Category: Opacity

Ideas related to squeezing out information from seemingly closed sources.

Trolling on the human rights

If I were a patent troll, which universal human right would I start abusing next?

Patents and humanitarian activity (and how patents can kill humanitarian activity) have been covered on this blog before (see the SMOS project). I am in a slightly cynical mood, so I will now pretend to be a strategist for a patent troll (a “non-practicing entity”). How could I best abuse the world?

Note: I am NOT talking about the way big companies (like, say, Monsanto) are perhaps strong-arming the patent system. Compared to me, Monsanto are the good guys. They at least have at some point put some money into some R&D, and produce something. All I plan to do is to exploit quirks in the patent system.

I would want my target industries to have three key criteria:

  1. They have little or no experience with IPR, and none with trolls. The best attack is when the target has no idea what hit him.
  2. They produce things which every person needs to have. Ideally, things that are considered human rights. That way, the targets have no real option except to accede to my demands (or else break IP law).
  3. (Optional): Some type of vendor lock-in. This means that the customer is tied to one specific vendor for all his needs. Many people realize that the vendor can then abuse the customer at will. Most people do not realize that a troll can then abuse both the vendor and the customer at will.

An nice target list is provided by the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially Articles 25-26.  There are many potential attacks, but here I will focus only on a few novel ideas.

Article 25.

  1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
  2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Food / clean water

This is where I would strike, first and foremost, no hesitation.  Water-purification technologies are the choicest target because they fulfill all key criteria (they are essential, people don’t expect attacks, and there are lock-ins). Some target markets (for example oil-rich desert countries) are rich enough to provide considerable blackmail money.

Methods to create potable drinking water would be my number one focus. It is a high-tech activity, with serious companies doing serious R&D work. An overly broad patent (either created now, or bought from a suitable player, or an fire sale after a bankruptcy) could be a major block.

I would target companies close to a breakthrough, and file/buy a huge number patents around the same area. Here’s a secret: It doesn’t really matter whether or not the patents are truly valid. All one needs to do is to strike at a strategic moment, and announce that one has a hundred patents which company X is infringing. This is a typical troll strategy.

The strategic moment: the instant a major water-cleaning plant has started providing water to a large city (Dubai, Nairobi, Mumbai, Dhaka). Even a brief court injunction on the operation of a key water plant could be problematic to a whole city. The blackmail potential is very high.

(Normally, one would expect a reasonable government to act like India in the medicine case discussed below, and simply ignore the blackmail and the the injunction. However, consider an extremely poor and corrupt country with the leading elite fully tied to foreign interests… it might not do the sane thing).

Water distribution would be even more fruitful, since it is in practice impossible to set up a competing water and sewage network overnight. There is a definite vendor lock-in in that business. However, the technology is so simple that there is little IPR to abuse.

Medical care

Medical care would be a lucrative area for attack, but… filing spurious patents is difficult in this area. The major drug manufacturers are well protected by patent thickets.  There is also an active backlash against medical patents, which means that criterion 1 is no longer satisfied. Everyone is expecting attacks. For example, India is banning branded drugs. Governments and NGOS’s are already on their toes, unlike the water case. I would pass on this.

Communications

I would put communications in this category as well. I am not the only one; the ITU (the telecommunications branch of the United Nations) is waking up to the patent wars in the telecoms industry, and their effect on innovation (see for example here). This war was also addressed in our SMOS project.

The ITU initiative is largely an attack on patent trolls. A cynic might expect that since the big companies have deep pockets to affect the process, and governments have their own telecom industries to protect, the end result will be an even deeper monopoly on development by a few megacompanies, with no benefit for poor countries. Time will show.

In any case, while trolling the telecoms industry is currently all the rage, the competition is getting harsh, there is little chance for a surprise attack, and a serious backlash is likely. I would look elsewhere.

Motherhood and childhood

Childhood diarrhea is one of the worst killers in the world, and could largely be avoided by providing clean water and saline solution. A patent on a particular type of saline solution could provide interesting leverage to an utterly sociopathic troll. However, in practice it is relatively easy for medical professionals to work around the IPR by substituting slightly different components. Thus, while intriguing, the work-arounds make trolling difficult.

Article 26.

