Each week the college hosts a community dinner called Ration Club. It's open to anyone who'd like to find out more about the college and its work. To find out more or if you'd like to attend, please register.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​Most political organising happens in group chats. Yet little attention is paid to how to constructively manage them. How do we managed these online spaces productively to produce actual outcomes? What are the practical strategies you can use to manage them? What difference does the platform make? Join this seminar to discover practical strategies for managing group chats effectively and explore what works and what doesn’t.

​​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​The introductory session of the Engineering Group Decisions module, lead by Dr Joshua Becker. The goal of this module is to help you think like an engineer about designing team, organizational, and social processes.

​”There is no such thing as an independent individual: everything you do and know and think is shaped by other people.”

A monthly London-based meetup for members of the rationalist diaspora. The diaspora includes, but is not limited to, LessWrong, Astral Codex Ten, rationalist tumblrsphere, and parts of the Effective Altruism movement.

You don’t have to identify as a rationalist to attend: basically, if you think we seem like interesting people you’d like to hang out with, welcome! You are invited. You do not need to think you are clever enough, or interesting enough, or similar enough to the rest of us, to attend. You are invited.

Our reading list for this time is:

1. Against Learning from Dramatic Events (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/against-learning-from-dramatic-events)
2. People Unlike Me (https://www.notonyourteam.co.uk/p/people-unlike-me)

We’ll start to discuss these around 3. If you have articles you want to suggest for future readings, you can do that at https://redd.it/v3646u.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

Exploring how institutions work, some difficulties that arise in them, how they change, and how we each can try to participate constructively in them.

Readings:

• Paul Cairney, Tanya Heikkila, and Matthew Wood, Making Policy in a Complex World, Cambridge University Press, 2019, Chs. 3-4
• Elinor Ostrom, ‘Beyond markets and states: polycentric governance of complex economic systems,’ American Economic Review, 2010
• Sarah Schulman, Conflict Is Not Abuse, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016, Introduction & Ch. 1
• Edward Hallowell, ‘The human moment at work’, Harvard Business Review, 1999

​The Internet’s Own Boy is a documentary of the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz. It features interviews with his family and friends as well as the internet luminaries who worked with him. The film tells his story up to his eventual suicide after a legal battle, and explores the questions of access to information and civil liberties that drove his work.

​This screening is organised by Yasmine Boudiaf, a researcher and creative technologist: “Every year, around the time of Aaron’s birthday, I like to host a screening of The Internet’s Own Boy to honour his life and work. Aaron was a hacker in the purest sense - seeking truth and justice using whatever tools available. His vision for access to knowledge for all and his integrity in the face of oppression has been an inspiration to me and countless others.”

Join us for our bi-weekly Campaign Lab Hack Night - a regular session to work on your tech side projects to help the progressive left campaign more effectively. You can either bring your own project or help out on one of our ongoing ones.

​​​​​Snacks and drinks are provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop! 🙂

​​​​​All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left. 

Join remotely at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82959644687?pwd=cG9BdEFha3dmNzVjcFd2RUFTWGVNZz09

​​​​​Campaign Lab is a community of politically-minded progressive data scientists, researchers and activists who are working together to build new election tools and change the way we analyse and understand political election campaigning.

​Are you an engineer, developer, or someone passionate about building AI for the public good? Join us for our inaugural meetup and showcase! 🚀

​We’re building a community of technologists and innovators committed to leveraging AI for social good. This first event aims to be technical (but accessible) and highly participatory – and we’re looking for speakers!

🎤 Call for Speakers

​Whether you have:

• A 30-minute deep dive into your engineering project
• A 5-minute pitch for an idea you’d like feedback on
• Anything in between!

​We want to hear from you! Polish not required – we’re all about sharing ideas and fostering collaboration.

⏰ Schedule

• 18:30 - Doors Open
• 19:00 - Demo 1: Lex by the Incubator for AI
• 19:30 - 20:30 : More demos, pitches and ideas (this could be you!)
• 20:00 onwards - Networking & Discussion

🤝 Support

​This event is kindly supported by the Incubator for AI and Newspeak House

💡 Want to Help?

