ErikJonker

Data zijn randvoorwaardelijk voor het functioneren van een organisatie en worden steeds belangrijker, zo ook bij de overheid. De omvang en diversiteit van die data neemt toe, alsook de snelheid van uitwisseling, het aantal relaties en verbindingen. Tot op heden prevaleert daarbij binnen de overheid de zogenaamde sectorale aanpak. Dat wil zeggen dat iedere sector "gaat" over zijn of haar eigen domein en probeert daarbinnen het datalandschap te organiseren. Voorbeelden van sectoren zijn volksgezondheid, ruimtelijk domein, gemeenten en dergelijke. In deze blog wil ik ingaan op 1 aspect dat om aandacht vraagt namelijk de mogelijkheid tot hergebruik, remixen, aanpassen, verrijken van data ten behoeve van de werkprocessen. De overheid is een veelheid aan organisaties maar als het goed is werkt ze aan dezelfde publieke opdrachten die vanuit de regering en volksvertegenwoordiging op haar afkomen. Daarbij is het evident dat we willen dat genoemde organisaties, binnen kaders van wet- ...

Law, rules, regulations, at EU but also at national level, can not deal with AI. First of all laws were never made for a world where machines take the majority of decisions and where they do it better then humans. Also by design it's often impossible to exactly explain how machines come to their decisions, "Machines will never be human. But in some cases, they will be better than human". Wired has described these problems in an excellent article . Politicians are not very eager to adress this. They don't have enough knowledge and are probably insecure about what course to take. But it's time to adress this issue now. For the sake of people.

For most people it's not so visible but there is a wave of start-ups busy with building what could be described as a more decentralised internet. As noted in a recent Economist article . The current internet is very centralised and dominated by a few large platforms. Which ofcourse was not the original promise of this technology. No wonder there is lot of enthousiasm about current initiatives like Ethereum, IPFS  , IPDB  , Akasha  to name just a few. But also in the business world, a concept like UETP fits like a glove on earlier named initiatives. For me it shows we may be moving towards a more decentralised internet, which is good thing in my view. Both from the perspective of security and privacy. But also on a more fundamental level, it's good that large platform players like Google, Facebook Microsoft, Amazon etc. will not be completely dominating our information context in our lives. There can and should be places where you as a person are in full control. In m...

Google I/O made one thing clear, Google is about AI. That is their primary focus. If you want you can ignore all discussions about success/failure of Allo, Duo, Android, Chrome OS etc. AI is their big bet. As Sundar Pichai noted they are just getting started and the road is long and hard. Therefore it's a good time to mark a part that's obviously missing until now. That part is the protection of the privacy of their customers but also the control they have on their own information, how that is handled and used. I really look forward to the vision of a smart home with Google assistant where everybody can use his/her voice to order pizza, turn on the lights, ask what's on TV tonight, plan a meeting with my friends and more of such things. However i want some level of control on my "profile", which becomes really a lot richer then the traditional profile on current websites/apps. It learns from all the conservations and my behaviour, it's almost a quantified...

Gisteren startte OpenBazaar, ik raad iedereen aan te lezen hoe hun concept in elkaar zit (  https://openbazaar.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/208020193-What-is-OpenBazaar-  ) Los van de vraag of deze specifieke startup een succes wordt, het illustreert een bredere ontwikkeling naar meer gedistribueerde, P2P vormen van informatie-uitwisseling. Zonder een derde partij die toezicht kan houden, belasting kan innen, wetten kan handhaven e.d. Dat zien we ook in de financiële sector waar gevestigde partijen flink in Blockchain technologie investeren juist omdat ze zelf ook bevreesd zijn voor een dergelijke disruptie. Daarnaast zijn er diverse initiatieven/startups zoals  https://www.ethereum.org/  die ook volop inzetten op een gedistribueerde, P2P toekomst. Niemand weet wat succesvol wordt en hoe dit afloopt. Maar disruptie komt eraan. (picture by Eric Parker  https://www.flickr.com/photos/ericparker/2098566729 )

Artificial Intelligence is a hotly debated trend. A lot of discussion is about the question what “true intelligence” is. And whether that could be artificial. Not the most interesting of discussions in my view. In my personal definition Artificial Intelligence is anything done by machines that you would expect could only be done by humans. This means that the definition is sliding. In the middle ages a chess playing machine would probably be called “intelligent”. Just as a self-driving car in the fifties. In general it seems that everything that is seen as normal /accepted is not viewed as “artificial intelligence” anymore. The fact remains that the combination of smart algorithms, machine learning/deep learning is changing our lives in a fundamental way. Not with a big explosion. But in small steps, gradually. An example is the fact that according to Google 10% of Gmail replies in the US is a smart reply. A sign of the digital assistant creeping into our lives. 

Privacy is an important subject in our times. Regardless where you stand on this subject. Everybody wants some level of protection with regard to their personal space. The problem is that the level varies with context and situation we are in. The traditional government approach  is to make legislation which provide the norms in this respect. Both on a national and european level regulations are made to protect the citizen. However alone they will fail. As I encounter in my work everyday,complexity of the information society is growing exponentially. Big Data, Internet of Things, Mobile, Artificial Intelligence are just some parts of this. Current laws are not compatible with those developments. They are in a different mindset, in a different industrial age if you want. The concept of platforms is not acknowledged nor accomodated. They overestimate the role the small nationstate can play in the global information context. There is no concept with regard to personal data that c...