Organization

Social and Environmental Linkages

in
Links: 
Local knowledge, Power Research, Voices of the Unheard, Follow the Money, Grassroots Public Policy Development, Self-Designed Development, Environmental Impact Remediation, The Commons, Arts of Resilience, Citizen Tribunal, Environmental Impact Mitigation, Salvage Computing, Transparency
Douglas Schuler
Version: 
1
Problem: 
The fact that the social world of trade, culture, consciousness, etc. influences the environmental world — and vice versa — is obvious to anyone who thinks about it. On the other hand, questions about what do about those linkages and where to go with them, are often omitted or undervalued in relation to considerations that focus to one world or the other. Some environmental remedies may end up hurting precarious communities [2].
 
Identifying environmental degradation and tipping points for environmental crises, clearly two important elements of environmentalism, are by themselves insufficient for addressing them. It is also the case that trying to inject technology into a situation without thinking of the linkages is likely to result in unintended consequences; work in the social world to distribute it, advocate for it, adopt it, reject it etc. must be part of the program.
Context: 

Linking social and environmental factors should be inherent in the work of the LIMITS community—and to virtually any other project concerned about social justice and/or environmentalism. This pattern should be useful, both implicitly or explicitly, whenever analyzing or designing for environmental or social amelioration.

Discussion: 
The original concept that inspired the work on this pattern was in relation to the Green New Deal. The genius—and the audacity—of the Green New Deal is that it acknowledges that environmental problems such as climate change and species disappearance and social problems such as poverty, mass incarceration, xenophobia, and war are inextricably linked. And like the original New Deal, the Green New Deal is extremely wide-ranging with respect to the magnitude of resources proposed and the breadth of its consideration, which addresses agriculture, energy, transportation, economic security, the environment, and the entire social sphere besides.
 
Unfortunately, unlike the Green New Deal, policy is often developed around a single goal, often from an efficiency point of view, and often is simply imposed on people. Thus, all countries should reduce their use of oil or coal regardless of how the burden fell and on whom. Realizing the connections between social problems and environmental issues, especially where one exacerbates the other or when reducing one reduces the other, should offer clues as to where to look for interventions.
 
Which is not to say that this will be easy. As Dobson points out, neither social justice nor environmental sustainability necessarily produces the other [6]. And, for example, if increased environmental sustainability raises the taxes or makes gas prices higher than some kind of resistance is virtually guaranteed. In fact, it's not an easy matter to convince some people that computing can have any detrimental effects on the environment, presumably because the connection is harder to see and because of portrayal as a “green industry” [5].
 
What Linkages?
Human activity, as we know, is now the main driving force behind the major changes that are now disrupting the Earth's systems. But in many ways this is just the beginning of the story. 
We need to know what types of human activities are behind these changes? How do they work and how can they be interrupted or diverted? Sabie, Salman, and Easterbrook, for example, discuss how the computer has revolutionized the field of architecture, allowing new dazzling buildings to be built, but are asking the ICT community to accept the "challenge of providing shelter, primarily housing, in existing and future scarce-resource contexts." [30]
Who are the stakeholders? They include the people who affect the changes, the people who must endure the consequences, and the people in between. What can we do with the information? For one thing, it must be recognized that people in marginalized communities are often also in environmentally compromised areas. Linking the social and the environmental means including people from these communities in any conversation or deliberation that will affect them and find an appropriate approach not as an economic rationalistic imposed "solution" but derived through an ongoing negotiating process.
 
What Does Computing Have to Do With It?
Computer scientists, researchers, and practitioners—and the people that pay them—are reshaping the world — or at least they are making the reshaping happen more quickly. The impacts of computing are linked to both the social field and the environment, sometimes through propagating ignorance on the global scale, sometimes helping us further our understanding. 
 
What damage are we enabling? What are our roles and which ones can we step into? Powering the cloud has just bypassed the airline industry in terms of carbon and other pollutants. And crypto currency mining, like actual mining, is consuming vast, increasing amounts of energy, reenacting the fairy tale through spinning bits into gold. Computing as a vast collective activity has gone beyond enabling others to cause damage in their own way to being actual, direct producers of damage. Moreover, the hardware we employ (and throw away in record numbers) is constructed using rare earth metals that are acquired under harsh conditions that degrades both human and environmental health [2]. 
 