  1.  Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
  2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
  3.  Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

(Distance) education

Low-cost distance learning technologies are interesting, especially as they provide a very low-cost alternative in extremely poor countries. The best course of attack would be cases where a given company has achieved an effective lock-in on the overall technology and has created a walled garden.

A walled garden means that one company controls all aspects of the material: the hardware, the software, and the content. Apple is the best-known example of this strategy,  followed perhaps by Microsoft and Google (whose lock-in does not extend fully to hardware though). The walled garden can create many type of problems for customers; for example, there have been cases where critically-needed applications have been pre-emptively deleted from the AppStore if Apple has feared litigation.

These companies have pockets deep enough to fight the trolls, but those same pockets can also bribe the trolls. I would frame the attack behind the scenes, making the problems appear to be the fault of the company, as in the AppStore case above. Since their brand names are absolutely crucial to them, they would be more  likely to pay off (though of course they also have armies of lawyers. The balance is difficult).

A public-service note: attacks like this could be avoided by using open-source solutions, or at least by minimizing vendor lock-in. A sure way to create problems of this type is to accept a walled garden, however attractive it might look in the short run.

Am I serious? Yes and no.

No. If I actually wanted to do this, I wouldn’t write about it. Profit is made by keeping absolutely silent and working in the shadows.

Yes. The basic principles are valid. The exact sample cases I’ve suggested might or might not work. I have outlined some techniques for avoiding attacks of this type (most importantly avoiding walled gardens), but where there is money, there will be trolls.

Rest assured: there are people out there thinking precisely along these lines. Globally, masses of people are now being downsized who have the competence for this, families to feed, and negotiable moral values.  (To be consistently cynical: I am among them. I could  be good at this. We all like to think we’re on the side of the angels, but we’re not).

If someone has good ideas on how to protect the world against them (us?), I would appreciate hearing those ideas.

UN

 

SMOS: Humanitarian Patent Pool

What would it take take to actually, truly start  a “Humanitarian Patent Pool” like Timo Tokkonen suggested in a posting last week? The idea being to collect certain patents in a non-profit “pool” to keep patent trolls away from ruining humanitarian efforts.  The question was inspired by humanitarian catastrophe communications (see SMOS web page). But there could be other areas.

Is HPP even vaguely realistic? Patents are powerful, but not all-powerful: the Doha Declaration allows developing countries to bypass existing patents for medicines when public health is threatened. A concept similar to HPP, defensive patent aggregation, exists in the commercial world, but to my knowledge not in a non-profit setting.

Here are some back-of-the-envelope estimates on how the HPP might work.  Bear with me if there are ludicrous errors, and please propose improvements.

The core purpose of the HPP must be to eradicate patent trolls in humanitarian areas. The purpose is not to hinder legitimate players. (This is immediately a controversial goal. Idealists will want to eliminate patents from the humanitarian field altogether. I feel it is sufficient to eliminate just the rabid dogs, and let the healthy ones thrive).

The HPP needs to be a non-profit foundation. It should be international in scope, but it might be sufficient to restrict it to the USA because that is the home of the patent trolls.

The key function of the HPP is to collect ownership of “bad” patents. By “bad” I mean something that is not being used to create anything, but can be used by a troll to stop development. A much more refined definition is obviously needed.

The main category of “bad” patent is one which is too broad and should never have been granted in the first place. Another category are patents for a technical solution which has become obsolete, but which a lawyer can stretch to cover some other technology. Such patents are lethal weapons in the hands of a troll. But they could also be lethal weapons in the hands of the HPP.

There are two key strategies.

  1. Containment and decay. Collect patents that are allowed to expire as soon as possible. The purpose here is to prevent trolls from making claims, and to create strong prior art against future spurious patents. These patents should for the most part be collected through donations.
  2. Active deterrence. Patents that can and will be used in litigation against trolls. In some cases, the HPP might consider paying for these. The cost of filing a patent is > 10 kEUR, so the HPP might be willing to consider buying them at cost.

The HPP should be aggressive, not defensive. Unless the HPP is willing and happy to go to court against trolls, it will have no deterrence effect.

Since the USA already has a well-oiled machine in the Electronic Frontier Foundation, it would make sense to tie the HPP in very tightly with the EFF, especially its Patent Busting Project.  On the other hands, in terms of funding, the HPP could have wider appeal and hence be independent.

