TED Talk by Martin Hanczyc from ISSPs Living Technology workgroup

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

Last year ISSP coordinated a one day conference on Living Technology at University of Southern Denmark: Living Technology - Putting people in the present.

Several great talks were given and taped at the conference, including Martin Hanczyc's talk Artificial Life.

Now Martin, who is a member of our Living Technology group, has just given what I believe to be his first TED Talk, where he once again shows how brilliant he is at communicating what he is best at. I'm particularly happy to notice that there seems to be some overlap between Martins ISSP talk and his TED talk, perhaps suggesting that the one helped him build the latter.

Congratulations to Martin and the Living Technology group.

The unedited edition of The Engineer's interview with Richard Thaler and Guldborg Hansen

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

Yesterday, The Engineer - a newspaper with approx. 60.000 subscribers (mostly engineers) - featured a long article about nudging which incorporated an interview with Prof. Richard Thaler (Chicago Booth) and Pelle Guldborg Hansen (Co-Director of ISSP and Chairman of the Danish Nudging Network).

The article as well as the interview was made by Robin Engelhard who is a highly respected science journalist. The interview shows why Robin Engelhardt is highly respected - it is sound, critical and balanced.

If you know how to read Danish (or just how to use google translate), but don't subscribe to The Engineer you may read the unedited edition of the article here.    

Interview with Thaler and Guldborg Hansen in "K-forum"

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

No doubt that Thaler's visit and ISSP Lecture has succeded in nudging a lot of attention. Thus, we just recieved this from the blogosphere:

http://www.madforlivet.com/bloggen/333-nudge-nudging.html#comments

Also, Wednesday Robin Engelhardt from the newspaper "The Engineer" gave a preview of todays article in that same newspaper at the site "K-forum". You may help him approach 1.000 readers by clicking here:

http://www.kommunikationsforum.dk/artikler/beskrivelse-af-nudge

Nudging got 2 pages in national newspaper Børsen

By Pelle Guldborg Hansen

While working on our 'official reports' from the ISSP lecture by Richard Thaler and the following Policy-hearing we are happy to see that we got two full pages on the events in the national newspaper Børsen. One of these pages were the back-side - the second most important page in any newspaper. However, the event also featured on the frontside as well, so it is hard not to be proud.

You may read the articles (in Danish) here.

(The only two additional things that I would have wished for was a more explicit mentioning of ISSP as well as that the newspaper had got my name right. Fortunately, none of the 200+ in the audience at the ISSP public lecture and the 50+ at the policy hearing got away without this information, since it was mentioned over and over again).

ISSP Public Lecture featured on Videnskab.dk

While others are having "potato" holidays in Denmark, the ISSP team is working intensively on getting the final pieces of Prof. Richard Thaler's ISSP Public Lecture to fit together.

One of our many efforts was to write an Op. ed. which is now online at Videnskab.dk. However, this is just one of the many places that the event with Prof. Richard Thaler gets attention up front. Thus, "Landbrug og Fødevarer"'s online ressource Food & Culture has also brought a small post about it that you may read here, and even Arla Food is now talking about nudging consumers in a more healthy direction.

These few mentionings are, however, just the top of the ice-berg. During the last few days Pelle G. Hansen, Co-director of ISSP, has been talking to a series of journalists. Thus, we know at this point that the newspapers Jyllandsposten, Børsen and Ingeniøren are all running articles about nudging next week. The new radio-station 7/24 will also have a 5-10 minutes snippet about nudging.

Beyond the press
However, this is just the press. The real value and success lies in the fact that October 21 will show that what we sat out to do with the ISSP is actually possible. The social software ISSP-focus group originally choose to work with nudging and establish The Danish Nudging Network because it features both a rich and broad potential for societal impact, while at the same time being controversial and thus in need of public discussion and acceptance.

With the event on October 21 ISSP and the Social Software group has provided the premises for a sound debate on nudging in a unique way. Through the Danish Nudging Network we have succeeded to coordinate the event together with the University of Southern Denmark, the Danish Cancer Society, Aalborg University, DEA, Mindlab, Dansk Kommunikation, Trygfonden and Metropol. Thus, the planning of the event itself has created incredible amounts of trust and social capital between institutions.