This pattern suggests that linkages might prove themselves to be important tools. What leverage points might we identify and leverage? The more we know about this the better our chances become. It might turn out, for example, that if the miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo decided to unionize, then a demand for transparency in supply chains at the same time, might be well-warranted.
 
The relationship between the social and environmental worlds to be thoroughly considered and explicitly linked in any policy that gets developed. 
Solution: 
SEED. Linkages connect stakeholders, tools, outcomes, goals, social and environmental entities and processes. We find and identify existing linkages. But, crucially, we also invent them. The LIMITS community links computing with sustainability issues. It also helps establish new links between people.
 
Linkages is an important concept but we need to go beyond that. We need to seek out the value of knowing about linkages. How can we help identify, hypothesize, leverage, illustrate, write stories about, rewrite, rewire, or create new necessary linkages?
Categories: 
orientation
Categories: 
organization
Categories: 
engagement
Themes: 
Research for Action
Themes: 
Policy
Themes: 
Social Movement
Themes: 
Theory
Verbiage for pattern card: 

Social and environmental issues are inextricably intertwined. Neither can be addressed without addressing the other. This pattern focuses on how those linkages manifest and what can be done to address both effectively and simultaneously.

Information about introductory graphic: 
Land and Sea, Todros

Citizen Assembly

in
Solution: 

A Citizens’ Assembly brings together people from all walks of life into one space, in person or online, to learn about, discuss, and deliberate on a topic, and then provide recommendations to their government and their fellow citizens.

Access to Technology

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Pattern number within this pattern set: 
1
Group Name: 
Urban Gardening
Peter Lyle
Queensland University of Technology
Marcus Foth
Queensland University of Technology
Jaz Hee-jeong Choi
Queensland University of Technology
Problem: 

Gardeners can come from any background, and as such have a wide variety of access to existing technology. Access to technology refers to whether an audience has a particular gadget or service, and their ability or willingness to use it as part of gardening practice.

Context: 

This problem applies to individuals and communities, whenever the intent is to design interactive technology. The context varies depending on the available resources of a community, and the target demographic of design.

Discussion: 

When designing for a known person or group, infrastructure and access to technology may be prescribed. Typically the context must be understood in order to know what is suitable. For example Australia has a high level of smartphone market penetration, and if targeting residential gardens, there are a likelihood of highcspeed Internet access. This would allow for the use of rich media and high levels of interconnectivity.

Communities on the other hand, such as Northey Street City Farm or Permablitz Brisbane, are limited in time and money to invest in additional technology or infrastructure. In these instances it is important to understand what technology community members already use or what infrastructure is already in place, and how is it currently used. With this understanding, the ability to repurpose, or make use of technology as part of a design, will become clear. Understanding the role technology plays in the lives of gardeners, and when they have access to technology, will result in a more inclusive design (Heitlinger et al., 2013).

Solution: 

Designers need to consider: the existing infrastructure; time and money to invest in new technology; and attitudes of gardeners to different technologies, and incorporate these preferences accordingly.

Community Oriented Social Media

in
Pattern ID: 
138
Rudyard
Discussion: 

Access to information and connections is essential to be successful in the 21st century. There is talk in many cities across the country of establishing municipal broadband- for example the grassroots organization “Upgrade Seattle” wants to “make the internet a city-owned and operated utility.” in Seattle.

 

A possible step further would be to create a publicly owned, operated and funded Social Network that would fill a role similar to that of radio and TV public broadcasting. The first and most obvious benefit would be the same one that comes from public broadcasting, that is- providing an alternative to the corporately owned, commercially funded media platforms, with a greater emphasis on community issues.

 

The services that companies like Facebook provide are valuable, and many of us willing give up a lot of equally valuable information in exchange for those services. The personal data Facebook mines from us is sold to other companies and used for market analysis, as well for generating personally targeted advertisements. A great wealth of information is produced thru all the clicks and likes and views from the users. All this data could go to good uses the private sector is not likely to be concerned with. Collection of census data and statistics for aiding scientific research are some of the immediate possibilities.

