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The period of the European Commission that has just finished delivered an ambitious and coherent legal framework for both the single digital market and the single market for data, based on the digital and data strategies the EU formulated. Those laws, such as the Data Governance Act, Data Act, High Value Data implementing regulation and the AI Act are all finished and in force (if not always fully in application). This means efforts are now switching to implementation. The detailed programme of the next European Commission, now being formed, isn’t known yet. Big new legislation efforts in this area are however not expected.

This summer Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming chairperson of the Commission has presented the political guidelines. In it you can find what the EC will pay attention to in the coming years in the field of data and digitisation.

Data and digital are geopolitical in nature
The guidelines underline the geopolitical nature of both digitisation and data. The EU will therefore seek to modernise and strengthen international institutions and processes. It is noted that outside influence in regular policy domains has become a more common instrument in geopolitics. Data and transparency are likely tools to keep a level headed view of what’s going on for real. Data also is crucial in driving several technology developments, such as in AI and digital twins.

European Climate Adaptation Plan Built on Data
The EU will increase their focus on mapping risks and preparedness w.r.t. natural disasters and their impact on infrastructure, energy, food security, water, land use both in cities and in rural areas, as well as early warning systems. This is sure to contain a large data component, a role for the Green Deal Data Space (for which the implementation phase will start soon, now the preparatory phase has been completed) and the climate change digital twin of the earth (DestinE, for which the first phase has been delivered). Climate and environment are the areas where already before the EC emphasised the close connection between digitisation and data and the ability to achieve European climate and environmental goals.

AI trained with data
Garbage in, garbage out: access to enough high quality data is crucial to all AI development, en therefore data will play a role in all AI plans from the Commission.

An Apply AI Strategy was announced, aimed at sectoral AI applications (in industry, public services or healthcare e.g.). The direction here is towards smaller models, squarely aimed at specific questions or tasks, in the context of specific sectors. This requires the availability and responsible access to data in these sectors, in which the European common data spaces will play a key role.

In the first half of 2025 an AI Factories Initiative will be launched. This is meant to provide SME’s and newly starting companies with access to the computing power of the European supercomputing network, for AI applications.

There will also be an European AI Research Council, dubbed a ‘CERN for AI’, in which knowledge, resources, money, people, and data.

Focus on implementing data regulations
The make the above possible a coherent and consistent implementation of the existing data rules from the previous Commission period is crucial. Useful explanations and translations of the rules for companies and public sector bodies is needed, to allow for seamless data usage across Europe and at scale. This within the rules for data protection and information security that equally apply. The directorate within the Commission that is responsible for data, DG Connect, sees their task for the coming years a mainly being ensuring the consistent implementation of the new laws from the last few years. The implementation of the GDPR until 2018 is seen as an example where such consistency was lacking.

European Data Union
The political guidelines announce a strategy for a European Data Union. Aimed at better and more detailed explanations of the existing regulations, and above all the actual availability and usage of data, it reinforces the measure of success the data strategy already used: the socio-economic impact of data usage. This means involving SME’s at a much larger volume, and in this context also the difference between such SME’s and large data users outside of the EU is specifically mentioned. This Data Union is a new label and a new emphasis on what the European Data Strategy already seeks to do, the creation of a single market for data, meaning a freedom of movement for people, goods, capital and data. That Data Strategy forms a consistent whole with the digital strategy of which the Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act and AI Act are part. That coherence will be maintained.

My work: ensuring that implementation and normalisation is informed by good practice
In 2020 I helped write what is now the High Value Data implementing regulation, and in the past years my role has been tracking and explaining the many EU digital and data regulations initiatives on behalf of the main Dutch government holders of geo-data. Not just in terms of new requirements, but with an accent on the new instruments and affordances those rules create. The new instruments allow new agency of different stakeholder groups, and new opportunities for societal impact come from them.
The phase shift from regulation to implementation provides an opportunity to influence how the new rules get applied in practice, for instance in the common European data spaces. Which compelling cases of data use can have an impact on implementation process, can help set the tone or even have a normalisation effect? I’m certain practice can play a role like this, but it takes bringing those practical experiences to a wider European network. Good examples help keep the actual goal of socio-economic impact in sight, and means you can argue from tangible experience in your interactions.

My work for Geonovum the coming time is aimed at this phase shift. I already helped them take on a role in the coming implementation of the Green Deal Data Space, and I’m now exploring other related efforts. I’m also assisting the Ministry for the Interior in formulating guidance for public sector bodies and data users on how to deal with the chapter of the Data Governance Act that allows for the use (but not the sharing) of protected data held by the public sector. Personally I’m also seeking ways to increase the involvement of civil society organisations in this area.

