Algorithms shape decision-making from a distance and datasets scraped by machine learning are being gathered for remote corporate interests. Artificial Intelligence is being discussed in the language of dystopian futures instead of being shaped by public interest for the common good.
We challenge that model, to imagine alternatives: communities with creator’s rights, frameworks for peer-learning, distributive knowledge building the context and grounding of data in the everyday, surfacing and creating layers of knowledge of place-based culture, information freely available, citizen science, designed to develop networks of collective intelligence
Local knowledge held in place becomes relational infrastructure: a collective data commons
By holding data in this way, communities can develop collective agency. As a pragmatic example, the neighbourhood planning process can be transformed by repositioning as resources of place-based information, working alongside local authorities to develop local mandates for change > to rebuild, repair, insulate, generate energy collectively; connect care sustainably, allocate resources regeneratively.
storytelling as memory and future
Local knowledge ranges from snapshots of history and personal memories, to datasets large and small collected by a range of organisations, including local authorities as custodians of heritage collections and archives.
But stories of place are being lost from the place where the stories began.
Once available as part of a thriving local news network, stories of people and place are disappearing. Too often local information is difficult to find, heritage documents aren’t easily available and news is spread across media platforms layered with commercial pathways that break threads rather than weave together to build them.
commons sense
Facing an uncertain future in an age of climate change, communities hold long memories. Local knowledge, passed down through generations, is felt deeply, held lightly – an expression or turn of phrase, history woven through stewardship of land, local landmarks and characters of history.
This indigenous sense of a place holds deep connections to functionality, purpose – and power structures. Within those structures of social and economic power, the commons is an important space, with a long history connected to the management and ownership of a place. The “commons” holds the natural and cultural resources accessible to all members of society, including resources of air and water, as part of our rights to a habitable Earth.
In this way, resources of information can also be rooted in place. They can be held for the common good and created from a library of questions asked by the community.
Creating a new definition of place which involves, values and includes all members of a community
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“Memory, because what we remember defines who we are today. Place, because it roots our today in a world we can understand…a home for our memories that connects us to a place reminds us of who we are but also what we share with the people around us” // Josh Westerling
Local information creates rich pictures of community and local distinctiveness. Every map / drawing / painting / picture of a building, street or tree holds social, cultural and economic history which is deepened when layered with domestic and infrastructure documents.
Local authority archives – historic maps, art and archaeology collections – can find new life in service of place. Local government investment into place-based impact analysis, multi-agency modelling data and resilience frameworks, can be shared in its local context with visual presentations for accessible knowledge exchange.
Data framed as a common good can be created and managed by a community – it can be valued by and create value for a community. When communities create information resources using the frameworks of citizen science, they bridge the ‘digital divide’ with peer-led, participatory knowledge exchange. Westcountry Rivers Trust‘s flagship Citizen Science Investigations project is seeing transformational data collected by citizens working together to monitor local rivers and waterways. The British Trust for Ornithology is working with 60,000 birders, volunteers monitoring birds and their biological data. Imagine these datasets located in place, directly related to habitat management across streams, fields, hedgerows, public parks, gardens. That rich sense of place and relational knowledge, the citizen science of listening and observing, inspiring a deep understanding of custodianship
Data in digital commons can develop collective agency for real change. Creation, stewarding and ownership of local data can be managed and directed by communities. Place celebrated in context for the common good >>> By shifting the locus of creation and value, can we rescue the world-changing proposition of AI, the artifice of intelligence, to a resource of place in service to new futures resonating with the testimony of lived knowledge of these lands?
Collective Commons: local knowledge > held in place