 

There is a need for people to have greater control over their information and how it is used. Perhaps not only a need, but a right. Then, beyond the issue of how our information is used, there’s the issue of how information filters to us through our “feeds.” The posts we see from our friends and the pages we follow (as well as advertisers) are sifted and prioritized based on hidden algorithms. There should be concern about how this system can create personal bubbles and opinion echo-chambers. Not to mention how it could influence people’s mental states (based on whether they see more police shootings or puppy videos, for example).

Categories: 
organization
Categories: 
social
Themes: 
Community Action
Pattern status: 
Draft

Archeodata

in
Problem: 
The amount of information that we have gathered as a species, be it in digital, analog or mental formats, is staggering, but a great deal of it has simply been abandoned after it's discovery or creation. The amount of man-hours dedicated to the countless forms of information analysis by as many individuals is incalculable, but a vast array of results from those analyses is or could be readily available to any community seeking niche information. At the time of writing this entry, it was estimated that there exists over 295 exabytes of information stored digitally. A fair amount of this information may be corrupted, duplicates or even the product of random generation, but a fair amount of it is also unique.
Context: 

Archeodata is distinctly separate from cultural knowledge in that the information it contains was only relevant to it's pursuer(s) and was later abandoned. This does not necessarily mean the information has been lost completely, only that it has been virtually forgotten and/or assumed to have no value. Possible examples could include analytic or statistical data, blueprints, music or computer code, while examples such as social mores, traditions, biological drives, simple relics, physical remains or any modern common knowledge (regardless of "age"/source) would not constitute archeodata. While the medium containing the data itself can sometimes offer addition physical data, what is important to defining archeodata is the presence of qualitative and/or quantitative information that has for all intents and purposes been abandoned, but can/could be accessed and applied to developing new, "cutting edge" perspectives.

Discussion: 
As a species we excel at information organization and dissemination. We are rare in that we are capable of mirroring behavior we have not physically seen but instead visualized through analysis of abstract information. The historic correlation between new methods of information dispersal and social "progress" is well accepted, e.g. the advent of writing, the creation of the printing press and telegraph, television and radios. These new technologies have, over the centuries, allowed progressively more information to be made accessible, and with modern digital communication we are now able to disseminate vast amounts of information quickly and easily.
 
Humanity is the only species known to encode and transmit information through abstract symbolism, i.e. writing, allowing a healthy amount of current understanding to have already been built on archeodata. Modern archaeology and anthropology are focus heavily on the recovery and study of ancient archeodata while many of the modern "hard" sciences owe significant breakthroughs to the recovery and synthesis of the same. For example, during the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak Dr John Snow tracked outbreaks of the disease using a standard dot map/Voronoi diagram, then famously used the data to identify the source of the outbreak as the public well on Broad Street. Afterwards, officials rejected his assertion that water was responsible for bearing the disease and his data was abandoned until 1866 when his information was used to combat a similar outbreak in Bromley. These studies were of minor interest to the medical community at the time, but several decades later were of great interest to Pasteur, Cook and Lister as they established modern germ theory. More recently, there is much debate on the ethics of using data from the infamous Nazi freezing experiments, which remains some of our only data on death from exposure. Conversely, after the death of Nokolai Tesla many of his notes were initially seized by the US government, and after declassification showed theories applicable to to modern plasma torches, radar and wireless networks.
 
The issue of privacy does not apply to true archeodata because it has, by nature, been abandoned or lost, and thus assumed to possess no value by laypersons. Information is only considered sensitive or private when it's dispersal could potentially impact ones freedoms, but this obviously does not apply to what has been discarded. For example, online fetish communities often include a clause in their membership agreement that members cannot use any information about other members obtained through any means for any purpose; this is done with the stated intention of creating a "safe space" or judgement-free community where members can explore interests without social repercussions. Likewise, government surveillance of citizens is a hotly debated topic with similar arguments for and against, where, conversely, examining the sexuality of various historic cultures is as widely accepted as our poring over ancient journals and entering tombs. A defining hallmark of archeodata is that the information holds no value to whomever, if anyone, is aware of it.
 
Much data already exists, but in addition to organization it also requires verification. For example, until the recovery and translation of Homer's epic cycle the existence of the city of Troy had been forgotten. It was found after centuries of searching evidence to verify the data that had been implied. Conversely, while the existence of Atlantis or Camelot has been implied by various recovered sources there is much more evidence against their existences then for them.  
 
