Open Password – Friday, July 16, 2021
#948
Social responsibility of the information sciences – Elia Johannes Panskus – Rolf Däßler – Posdam University of Applied Sciences – Ute Schwens – German National Library – Libraries – Archives – Museums – Disinformation – Pandemic – Image – Job profiles – Guidelines – Andreas Degkwitz – Humboldt University – Promoting democracy – Trustworthy information – More democratic Exchange – Willi Bredemeier – Hans-Christoph Hobohm – University lecturer – Neighboring disciplines – Economy – Civil society – ISI 2021 – Bernd Jörs – Reinhard Kuhlen – Information competence – Information science – Library science – Discourse space for libraries – Claudia Lux – Risks of artificial intelligence – Start of the Art – Open Access – Ambient Assisted Living – Smart technologies – Target group seniors – Excubate – Market development – Willingness to pay – Ecosystem – Startups – Established companies – Energy suppliers – Use cases – Bertelsmann – Self-determined living – PERS – COVID-19 – Philips Lifeline – Smart meters
I
Cover story (1): On the social responsibility of information science – information institutions as important building blocks of society – by Elia Johannes Pauskus
II.
Cover story (2): On the social responsibility of information science – politics, economics, society and neighboring disciplines not included – state-of-the-art reports and highly informative lectures on individual problems, but hardly any instructions for change and action for oneself and others – by Willi Bredemeier
III.
Ambient Assisted Living: Smart technologies as a means for a self-determined life at home – use cases, willingness to pay and drivers for the target group of seniors
Symposium: On the social responsibility
of information science (1)
Two keynotes
By Elia Johannes Panskus
Information institutions as important building blocks of society
Johannes Elias Panskus
After the technical advice, which is probably usual at this time, to please remain silent and a short greeting from Prof. Dr. Rolf Däßler from the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences starts the symposium on the social responsibility of information science with the keynote speech “Information institutions as important building blocks of society” by Ute Schwens from the German National Library. Ms. Schwens examines the question of whether we still need information institutions such as libraries, archives or museums and for what? The Internet actually exists.
A legitimate question that Ute Schwens can clearly answer with “yes” during the course of the lecture. Information facilities not only form the basis for our Internet, they also provide material for the network that is checked, completed and prepared at the same time. The Internet would probably be filled with even more disinformation and more garbage if it weren’t for institutions that try to provide reliable information in the first place.
Information facilities are not only a foundation of the Internet, they are also a foundation of our society. Because it is based on science, education, research and culture. And for this it needs libraries, archives and museums. And just like society, information institutions are evolving, primarily digitally. Especially during the Corona pandemic, demand for the few available spaces in libraries was high, and demand for digital formats was high, says Ute Schwens. Nevertheless, many people have an outdated image of such memorial institutions as dusty, soporific and dark places, although this is not true today.
Job profiles have also changed significantly in the last few decades. Other skills are required, in particular the willingness to move into the new, much more digital world in order to be attractive enough to reach non-specialists. Ute Schwens demands that new ideas have to be generated again and again. There are still many challenges ahead. The saying “Only what changes stays” is also true here. But one thing is certain: it won’t work without information facilities, concludes Ms. Schwens.
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“Public Libraries 2025” (ÖB 2025): Guidelines for the development of public libraries
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In a time of great change for libraries, major issues arise, such as growing inequality or problems on the labor market or sustainable measures against climate change or the transformations into the digital society. And one topic is becoming increasingly important, says Prof. Dr. Andreas Degkwitz from the Humboldt University of Berlin in the second keynote of the symposium, the ever-increasing questioning of our democracy.
Libraries, as places of society and cohesion, are directly affected by this change, but can also actively shape it. However, libraries see themselves primarily as service providers when it comes to the burning current social problems. As a result, the political and social role of libraries takes a back seat. And that, says Andreas Degkwitz, must change. We want libraries to be at the forefront of promoting democracy.