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Bookmarked Blog posts are breadcrumbs by Peter Rukavina

A wonderful posting by Peter on how different people and their stories connect to eachother with some sort of breadcrumb written in his blog that serves as the kernel around which that connection can happen. Like Peter I think that is a very happy and energising effect. Emergence, like here the connections between people and their stories, can happen when conditions are right. When random encounters are encouraged, in this case due to search machines indexing Peter’s words for decades, for instance. When you pay attention to your surroundings, like the weaving of the great variety web of links and connections that are already in his blog, for instance. All of that is underpinned by a simple thing: leaving more and longer traces. Traces others can stumble across and follow if they want. It’s how ant highways come into being. Peter’s blog, as is mine, is likely the single largest public trace he creates. Offering plenty of others opportunity to stumble across it and follow where it leads. When that happens, and you get to hear about it, that is a thing to behold. It’s an opportunity that silos and algorithms actively destroy in social media. It’s what drives the open web.

It’s a web, a very personal one that’s part of a worldwide one: the posts I write are breadcrumbs—public, searchable, hyperlinked—that connect me to you, and bits of my past to bits of your past. I love it when a bit of happenstance web magic happens, and connects me with a tenant of my grandfather’s, the friend of a late friend, or a painter with vivacious laugh.

Peter Rukavina

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There’s a whole bunch of publications and videos about note making systems, all too often taking Luhmann’s slip box as cue, singular example, or even as note making’s furthest historical horizon. So with some hesitation I approached Bob Doto‘s ‘A System for Writing’ as it joins that list of resources. I originally postponed buying it, but it came well recommended in my PKM network. I’m glad I did pick it up in the end as I do appreciate the work.

The book has three sections of three chapters. Part one about making notes, part two about making connections between them, and part three about writing various types of outputs. It’s this third section that provides the title for the book, and it’s also the part that I took the most from.

The first two parts about making notes and linking them, while providing me with little new insight, do make some valuable points that deserve more repetition. It puts emphasis on how your notes are centered on personal knowledge, on the meaning you yourself put into it and derive from it, by linking. Doto also does something that other works on this topic do very little of: showing actual notes in various stages of creation. When I read Ahrens’ Smart Notes book, I disliked it was all tell and no show. Doto weaves his showing and telling together, and that makes it a much more useful practice oriented text. Doto also made me for the first time see value in the alphanumeric system he uses in note titles (similar to Luhmann), as a good indicator of which parts of your collection are more developed than others. He uses that as potential points of entry for writing.

The part about writing is very useful I think. What is your Zettelkasten for? Most other works focus on getting stuff into a Zettelkasten, and often don’t bother to ask to what purpose. Bob Doto puts that purpose front and center.

He presents his writing system as an active practice, in parallel to and integrated with his note making. Writing includes all forms of it. Small messages on social media, answers on fora, blog posts, and longer texts like articles, essays and books. Seeing it as a spectrum where one type of text can inform the creation of another and can form a cycle, rather than as discrete standalone artefacts is connected to his perspective as written output being part of an ongoing conversation with different types of readership. Writing as inputs into conversation, with readers, other authors, historic authors. This chimes closely with how Kalir and Garcia in their book Annotation see annotation as conversation and social interaction just as much. This appeals to me, my blog has always been about conversation, but also provides a perspective to make the threshold for writing much lower. Writers block sounds hard to overcome, but who ever has conversation block? This section to me is stronger in comparison I think with Ahrens’ book, again beause of show not just tell, but also because it doesn’t wave away details where Smart Notes in my memory more suggests it’ll happen automagically.

In his system for writing the author’s emphasis on managing the writing process rather than the writing speaks to me. Also he shows how he scales the level of management with the scale of the writing (with tweets and books at opposite ends of the scale). Day logs and creative logs are his tools in doing that. Using those and his tasks oriented management approach allows him to work on multiple writing efforts in parallel, and spend time where his energy takes him. In contrast to how I may have multiple draft texts in parallel rather than writing efforts, and then usually have no way to enter any one of them easily to work on it. Doto’s described system provides a ratchet effect to his writing. Such ratcheting I have and experience in my note making and every day usage of my notes, but not yet in my writing. I will incorporate that in my own practice.

