Brain Off
Mikel Maron :: Building Digital Technology for Our Planet

Illuminating and fascinating reading on Google’s naming policy for disputed places. Commendable that their decision making process, and the process for devising that process, have been so transparently communicated. There are things here for any mapping organization to learn from. And interesting to see how far Google’s process has paralleled OpenStreetMap, and where it ultimately diverges .. in the basis for authority.

I’ve had an interest in the nature of borders and conflicts in mapping ever since maps started to take over my life . Traditional cartography hadn’t done a very good job of representing the multiple, fluid realities of the world, especially in the age of nation states. The reality of borders isn’t represented very well by a thick black line. For instance, the national boundaries within the EU are tending towards something like US state borders; in fact, crossing into California, through the agricultural checkpoints, is more restrictive than driving from Germany to Austria. Better are the maps indicating the shifting line of control of WW2, so fascinating to me in my childhood atlas. The thick black line gives the illusion of stasis and control, but ultimately it’s all temporary.

Like most ultimately liberating technologies, maps were primarily designed as military technology, to claim territory, demonstrate authority, control reality. The promise of digital democratic mapping up-ends the military origins. Digital maps have the potential to express multiple and opposing points of view.

OpenStreetMap had the start of its first edit war in the fall. It won’t be the last. At issue was the territory of North Cyprus, in conflict since a nearly universally regarded illegal (excepting Turkey) invasion by Turkish forces over 30 years ago. A English expatriate living in North Cyprus was labelling places with Turkish names. A Greek Cypriot, whose father fled from North Cyprus, had been switching to the Greek names. And back and forth. Traditionally places had both Greek and Turkish names, and Greek and Turkish people, and people used whatever localisation they choose. With the political/military conflict, and a global platform for communication, the conflict has spread to open databases. The Wikipedia article on Cyprus is often in conflict, and now OSM.

I attempted to intervene and broker a solution between the fighting editors. Perhaps I had been spending too much time at the UN, and fancied myself a digital diplomat. With much patience, we came to agree that both Greek and Turkish names will be represented, in A/B fashion. But in the end, we could not reach consensus on who was A and who was B. So disappointedly, dialogue in this case failed.

The discussion within OSM for a solution has been wide ranging .. everything from totally laissez faire, i.e. letting the editors fight it out until one gets tired, policies for disabling certain user accounts (ineffective), whitelists, blacklists, to locking down certain areas from any editing at all. As with most “decisions” in OSM, the solution has been a combination of the simplest thing that works and whatever someone takes the initiative to actually code. We have a rule but no code changes (though disputes has led some impetus to implementing changesets and reverts). We have called our rule the On the Ground Rule, which resembles greatly Google’s Primary Local Usage. The difference of course is in where the ultimate authority for applying this rule lies.

Preceeding this difference, I think I can detect something of the frustration I’ve experienced in attempting to free data from the United Nations as Google has. “We considered attempting to extricate Google entirely from the problem of deciding placenames by simply deferring to the determinations of an existing, authoritative, multilateral or multistakeholder institution.” But the UN keeps a strict policy that their maps are not official political representations, and takes no authoritative stance on boundaries or names. Frustrating, since essentially the UN is hamstrung by the traditional, single reality view of cartography.

So, Google has imbued itself with the authority for these decisions. And they have the funds to employ a Director of Global Public Policy to think these thing fully through. Of course, of any authority, they are presently most open and transparent. Google is spreading its remit way beyond organizing the world’s information, to organizing the world. They are investing in green energy technologies, sponsoring humanitarian information software development, advising governments and intelligence agencies on how to operate. And perhaps the primary colored, happy, relatively open and efficient world of Google is a better alternative to the current world order! They’ve done such a good job with the web, give them our world.

Google has become a target for such sarcasm on many fronts .. because it wasn’t supposed to be this way. The interweb would rebalance power and authority, and this potential is what inspires me for democratic digital mapping. In this vein, Google is an systematic aberration, amassing power by doing what it should — being good. But does power inevitably corrupt? That’s the fear, and the remorse that it doesn’t necessarily need to be this way.

Where does OpenStreetMap derive its authority? The discussion of
the tagging process touched on this very issue. Jokingly, OpenStreetMap was described as an anarchic collective, but I don’t think that’s far off. There is some ultimate authority — the Foundation runs the servers — but only in the most hands off caretaker position. Beyond some extremes, it’s a continual negotiation and consensus building process, never definitively settling, open to newcomers and new perspectives. The authority of OpenStreetMap is its Openness.

This difference in authority has real implications for real maps. Here is Google and OpenStreetMap compared for Cyprus.

Google has decided to dodge the issue completely by not providing any data for Cyprus. There is definitely data commercially available, since Microsoft maps do show boundaries, roads, and names. OpenStreetMap shows the still somewhat messy circumstances.

