Designing Collective Intelligences: The Art of Anticipation
BACKGROUND/HISTORY AND CONTEXT OF THE WORKSHOP
The rise of prediction as a paradigm for analysis and governance is one of the key challenges across Europe’s societies. Interest in prediction grew when it became apparent that predictive analytics could inform resource allocation and improve planning across private and public sectors (predictive logistics, predictive maintenance, predictive policing).
As such systems mature far beyond the capacities ascribed to them in an earlier generation of foresight research, their power (as ubiquitous systems) expands to encompass the prediction of human behaviour more generally. If we want to rely on autonomous systems that can learn, we need to know much more about how to build institutions and organisations that learn. Otherwise, machine intelligence will not fully benefit human intelligence in key areas of life and labor.
MAIN AIM / OBJECTIVE
The workshop will consider how the arts engage technological innovation and collective intelligences to enable predictive agency and transdisciplinary encounter. This workshop will introduce the work of anticipate.network, an open transdisciplinary group that supports concrete collective intelligence design activities through collaborative research and explores use cases that highlight and resonate across the dynamics of collaborative creation, and evaluate outcomes in relation to multiple scales of value.
The workshop will consider:
– how technological changes embed us in human-machine-collectives of unprecedented scale – how we can comprehend and co-design such embeddedness through the “not-yet-disciplinary” cultures of experimental research and their anticipatory what-if-power
– how by working together, we can develop new ways of engaging in fore-sighting activities on all levels of generative engagement.
– how by complementing the powerful-yet-narrow vision of technology-centered predictive analytics, the multiple registers of anticipation can facilitate both forecasting and foresighting
– how members of the network can support each other in engaging with contexts and conditions that inform and structure their own work locally and translocally
EXPECTED OUTCOMES
The workshop will provide insight into:
– key aspects of mutual learning and collective intelligence design
– a framework based on generative engagement models derived from the (anticipatory) arts that facilitates the collaborative design of socio-technological systems and the creation of models of governance
– developing new ways of engaging in fore-sighting activities on all levels of generative engagement
– from the individual citizen to the policy maker structuring the different stages of such engagement
– recent shifts in the policy landscape and opportunities for collaborative approaches
BRIEF OUTLINE / METHODOLOGY
The workshop will provide a general introduction, a walk-through ideation with corresponding posters, open discussion of key themes and a short conclusion. All participants will receive a related working paper for further consideration.