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This presentation describes the backround and purpose of the organisation Informed Individual
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Øystein Jakobsen, 02.04.2008
In the world today, bad things happen
• Animal cruelty
• Human rights violations
• Climate change
• Deforestation
• Species extinction
• Child labour
• Pollution
• Etc..
People are concerned
• Ideological organizations
– Save the Children, Amnesty
• New business areas
– Recycling, Solar panels, Wind power, Bioethanol etc
• Ethical strategies from companies
– Toyota, Coop, Google, Cultura, Storebrand
• Media attention
– 60 minutes, documentaries, articles
From a human standpoint, we need to adress these issues
Who can do something about it
Governments :
Mission: To govern a country
Does this according to a mandate approved by the voters or the military
Power is granted by the individual through voting or soldiering
Means of influence towards governments:
Voting for a party
Lobbying, adressing media etc
Following orders or tasks
Not voting for a party
Refusing orders or tasks
Protest, civil disobedience, resistance
Companies:
Mission: To maximise profit
Does this by selling products and services
Power is granted by the individual through purchasing products and services
Means of influence towards companies :
Purchasing products and services
Choosing which company to work for, how to work
Not purchasing products or services
Strike, refusing tasks, resignation
Bodies The individual
Example: The consumer
• Many of the worlds problems can be tied to companies
– which get their power from the consumer
• If people care, why do they buy products from "bad" companies?
– Most people would not endorse child labour
– People endorse child labour by purchasing chocolate made by children
The information gap between the action of buying chocolate and supporting child labour is too great for the individual to accept responsibility
The individual needs information to act responsibly
How the individual is being informed today
• Labelling
– Ecological products
– Fair trade
• Internet
– Wikipedia, Blogs
– Amnesty
• Rankings
– Covalence
– DJ Sustainability Index
• Education
– Universities
– Kindergarten
– Media
– NY times
– Al Jazeera
• Marketing
– TV Commercals
– Product placement
Watchgroups, journalists, labelling, marketing
• Collects information
• Interprets the information
•Presents the results through labelling, marketing, newsreports etc
Fact
What company does what and how, purchases from where, etc
IndividualDecides if he wants to trust the source, if the
information is relevant, if it is available
Problems with existing information models
• Combines information, interpretation and distribution
– The power is in the hands of the one controlling the media
• Amount of information
– There is simply too much, amount grows exponentially
• Availability of information
– Information may not be available at a time when the individual buys a product, votes, performs a task etc
• Lack of transparency
– Corporations, daughter companies, sub-brands, hedge-funds, offshore accounts - not very easy to keep track
• Does not involve the value chain
– What about sub-contractors, logistics suppliers, power suppliers?
• Does not engage the individual
– Except for UGC, the individual is passive and not contributing
Fact
Where products are manufactured, how politicians have voted etc
ContributorCollects and posts information
Filter engineInterpretation layer processing requests
Application
IndividualUses the system
Application
Filter managerCreates and manages filters
DatastoreStores and connects the information
Filter store
Contributor
Datastore
Filter engine
Application
Application
Fact
Individual Filter manager• A contributor collects
information
– Events
– Food tracking
– Product catalogs
– Production methods
– Public company information
Information collection
Fact
Contributor
Filter engine
Application
Application
Datastore
Individual Filter manager• The contributor posts information
to a datastore in a quantitative form
– The information is transformed to numbers and indexed.