The working principle needs to be absolute transparency. For strategic reasons, if preparing for an attack, the HPP may require secrecy. But even there things need become public when fight is over. As far as I can see, the HPP cannot ever accept secret agreements or settlements.

The focus areas for active deterrence must be chosen very tightly. They should be restricted to those areas in which humanitarian damage can be massive, and in which trolling activity seems to be particularly easy. Catastrophe communications would certainly be one such area.

The budget of the HPP simply cannot be kept small. Even if using only donated patents, there are legal costs associated, even if the patents are allowed to expire immediately. A reasonable minimum estimate is 1 kEUR per patent. Since there must be hundreds to thousands of patents in the pool, this easily results in a budget of hundreds of kEUR per year.

If some key patents are bought with hard money (though at cost), the cost per patent could be 10 kEUR. The number of truly crucial patents will be small — court cases are typically litigated over just a handful of patents — but knowing which ones a critical requires buying more.

The cost of stockpiling and maintaining the patents will easily climb to a million EUR per year. Unlike projects like the EFF’s patent-busting project, there is no meaningful way to crowdsource the idea. It needs hard money.

If the HPP goes to court, the legal costs are unpredictable, but the HPP must be able to handle them. This is where my reasoning becomes completely fuzzy. Could this work on a pro bono principle? If courts find trolls’ patents spurious, might they willing to force the trolls to pay costs? I find this highly problematic.

Is there any way for the HPP to make some profit to recoup all its losses? In principle, yes, by licensing to legitimate businesses. However, trying to make a distinction between non-legitimate and illegitimate players would add costs and make enforcement difficult.

And, more crushingly, the HPP would risk turning into a patent troll of its own. (“He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster”). It is difficult to see any way to make the HPP self-sufficient.

So where would the funding come from, then? I have no real idea. This was as far as I was able to get in one sitting.

So is the HPP idea even vaguely realistic? If not, would be worth developing from some other angle? If not, do we just have to adapt to life with the trolls?

 

Is aviation safety shameful thing: Final summary

Safety is an important part of aviation. Although many customers do not care, we feel that it should be transparent to those customers who are. Studying airline web pages showed large variations between airlines, but to summarize: it appears to us that the majority of airlines want their ordinary passengers to think of flying as a non-technical activity that entails no risk, and hence no need for safety measures.

However, some airlines do go to significant depths about their safety procedures. Many of those airlines are in developing countries with poor safety records, and appear to use safety as a marketing tool to reassure customers. However, some well-known Western airlines also have a similar approach. In essence, we found no external parameters that would explain the differences.

We interpret this to mean that safety can be used as a marketing tool. Some airlines choose to use it; some do not. Nothing external forces an airline to be transparent or opaque about its safety culture; rather, this is a (business) decision that is made by the company.

Three aspects were studied (see also full project page).
Report 1. Do airlines make safety information available to their users on their main web pages? (By Jakke Mäkelä)
Report 2. Do airline web pages have any mention of accidents or incidents that have happened? (By Niko Porjo)
Report 3. Is there any external factor that would systematically explain any differences? (By Niko Porjo)

Report 1: The web sites of 83 major airlines were analyzed. Only 35% seem willing to even mention safety on their official web pages (what we decided to call a “safety-positive” approach towards customers). Airlines in developing countries were more safety-positive; up to 65% of them used safety as a marketing tool. However, this was not a hard-and-fast rule; some developed-nation airlines like British Airways and All Nippon Airways had a very large focus on safety issues.

Report 2: The web pages of 46 airlines were scanned in detail to see whether any information at all could be found about accidents that had occurred to the airlines. Out of 37 airlines with a fatal accident, 10 mentioned the accident somewhere on the web page. However, the information was technically quite shallow.

Report 3: A simple metric was used, where number of hits on a search for keywords “safety” and “accident” was used as a proxy for the amount of accident information that the airline wishes to make available. This number was correlated with a number of internal parameters that could affect it (such as airline size), as well as external parameters such as the GDP and Global Integrity Report score of the carrier country. No statistically significant correlations were found.