That's behind the scenes. In front of it, more than 200 citizens, businesspeople, policy makers, journalist, etc. will be seated. This will mark our achievement at engaging science and research with the broad public. We only hope that we will be able to deliver an experience just as positive and enriching as when we had Naomi Oreskes give the 1st ISSP Public Lecture in 2010.

Policy Impact
However, the ISSP activities on October 21 doesn't end with Prof. Thaler's public lecture. In the afternoon ISSP, University of Southern Denmark, DEA, the Danish Cancer Society, Mindlab, Trygfonden, Dansk Kommunikation, Aalborg University and Metropol have put up a policy hearing about nudging. Despite of the potato holidays approximately 60 central policy stakeholders will attend this venue (we had planned for 50). Our hope is that in this way nudging may be considered as potent new approach in public policy making, while at the same time avoid being hyped.

While we're only a small team, we hope to return next week with a reportage from the event.

ISSP News now has 800 subscribers

Using the synergi of activities the ISSP Newsletter has now reached 800 subscribers. 

The sign-off rate grew a bit to 3.6 %, since 6 subscribers decided that it was time to quit. 5 of the 6 were interested in Regional Sustainability and we take this as a hint to call upon the RS group to deliver more news in the future.

Still, gathering 800 subscribers in 1½ year is satisfactory - and with the ISSP activities about to be revealed, this number is only likely to become much higher.  

ISSP News #10 hits the street

Yes, we said #10! It was an idea that Pelle G. Hansen took with him from PHILOG when he worked with Vincent F. Hendricks (today Philog is better known as Lori-Web and based in Holland) at Roskilde University: creating a platform for stakeholders to engage with each other.

While there is still a lot to do with developing the Newsletter, this issue delivered a particular message: ISSP profiles like to engage their knowledge with the broader society. Thus, the newsletter featured Steen Rasmussen's personal blog as well as ISSP Profile Rachel Amstrong's blog at Wired. It also featured ISSP profile Vincent F. Hendricks' blog in the newspaper Information as well as his book with Pelle G. Hansen on info-storms. Finally, the SAiNT group once again showed its strong commitment to ISSP by featuring a piece by Mats Fridlund on Techno-science.

Oooh, by the way: 789 people received the news!

Richard Thaler's ISSP Lecture passes the 150 mark

As announced we turned to the academic circles. That was a disappointing experience. Even those academic circles within which Richard Thaler has excelled and worked with Nobel laureates didn't show much interest. We did a bit of personal recognizance and found that throughout academia, professors and ass. professors were more interested in the "potato holidays" than attending the lecture.

Turning to students, things didn't improve much at first. Even students attending courses in psychological decision making decided that this wasn't really relevant! Nor journalists covering economics for major newspapers! But then we noticed something we have seen before: those interested in some of the best science and research in the world are not necessarily correlated with the disciplines within which this work takes place. Instead, they are students, professors, citizens, business-makers, politicians, and so on, who are apparently are just interested in solving some of the major challenges that we face as a society.

This is both depressing and encouraging.

On a practical level it is also a BIG challenge because it means that there is no easy way to get in touch with all of these people. Fortunately we're not afraid to take up this challenge. Using social media, blogs, etc. we are finding new ways to get people together - and we've just hit the 150 mark for Richard Thaler's Public ISSP lecture.

Co-leader of ISSP social software focus group writes on: World class universities

A couple of days ago Vincent F. Hendricks - who's co-leading the ISSP focus group on social software together with me - wrote an op ed piece in Dagbladet Information about the ways the politicians request for competition between Danish universities has had some bad effects.

As you read the piece is being translated into English so it can be part of the next ISSP newsletter which is coming out next week.

You may read Vincent F. Hendrick's piece in Danish here: http://www.information.dk/279790

ISSP News hits the 750 mark!

These are happy days!

The number of people receiving the ISSP news has just hit the 750 mark. This is a big achievement. But most importanly, it has happened while keeping an extremely low sign-off rate: 3% to date! Compared to other newsletter I know of this is an extremely low rate. Congratulations to all of us.

Richard Thaler's ISSP Lecture passes the 100 mark

With a bit more than one month to go until this year's ISSP Lecture presenting economist Richard Thaler we have now passed the first milestone: 100 people have signed up for the event which will take place at Metropol in Copenhagen October 21.