​We believe great engineering happens with:

• Good food (ideally pizza 🍕, but we’re flexible)
• Great spaces (got a venue to share? 🏢)
• Amazing people (that’s you! 👋)

​📢 Submit a talk or offer support

​💬 Continue the Conversation

​Want to keep chatting? So do we! You can find us…

• On the CivicAI Community on Whatsapp
• On our (brand new) Building AI for Good Discord community

​This course invites participants to reimagine the role of technology through the lens of Human-Centered Design. Over three sessions, we will explore how ethical principles, intersectionality, and sustainability can be integrated into how we design and build things. Drawing from frameworks like Design Justice, Plurality, and Human-Centered Design, we will explore how technology can be more inclusive and equitable, for humans and for the planet.

​Session 2: Intersectionality and Ethical Design

• ​Soft introduction to Intersectionality & Introduction to Intersectionality in Design
• ​What do we mean by “Ethical Design”?
• ​Bias and Power Dynamics in Technology
• ​Designing for Privacy and Consent

Teacher Profile: ​Alex Papadopoulos is trying to understand what a technologist is so that he can call himself one. Meanwhile, they think about identity, belonging, and human-centered technology, and co-run a queer film festival. By day, Alex is a UX Researcher, working with projects in the public sector and healthcare, and he used to work for the non-profit sector.

What is Cognitive Security

​Cognitive Security or CogSec is an emerging interdisciplinary field studying mental self-defense against mind manipulation, social engineering and persuasion techniques.

​In some sense cognitive security can be thought of as the opposite of mind manipulation. Mind manipulation seeks to bypass a person’s critical thinking and influence a person’s behaviour or beliefs via psychological vulnerabilities. Cognitive Security aims to protect our mental autonomy in forming beliefs and making decisions as well as understand ways in which human minds are vulnerable in order to build resilience against various forms of manipulation and persuasion. 

​Cognitive Security as a field is certainly concerned with “conventional” bad actors such as charismatic individuals, private corporations, public organisations and governments manipulating cognition — be it intentionally or unintentionally. But the overall scope is more broad: it also aims to protect individual minds against hostile memes (self-replicating units of cultural information), hostile egregores (distributed thought entities), emergent social media dynamics and hypothetical future threats like superpersuasive AI.

​There is also US-based group focused on CogSec, you can read their definition on their website.

​Meetup Structure

​The meetup will start with a remote 20-min talk on Basics of CogSec by Romeo Stevens (the founder of Mealsquares and the writer of Neurotic Gradient Descent; he is @RomeoStevens76 on twitter).

​The talk will follow by a 30-40 min remote panel discussion + Q&A with Romeo Stevens and Mike Johnson (the writer of Opentheory.net and the author of Principia Qualia, Symmetry Theory of Valence, Neural Annealing, Principles of Vasocomputation; he is @johnsonmxe on twitter).

​Examples of CogSec-related writing by the speakers:

• Romeo’s essay “Buddhist Psychotechnology for Withstanding Apocalypse Stress”
• Romeo’s shortform tweets: one, two, three
• Mike’s twitter thread “In the beginning there was sensation”
• Mike’s long twitter post “We seem to have various “roll for disbelief” interrupts we can inject into our nervous system to prevent connecting with a person/idea/stimulus”

​Unconference

​​The talk and the panel discussion will be followed by unconference, a participant-driven conference with write-in schedule on the wall. Anyone who wants to initiate a discussion on a topic can claim a time and a space.

​​That said, you can also simply come and hang out with people — unconference is there to give some structure and help like-minded people find each other.

​Schedule

​7:00 PM Doors open
7:30 PM Romeo Stevens’s talk “Introduction to Cognitive Security”
8:00 PM Panel discussion with Romeo Stevens and Mike Johnson. Q&A
8:30 PM Break: discussion and socialising. Proposing unconference topics.
9:00 PM Unconference until late

​Potential Discussion Topics

​You are very much welcome to propose your own discussion topics not listed here. These topics are provided for reference.