– It is now possible to systematicially weigh, categorize, index (…) information. Can also contain text, video, references etc
Information contribution
Fact
Contributor
Datastore
Filter engine
Application
Individual
Application
Filter manager• A Filter manager creates a
filter
– Which contributors to trust
– What topics are important
– Weighting of information
– etc
Filter creation and management
Fact
Contributor
Datastore
Filter engine
Application
Application
Filter managerIndividual• An individual chooses filters
– Represents that individuals values and interests
– Can have several filters in combination
– Can subscribe to, create, personalise and share filters
Filter subscription
Fact
Contributor
Datastore
Filter engine
Application
Application
Individual Filter manager• The individual is presented
with relevant, aggregated information through 3rd party applications
– Lots and lots of possibilities
Information presentation
Regular manufacturing
Regular rating
Palm oil bioethanol production
Poor rating
Sustainable bioethanol production
Good rating
Regular manufacturing
Regular rating
Hydroelectric powerplant
Good rating
Hydroelectric powerplant
Poor
rating
Menu
Visual search
Search
Searching…
Menu
16%
Manufacturer: Nestlé
Product: Lion
New search
Fair Trade 12%
WWF -
Nor-Watch 20%
Examples of applications
• Presentation
– Personalised newspapers or RSS giving you relevant news
– A Firefox plugin shows ratings of companies or products you see
– Digital price tags in stores has the current store rating
– Informing you of political parties with values matching your own
– Internet marketing skips ads from irrelevant vendors
– You touch your phone to a pack of pork chops in the store, and the screen displays a smiley-face (Barcodes)
– You get personalised newscasts when watching TV or listening to radio
• Contribution
– Taking pictures with your phone, categorizing and weighting it with a mobile app and sending it in
– Posting anonymously through encrypted web forms
– Import from or cached connection with other databases
Benefits of this model
• Separates information, interpretation and distribution
– Shifts the power away from media to the individual through trust
• Can handle any kind of information at any granularity
– Can rate anything from whole countries to food ingredients
• Information is available and understandable
– Aggregation and presentation through 3rd party makes info available (immediacy)
• Anyone can contribute
– Grants an uncencored, unbiased system where the user can choose
• Manipulation of ratings is virtually impossible
– The filter manager is watching and can adjust continually
• Engages the individual
– Potentially changing behaviour
• Potentially a powerful tool for democracy
– Democracy is dependant on free speech and informed voters
Example consumer effects after critical mass
• Products and services with bad ratings will sell less
• Stores, distributors etc will be reluctant to sell products with bad ratings
– Since this will affect their own rating
• Companies will be reluctant to purchase raw materials, products and services from other companies with bad ratings
– Since this will affect their own rating
• Companies with good ratings are more attractive to employees
– Especially since students are generally interrested in ethical issues
• Investors are less likely to invest in companies with bad ratings
– Both because it may be a poor investment and because they are also individuals
• Government contracts and investments funds are likely to incorporate minimum ratings
Business opportunities
• Personalised services based on filters
• New marketing models
• New search and distribution models
• Matching services (eg. employers and employees)
• Understanding the information model to gain high ratings
• Social Networking and Community effects
• Consultancy for companies to gain higher ratings
• New compliancy tools and services
• Increased mobile usage
Is it possible to realise?
• Technical implementation
– Possible with existing tehcnology:
– Datawarehouses and API's
– SDK for 3rd party app. dev.
– Authentication and security
– Indexing and search
• Rules governing the system
– Developing the logic of quantifying qualitative data, correlations between companies etc will be a matter of effort (continual)
– Must be done in an open and credible manner, allowing for dynamical change
• Getting people to use the thing
– Ethically concerned interest groups such as Covalence are likely to contribute
– Social networking, marketing and media attention will increase usage
Identified pilot candidate
• Set up server with database and filter engine
• Create contributor and enter data in database
– Use EAN, barcode standard in EU. EPN database for groceries in Norway
– Either enter data manually (easiest), connect to or copy existing database
• Create filter
– Create filter based on Covalence.ch, has ethical ratings for companies
– Create a filter for allergics about which products are OK and which are not
• Create user management
– Web page where you register, including mobile number
– Choose filters for that user
• Create mobile client and web interface
– A mobile client where you enter EAN, it performs a request and you get a percentile result or smiley. Client can include a camera barcode reader
– Web form doing the same
Fact
Contributor
Datastore
Filter engine
Application
Individual
Application
Filter manager• The continual flow of
information
– Continual development of rules and applications
– Continual evolution of filters and their adoption
The system will evolve
How to proceed
• Present the model to interested parties
– Interest groups such as EFN, Friprog
– Business players such as Opera, Coop, Sun
– Organisations working with health, innovation, consumer rights etc
• Set up a proof-of-concept
– Create a pilot with basic design and rudimentary rules
– Open source would be preferable
– Get a handful of developers to contribute
– Part-time or full time, community based approach preferable
– Insert some data, a few filters, and application and we are gtg
• Discuss organisational type
– Non-profit organisation which governs the system and the rules (the blue boxes), regular companies can capitalize in application layers (red)
Note - one single actor could create such a system for his own interests, but that would devalue credibility and neutrality
Related activities• Ethical ratings
– Covalence
– Truecost
• Data availability
– HP presents open info on its entire value network
• Tracking
– TraceTracker tracks food products down from separate ingredients to store
– Tradesolution Norway has EPN database over EAN groceries numbers
– EPCIS standard for product description
• TopicMaps and Semantic Web
– How to tie knowledge together and make sense of it
• Others - loads of others
Current status
• Mozilla, Sun and Friprog have noted their interest
• Freecode have given commitment and are active participats
• Registered domains
– Informedindividual.org, Informedindividual.com and theii.no
• Action points:
– Submit organisation registration within May 5th
– Set up server with project tools etc within May 5th
– Have working proof-of-concept pilot within May 19th