The overall impression is that for any ordinary passenger ordering a ticket and browsing around the web site, the majority of airlines do not wish to bring up the issue of safety in any way. The factors that are emphasized are price and quality. When anything more is described, it is positive things like social responsibility, equal opportunity, sponsorships, and  so on. However, there is a dichotomy: those airlines that do mention safety tend to do so extensively.

Those are fairly objective facts; what personal opinions should we draw from them? We are rather surprised that so few airlines choose to be open about safety. Silence on this issue does not benefit the customers. Customers should be able to make informed choices, and this includes understanding the safety record of the airline.

Perhaps it does not benefit the airlines either.  In a culture of silence, safety only becomes visible when disaster strikes. The easiest way for an outsider to understand the airline’s safety culture is to read accident investigation reports on how it failed. This is hardly positive advertising. Would it be possible for airlines to utilize their safety culture in a more proactive way?

Accident information comparisons

 

Safety and accident related information is available at the websites of airlines, but you will find more of it if you use Google. There were also a couple of interesting peculiarities in the data, where it seems possible that the airline was hiding information. See also Part 1, this post is part of our “Is aviation safety a shameful thing?” project.

In this part two I will compare the number of safety/accident related links that were found by the airline’s own search to the number found by Google when it was limited to the website in question. Both link counts are also analyzed against against information about the airlines and their home countries. The intention is to find out how open airlines are with this information. Absolute numbers show how much information is available, relative numbers show how well it can be found with the search provided by the airline and might give a hint about how desirable it is to the airline to show that information. Comparison with other data might reveal factors that are common to airlines with high or low number of links.

I searched through 46 airlines. Figure 1 shows the raw link counts. The x-axis shows how many links were found and the y-axis shows the number of airlines that had that count. The large blue and orange bars at x=0 show that for many airlines the homepage was a poor choice for finding safety or accident info.

On the other hand Google is able to find information (yellow and green bars) on both subjects and in some cases quite a lot of it. It should be noted that I only counted to 10, if there were more links I ignored them. This document of the raw data shows in more detail which links were accepted to this data set.

Links to anything that the passengers would find out during the trip, such as pre-flight safety announcements, were rejected. Another category that was not accepted were links to insurance terms and conditions.The reason being that I am interested in what “extra” information is available at the website.

Figure 1. Number of links found for both searches and words.

I’d like to be a little cautious when making conclusions based on this data, mainly due to the low number of airlines, but also due to the data gathering process. Namely it was done by me alone without much help. In my experience this leads to a less rigorous result than a group effort. But one thing seems to be pretty certain: Google is better in finding this information than the search functions on the airline web sites.

This is true even if those 12 airlines that didn’t have a search are removed from the zero column. For the whole set, when the number of links found for one airline by one search is summed; Google finds more links in 39 cases while in only two cases the homepage search returns more results (Qantas 5 vs. 4 and Czech Airlines 7 vs. 5)

At least one of the airlines uses Google to power their search (US Airways). This offers an interesting comparison: US Airways homepage search found 3 safety and 1 accident related link, while the general google search found 1 safety and 7 accident related links.

While I was not logged in to my Google account, it is possible that Google had picked up on the fact that the same computer had been intensely searching for accident info for several days and used this knowledge to show what was most interesting to me.

A more sinister explanation is that the results by the search provided at the homepage have been filtered not to include what I was looking for. Searching the US airways site with the site’s search for “1549” gives (18 March 2012 ) one result about a general chronology of the airline and tells that some results have been omitted. If one includes those, four more links to the same chronology are included. It is still possible that this is a result of some more general decision not to include parts of the web site in the site search, but I’d say there is a good possibility that this is intentional.

In the case of Kenya Airways, Google search gave two links to the accident of KQ 507 but when I followed those links they gave a 404 (i.e page not found). This could be due to several reasons and need not be intentional. The accident was mentioned in an annual report.

Table 1. Mean and median number of links found Google for different sub populations

 

Table 1 shows the mean and median number of links found by google for different sub populations. “Whole set” includes all the airlines, while “Google and Homepage” includes only those cases where both searches were available and “Google only” includes only the cases where there was no homepage search.