• What counts as manipulation? How is it different from normal attempts to influence minds? How can we best defend against it? Why defend against it at all?
• Group Dynamics & Cognitive Security. How group psychology affects individual thinking? Collective defense against manipulation
• Psychedelics. Nowadays they are often used as therapeutic tools that help people overcome emotional challenges and gain mental flexibility, but in the past CIA was attempting to use them for mind control (Project MKUltra). What do psychedelics say about human mind’s ability to process information? How psychedelics help or hurt personal epistemology?
• Future Challenges. Potential impacts of advanced AI on human cognition. Preparing for increased sophistication in persuasion technology.
• Memes & Thought Patterns. Identifying and analyzing harmful thought patterns. How ideas spread and self-replicate.
• Social media’s impact on cognitive autonomy. Information overload & building healthy information consumption habits
• Your personal stories of getting manipulated and resisting manipulation. What did you learn about it?

PauseAI is a community of volunteers and local communities coordinated by a non-profit that aims to mitigate the risks of AI (including the risk of human extinction). We aim to convince our governments to step in and pause the development of superhuman AI. We do this by informing the public, talking to decision-makers, and organizing protests.

AI is harming you, but people are acting. Learn how they have defended you.

​Join us at Newspeak House for an explanation of the harms posed by artificial intelligence and learn what brave people have done to defend you. Hear from our panel of experts on the steps their organisations have taken, and feel empowered to take action yourself. Snacks and non-alcoholic drinks provided.

18:45 Doors open
19:00 Introductions of the speakers by Newspeak House
19:10 William Baird, UK Director of PauseAI
19:30 David Wood, Chair of London Futurists
10:50 Refreshments break
20:00 Andrea Miotti, Executive Director of ControlAI
20:20 Fourth speaker TBC
20:40 Questions by the audience
21:00 Socializing and networking by guests
22:00 Close

This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​In this first session we’ll try to build a mental model of what large language models are, focusing on their capabilities and limitations in common use cases.

​Be part of the mission to connect politics to the hyperlocal and join Campaign Lab at our hackday on November 17th!

Who is this event for?

Progressive technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome anyone that is interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left.

​​​What is Campaign Lab?

​​​​​​​Campaign Lab is a community of politically-minded progressive data scientists, researchers and activists who are working together to resolve tech soluble bottlenecks for campaigners and bring an evidence base to bear on campaigning.

​​​What is this event about?

We all know that politics is London-centric, focused on the gossip of the Westminster bubble and disconnected from the vast majority of British people who are outside that bubble.

We believe that politics needs to be brought back down to the local level and reoriented around the decisions that make material differences to people’s lives. And we believe there is a lesson for progressives here: speak to people in the language of the local, and you are much more likely to get a hearing.

As part of our work around this, our community have already made some incredible tools like the MP Scorecard and the Local Policy Stats tool. These tools equip citizens and progressive campaigners with the knowledge they need to know exactly how the decisions made by their local representative affect their local area. But the work is never done - join us at our Hyperlocal Hackday on the 17th November as we continue to build the campaigning tools that connect national politics and the hyperlocal.

We are currently working on making our events fully hybrid, and you can participate via zoom. ​​​​​If you’re joining us in person - meals, snacks and drinks are provided free of charge! Don’t forget to bring a laptop.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

Exploring how institutions work, some difficulties that arise in them, how they change, and how we each can try to participate constructively in them.

Readings:

• Paul Cairney, Tanya Heikkila, and Matthew Wood, Making Policy in a Complex World, Cambridge University Press, 2019, Chs. 5-6
• Felicity Edwards and Michael Gibeau, ‘Engaging people in meaningful problem solving,’ Conservation Biology, 2013
• Patricia Shaw, Changing Conversations in Organizations: A Complexity Approach to Change, Routledge, 2002, Series Preface & Ch. 1
• Charles Lindblom, ‘The science of “muddling through”,’ Public Administration Review, 1959

​Famous as tourist destination around the world, Cape Town also has one of the worst violent crime rates on Earth; from the gang lands of the Cape Flats to the neglected townships of Nyanga, it has a murder rate more than 10 times that of the United States.