Archeodata is not limited to information or statistics. A fantastic amount of software code has been written that is considered largely obsolete, ranging from machine-specific drivers to video games, and occasionally this type of information proves useful, or at least entertaining. Conversely, the rate at which software and digital hardware develop can make recovering this type of data difficult: after going out of business, the contractor that built the US military's inventory of A-10 Thunderbolts simply threw out their schematics, forcing the US Air Force to scavenge existing parts until they learned how to build suitable replacements. Similarly, NASA engineers attempting to access old Apollo mission schematics found contemporary hardware incompatible with older storage mediums while the original computers were completely inoperable. Likewise, ancient music has been the subject of much curiosity, but while many ancient instruments have been unearthed relatively few cultures through histories had developed a system of music notation and many of the ancient ones we don't know how to read. 
 
There also comes the unfortunate truth that at some point, data that is of interest to us now will also lose relevance. Our intense desire to analyze our environment is matched only by our desire to preserve our individual analyses, and it is impossible for one to predict all the ways in which information can be used. Many groups intentionally store archeodata in many forms, ranging from humble time capsules to massive national archives. Perhaps the Ur example of the intentional preperation of archeodata is Wikipedia's Terminal Event Management Policy: should a "non-localized event... render the continuation of Wikipedia in its current form untenable" occur, a series of protocols have been developed to increase the chances of the Wikimedia Foundations data banks being preserved. The "worst-case scenario" scenario, with ten minutes or less until failure, involves broadcasting the entire database, compressed, into space via radio telescopes around the world. Conversely, since 1983 the US Department of Energy has been struggling to figure out how to label nuclear waste disposal sites in such a way that their contents will be recognizable as dangerous for the length of their existence, or about 10,000 years. It feels safe to assume that in the space of that time our language and culture may be lost where artifacts remain, thus leaving the correct archeodata in an accessible way might be our only responsible option.
 
Data is much like a physical tool in that in can be applied to achieve desired results from the natural world, and in that sense finding new data is sort of like finding that a strange tool: you recognize that it is what it is, even if you just don't know what to do with it, until that perfect moment comes along when everything "clicks" and you see exactly how it can be used. The key is to remembering that even if you can use something as a wrench, that doesn't mean you might not be able to use it later on as a screwdriver or a hammer. 
Solution: 

While the internet and digital communications have already drastically increased accessibility to archeodata, there are vast archives and databases which remain, for whatever reasons, inaccessible. Communities wishing to prepare archeodata for future discovery must preserve it accordingly in an accessible manner, whether digital or analog. The advent of digital communications allow for quick and easy dissemination of large amounts of data, but with the very real possibility of network failure or hardware malfunctions the need for backups is obvious. Adding "tags" to data, or small external pieces of information by which the larger can be identified/sorted, has also shown to be a reliable means of sorting large amounts of information, e.g. the Dewey decimal system, internet tags.

Verbiage for pattern card: 

There already exists a profound amount of information, however that is really all much of it does. Countless individuals have compiled or accumulated vast amounts of data, used it for their purposes and then left it abandoned. This does not negate the validity of their data, but it does insinuate the need for making it accessible. 

Adapting Change

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David Hubert
CIRAL/CIRAN
Problem: 

Heraclitus of Ephesus wrote that of all the things in the world, "change is the only constant." As time goes on, circumstances beyond controlling will occur and and communities will be required to adapt to new conditions, but the nature of some types of change and/or how rapidly the transition occurs isn't always our favor. There also usually exists a correlation between the speed with which change occurs and the amount of supporting systems disrupted by this change, most often to their detriment. Many factors and situations are beyond our individual control while the end-state of change is uncertain at best, so when we recognize the process of change beginning to occur we do what we can to influence the factors we actually can control. If it is decided that action is needed to mitigate change then the nature of that action must be determined first; as Kwama Nkrumah wrote "action without thought is empty, [and] thought without action is blind.” Great care must be taken to avoid unnecessary disruption, and a balance must be found between planning and execution, ensuring that appropriate steps are taken while ensuring they are taken before control of a given situation is lost. 