The ÖB2025 guideline of the German Library Association is intended to help libraries set up in a contemporary manner. ÖB2025 outlines in three points how libraries promote education and cultural participation and how libraries become places of encounter and exchange. The paper also provides insight into how successful implementation can take place. With 15,000 printed copies, the ÖB2025 guideline has a wide distribution. Libraries currently have great opportunities to position themselves at the center of an active society, says Degkwitz. Citizens want access to trustworthy information and democratic exchange and libraries can offer that – always in the context of digital change, of course.
On the social responsibility
of information science (2)
Politics, economics, society and neighboring disciplines are not included
State-of-the-art reports and highly informative lectures on individual problems, but hardly any instructions for change and action
for yourself or others
By Willi Bredemeier
Willi Bredemeier
When I joined the event there were 103 participants. This number fell to 82 by the start of the final discussion round. Information scientists therefore appear to be interested in the social responsibility of their discipline. I agree with the university lecturers, who clearly shaped the event, that its content is more important than achieving organizational and technical perfection in its conferences. The influence of university professors also came about because representatives of neighboring disciplines, business and civil society were not invited, my constant warning that I also addressed to the ISI 2021. How are you supposed to act socially responsibly if the expectations of politics, business and society remain unknown and if you want to have an impact you would have to enter into cooperation with them?
Another reason was that the discussions mainly consisted of replies from the speakers and tended to drag on and the chat function was little used. The liveliest comment came from Open Password author Bernd Jörs, also a university professor:
“It’s good that there are still a few information professionals who can lay claim to the final TRUTH directly after God. We can only ever approach this objective TRUTH, but never claim to have “certain KNOWLEDGE”. In the future, with omnipotent information science, we will build a new meta-level in science and employ many professionals who can assess the truth of the respective scientific disciplines without prior knowledge.”
Reinhard Kuhlen felt addressed here and saw Jörs’ criticism as incomprehensible.
The image that emerged at the symposium was of a hierarchized and heterogeneous, poorly connected discipline, which is certainly capable of generalization. Information science was seen as a “discourse space” for libraries, especially in combination with library science, which was not a comprehensive but sufficient and important specification for a specialist conference. While I welcomed Claudia Lux’s critical and future-oriented questions about the risks of artificial intelligence, I found the question of what conclusions we draw from the experiences with COVID-19 to be a thematic « must » and saw the comments on archival science as very informative I asked for preliminary documents for two lectures because I foresaw highly abstract presentations with some only indirect relevance to the social responsibility of information science. Here I was successful in one case.
The willingness to engage in self-criticism and the will to change their own work in favor of a greater social focus varied among the speakers. Occasionally there was a temptation to interpret the current practice of libraries and information sciences as a sufficient assumption of social responsibility. Hans-Christoph Hobohm imported a requirement from library literature and policy from the Scandinavian region (“libraries as the fifth power”) that should be discussed further. Overall, I would have liked fewer state-of-the-art round-ups about the status and importance of libraries and their “information science discourse space” and a mention of a large number of problem variables than pragmatic, innovative suggestions on how information science can fulfill its social responsibility the libraries can do justice to in a more realistic way. This could all have ended with a common manifesto, as was possible in the pioneering days of open access.
This brings us to the individual content.
Read in the next episode: How Corona made libraries more digital –
A vibrant discourse space for archival science! – Libraries and “Library and Information Science” as innovation partners.
Ambient Assisted Living
Smart technologies as a means
for a self-determined life at home. Use cases, willingness to pay and drivers for the target group of seniors
(Excubate) – AAL market worth billions: Estimates show a market volume of 1.4 billion EURO in Europe – Various socio-economic trends increase the added value of AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) for seniors – AAL technologies offer a wide range of potential use cases in everyday life Seniors beyond the home emergency call – The target group’s willingness to pay has increased significantly over the last few years – An ecosystem is increasingly developing around the topic of AAL, in which startups act like established companies in an area of tension between cooperation and competition – AAL as an opportunity for large companies A wide variety of industries: Industry experts and outsiders – such as energy suppliers – bring their own core competencies into the ecosystem and push into the market with more complex systems using multiple use cases.