​For 12 years The Safety Lab, a crime reduction NGO and innovation initiative, worked on reducing and mitigating the impact of violent crime in the city. Working with the City of Cape Town and local app developers Afrolabs, the Safety Lab developed and started deploying iSafety (later iCommunity); an app designed for closed user groups of trusted community members and violence reduction specialists to reduce violent crime through pro-social community action.

​Its story, from development to deployment in some of the most criminally dangerous areas in the world whilst navigating the bureaucratic politics of a large city, will be of interest to anyone with a background in software development, municipal politics, or crime reduction.

Join the team of criminologists, violence interrupters and developers for the story of iSafety’s start, evolution and ultimate fate.

Science Futures is for anyone passionate about the future of research and its societal impact, a series of events uniting artists, philosophers, engineers, & scientists exploring future directions of science. This month, Professor Joshua Becker will be speaking on collectives in collective intelligence and what this means for the future of science.

Becker is an Associate Professor at UCL, a volunteer Lecturer at Newspeak House, and a volunteer neighbor mediator with Calm London. He also serves as a cochair for the Collective Intelligence conference, as an associate editor for the Collective Intelligence journal, as a contributing member of the Collective Learning network, and as mandolin player for the Leaf Sheep Collective. Prior to climbing the ivory tower, he worked on the ground in mediation and conflict resolution, and builds on this passion in their research today. His’s past research has focused on whether discussion makes groups more or less accurate, proving mathematically that groups can simultaneously become more accurate while also making worse decisions. At present, he is particularly focused on how groups can make decisions amidst disagreement, and why they can fail to reach agreement even when it would benefit all members.

18:00: Doors open
18:30: Professor Joshua Becker: “Collectives, intelligence, and me: putting the ‘science’ in Social Science”
19.15: Discussion, Q&A hosted by Dr Eric Rogers
20.30: Mingling and getting to know each other :)
21:30: Close

​This course invites participants to reimagine the role of technology through the lens of Human-Centered Design. Over three sessions, we will explore how ethical principles, intersectionality, and sustainability can be integrated into how we design and build things. Drawing from frameworks like Design Justice, Plurality, and Human-Centered Design, we will explore how technology can be more inclusive and equitable, for humans and for the planet.

​Session 3: Design Justice & Pluralism

• ​Principles of Design Justice
• ​Pluralism in Design

Teacher Profile: ​Alex Papadopoulos is trying to understand what a technologist is so that he can call himself one. Meanwhile, they think about identity, belonging, and human-centered technology, and co-run a queer film festival. By day, Alex is a UX Researcher, working with projects in the public sector and healthcare, and he used to work for the non-profit sector.

​​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, but is open to the public to attend.

​Schedule

1. Play: Moida Mansion by Lucas Pope. It’s free and takes 10 minutes to play in a browser. (even on your phone!)
2. Discuss: Together we’ll break down the game into it’s components, talk about what makes it feel the way it does, analyse the gameplay.
3. Jam: Using Moida Mansion as a starting point, we’ll create paper prototypes and play them with each other.

​​​Recommended Media

​Teaching to fish by Raph Koster (Video)

Welcome to the lucky thirteenth edition of our London FoC meetup!

​🎄 Festive Pub Quiz Edition ☃️

​​This is a chance for folks who are part of the Future of Coding community (futureofcoding.org) to present their work in progress and talk shop over a few drinks. If you’re new to the space you can learn more on the FoC website, or by listening to the podcast.

For this festive edition we’re doing a pub quiz! Just, not at a pub… We’re meeting at our usual spot; Newspeak House in Shoreditch. You might want to brush up on your computing history and fun programming language facts.

​There will be beer, non-alcoholic drinks, and a holiday food spread provided. Kindly sponsored by Common Magic.

​​We’re not doing demos and lightning talks for this round. We’ll resume regular events after the holidays.

​In between quiz rounds we’ll have ample time to have a few drinks, eat food, and hangout. If you are working on something and want feedback, bring your laptop! You can show people during hangout time.

