Digitale autonomie klinkt mooi en noodzakelijk. In de praktijk maken product managers en IT-managers keuzes op andere gronden dan ‘autonomie’. Een klassiek geval van een weging moeten maken tussen iets dat abstract is (‘autonomie’), versus iets dat veel concreter en vertrouwder is voor degene die een beslissing neemt (‘total cost of ownership’ bijv.). Bij digitale ethiek zie ik dat ook vaak, en in wegingen t.a.v. de AVG ook. Het concrete wint het dan meestal van het abstracte of algemene. Omdat je verschillende categorieën van dingen aan het vergelijken bent en we daar slecht in zijn.

Hoe maak je digitale autonomie tastbaar genoeg om het op directieniveau besproken te krijgen? Door de te vergelijken aspecten wel vergelijkbaar te maken. Recent kreeg ik een inkijkje in hoe dat binnen een grote uitvoeringsorganisatie is gegaan.

Startpunt was de probleemstelling: de keuze voor bepaalde digitale diensten o.b.v. louter financiële en technische factoren leidt tot afhankelijkheden. Dit introduceert operationele en financiële kwetsbaarheden, omdat er beslissingen buiten de eigen organisatie kunnen worden genomen die rechtstreeks de eigen primaire operationele processen stil kunnen leggen.

Het digitale stapelmodel uit de Digitale Open Strategische Autonomie (DOSA, 2023 Ministerie van Economische Zaken) is als hulpmiddel bij de analyse ingezet.

Het stapelmodel maakt onderscheid in lagen, van grondstoffen onderin via infrastructuur naar data en applicaties.

De analyse keek naar twee assen op elk van die lagen: is de organisatie ervan of niet? doet de organisatie het zelf, of doen ze het niet zelf?

In dit geval is de organisatie zelf op het vlak van data en toepassingen zeer actief, en dat behoort ook tot de kern van wie ze zijn. Maar ze besteden ook veel uit. In mindere mate geldt hetzelfde voor ‘zachte infrastrctuur’. Ze zijn niet van de harde infra, en hardware, en al helemaal niet van grondstoffen, en doen daar ook vrijwel niets zelf.

En wat was de verandering in de afgelopen jaren?

In bovenstaande plaatje zie je dat er op de vlakken van data, applicaties en zachte infrastructuur meer is uitbesteed in de afgelopen jaren. Daarbij is men ook zelf veel blijven doen m.b.t. data en applicaties, maar op het vlak van zachte infrastructuur is men minder zelf gaan doen en zijn bepaalde activiteiten gestopt.

Om afhankelijkheden te verminderen (m.n. daar waar je ‘er van bent’ maar wel veel uitbesteed), kun je benoemen of je de verandering wilt omkeren, en of je dat samen met anderen wilt doen. In onderstaande plaatje bijvoorbeeld, zelf volledig op de data focussen, t.a.v. applicaties zelf veel blijven doen, minder uitbesteden en meer samenwerken in de keten, en t.a.v. zachte infrastructuur minder zelf doen, meer samenwerken in de keten, en minder uitbesteden.

Hieruit volgen in een discussie makkelijker elementen van een uitvoerbare strategie, en concretere afwegingen t.a.v. inkoopvereisten die je aan anderen stelt, kennisontwikkeling in de organisatie, en samenwerkingsverbanden met ketenpartners.

I’ve been long fascinated by memory palaces. As a primary school kid and again as a teenager when I encountered the concept, I concluded that, while fascinating, they were more effort than what I would gain. My memory was fine, and first conjuring up a set of locations and then visualising evocative things in them to remember something seemed an awful lot of upfront trouble.

In recent months I’ve looked at memory palaces and other mnemonic techniques again. Reading Wayfinding by Michael Bond gave me insights into the role of the spatial brain in remembering, but also mental health and ageing. Reading Lynne Kelly’s Memory Craft gave me lots of insights both in various memory methods, as well as the effort and repetition that goes into them and which thus supports learning. Both were fun reads.

I decided to create a memory palace in my home office, which now has 45 loci.
Which leaves me with the question, what do I want to remember in it? And, I don’t know!

I find it quite hilarious that I can’t come up with something worthwhile to put in a memory palace! 😀
However I suspect that it might be the same for others. Searching forums for memory techniques, most applications are focused on showing off how well the methods work. Memory competitions to remember a random deck of cards in sequence in a few minutes.

Not a whole lot examples of memory palaces used for something ‘real’ and significant to its user.