In all cases there are more links related to safety than to accidents, but the difference is not massive. Results for the word “Safety” show no definite differences between the populations. For “Accident” airlines with their own search show more info. This difference could be explained if the airlines with no homepage search had had fewer accidents, but in only 3 cases out of 12 I couldn’t find a fatal accident in the history of the airline. Four out of the 12 airlines without homepage search function are low cost airlines which might have less expansive websites and therefore less information. This result is similar to what Jakke saw in his analysis of airline homepages.

I compared the link counts against a data set ( or here ) with info on

  • number of employees
  • number of yearly passengers
  • revenue
  • year the airline was founded
  • GDP (PPP) per capita of the airlines home country
  • global integrity report overall score of home country
  • corruption perception index
  • IATA membership
  • date of latest accident

It was difficult to find all the data for all the airlines so there are some gaps. The data is also unreferenced and from various sources. Some plots with very short description are available here. There is a modest correlation between the date of latest non fatal accident and total number of links found,  which just might be significant. There is also a modest correlation between the Global Integrity Report overall score and total number of links. But the plots show that in addition to the set being quite small there might be other data related difficulties that make this type of analysis less trustworthy.

Overall the small numbers in table 1 suggest that openness is not the approach chosen for these subjects. Further, there is accident related information at many airline websites but you might not find all of it with the search provided by the airline.

In the third part of this series I will attempt to rate the links and see if any info comes out of that

Avoin data, Osa 1. Mitä se voisi olla?

Ihmisten välinen kanssakäyminen perustuu arvauksiin tulevasta käyttäytymisestä ja reagoinnista. Avoimen datan suuri mahdollisuus voisi olla juuri ennakoinnissa. Tahtotilan osoittava anonyymi järjestelmä ei oikein tehtynä vaaranna yksityisyyttä tai avaa takaportteja väärinkäytöksille. Päinvastoin, se antaa muille mahdollisuuden varautua ja suunnitella omaa toimintaansa, omien kykyjen ja tilanteen edellyttämällä tavalla.

Zygomatican muissa kirjoituksissa on mietitty avoimen datan mahdollistamia uusia ratkaisuja erilaisiin tilanteisiin. Ottamatta lopullista kantaa itse väitteeseen tuoko avoin data autuuden, en ole varma tietääkö kukaan täsmälleen mistä puhutaan. Seuraavassa pohdin aihetta esimerkkien kautta hieman syvemmälle, termin semantiikkaa ja filosofiaakin sivuten.Mietitään aluksi mitä data on. Normaalissa puhekielessä sanat data, informaatio ja tieto menevät sujuvasti sekaisin. Tietoa (toivottavasti) seuraavat ymmärrys ja viisaus, jotka jätän tässä kirjoituksessa vähemmälle huomiolle. Ymmärrys ja viisaus edellyttävät aikaa ja kokemusta ja voivat vaikuttaa huomattavasti miten yksilöt toimivat eri tilanteissa näennäisesti saman tiedon pohjalta. Normaalissa keskustelussa itse viestin välittyminen ei tavallisesti termien ristiinkäytöstä häiriinny. Tai korkeintaan näkyvät kielenhuollon harrastajien kasvojen punoituksena. Yleensä kuitenkin tarkoitetaan jotain yhteisesti tunnettua asiaa, joka selviää muusta yhteydestä.

Mitä on data?

Puhuttaessa datan avoimuuden puolesta on tärkeää tunnistaa mitä moinen “data” tarkoittaa sekä mitä kaikkea sen halutaan tarkoittavan. Datasta joskus käytetty muoto “raakadata” kuvaa termiä hyvin, joskin se avaa samalla uuden ulottuvuuden sillä raakadata on usein eri asia kuin data. Raakadata on numeroita tai arvoja siinä muodossa, missä ne saadaan mittalaitteelta tai sensorilta. Raakadatan numeerisia arvoja ei ole suodatettu millään tavalla ja voi yksinään olla jopa käyttökelvotonta. Silti se kuvaa puhtaimmillaan tarkastellun kohteen tai jopa sen mittaamiseksi tarkoitetun laitteen sisäistä käyttäytymistä. Tarkastelutaso määrää millä tavalla raakadataa tulee käsitellä, että saadaan käyttökelpoisia tuloksia, varsinaista dataa.