Context: 
This pattern applies to any community engaged in a decision-making process. Many issues and possible changes are not time sensitive per se, but situations can easily occur at many scales where foregone or even delayed action would be detrimental to the community. Recognizing this type of situation falls on the members of this community, but this comes with the caveats that not all situations are as time- sensitive as they may appear, and that predicted end-states and rates of transition may not reflect reality. 
Discussion: 
Wikipedia defines time as "the indefinite continued progression of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future." From that, the process of change begins with the past, the staging and valuing of variables, then moving through the present by interacting with one another, then unfolding into their end-state in the future. The Hopi saw time as an environment that one moved through, like riding down a river winding through a constantly changing countryside, but thus far both science and philosophy have failed to produce a working model of time.
 
Also much like being swept down an unknown river, change is as unpredictable as it is inevitable. This vagueness makes change a very two-sided coin, offering either hope, or, more often then not, dread, for, as H.P. Lovecraft wrote, "the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." Numerous studies have shown that the brain operates very differently under different circumstances. Hunger, sleep deprivation and sex all affect our decision-making processes differently, but few drives cause more irrational behavior then fear. When faced with change, especially at larger scales, it can be very easy to slip into an emergency mindset, to lose sight of the bigger picture in lieu a seemingly large detail, but it is usually impossible to  truly say what changes would be good or bad for us just as we cannot accurately say what changes would be good or bad for others. This stems from the simple facts that "good" and "bad" are relative to the observer and that we cannot truly predict the range of consequences from our actions. Returning to the "time as a river" perspective, it is also important to note that it is not really a river, especially in terms of where it might take one. It seems to operate much more like a river delta: broad, steady, and filled with possibilities. 
 
However, this fear of change is not without reason. Any type of change, any adjustment of variables within a given system, inherently causes disruption among adjacent entities. Most often the scale and/or intensity of this disruption is proportional to the rate at which this change occurs, i.e. c=vt, c being the change occurring to a given system, v being the disruption of adjacent/interdependent systems, and t being the duration of time this change takes to occur. For example, if one were to dig a hole, one would have many options to achieve this end. The obvious solution would be to use a shovel, causing minimal collateral damage but taking a fair amount of time, where a diesel-powered excavator would certainly be faster but would tear up a lot of other ground. Moving further towards the extremes, an archaeologist can use brushes and trowels to carefully remove dirt over months or years, but with some artfully placed explosives you can have a hole dug in seconds. The perfectly valid concern held by those worried about change is ultimately over exactly which adjacent systems will be affected.
Solution: 

Changing times will require communities to change with them, but top-tier objectives, e.g. ensuring basic survival, rarely change, if ever, and what constitutes top-tier objective(s) must be identified by the community in question. That said, communities must remain flexible in their goals and be willing to adjust for new information and situations, e.g. recognizing when a lower tier objective is no longer feasible or when one method can achieve an objective better than another. Additionally, communities may often identify critical points of failure or obvious challenges within their own system(s) and develop contingencies accordingly. Intentional avoidance of "load-bearing" positions, e.g. having one person without whom the system cannot function, goes a long way towards ensuring stability, as do maintaining standardized communications, including documentation, language and data formatting, to ensure that the correct information can be found by those seeking it. Perhaps most importantly, communities must adopt the mindset of survival, of finding a balance between flexibility to go with some change and the rigidity to resist other, the willingness to "make it happen" in spite of external influence.Solution: Changing times will require communities to change with them, but top-tier objectives, e.g. ensuring basic survival, rarely change, if ever, and what constitutes top-tier objective(s) must be identified by the community in question. That said, communities must remain flexible in their goals and be willing to adjust for new information and situations, e.g. recognizing when a lower tier objective is no longer feasible or when one method can achieve an objective better than another. Additionally, communities may often identify critical points of failure or obvious challenges within their own system(s) and develop contingencies accordingly. Intentional avoidance of "load-bearing" positions, e.g. having one person without whom the system cannot function, goes a long way towards ensuring stability, as do maintaining standardized communications, including documentation, language and data formatting, to ensure that the correct information can be found by those seeking it. Perhaps most importantly, communities must adopt the mindset of survival, of finding a balance between flexibility to go with some change and the rigidity to resist other, the willingness to "make it happen" in spite of external influence.

