Future, Openness and Sustainability
Description
Open knowledge can be used as a practical tool for moving towards sustainability. However, openness can also make an important contribution to sustainability from a philosophical and ethical perspective, a contribution not limited to digital resources. We will discuss ideas around what role open knowledge can play in a more sustainable future and why it is important to have openness as an ethical value for sustainability. In a series of short talks followed by a discussion, the speakers will consider the cleanweb, open seeds, open education resources, open source architecture and open economies.
Session Host
Centre for Sustainable Communications, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, @kthcesc Contact: Jorge Zapico, @zapico, jorge@zapi.co
Contributors
- James Smith, Cleanweb, UK., @floppy
- Chris Adams, AMEE, UK, @mrchrisadams
- Karthikeya Acharya, Aalto University, Finland/India.
- Jack Townsend, University of Southampton, UK, @jacktownsend_
- Hannes Ebner, KTH, Sweden, @electricbum
- Jorge Zapico, KTH, Sweden, @zapico (moderator)
Bios
The Center for Sustainable Communications is a research center at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm exploring the relationship between information and communication technologies and sustainability. http://cesc.kth.se
Karthikeya Acharya is pursuing his doctoral research at the Department of Design, School of Art, Design and Architecture, Aalto University. He studies material consumption in domestic environments within the context of vertical housing. His research is currently looking at constructive design research methods, like deploying prototypes in real contexts to make public the consumption of resources like electricity, water and petrol and study its implications on both residents’ behavior and on the material resources usage. He spends time between Finland and India.
Chris Adams has been working with the web for more than 10 years as a designer, sysadmin, developer and product manager. He’s worked with clients ranging from the likes of Red Bull, the NHS, Delloite, designing and building internal collaboration platforms, to scrappy startups, where he’s put environmental analytics APIs on coworking spaces, built apps to disrupt the rail industry, and designed a cure for road rage by hacking together cheap in-car webcams, gps tracking & video sharing sites.He now manages products at AMEE, in his spare time organising events for Cleanweb UK.
Hannes Ebner has a background in Telecommunication and Information Systems and has experience with both research and applied projects. He is a PhD candidate at the School of Computer Science and Communication at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology (http://www.kth.se) and co-founder of the spin-off MetaSolutions AB (http://www.metasolutions.se). The focus of his work and research lies on modern Web architectures, collective knowledge construction using Linked Data, and metadata interoperability. He is also one of the leading architects and developers behind numerous Open Source projects. You can find Hannes on the Web at http://ebner.se.
James Smith runs Cleanweb UK, an organisation promoting cleanweb activities in the UK. He has been building cleanweb projects since 2007, starting with The Carbon Diet and Green Thing. He worked as a lead developer and platform evangelist at AMEE, along the way building the world’s first natural language carbon calculator, AskAMEE. He is currently running Therm, the first specialist cleanweb consultancy. You can find him as @floppy on Twitter, or visit his personal blog at floppy.org.uk.
Jack Townsend is researching the role of openness and the Web in tackling global challenges and advancing sustainable development for all. This question has taken him from the energy sector, where he managed innovation with web applications and big data, to the Web and Internet Science group at the University of Southampton, UK. Jack recently created Globe-Town.org, a winner of the World Bank #Apps4Climate competition, which conveys the risks, responsibilities and opportunities of climate change using open data. Find him at @Jack Townsend.
Jorge Zapico has a background in computer science and in sustainable development. He is researching how computers can play a role for moving towards sustainability as a PhD candidate at the Center for Sustainable Communications in KTH, Stockholm. He combines coding and designing websites such as Carbon.to, Greenalytics and Footprinted with growing vegetables and experimenting living more sustainable. You can find more info at: http://jorge.zapi.co
Details
Location: Aalto PRO
Date & Time: Tue 18, 16:00 - 17:30
Target Group: Anyone interested in the topic and in discussing
Topic Stream: Open Knowledge and Sustainability
Session Etherpad page: link