citizens assembly

Rejoining EU, what’ll it take?

I attended the EU’s citizens panel on virtual worlds over the weekend. One of the most inspirational aspects of this event was the ability to meet so many people from across the European Union. I took the opportunity, to talk to some about how they felt about British re-entry. One Dutchman felt we hadn’t suffered enough, and that we needed to wait. One German was anxious that we re-joined so as to reduce his tax burden. Another very well-informed Dutchman, said he felt that British public opinion under estimated what the EU would ask to allow us to rejoin and one Finn, said his condition on us re-joining was that we be forced to enter FIFA competitions as a single nation. I think this was a joke, but he seemed quite upset about Finland’s record against the UK nations’ football teams.

My informed Dutch correspondent started by talking about the euro. Some of what he said particularly on the Euro was a bit worrying, but it’s a price worth paying if that’s what it takes. I suggested that the Swedish precedent on the currency is important and that there may be dangers to the EU in attempting to subsume another global reserve currency too quickly. I also wonder if those nations hosting cities that have replaced London’s international financial trading capability, really want to see the London market makers able to trade in euro instruments so soon. To me more importantly on the currency and macro-economic convergence, are the limitations entrenched in the ‘stability and growth pact’. Debt levels and deficits should be the result of a democratic mandate and not embedded in an unchangeable treaty; the need to breach the stability and growth pact limits during the pandemic is a proof point to this truth. Perhaps the EU member states will take the opportunity to amend the requirement of Stability and Growth Pact. We agreed that the other opt outs are all gone; the UK will have to forgo its financial rebate, our charter of fundamental rights exemptions and comply with and join the Schengen treaty. These terms are acceptable to me. We need to start talking about them. …

Virtual Worlds, the EU citizen’s assembly, session two, day three.

Here is my write up on Day 3; the meeting kicked off in working groups and then returned to plenary. The plenary video is indexed on their web page. This article is made from mainly contemporaneous notes, but I had to revisit the video for the final two speakers. The plenary had guest speakers and allowed some of the working groups to present their ideas. My article here does my best to tell the story of what happened. Most groups seem to have some difficulty in imagining what will change, and there is much inertia and fear on what we'll lose and whether it'll get worse and crime will grow. I am disappointed at the failure to emphasis privacy except for Renate Nikolay, from the Commission and there were some belated calls for free speech, universal access and a need to regulate and suppress fake news. There is an interesting but inconclusive discussion on how to catch up with the USA and China, and a need for education and information. Possibly the most important contribution came from Rehana Schwinninger-Ladak, one of the knowledge committee, again from the Commission who classified the problems and solutions as about people, industry and infrastructure.

The full article is overleaf, please use the "Read More" button. ...

Virtual Worlds, the EU citizen’s assembly, session two, day two.

On the second day of the EU’s citizens assembly on Virtual Worlds, I observed Working Group 6 which reconvened to further develop proposals aimed at informing the regulation and development of a digital Europe. The working group was directed to focus on the Commission’s digital principles, numbers four and five, “Fostering participation in the digital public space” & “Increasing safety, security and empowerment of individuals”. I wonder if the Commission’s short list of broad principles, is a better way of getting something on the table, rather than the detailed multi-point manifestoes that I have tried to build with others.

While the moderator tried to give the meeting some structure much of the meeting was very disjointed with citizen panel members saying what they wanted, which is their role, but rarely adding to what others say by improving or disagreeing. I believe the moderating team have created a summary to forward to the final plenary, if so they have done a better job than me.

This blog article is based on notes taken at the time, and while I have polished them and turned them into sentences, they do not tell really tell a coherent story but I hope that the combination of the wisdom of crowds and my comments, insights and lessons will be interesting

My notes and comments are below/overleaf; use the Read More button to see the full article.

Virtual Worlds, the EU citizen’s assembly, session two, day one.

The plenary sessions were set in a virtual world, which looked from the demo, very like 2^nd life. Observers could not see or participate in this. I have a note but the ice breaker did not really work, it was about engaging with virtual worlds, and my notes suggest that the delegates don’t know how to answer the question asked. There were several technical problems on the video conference.

The moderators suggested that they broke the 1^st plenary into four parts, inviting experts to answer questions generated by the syndicate working groups at the previous meetings. The topics were the economy, jobs & business, safety & security, health & well-being/the environment, and Society: Inclusiveness, Accessibility and Democracy.