Do use memory palaces? What do you remember with them for the long term? Why that? Would a note to link to be enough too?

This year I decided to no longer spend any money with Amazon. Over the years I’ve spent quite a bit at Amazon on mostly e-books, and some paper books.
I’m exploring other options of buying and acquiring ebooks. Today I decided to divert some of the money I would otherwise have spent at Amazon as donations to Standard Ebooks.

Standard Ebooks is a US based ‘low profit‘ organisation that creates ebooks from books that are (considered to be) in the public domain in the USA, and releases those ebooks into the public domain themselves.
It ensures works are available as ebook, also when there’s no commercial entity willing to market an ebook version.

Creativity builds on creativity, creators mutually influence each other across borders and across time. The public domain is a key societal boon. In my voluntary work for the Open Nederland association, the focus is on facilitating the use of Creative Commons licenses for makers in the Netherlands. Creative Commons allows you to set generic permissions for various types of use, thus allowing creative works to flow more easily, both to the public and to other makers.

Making public domain ebooks from public domain books is a similar act. It ensures that human creativity available in the public domain keeps growing, despite various publishing houses actively campaigning against it (or even aiming to limit library access to works).

Much better to spend money there than at Amazon.
I’m diverting about 25% of my previous Amazon spending to Standard Ebooks.

There are various kinds of RSS feeds that I can access as a patron, as well as an OPDS feed for their entire collection. Such an OPDS feed, like with podcasts, allows one to distribute books and book collections as feed payload. My Calibre library tool (as server) and various e-readers (as client) can work with such feeds.

There is one caveat: whether something is in or out of copyright, depends on your location as you download a work. Works can be in the public domain in e.g. the US, where Standard Ebooks is located, but still in copyright elsewhere and vice versa. Your location determines if you are breaching copyright when downloading a work.

Technology, working in technology, is inherently impacting society, and must concern itself with the democratisation of access and use, and the flow of information. My focus has always been the agency technology can provide, specifically to those who don’t have such agency without it. How it can strengthen community and autonomy. Unintended consequences and externalised effects of creating and using technology do always exist and impact different groups too, and need to be considered in any technology choice. My work in government data is about information and power asymmetries, my work in digital ethics more generally seeks to incorporate a wide range of other values and considerations, my work in tech regulation and standards similarly is to enable agency and confirm and embed values. Ethics is not about saying no to things, it’s about shaping our actions towards each other. Seeing each other as part of every question, not othering others to cut them out of deliberations. Democracy is at its core.
My day to day work in my company is carried by it and my voluntary board work reflects it as well.

My work in technology has always been what I’ve come to call constructive activism. It’s an often less visible way to enable change though than through e.g. overtly campaigning for such change. You can work in relative quiet. There are times however when it becomes needed to more visibly get involved, to be seen to get involved. I increasingly feel we’ve been sliding into such a situation in the past years here in the West.

Defend Democracy is a young civil society organisation, working in Brussels, to strengthen democracy, and defend it against eroding forces from here, elsewhere and from technology. Like my other voluntary board memberships enabling agency is key here. At the Open State Foundation it’s about citizen’s agency based on increased government transparency and better information. At the Open Nederland association of Dutch makers in support of Creative Commons licensing, it’s about makers’ autonomy in what happens to what they make and how it can contribute to society. At the ActivityClub foundation it’s enabling public discourse through a non-toxic common infrastructure (mastodon.nl a.o.). At Defend Democracy it’s about what those other three organisations have in common. Strengthening and defending democracy.

I am joining the board of Defend Democracy as its treasurer.

In several jurisdictions (certainly the USA and Australia, Germany too) Amazon Kindle customers are told that by February 25th the ability to download books to your computer (for later transfer to your device over USB) will be disabled. I haven’t seen it in my Dutch Amazon store yet. That makes me wonder if it is a phased roll-out. This won’t prevent you from reading your e-books in any way, but will prevent you from storing them in useful formats outside of the Amazon silo (so that Amazon no longer can remove them at will).

I realise my steps to move all my Amazon bought e-books to an environment I control have been timely (yet, also late by several years one might say).

Within the next 10 days downloading Kindle book files and using Epubor to move them into your Calibre library should likely be a priority if you care about long term autonomy over your e-readings. Enshittification avoidance is a civic duty I’d say.

Where enshittification happens it must be made to hurt the companies choosing it. Like by no longer sending money their way. So this step just makes avoiding Amazon purchases easier to keep up for me.