OSM has better potential solutions. Our database is already internationalized. All that’s waiting is i18n and localisation of the maps themselves. In an interesting twist, this is one of OSM’s proposed Google Summer of Code projects. Another twist is that the student proposer is from India, and the problem of localising Indic scripts is a complicated one — how a series of characters is rendered differs based on their order, so rulesets/state machines need to be embedded in fonts. Yahoo India has made some impressive progress here, rendering Indian placenames in the local script of each Indian state. The Indian state itself provides the forum for sorting out placenames — state divisions are organized, and reorganized, along real and sometimes semi-imagined linguistic lines. But of any place I’ve ever visited, India demonstrates the greatest variety of people living in relative harmony .. so if there’s any place that will work out the solution for the promise of multiple points of view in digital democracy, I reckon it’s India.

There are probably too many projects I have an interest in but too little time for. On these I generally cheer lead when needed and make connections to other people and efforts, and give little nudges occasionally so that they’re rolling in the right direction.

Chris Schmidt has built a working version of the OpenAerialMap concept. Excellent. We’re moving from talking to hacking, and this seems poised to grow rapidly. I’m going to add imagery from Merano when I have the chance.

I’m disappointed that UNDemocracy has gone on strike. This seemed to me to be a landmark project, for pushing forward transparency in the UN governing bodies and agencies, and I know it has already had an effect inside and outside the UN. Julian has found the reaction too slow, but I’m not surprised since the UN is slow moving. There’s now discussion on how to raise a phoenix from the ashes…

Web4Dev wrapped up last week, and Anna & I are back from NYC. It was a great experience .. the presentation went really well, we met many people at the UN and with NGOs/etc, and got a good insight into the United Nations system.

Wednesday morning, I gave my presentation of Wikis at the UN, the projects Anna and I worked on at the UNDP and INSTRAW, in the session on Collaborative Tools with Sarah Kerr. I was really excited to speak on this and advocate more wikis at the UN. The presentation was received well, and we met many people interested in wiki projects. It was even suggested to use a wiki to organize next year’s conference. The web4dev wiki we set up demo’d great, and I we had a bunch of attendees add details.

The entire event was webcast, and immediately archived; great job by the UN AV guys. Here’s the video of my presentation. You can download the slides from here watch out, this is 22MB!. And there’s the transcript of what I said.

The Web4Dev conference proper was insightful, to understand how web development operates within the UN. However the impact on Monday, the Global Alliance-AIT sessions, was not positive. The AIT Global Partnership is a series of events to strengthen the UN’s use of technology through cooperation with IT corporations and professionals. Their sessions came off as a brazen sales pitch; during a panel on SOA (just web services and widgets, jargon for CX0), an audience member asked “What does this have to do with development?” and it appeared that the panelists didn’t even understand what “Development” meant in this context.

Now I definitely agree that public-private partnership is crucial to successful Development ICT. Sometimes the market responds in unexpected ways; for instance, Intel is apparently considering developing a competitor to the $100 Laptop. But Monday showed the dangers of such initiatives being hijacked by the private portion. AMD’s 50×15 project to have internet access to 50% of the world by 2015 is great, but will their educational initiatives be pushing open source software development in classrooms? Several times I heard the phrase “Open Source is not free”, referring to maintenance and other costs, which of course if true, but it was being used as a dismissal of open source as a viable option.

I think it’s more than a viable option .. it’s absolutely central to ICT in the developing world, not only because of the cost savings, but the freedom to modify and educational opportunities. Socially, open source software leads to open knowledge and open democracy, which I am pushing for with wikis. The UN itself works at cross purposes on this, with many open source initiatives, while at the same time licensing more and more from Microsoft internally. The UN itself could do so much to raise the profile of Open Source internationally.

I raised these issues during the final feedback session, and others in the audience encouragingly concurred. Overall there was a wonder on Web4Dev was all about, and a real desire to find that .. how can we continue to work together, finding leverage points with the UN system, working effectively, “UN 2.0″.

Another surprise was the call to build large and not “just release”. The school of thought to architect completely before building is alive and well .. while rapid prototyping and iterative development is accepted practice everywhere else on the web. Or at least a “lightweight” approach. One UN project which really impressed me was the UN Online Volunteering Service. They “connect development organizations and volunteers over the Internet and supports their effective online collaboration”. If you want to volunteer, you search for postings from organizations, get in touch, and get to work .. all online. They eat their own dog food .. a large part of the site redesign and translations are done by the same volunteers. The actual staff is only 3 people. Sounds like a Web 2.0 startup!

Being inside the UN was great. The international style still feels so optimistic, formal and relaxed at the same time. Not too anachronistic, though the cafe outside the meeting rooms is probably the last place in NYC that allows smoking inside a public building (diplomatic immunity and all). Wonder if that will survive through the upcoming renovation. After the conference closed, we had lunch at the Delegates Dining Room, great food and a ridiculous amount of fresh berries on the desert table.