FtC+Takashi Okumura
tweeting_drtaka I received an invitation from a source to an event called Funding the Commons Tokyo 2024. The event is called “Funding the Commons Tokyo 2024,” and it is an event in which former Tokyo gubernatorial candidate Takahiro Yasuno will take the podium to talk with Audrey Tan. But actually, I did not know much about it until yesterday. (continued)
- I think it is an opportunity to match those who have a budget with those who are looking for it, but it doesn’t seem to be so. I found Mr. Seki’s note on Code for Japan’s “problems” in the site, which gave me a hint.
tweeting_drtaka Code for Japan is a project that has organized volunteers to shape information technology for the public good (and, understanding). Its representative writes, “We have experienced firsthand the situation of weak investment in digital public goods. So I understood, “Oh, this is my story.
tweeting_drtaka: There are various research topics that are meaningful to society, but if they are not in line with the reputation of academia or market-based evaluation, they are underinvested. If it is the curiosity of researchers that compensates for this, then it would be desirable for society to guarantee freedom of research to academics.
tweeting_drtaka In short, R&D investment in public technology is inherently underinvested. I’ve worked on information technology in public health, and since it’s not a revenue-generating or targeted technology, the budget is limited to public subsidies, which is an order of magnitude different from what GAFAM R&D and information entrepreneurs raise from the market.
tweeting_drtaka We are confident that our research will be an asset to humanity. Making the results fully open and free of charge will bring about further development of the technology. However, such a stance is not supported by “business”, so we have received budgets from the “research” angle and have disclosed the results of our research and development.
tweeting_drtaka Our attempts to do so have fortunately been well understood by the research community and we have been able to receive many research budgets. However, unlike a business, it is difficult to increase the scale of operations, even though there is more work to be done as research progresses. As a result, the burden has continued to increase until now.
tweeting_drtaka: If I were in a position to host a lab, I think it would be called something like Humanitarian computing lab. I’m sure some of my followers are interested in similar fields, so I’ll try to share what I’ve seen and heard over the next few days.
tweeting_drtaka So, going back to FtC, I understood that it is a group that considers “support for digital public goods” to solve such problems! I don’t know what kind of output we will get. However, having been a party to this issue for a long time and having been exposed to this project, I have two points to consider.
nishio: Funding the Commons Tokyo 2024 I’ve put together an AI summary of all the articles written by the four operators, and if you are interested in mechanism design to support OSS and other digital public goods, just read this summary and think “there are people trying to make the world a better place”.
tweeting_drtaka The first point is that the term “public goods (i.e. goods or services such as parks or highways)“. I sense an intention to broadly include assets such as data, not just code. But while data, whether flow or stock, involves operational aspects and costs, data itself does not reproduce value. In this regard, I believe that investing in code is more effective.
tweeting_drtaka Another point is that even if a budget is raised through crowdfunding or other means, the main expenditure in advancing the project is personnel costs. The other point is that even if you raise budget through crowdfunding, the main expenditure for the project is personnel. Unless a sustainable model with a strong financial foundation is created, much of the investment will be converted to personnel costs for ad hoc employment. We cannot get out of the bicycle operation that continues to take the next budget based on the results of our activities.
tweeting_drtaka My answer to this question is to make humanitarian computing one of the themes of research and education in university informatics departments. My answer to this problem is to make humanitarian computing one of the themes of research and education in university information departments. By making the research and development of public information technology the theme of university term projects, thesis and master’s theses, prototypes and POCs will be generated continuously.
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