Data ja varsinkin raakadata on puolueetonta, kantaa ottamatonta, usein numeerisista merkeistä koostuvaa, jostain kerättyjä tai mitattuja arvoja. Pelkästään näitä lukusarjoja tarkastelemalla ei voi olla varmuutta mitä ne kuvaavat. Ilman muuta tietoa asiayhteydestä sama jono numeroita saattaa kuvata tietyn henkilöryhmän painoja tai koetuloksia. Raakadatan yhteydessä tulee aina tietää mitä ne edustavat, jotta niitä voidaan käyttää hyväksi. Joskus puhutaan metadatasta, mutta usein numerosarja tarvitsee tuekseen muuta dataa. Kärjistetty esimerkki on Douglas Adamsin kirjassa “Linnunradan käsikirja liftareille”, jossa tietokone antaa pitkän käsittelyn jälkeen vastauksen kysymyksen “mikä on elämän tarkoitus”. Vastaus on 42. Kyseinen vastaus taitaa jäädä koko ihmiskunnalle datan tasolle, sillä se ei anna suoraa vastausta yhtään mihinkään. Sen hyvä puoli kuitenkin on, että ihmiset saattavat pohtia mistä oikeasti on kyse.

Jättäen syrjään tekniset termit, kohina ja integrointi, katsotaan kahta eri esimerkkiä saman raakadatan käyttämisestä. Otetaan tarkastelun kohteeksi auto ja ohjauspyörän kääntäminen. Raakadatana voidaan kerätä ajoneuvon nopeus sekä ohjauspyörän kääntökulma ja kuinka kauan se on käännettynä. Erittäin lyhyellä aikavälillä tarkasteltuna tietoja voidaan käyttää esimerkiksi ajonvakautuksen toiminnan ohjaamiseen, jolloin ratin pienet kääntelyt ovat merkittävä tietolähde. Halutessa kuitenkin tietoa auton ajosuunnasta, moiset mikrokääntämiset eivät ole enää tärkeitä. Tässä  tapauksessa tulee keskittyä kuinka kauan ohjauspyörä on käännettynä tiettyyn suuntaan, jolloin auton kulkusuunta vaihtuu vaikkapa pohjoisesta länteen. Kummassakin tapauksessa voidaan käyttää samaa raakadataa, mutta vasta käsittelyn jälkeen se muuttuu käyttökelpoiseksi. Tässä tapauksessa data on joko auton vakaa eteneminen tai auton kulkusuunta. Etukäteen on mahdoton sanoa kummasta tiedosta joku yksittäinen tekijä saa tarvitsemansa informaation. Siis… Nytkin meni jo epäselväksi onko auton kulkusuunta DATAA jotain tulevaa käsittelyä varten vai jo TIETOA ja INFORMAATIOTA  vastauksena johonkin kysymykseen. Vastaus on, että se voi olla kumpaa tahansa ja selviää vasta käyttöyhteydestään.

Mitä hyötyä on datasta?

Katsotaan vastaavaa päätöksentekoketjua  ja samalla yksittäisen kansalaisen päätöstä mitä pukea päälle seuraavana päivänä. Aluksi pukeutumispäätös saattaa tuntua yksinkertaiselta, ennustettuun lämpötilaan perustuvalta päätökseltä. Meteorologi voi kertoa yhden numeron ja kehottaa valmistautumaan sen mukaisesti. Tuo numero ja kylmyys tai kuumuus ei kuitenkaan ole yksiselitteinen käsite. Suomessa +3 celsiusastetta heinäkuisena aamuna voi olla kylmä ja tammikuussa lämmin ajankohtaan nähden. Kummassakaan tapauksessa yksin jaottelu kylmään tai kuumaan ei kerro mitään  odotusarvosta miten lämpötila kehittyy saati lumi- tai vesisateesta ja kestosta. Sama numero höystettynä lisätiedoilla vuodenajasta ja koordinaateista voi vaihtaa T-paidan untuvatakiksi. Yksi numero kertoo harvoin kokonaisuudesta kaiken tarvittavan, poislukien ehkä jo aiemmin mainittu 42.