The first speaker, Harman van Sprang, referenced the sharing economy. I wonder if this is npw an out of date concept as industrial music, and the DatenKraken have enclosed or sought to criminalise what was often published as free content. He also spoke in reply to a question that cities are the centre of innovation. He was brought to this conclusion after being approached by the city of Seoul and came to VR as a means modelling the future. See also, https://www.sharingcitiesalliance.com/. It seems that urban planning is an attractive application for virtual worlds, as Euractiv reports a few days later on how the City of Berlin is using such technology to simulate, test and prove urban designs.

Van Sprang also referred to web 3, which both, he & I categorise as a drive to own one’s own content, the road to Web 3 can be seen as a journey from content to conversation to value. The original web for most people was an act of consumption, Web 2.0 enabled citizen content publication, and Web 3 is seeking to enable ownership, which may allow authors to establish value. For this to be useful and democratic, we need to extend the definition of authorship and copyright laws need to strike the balance between ownership and the right or collective benefit of building derived works.

Eric Marchiol of Renault, forecast that virtual reality was useful for planning , modelling and logistics. Renault have modelled their factory and he showed a video describing the solution and its benefits. From what he showed us, I think the benefits come from a common data schema including all relevant objects which includes people in the plant. He showed an example of certain objects, in this case a drill, which before the project had multiple data descriptions and existed in each of many applications. However, what shook me is that he described that Renault had a real time monitoring system implemented inside their virtual world. I wonder whether the three-dimensional representation is necessary for this functionality. He also described the virtual world as useful for simulation. This of course requires the implementation of science and physics rules within the software to be sufficiently accurate. Marchiol also spoke of health and safety as a dimension of the security problem, which I found refreshing, given the obsession over ‘safety’ often interpreted as censorship, within the Commission materials. From this presentation, I can see that some are using VR as an effective planning and simulation tool, and other training applications are obvious.

Dr Mariette van Huijstee came back to talk and sought to answer one of the questions on digital identity and privacy. She provoked me into asking myself that since an un-forgeable proof of a digital identity is based on encryption, is it possible to install surveillance back doors while promising people the ability to prove their identity. I say no. I think that asking this in the context of proving one’s identity makes the contradiction more acute.

Elisa Lirone, in my opinion, misunderstands the history of virtual reality. Facebook may, by having bought Occulus Rift VR, the VR headset vendor and have renamed themselves as Meta to ideologically colonise the solution space but this ignores the 30 years of games development, the establishment of MMOs and the work of organisations like second life, who not only developed a virtual world, but permitted the users to own their own code and the rendered objects and this created markets for digital objects, as did some of the games. (Somewhere in this blog is an article on how people in low wage economies would grand games for might game artefacts and then sell them for real money. It’s dated 2004! Doom was launched in 1993.)

It’s clear that I believe that 3D virtual worlds will have a limited application, but they were not invented or developed by the social media giants.

I again will need to review the stream, You will be able to find the links on this website after the session : Virtual worlds panel (europa.eu)

This was written from contemporaneous notes, but I have taken some time to polish them and have added the notes about the Euractiv article and Berlin’s planning applications; I have backdated this to the day of occurrence. …

Virtual Worlds, Day 3.

On day three of the EU’s citizen’s assembly on Virtual Worlds, after a short meeting in groups, we reassembled in the plenary hall. We were introduced to a speaker panel, which they referred to as a knowledge committee which included three Belgian improv artists. The whole session is available at for review on the Commission’s streaming platform. In my article overleaf, I catalogue the EU’s definition of people’s rights and principles, briefly look at the regulatory aquis, and briefly introduce the key members of the panel of experts. I criticise the lack of emphasis on privacy & anti-fake news, and the absence of any talk of investment policies. I end by asking how the topic was chosen and if it is in fact of real relevance for tomorrow? to read the full article, please use the "Read More" button ...

Virtual Worlds, Day 2

This is based on my notes taken on Day 2 of the EU’s citizen’s assembly on Virtual Worlds. These have been polished, but are not easy to draw conclusions or a story from, partly because I have tried not to leave anything out, and the participants were not looking to bring their stories and thoughts together. These notes do not tell a story and this article is quite long for me. I hope it has something interesting for you; it talks of the technology, a little bit of economics, social engagement and control and even a little about the changing nature of personality.

This is an excerpt, the full blog is beyond the "Read More" button. ...

Virtual Worlds, an EU citizens assembly

I have been granted Observer status to the EU’s second 2nd Generation citizens’ assembly, this is on Virtual Worlds. I felt my expertise might be useful. The first day (half day), was a plenary session, the final exercise in the afternoon was a brainstorming session in which all the invited citizens joined in. They were asked to identify the three best things and the three worst things, they have observed since 1992, the year the world wide web was invented.

from NWN Beneath the Cobbles, made by me

I report and comment on my day below/overleaf … …