If that wasn't an achievement in itself, it turns out that those signed up fall equally in all the groups targeted by ISSP: academia, businesses, citizens organizations, policy-makers, journalists, and so on. I perceive this balance to be one of the most important ideals to aspire to as it is our declared aim to try to create the best conditions for a balanced and sound debate about developments in the ISSP focus areas.

But needless to say, 100 people is not where we stop. The coming week we'll be working hard to reach the 200 people mark by spreading the word primarily in academic circles.

If you want to help out, please write peha@sam.sdu.dk to get an electronic invitation targeted to your particular network.

N.Y. Food application has been handed in

Finally, after 9 months of hard work and coordination it happened! The N.Y. Food application for a Research Alliance financed by the strategic research council has been handed in. The Social Software ISSP focus group has played a key role in giving birth to the application, but especially The Danish Cancer Society and Aalborg University have been main actors in working the application through the final phase and getting it done. The other hardworking partners in the alliance are Metropolitan City University, Glostrup Hospital, Roskilde University, University of Southern Denmark, and MAPP-AU. Below you may read the summary of the research alliance applied for and then cross your fingers and wish us luck - we'll know in December.     

Summary:

The increasing prevalence of diet-related diseases and its subsequent health inequality in the population pose major societal challenges for the 21^st century. Evidence shows that current strategies for changing food behaviour are insufficient to counteract these challenges. It is crucial to develop and explore new strategies that make healthy choices easy choices. Nudging seems to be the most promising among such strategies. Nudging is an interdisciplinary public policy paradigm which aims to influence human decision making by changing psychological, social, and structural context cues, without forbidding any options or making alternatives more costly in terms of time, trouble, and social sanctions. This makes nudging an often inexpensive approach that potentially reaches everybody without requiring elaborate decision-making effort. A typical example of a health-promoting nudge intervention in foodscapes is making healthy foods the default option, and priming dietary norms and values, where foodscapes include both physical and social settings and their interactions in between. N.Y.FOOD aims to understand the potential and limitations of nudging in promoting healthy food choices among young people (15-25 yrs). N.Y.FOOD will establish and test which types of nudges are effective, ethically and publicly acceptable in the Danish foodscapes and society. This will be achieved through an interdisciplinary research alliance which develops methods for systematic construction and efficacy assessment of nudges, in cooperation with external partners who will help implement and embed nudges in society. N.Y.FOOD seeks to promote the health of youth and at the same time reduce social inequality in health. N.Y.FOOD will also contribute to an ethics and policy discussion of the use of nudging in public health nutrition promotion.


You can read much more about nudging at http://inudgeyou.blogspot.com/. If you want to know more about the application you are welcome to contact Pelle Guldborg Hansen at peha@sam.sdu.dk

Støy's piece has two prominent Danish researchers discuss the notion of Living Technology

Following Kasper Støy's piece on Living Technology two prominent Danish researchers took up the opportunity to discuss the notion of Living Technology.

Claus Emmeche, theoretical biologist, associate professor, and director of the center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies at the Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen, opened up by playfully suggesting that one might consider dropping the notion of Living Technology all together.    

This soon had Steen Rasmussen, Head of the Center for Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT) which is located at the University of Southern Denmark, recall past discussions about how to name various movements and ideas in science. While Steen agrees that it is important to discuss a term like "Living Technology", he also concludes that to him the notion works well as a way of referring to technologies, which in different ways share features with living organisms.

To me, what is almost as interesting as the content of Claus and Steen's online discussion, is

• how it significantly raises the standard of the usual comments found on online sites, 
• gives the public a peek into the way researchers may disagree and tease each other, while still being gentlemen, and 
• how it tests a new way for scientists to engage with their field, other researchers and the public.

I hope to see more people adding to their discussion.

Kasper Støy's ISSP piece "Living Technology in Practice" now online at Videnskab.dk

The new collaboration with Videnskab.dk is going really well. With its wide audience Videnskab.dk is a great way to put focus on the ISSP focus areas.

This week Kasper Støy's piece on Living Technology in Practice published online at ISSP earlier this year went online at Videnskab.dk. You can see it here: http://videnskab.dk/teknologi/levende-teknologi-i-praksis.