Aina johtopäätöksiä tehtäessä tilanteen tekee haastavammaksi kysymys, onko kaikki tarpeellinen data koossa haluttua tulkintaa varten. Esimerkiksi auton kulkusuuntaa määritettäessä kompassi tai kiihtyvyysanturi voisi antaa parempia tuloksia. Mutta jos niitä ei ole käytössä tai haluta asentaa, tulee data kerätä käytettävissä olevilla välineillä. Sama koskee kulkusuunnan vaihtelua mitattaessa ohjauspyörän kääntämistä. On oleellisen tärkeä tietää kuinka suuren muutoksen ratin kääntäminen aiheuttaa. Erityisesti viimeisen kymmenen vuoden aikana on rakennettu sähköisiä ja mekaanisia ohjausjärjestelmiä, joiden avulla ohjauspyörän liikkeiden vaikutus muuttuu eri nopeuksilla tai erilaiset ajo-ohjelmat valittuina. Talviohjelma voi painottaa rauhallista käyttäytymistä ja urheilullinen puolestaan kääntää autoa jo tiukkaankin mutkaan samalla kääntökulmalla. Keskeinen kysymys on siis mitä tietoa tarvitaan johtopäätöksen tekemiseksi, onko kaikki tieto saatu ja onko kaikki tieto varmasti relevanttia ja oikeaa.

Raakadatan pyhyys

Muutettaessa dataa informaation suuntaan varsinkin asiantuntijat ja tiedemiehet saavat tavallisen kansan hulluuden tai ainakin raivon partaalle. He eivät välttämättä keskity kertomaan datan selvästi osoittamaa asiaa, vaan haluavat kertoa ja varmistua että data on kerätty, käsitelty ja luokiteltu oikein ja mitä niiden puitteissa on turvallista sanoa. Jos ei voi olla varma miten numerot on saatu, ei voi olla täysin varma myöskään sen perusteella kerrotuista johtopäätöksistä. Esimerkiksi lämpötilaa mitattaessa on iso merkitys, onko mittari ikkunan sisä- tai ulkopuolella. GPS-koordinaattien mukainen ero saattaa olla vain viisi senttimetriä, mutta vaikutus lämpötilaan voi olla kymmeniä asteita säätilaa tarkasteltaessa.

Tieteellisen työn ja tutkimuksen periaatteisiin kuuluu avoimuus hyvässä ja pahassa. Tämä lause avaa kokonaan oman pohdiskeluketjunsa, johon palaamme myöhemmissä kirjoituksissa. Hyvin kirjoitetusta raportista tulee selvitä millä tavalla numerot tuottanut koe on järjestetty ja sen mittalaitteet asennettu. Samoin alkuperäinen data tulisi olla saatavilla muokkaamattomassa muodossa, ilman sille tehtyjä luokitteluita tai muita johtopäätöksiä. Periaatteena voidaan pitää alkuperäisen datan pyhyyttä ja mahdollisuutta aina palata siihen. Tarpeen voi aiheuttaa myöhemmin vialliseksi tai väärin kalibroiduksi havaittu sensori. Tällä tavalla koe on toistettavissa uudelleen pyrittäessä ymmärtämään itse ilmiötä.

Järjen käyttö on suotavaa

Mikä voisi olla sopiva avoimen datan taso menemättä liiallisuuksiin? Auton katolle tuskin tarvitsee laittaa näyttöä osoittamaan ohjauspyörän kääntökulmaa, se selviää lähes aina auton käyttäytymisestä ilman sensoreitakin. Tällainen mitattu data voitaisiin helposti laittaa avoimeen jakeluun, mutta olisiko siitä mitään todellista hyötyä? Sama kysymys tulee esille esimerkiksi laivaonnettomuuden analyysissä, minkä tason TIETO avoimen datan avulla olisi voinut auttaa joko onnettomuuden välttämisessä tai pelastusoperaatiossa. Tarkka sensoritieto voi toki olla tarpeen onnettomuuden syiden selvittämisessä, mutta ei aina etukäteen niiden välttämisessä.

