Making sense of our connected world
Towards the Technological Pluriverse
How does the design practice of digital technology need to be fundamentally changed to create a more inclusive digital future? Adriaan Odendaal & Karla Zavala Barreda on creating the idea of technological pluriverse through board games.
4 core properties of sustainable support formats for digitalisation in SMEs
How can we communicate digitalisation in SMEs in a appropriate way for the target group? 4 core characteristics of sustainable support formats for long-term success.
How to identify bias in Natural Language Processing
Why do translation programmes or chatbots often contain discriminatory tendencies towards gender or race? Here is an easy guide to understand how bias natural language processing works.
European Platform Alternatives
When the Platform Alternatives project began its research of Europe’s platform economy in 2020, the team set out to understand the structural effects of the large American platforms and the strategies of their European competitors. What they found was a highly diverse and active landscape, where scaling at all cost and market domination were not necessarily core concerns. Now, two years on, the question of how to regulate large platforms still dominates the public and policy debates. The contributions gathered here, however, suggest that it would also be of societal value if mainstream discourse learned to take a closer look at the variety of organisational solutions of existing European platforms. Not only to regulate them better but also to help them prosper into true alternatives in the global market.
When self-regulation in platform entrepreneurship is an asset
Tina Krell interviewed Magdalena Piech from Allegro, Poland’s leading digital marketplace. What are its community-driven efforts and views on regulation and self-regulation in platform entrepreneurship?
Drilling down on diversity in the European platform economy
The Platform Alternatives research team looks back on two years of research into the European platform economy and tells which insights have surprised them the most so far.
Is an ethical pathway to a technology-driven future of work possible?
Tina Krell sat down with Zenjob co-founder and CLO Frederik Fahning. They discussed the platform dynamics in the temp industry, the labour market and the challenges of scaling in Europe.
Four key ideas for a sustainable platform economy in Europe
The Platform Alternatives project spoke to various highly experienced stakeholders. In this article we want to share four ideas on sustainability and fairness for platform companies.
Defining Digitalisation: Defending Ethical Principles in the Digital Age
What visions must be implemented in the future so that the digital transformation of our society works for everyone? In dialogue with stakeholders from science, politics and civil society, the international research project “Ethics of Digitalisation” has taken stock of the current state of ethics-led digitalisation. We have summarised the most important results.
New toolkit collects easy tips for intersectional AI
For many, AI systems have further widened the gaps of inequality. This is why Intersectional AI (IAI) approaches use the perspectives of marginalised communities to fundamentally change the making and using of Artificial Intelligence. Our new toolkit provides an introductory guide to IAI and argues that everyone should be able to understand what AI is and what AI should be.
5 SEO tips for non-profit organisations
Many non-profit organisations often do not use the full potential of their online presence. We provide SEO tips to quickly and sustainably optimise the presence of your own website in search engines.
Filmfestivals on demand? Pandemie, Filmkultur und Streaming
Has the Covid 19 pandemic led to an exclusive film culture on the net that can compete with the unique experiences of major film festivals in Cannes, Venice or Berlin? Nastassja Kreft explored this question in her master’s thesis. She examined film festivals that have presented their programmes on digital streaming platforms since 2020.
The case of culture: Extractive practices of work-life integration
From “move fast and break things” to a modern day workplace panopticon: Tech companies are treating their own workforce as mere productivity machines, driving the insatiable thirst for growth and shareholder value. This new kind of work-life integration tends to encourage long working days, visible busyness, and the lack of true time off.
Shaping the Airbnb Experience: How platform executives manage their service providers
Have you ever noticed that Airbnb stays tend to resemble each other quite a bit, regardless of whether you are staying in, say, London or Lisbon? If so, this is no coincidence. In this blog post, Dr. Georg von Richthofen describes the strategies and tactics which platforms such as Airbnb use to manage service providers in the sharing economy and create distinctive customer experiences.
The case of nature: Digital Ecocide by Tech Companies
Digital tech companies and global digitalization trends are adding to the existing pressures on our natural environment on several ways. In fact, all six Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that relate to ecological sustainability are impacted by the digital tech industry.
Lack of digital policy in the truel of the chancellor candidates – An emancipation of the electorate
nsights into the projects in the field of digital policy are not yet available in the truels. However, if you would like to find out more, you have come to the right place: Three researchers from HIIG and HBI write about their opinions on digital policy and refer to the Digital Electoral Compass. It gives journalists and voters the opportunity to get an idea of the situation for themselves.
When will the first AI top the New York Times bestseller list?
Language generators based on artificial intelligence are producing increasingly convincing texts. This led us to wonder: Could an AI guest-author an article in Encore? This AI-written text is the result of our experiment.
Virtual volunteering – How young people use digital technologies for the common good
Digitalisation is giving rise to new fields and forms of engagement. In the pandemic, solidarity practices gained relevance, organisations were challenged.
Myth: AI Models are abstract and do not need personal data
In supervised machine learning, models are based on abstractions from training data. The models themselves, while structurally influenced by the training data, do not contain the data themselves. It therefore…
Open Access, but not for free: Resilient financing for academic publishing
Open access publishing does cost money too. But if the reader does not pay, who else is? Modes of community publishing and funding provide answers and hint towards a crucial set of values for academic exchange. Several research projects follow-up on this and work on practical solutions.
With Open Mind and Open Source – the democratic potential of public good-oriented AI
Dr. Theresa Züger talks to Patricia Leu from Prototype Fund about the Public Interest AI project and the democratic potential of AI for the common good.
Possibilities for Change – Higher Education and Digitalisation
Bronwen and Moritz highlight the institutional challenges posed to Higher Education Institutions by the pandemic and outline how these can be viewed as a window of opportunity