Categories: 
orientation
Categories: 
organization
Themes: 
Education
Themes: 
Globalism and Localism
Themes: 
Community Action
Themes: 
Case Studies
Verbiage for pattern card: 
 Determining which steps to take is just as important as actually taking them, but in a time-sensitive environment, action and thought must be carefully balanced. Communities must be able to recognize where change is occuring/will occur as well as which rates of change are favorable, which are not, and which ones can be regulated or negated.
Pattern status: 
Released

Monopoly

in
Pattern number within this pattern set: 
26
Version: 
3
Verbiage for pattern card: 

Monopolies exist when one institution (or a small number of institutions) control all access to something, generally a commodity, information, or a service.  In the absense of external controls, the monopolist institution can (and almost invariably does) make up the rules all by themselves, and rarely to the benefit of the many.

Neighborhood based Community Health Workers

in
Pattern ID: 
913
Links: 

Healthy Living Collaborative of Southwest Washington

Michael O'Neill
Healthy Living Collaborative
Version: 
1
Problem: 

Fragmented systems of service delivery that are intended to deliver health, social wellbeing, and safety are in need of course correction to address severe disparities in health and welbeing that exist.  The mandate of health care reform from the Affordable Care Act is to improve care, improve population health outcomes, and lower costs. In Washington State the timeline to accomplish this is five years.

 

How can organizations that have traditionally delivered units of care shift towards providing access to wellness for a population which creates health equity, increases local capacity, and transforms payment and delivery systems?

Solution: 

Community Health Workers are an emerging solution to this problem as shown by a case study of the Healthy Living Collaborative project in Southwest Washington and other similar projects which it is modeled after.  Community Health Workers (CHWs) are trusted community members among the people they serve who can fill a variety of culturally appropriate roles.  These roles increase access for the CHWs friends, family, neighbors, and peers to resources, knowledge, and skills that promote wellness.  CHWs are a credible voice for the lived experience of local needs and play a critical role in translating this information across cultural, social, and organizational boundaries.

Verbiage for pattern card: 

Community Health Workers are an emerging solution to this problem as shown by a case study of the Healthy Living Collaborative project in Southwest Washington and other similar projects which it is modeled after.  Community Health Workers (CHWs) are trusted community members among the people they serve who can fill a variety of culturally appropriate roles.  These roles increase access for the CHWs friends, family, neighbors, and peers to resources, knowledge, and skills that promote wellness.  CHWs are a credible voice for the lived experience of local needs and play a critical role in translating this information across cultural, social, and organizational boundaries.

Pattern status: 
Draft
Pattern Sets: 
Community Health Workers as a Civic Intelligence case study

Conserving Natural Wealth

in
Version: 
1
Problem: 

 At the heart of preservation of the natural world is the conservation of our earth’s diminishing biodiversity, which could also be described as ‘natural wealth’. It is this biodiversity that has provided us with the sustenance and material support that has allowed us to shape our world, from the most basic processes such as oxygen supply to the formation of minerals essential for the production of complex modern equipment. The power that this natural wealth afforded us has become its greatest threat. In addition to the essential provision of food, fuel, building materials, clean water and air, a specific region’s biodiversity is often the cornerstone of its cultural identity. While it is problematic to quantify the rate of biodiversity loss, it has become increasingly evident in the broader context of widespread habitat loss, the true toll of which we cannot even begin to fathom. There are of course complex threats to biodiversity, such as the harvesting of wild plants and animals for research in order to find commercially valuable genetic and biochemical material, also known as ‘bioprospecting’. Such industries should be allowed to operate only within defined frameworks that are designed in conjunction with conservation objectives. The capital and expertise for such an industry most often originates from more developed countries, while their target areas will be in considerably underdeveloped regions of developing nations. This reality highlights the need for strong community organisations and heightened civic intelligence, particularly in these biodiversity ‘hotspots’, which are at risk not only from external exploitation of natural resources but also the wrong kinds of development.

Context: 

 

 

Discussion: 

The key areas of focus would be to strengthen communities in several ways, most importantly their understanding of their natural wealth, including its vulnerabilities, their ability to make decisions collectively and their capacity to communicate with other parties that can assist them in the preservation of this natural wealth. Civic intelligence is an important foundation in such circumstances, especially given the wide range of opportunities for more prominent community members to accrue disproportional financial benefits from what are, at best, collectively owned resources.

Pattern Sets: 
Preserving the Natural World
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