Janet Marsden

Stigmergic self-organization and the improvisation of Ushahidi

There has been considerable investigation into the nature, effectiveness and performance of virtual organizations, virtual teams and virtual collaboration (Cogburn, Santuzzi, & Espinoza, 2011) based on the affordances of information and communications technology (ICT). The recent emergence of location-based social network technologies has resulted in new modes of ad hoc virtual organizations. Developers appear to improvise systems by cobbling together existing applications and technologies, almost overnight, with uncoordinated contributions rather than traditional designs or project plans. Heylighen theorizes that stigmergic self-organization explains this kind of system development (Heylighen, 2007a, 2007b). As defined by the biologist Grasse, stigmergy has been defined as a sequence of indirect stimulus and response behaviors that contribute to the coordination of actions among insects through their environment, for example termites coordinating their nest building activities (Theraulaz & Bonabeau, 1999). Heylighen likens human cognitive self-organization to stigmergy. In recent years, the advent of distributed ICTs like worldwide internet computing and pervasive ubiquitous networks have made traditional top-down techniques of system development increasingly irrelevant for software application development. Instead, modular, adaptable and self-managing end-user components are combined in mash-ups (Merrill, 2009). Similarly, software development teams are spontaneous and ad hoc, functioning as virtual organizations. In this study, the actions leading to the creation of the Ushahidi software platform and its subsequent adaptations are identified using longitudinal case study methodology and content analysis methods applied to newspaper, magazine, website, journal and social networking publications. Based on a socio-technical theoretical framework, the Ushahidi system is framed as a dynamic, ad hoc virtual organization in the context of emergency response. The actions leading to the instantiation of the Ushahidi system are examined as examples of human cognitive stigmergic response to critical incidents and naturalistic development of complex adaptive systems.

An Extended Model of Learnning

The youth center was located in the city’s economically derelict south side. The center itself was precariously funded, barely hanging on to its faux-modern building in a seedy-looking lot on a tree-lined side street. Its director, however, was an energetic woman with ideas on the center’s potential role in the neighborhood. She wanted to develop the center as a place where children from the neighborhood could come to learn basic computer skills — word processing, designing World Wide Web pages, online information search skills. This was good for character building and for discipline, she felt. Such skills would prepare “her kids” for jobs in the real world.

Implementing the Extended Model of Learning

The Center for Active Learning (CAL) — which at present serves as the vehicle for learning-in-community projects for our students — was established in response to a need. The demand for consulting help from public institutions and CBOs in the area had increased significantly since 1991, when the idea of learning-in-community was first tried out. Student demand for hands-on ICT consulting opportunities had grown as well, so much so that it made sense to develop some kind of formal structure to administer the growing number of projects. Looking back now at the path that led to CAL and CITI, it seems as though it almost created itself. The flow from conception to realization was surprisingly quick.

Toward a Radical View of Practice

In this concluding chapter, we briefly summarize the concerns of the preceding chapters and look ahead to a more radical role for learning-in-community programs such as ours. Disparities in access to ICTs and technical know-how are structural in nature. Efforts to reduce these gaps can be topical: they may address these needs by providing ICTs and/or access to know-how. Our program has been topically focused in this sense. Alternatively, such efforts could be politically active and represent the have-nots in resource allocation decisions. The latter role is more radical insofar as it seeks to address power imbalances in communities by giving voice to the have-nots. The mediating function of programs in this regard could be slanted toward the ICT supplier versus the demand side and, within the latter, toward the resource rich versus the resource poor, toward topical versus radical intervention. University-level programs of study in ICT application and use seldom view themselves as political activists in the local community. Indeed, there is a suspicion that not many are even sensitive to the relation between technology and human values (Kling, 2002). We are not suggesting that outreach programs should “go radical” to have legitimacy in their communities. We are arguing, however, that as the gap in ICT access continues to widen, such programs, while continuing to provide topical help, cannot be blind to the structural underpinnings of digital disparities. The discipline of urban planning offers lessons in radical practice — in the need for political activism from practitioners — that are centrally relevant to the concerns of this chapter.