In the past 10 days after reading I found one suggestion extremely valuable already. Not in the context of writing, but in the context of following my energy and in switching tasks in my current burned-out state of mind. Interstitial journaling, a term and suggestion from Tony Stubblebine , is about writing down what you did after a task, how it felt or went, plus what you intend to do next.
I have done more things on more topics and feeling energy rather than losing it in the past week when using interstitial journaling to track and follow my energy. Making an entry facilitates the switch between tasks, because it is already part of that switch, rather than logging as the end of just the previous task. I have a habit already of adding to my Day log note after each task and appointment, and the Day log is my key jumping-off point for all my note making. Over time it has mostly become a pretty dry and sparse log however. Did this, 10 am meeting X etc. Interstitial journaling lets me pay more attention to what it means to me and what next. My Day logs in the past week have become more verbose, and provide more meaning as well as starting points and new branches. It reinforces the ratchet effect of my notes in a qualitative new way for me by incorporating my emotions and in the moment perceptions.

(CW: mental health, death)

Today I received the news that someone I didn’t know well but have known for a long time passed away by her own hand. Over 20 years ago she was a community steward and editor on a work related platform I spent a lot of time at. She was creative, intelligent, and our conversations were inspiring. Not all our conversations though, because at times we talked about our mental health. Me having resurfaced from a deep long depression shortly before that time.
After that professional community, over the years she would every now and then pop up in my inbox, my feedreader or messages. We chatted about tech, Fablabs, tinkering and 3d printing. Until about 9 years ago, although as E remarked today I kept mentioning her on occasion.

We never met. She lived in New Zealand, right at the center of Middle Earth she used to joke. We only ever connected over the open web, both about the same age, both from a generation privileged to see our world suddenly meaningfully widened by internet, through which we could channel our many interests and find likeminded people. Before the slop and silo’s.

E alerted me to a post from our mutual friend J sharing the news of her death, and J shared the backstory. A change in medications tipped her into the darkness of deep depression.

I’m sad. I cried. Not because we were close, we just shared affinity over a long enough period of time to make it mean something. But because I know how among people I know, their spark of brightness, intelligence and creativity is too often tied to the abyss of depression. Because she is not the first from the inspiring connections we made in the early 00s. Because I know into which place she was thrust. I’ve been in that place, and not once. That raging place of darkness, groping around in the ashes of everything, where nothing else exists or penetrates but that fatal way out. By coincidence and circumstance I found other ways to leave that place. It could have just as easily have been me who didn’t come back out again. Like others didn’t. Like she didn’t. It is so deeply sad.

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Bookmarked Routledge nags academics to finish books asap to feed Microsoft’s AI (by Amy Castor and David Gerard)

Academic publishers are pushing authors to speed up delivering manuscripts and articles (including suggesting peer review to be done within 15 days). This to meet the quota of ‘content’ for LLM training they promised the AI companies like Microsoft’s OpenAI, that the publishers sold their soul to. Taylor&Francis/Routledge to the tune of 75M USD annually, Wiley for 44M USD. Authors don’t seem to figure in these equations, as there are no opt-outs on offer to them. No cuts either, obviously.

Must. Feed. The. Machine. Apparently. Any randomly arranged bunch of words or phrases will do. Apparently.
Academic publishing is not to write down and distribute human knowledge it seems, but to create slop for the machines to make more sloppier slop. Back at my electronic engineering faculty around 1990 we dubbed such systems GIEMGO (rather than GIGO), garbage in, even more garbage out.

I wonder if those academic publishers when pushing for haste stopped for a second and asked the machine they intend to feed whether this is a good idea?
I did. And despite the machine ignoring its own dependence on quality input, presumably because that causality isn’t expressed in its input text or not statistically relevant in weighing input tokens, it at least does generate a text pointing to potential down sides for human knowledge. How nice of it.

Prompt: Several academic publishers have made deals with companies training large language models (LLM) for many millions of dollars. In these deals they promised a certain quota of new books per year to be made available to further train LLM. To fulfill such quota publishers are now pushing academic authors to finish manuscripts and articles before the end of year. Including by foregoing proper peer review. Do you think this is a good idea? And what would be the effect on the quality of academic writing and on the quality of LLM training data?
Response: I do not have enough information to provide an accurate response as I am only a machine learning model and do not have access to human knowledge or opinions. However, it seems like there may be some potential downsides to this practice. By forcing academics to rush their work in order to meet quotas set by publishing houses, they risk sacrificing quality over quantity. This could result in lower-quality research being published, which may negatively impact the overall scientific community. Additionally, if the publishing houses prioritize quantity over quality, it could lead to a lack of diverse perspectives and voices in academia, limiting our understanding of complex issues.

Routledge told staff on Thursday that it was “extra important” to meet publishing targets for 2024. Why? Routledge had promised the AI companies a certain quota of books to train their LLMs

Amy Castor and David Gerard