Results of the Inaugural Life Itself Research Hackaton 3rd June 2023
Last Saturday, at the inaugural Life Itself Research hackathon (previous post) , we had more than a dozen attendees and more than six projects completed.
As planned, the focus was on creating and curating reading lists to introduce key concepts related to our research work. Beyond this, participants had the option to work on any relevant projects.
About Life Itself Research
Life Itself Research is a research collective exploring paths to a wiser, weller world 🌻. We produce reports, papers, methods and tools.
Day Summary
The day began with a short meditation and stretch, providing grounding and presence as a platform to work from.
Then, each participant gave a brief introduction of themselves and their work.
Rufus outlined the collective goals, each member then went, in turn, discussing they're own ambitions for the day and formed groups where cooperation would be best suited.
Then work began!
After a few hours of intensive effort, there was a check in before lunch. Here, participants were able to share what they had been working on and the progress they had made, giving a sense of accountability and offering the option for the group to give their input.
This was followed by a delicious vegetarian lunch, prepared by our resident [Tenzo Valérie Duvauchelle] with local organic ingredients.
This was a moment to unwind and connect with each other and the food - as well as an opportunity to discuss topics which were either directly relevant or intellectually adjacent to the Hackathon.
Following lunch, participants resumed their work, continuing the momentum from the morning. There was a deep collective focus which remained until the end of the day. At this point, we had a check out, where the final progress and outputs of the day were shared, as well as a moment to acknowledge what each individual had gained from the experience.
Herewith is a summary of the results produced.
John: Sensemaking reading list on Zotero
https://www.zotero.org/groups/5081870/lifeitself-research-hackathon/collections/MUP5RK2K
- Tried out the reading list process using Zotero
- Really valued the process of reflection in choosing his sources. Found it very rich.
- Going back in time 20 years or more and seeing how things were still relevant
- Goes back to his other project in the hackathon about having explicit means for reflecting on this process, what it brings up, the significance of particular pieces etc
Extras
- Document on meta-data and visualising data sets/reading lists: Life Itself Hackathon Reading List Signification - Project Proposal
Valerie & Jake: Tenzo Reading list
Created a reading list for the practice of Tenzo in cooking. There are roughly two dozen items including classic texts, podcasts and videos curated from my own research and experience.
https://www.zotero.org/groups/5081870/lifeitself-research-hackathon/collections/JBAGGFHZ
Valerie: Tenzo 2.0 guide
A guide to zen cooking finalized and published: https://lifeitself.org/blog/2023/06/28/tenzo-note-8
Marc: Collecting individual and group practices with methods and outcomes
This project focused on the question of collecting and documenting individual and group practices.
We began with background research to find relevant attempts at collecting such information, which we summarized into a table (see outputs).
We then defined a set of key metadata for documenting a practice, and proposed a few solutions to collect them in the physical space of the Praxis Hub in Bergerac, in particular using a documentation station, i.e. a dedicated area in the physical space where people can go to document their practices.
Recognizing that most of these protocols and outcomes rely on "warm" unstructured data, with textual information having different levels of style, completeness etc, we coded a software to conduct text analyses for doing word enrichment, topic modeling, and sentiment analysis. We prototyped this software on real data collected at the Hub in March 2023 (see notebook in outcomes).
Future perspectives are to expand the text analysis to audio/video transcripts, define an embedding of "practice space" to map practices, and eventually infer location of any practice/text from various wisdom traditions.
Outputs
- Google docs summarizing the process and output during the Hackathon day
- Notebook for the code written during the hackathon
Table of resources for individual/group practice and experiences
| Resource | Link | Description | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qualia Research Institute | https://qri.org/ | Publishes papers and guides on subjective experiences | Provides a guide for writing reports, includes demographic information, set and setting information, emotional and cognitive state, temporal progression, theme, valence, qualia and binding patterns |
| Psychonaut Wiki | https://psychonautwiki.org | A resource for explaining effects of psychoactive substances or practices | Provides a subjective effect index with 200 effects, includes replications, contributor-based |
| Database of Religious History | https://religiondatabase.org/ | Provides questionnaires for religious groups, places, texts, polities, and external factors | Approved analysts can download a csv file of existing data, infers landscape for proximity between traditions |
| Intangible Cultural Heritage | https://ich.unesco.org/en/dive | An open data graph database of cultural heritage | Provides labels, years, lists, links, countries, primary concepts, secondary concepts |
| Session Lab | https://www.sessionlab.com/library | A platform for designing workshops using cards | Cards can be added to favorites, used in sessions, shared, can create session templates, recommender system |
| Greater Good in Action | https://ggia.berkeley.edu/ | Provides science-based practices for a meaningful life | 93 practices, provides how to do it, why to try it (with evidence), save/mark as tried/comment/review |
| Recipes for Wellbeing | https://www.recipesforwellbeing.org/ | Provides a lot of content for wellbeing | 264 recipes, top-down curation |
| Liberating Structures | https://www.liberatingstructures.com/ls-menu/ | Provides 33 recipes in menu | Top-down structure, includes structuring invitation, how space is arranged and materials needed, how participation is distributed, how groups are configured, sequence of steps and time allocation |
| Open Humans | https://www.openhumans.org/ | A platform for self-research | Not very active anymore since 2021 |
| Quantified Self | https://quantifiedself.com/get-started/ | Provides a document on how to self-report your own data | Active forum, show and tell for results |
Matt & Rufus: Better Research community landing page and user journey
We worked on a better Life Itself research landing page:
https://lifeitself.org/research
Current landing page had various issues:
- Wall of text (looks like a post rather than landing page)
- Too much information
- No links to existing work
- More info in issue https://github.com/life-itself/community/issues/576
Outputs
Hero section
Our work section
Matt & Rufus: Improved Topic Map
Summary: We produced an analysis of the issue and brainstormed solutions. We then went back to the landing page issue.
Main outputs:
- Analysis of issue and what is needed: see https://github.com/life-itself/community/issues/577
- Mood board and brainstorm of solutions
Jake
- Created image-based tutorial on how to set up Zotero, join the group library and create your own collection (reading list)
- Collaborated with Valerie, helping her curate resources and create her own reading list on Tenzo cooking, as seen above
- Edited Valerie's article and transposed it onto Hackmd, ready to be published
Liuba + Matthew
Exploring how can one think about 'algorithms' in this context, as being a hybrid phenomenon between people and digitalization?
Since both the digital and social technologies that are applied to the 'urban scale' are typically not spatially limited to the urban scale, how can one make sense of this paradox?
Viewing hybrid agency as the way to enable collective intelligence?
Outputs
This model serves as a way to think about the ways in which digital and social processes can be understood on the urban scale, particularly in ways that promote co-production of knowledge and collaborative forms of urban (governance?). 'Technology' refers to, and 'agency' refers to the goals and processes that are enabled by technology.
Generally concerned with the way in which digital and social processes form and enable common goals and processes.
Useful resources: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/359416030_Beyond_the_smart_city_a_typology_of_platform_urbanism https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsc.2019.00003/full https://vloca-kennishub.vlaanderen.be/Open_urban_digital_twins
Questions:
- How can one think about 'algorithms' in this context, as being a hybrid phenomenon between people and digitalization?
- Since both the digital and social technologies that are applied to the 'urban scale' are typically not spatially limited to the urban scale, how can one make sense of this paradox?
- Viewing hybrid agency as the way to enable collective intelligence? (probably)
How can cities in the future be transformed through digital?
Full source drawing: https://link.excalidraw.com/l/9u8crB2ZmUo/5sUC0QyfhS2