Sensorit ja mittarit voivat antaa tietoa jo tapahtuneista asioista, ne eivät suoranaisesti ennusta. Ennustavia järjestelmiä on toki rakennettavissa, sellaisia ovat muun muassa auton käyntinopeusmittarin punainen alue tai vanhojen höyrykoneiden rajoittimet ja kielletyt alueet. Jos kyseiselle alueelle mennään, koneen rikkoutuminen on todennäköistä. Maa-, vesi- tai ilmaliikenteessä tällainen datan kertominen ei itsessään ole keskeistä. Kanssa-autoilijoilta puuttuu halu, aika ja mahdollisuudet analysoida mitä viereisessä kulkuneuvossa kohta ehkä tapahtuu. Pienten lasten vanhemmat ja isojen yritysten projektipäälliköt tietävät, että aina täytyy varautua yllättäviinkin asioihin. Onnettomuuksia kutsutaan onnettomuuksiksi ihan syystä ja siksi niistä ei pystytä ilmoittamaan etukäteen. Ja jos pystytään, ne eivät ole enää onnettomuuksia, koska ne eivät ole enää ennalta-arvaamattomia sillä niihin olisi voitu varautua tai jopa estää.

Kuka tekee, mitä aikoo?

Mikä olisi sitten oikeanlainen informaatio, mitä tiedottaa ympäristöön jos pelkkä data tai edes tieto nykytilasta ei riitä? Yksinkertaisin keino lienee pyrkiä antamaan tietoa kuljettajan tai aluksen kapteenin tulevista aikomuksista. Tämän perusteella muut voivat suhteuttaa oman toimensa seuraavaan todennäköiseen tapahtumaan. Jokapäiväisessä liikenteessä auton suuntavilkku on tulevasta suunnitelmasta kertovaa avointa dataa. Se pystyy kertomaan kuljettajansa aikomuksen ja sen näkevät tiedon vaikutus- ja tarvepiirissä olevat. Samalla suuntavilkku ei vaaranna kenenkään yksityisyyttä eikä turvallisuutta, minkä mikä tahansa avoimeksi julistettu data voi saada aikaiseksi. Käännyttäessä ei välity ympäristöön tietoa Möttösen perheen lomamatkasta ja tyhjillään olevasta kodista arvoesineineen. Se kertoo vain, että joku Toijota Korolla aikoo kääntyä seuraavasta risteyksestä oikealle. Oman yllätyksensä aiheuttavat kuljettajat, joiden mielestä reitinvalinta ei muille kuuluu. He, jotka jättävät vilkkunsa käyttämättä.

Omanlaista viestiä voidaan antaa myös hätävilkuilla. Se kertoo, että tarvitsee apua tai vähintään muiden tulee varoa jotain. Tämä viestii ympäristöönsä tarpeesta olla tarkkaavainen. Costa Concordian tapauksessa laiva olisi voinut laittaa “hätävilkut päälle” jo aiemmin viestimään, että kaikki ei ole enää täysin normaalia. Tällainen olisi tietenkin mahdollista rakentaa automaattiseksikin, jossa reitiltä poikkeaminen sytyttää hätävilkut, jotka kapteenin ja perämiehen täytyy kuitata merkkinä tietoisesti tehdystä toimenpiteestä. Käytännön esimerkkinä jälleen automaailmasta jarruvalojen tai hätävilkkujen nopea vilkuttaminen kovan jarrutuksen yhteydessä. Tällöin auton kuljettaja voi keskittyä omaan tehtäväänsä, mutta ympärillä olevat autoilijat saavat silti tietoa poikkeuksellisesta tapahtumasta ja pystyvät varautumaan siihen. Costa Concordian tapauksessa tietoa ongelmista pidätettiin, mutta pieniä vinkkejä voidaan silti antaa jääräpäisimmänkin kapteenin ylitse. Autollakin hätäjarrutus on hätäjarrutus kuljettajan kyvyistä ja tarkoitusperästä riippumatta.

Avoimuus ja ennakointi

Lähes kaikki ihmisten välinen kanssakäyminen perustuu oletukseen tulevasta käyttäytymisestä tai reagoinnista. Ehkä avoimen datan suuri mahdollisuus on juuri näissä anonyymeissä tulevan toiminnan tai tahtotilan osoittavissa järjestelmissä, jotka eivät vaaranna yksityisyyttä ja avaa takaportteja väärinkäytöksille. Painvastoin, ne antavat muille mahdollisuuden varautua ja suunnitella oma toimintansa omien kykyjen ja tilanteen edellyttämällä tavalla.

Muita aihetta sivuavia kirjoituksia: täällä.

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