ECSITE Interview, SPOKES magazine issue # 06

Legible Cities, Liquid Networks & Living Labs

Interview wIth Eli Kuslansky Managing PartNer at Unified Field In conversation with Maarten Okkersen, Chair of the Spokes Editorial Committee, Julie Becker ECSITE Communications Manager and Nicolas De Smet Van Damme, ECSITE Communications Intern.

Eli, could you introduce yourself? Some call you a digital media guru…

I’m Managing Partner and Chief Strategist at Unified Field, an agency creating interactive media for science centres, museums, corporations and government agencies. I’ve been work- ing in the cultural sector for over thirty years – twenty two of them at Unified Field thinking up solutions to deliver messages and experiences through digital media (although I did start as a maritime curator - go figure).

Recently, we created a new consultancy practice inside Unified Fields called “Future Culture”, in which we work with our clients to create cultural centres of the future, and producing real-world applications using big data. We have been working on a number of Future Culture projects, including multi-channel media programs, next generation maker spaces, smart cities and participatory exhibits.

Some of this like big data might sound alien to some – but actually data doesn’t come from outer space. A lot is created by human beings ful- filling an ancient urge to communicate with one another. I recently gave a keynote speech on this at the Leadership Reception at the Association of Science Technology Centres (ASTC) conference in Raleigh, where I spoke about “Ubuntu”, an an- cient African belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity. Maybe Ubuntu is the spiritual ancestor of the Internet with drumbeats being the first true HTML.

“Big data” has become a buzz word – but what does it mean exactly? How is it different from “normal” data?

Nowadays, we produce incredible amounts of data – most of it without even being aware of it. Each of your emails, tweets, Facebook pictures or clicks is data. But also each of your credit card purchases, each of your entry and exit points to a public transport system using an RFID card, each of your phone’s connections to a network… In fact, most of this data is generated by sensors registering activity (for instance cars stopping at a traffic light).

The nature of each of these individual data points is not different from what we already know (call it “normal” or “small” data if you will) – what is new is the amount of it (we’ve produced 90 percent of the data in all human history in the last two years alone), and the tools we use to collect and analyze that data, plus the predictive power of these tools. So basically we call data “big” when a collec- tion of data sets is so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process and its analysis requires programmes that extend beyond tradi- tional data processing and statistical tools.

Big data can predict things?

Big data can be used to reveal correlations and hidden patterns a lot faster than “normal” or “small” data that relies on causalities. For instance where and when viral outbreaks are more likely to happen in a given neighborhood – or who is likely to win upcoming elections.

…and might this be used to improve visitors’ experience in your science centre?

Exactly. The tens of millions of visitors to science centres every year generate big data sets. This data can be used in many ways –for instance feed- ing into a mobile app that provides each visitor with tailored co-curated journeys through your current offering, based on their preferences but also on how crowded or popular different exhibits are or even simple things like how the natural light will be in your galleries at any given time.

Having better insights into your visitors also could help ticket sales. At the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in the Pacific Northwest they use big data analysis to tell them what their visitors do while they visit, what they’re saying on social media, which exhibits they prefer, and what conservation programs they’re participating in. In one year the result is a 700% increase in ticket sales. That’s a lot.

But in my view big data offers much bigger opportunities for science centres: I am convinced that they can have an important role to play in equipping data-literate citizens and in leveraging the data they and their visitors already create. US-based museums, science centres, zoos etc. collectively receive about 850 millions visits per year, almost 2.7 times more people than the total US population – this represents incredible amounts of data. In Europe, visits to science centres per year are equally in the tens of millions.

Leveraging data?

If knowledge is power, then big data is rocket fuel. The question of who owns the data and who has the capacity to analyse it is absolutely central. Science centres and museums have al- ready started to move away from the attractions model that saw them as providers of fun phenomenological educators of young audiences. Many of them want to become places where all citizens can learn and enjoy themselves, as well as equip themselves with the skills they need to participate in the future of science with all its social implications.

Science centres want to host and facilitate that conversation and play a more active role in their communities. No way you can do this in the very near future effectively (i’m talking 5 years, not 20) if you don’t tackle big data now.

It is one of the essential languages of the 21st century. We – including science centres – should all be brokers of big data. But big data in itself doesn’t make much sense: at the Future Culture practice we think that science centres need to look at it in the context of what we call “the three L’s”: Legible Cities, Liquid Networks and Living Labs.

Spokes readers will be familiar with living labs – but Legible Cities? Liquid networks?

By 2050, 70% of the world population will live in cities – these will be where the future of in- novation happens. A lot of people talk of “smart cities” (that of course make use of big data). But right now the people busy planning and building smart cities all come from the same world: big information technology corporations. And they are building these cities in their own image: top- down, with seamless control, uniformity and systems in which in some cases citizens need to pay to use the data they generated themselves! This is not how cities work.

I am urging science centre and Ecsite to join in and act now to help create a humanistic version of the smart city – cities that are innovative learning cities. Cities just like the process of in- novation itself are messy and organic.