65+ is the target group of the future. As society ages and there is a serious shortage of nursing staff, the main need of this target group, a self-determined life in their own home, is increasingly becoming a key issue. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL for short) comes into play here and aims to use technology to support seniors in their everyday lives.
The willingness to pay of customers over 65 has increased significantly in recent years – driven, among other things, by the pandemic (200 euros on average per month). Due to this increasing willingness to pay, increasing technological competence in the target group and the urgency for solutions, AAL is developing into a billion-dollar market.
Many startups have already recognized this and established players are also increasingly entering the market. The multitude of possible AAL use cases offers opportunities for many companies, but a major challenge: due to the diverse needs of the target group, AAL can only be won in an ecosystem with partners.
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65 plus – a target group with a future
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Every fifth person in Germany is older than 65 years. However, the tech industry has so far had a difficult time tapping into this increasingly larger target group due to low levels of technological expertise. However, this is currently facing a change. As current surveys show, the affinity for technology within the target group is also increasing: according to a Bertelsmann study, 45% of people over 70 are already online regularly.
The starting point is the lifestyle of older people. A self-determined life in one’s own home is increasingly becoming a central challenge for older people in society – and also in technology companies. Around 70% of people over 65 live at home and would like to stay that way for as long as possible if financially and health-wise possible. However, seniors are often left to fend for themselves here, be it because their children live far away or because of a lack of nursing staff. Other trends in technology and business are exacerbating this problem.
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Ambient Assisted Living (AAL): Smart home solutions for living in old age
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So-called Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions are a promising approach in this context, as they relieve stress in everyday life for seniors and at the same time create a feeling of security for seniors and their relatives.
AAL solutions cover far more areas than personal emergency call systems (PERS) and support seniors with countless use cases along their entire daily micro-life cycle: The smart pill box reminds you to take medication in the morning, the stove switches on automatically when you leave the house for a lunchtime walk, in the evening voice and gesture control of the blinds save unnecessary effort and motion sensors detect when you go to the toilet at night and automatically activate the light in the hallway. COVID and the associated isolation have even increased many of the needs of the 65+ target group.
This also seems to have an impact on willingness to pay. While previous studies indicate an average willingness to pay of around 20 EURO per month for AAL solutions, a current survey by Excubate comes to a monthly willingness to pay of 150-200 EURO. Divided into individual use cases, the topic of health is at the forefront in terms of willingness to pay at 45 EURO / month, followed by security and communication at 35 and 32 EURO / month respectively.
Not least due to the development of willingness to pay, AAL is increasingly becoming a lucrative billion dollar market from which more and more companies want to benefit.
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AAL offers cross-industry opportunities for established companies and startups.
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In addition to established companies, startups also come up with innovative ideas to address the diverse use cases. However, market access is somewhat more difficult for them. On the one hand, they initially only focus on specific individual use cases (e.g. fall detection) and therefore only offer limited added value for users. On the other hand, they lack a well-known brand to be able to build the necessary trust with the target group in sensitive health issues.
Here, industrial companies have a decisive advantage over startups when it comes to their sustainable positioning in the AAL ecosystem: As established players, they have already built up trustworthy brands and customer relationships over the years and have the appropriate investment sums and networks available to be able to offer comprehensive solutions and work with other “big players”. to cooperate. With these advantages, it is not surprising that more and more industrial companies are discovering AAL for themselves.
Philips provides an example of how the combination of its own expertise, brand awareness and partnering in the ecosystem can be used to create successful AAL use cases. The medical technology giant has been offering medical alert systems with the Philips Lifeline brand for decades. Philips has also been researching smart home solutions for seniors for a long time in the specially built “CareLab” . The first more comprehensive AAL solutions were brought to market in partnership with the nursing service Right at Home with the launch of CareSensus – a platform to support nursing staff in the care and monitoring of seniors.
But AAL also enables new use cases for industries where this would not necessarily have been expected. Examples include energy providers as trusted partners around many people’s homes. For example, the use of smart meters is conceivable for analyzing the usage behavior of consumers in the household and alerting relatives or nursing staff in the event of any abnormalities.
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