification rules obtained by machine learning are not immune from bias, especially when historical data incorporates bias.
I will be participating in this Internet Governance Forum session in Joao Pessoa, Brazil, later this year. The session is organized by UN Global Pulse: In recent years, the potential of big data derived from the Internet and other digital devices to transform targeted advertising, recommender systems, location based services, logistics and other activities in the private sector has come to fruition. Increasingly, parallel applications in development work have emerged, proving the utility of big data for monitoring and measuring social phenomenon including disease outbreaks, food security, or migration. However, the opportunities presented by big data simultaneously raise serious concerns about privacy, especially when it comes to use of personal data. To realize the benefits of “Big Data for Development” it is important to find solutions for how to protect fundamental rights and values, including the right to privacy as recognized by the UDHR and ICCPR.