Rough schedule:

18:00 Arrive, get drinks, meet your team
18:30 First round of quiz starts
19:15 Special demo
19:30 Food & drinks break
20:00 Second round of quiz
20:30 Winners announced! Go be festive for the remainder of the time

Please read and abide by our community Code of Conduct if you plan on attending: github.com/futureofcoding/code-of-conduct

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

How do you know things? What do you track, access, search, store, process, output? How does your system support you in your endeavours (or fight you?)? Where does your knowledge go? In which outputs? Can people find you and subscribe to you? Is it even worth organising knowledge when information is a search away, or can be reconstructed by AI? What purposes might a knowledge management system serve in this context?

In this session, we will review results from the first session, and see how they relate to your research.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

Exploring how institutions work, some difficulties that arise in them, how they change, and how we each can try to participate constructively in them.

Readings:

• Paul Cairney, Tanya Heikkila, and Matthew Wood, Making Policy in a Complex World, Cambridge University Press, 2019, Chs. 5-6
• Felicity Edwards and Michael Gibeau, ‘Engaging people in meaningful problem solving,’ Conservation Biology, 2013
• Patricia Shaw, Changing Conversations in Organizations: A Complexity Approach to Change, Routledge, 2002, Series Preface & Ch. 1
• Charles Lindblom, ‘The science of “muddling through”,’ Public Administration Review, 1959

Join us for our bi-weekly Campaign Lab Hack Night - a regular session to work on your tech side projects to help the progressive left campaign more effectively. You can either bring your own project or help out on one of our ongoing ones.

​​​​​Snacks and drinks are provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop! 🙂

​​​​​All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left. 

Join remotely at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82959644687?pwd=cG9BdEFha3dmNzVjcFd2RUFTWGVNZz09

​​​​​Campaign Lab is a community of politically-minded progressive data scientists, researchers and activists who are working together to build new election tools and change the way we analyse and understand political election campaigning.

This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​Most UK citizens will have interacted with a gov.uk website, but few are aware of the massive structural changes that enabled the UK’s service digitisation process.

​The Government Digital Service is one of the most surprising digital success stories of the last twenty years. Often emulated by other national governments, the GDS approach promised to prevent the big IT failures of the past, where third party suppliers overcharged and under-delivered for decades.

​Why and how was the Government Service Standard made in the first place? Did it lead to unintended consequences? And is it still fit for purpose?

​Reading:

• A GDS Story
• A brief history of the Service Standard
• Setting the standard: A short history of the Government Service Standard
• Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery
• Service Manual
• The Post Office Horizon scandal through a service design lens
• Are there too many generalists in the civil service?

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

A workshop for developing your network development and field building practice.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

Exploring how institutions work, some difficulties that arise in them, how they change, and how we each can try to participate constructively in them.

Readings:

• Paul Cairney, Tanya Heikkila, and Matthew Wood, Making Policy in a Complex World, Cambridge University Press, 2019, Chs. 5-6
• Felicity Edwards and Michael Gibeau, ‘Engaging people in meaningful problem solving,’ Conservation Biology, 2013
• Patricia Shaw, Changing Conversations in Organizations: A Complexity Approach to Change, Routledge, 2002, Series Preface & Ch. 1
• Charles Lindblom, ‘The science of “muddling through”,’ Public Administration Review, 1959

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​What does it mean to “work in the open”? What are digital and knowledge commons? How does co-production collide with personal preferences and design affordances?

​In this session we’ll attempt to kickstart knowledge co-production within the cohort and beyond.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​Join us for an interactive session where we’ll explore and map the UK’s political landscape. This workshop will cover key actors, data sources, mechanisms, and points of influence within the UK political system. Participants will also gain insights into available data sources that shape political dynamics.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

Exploring how institutions work, some difficulties that arise in them, how they change, and how we each can try to participate constructively in them.

Readings:

• Paul Cairney, Tanya Heikkila, and Matthew Wood, Making Policy in a Complex World, Cambridge University Press, 2019, Chs. 3-4
• Elinor Ostrom, ‘Beyond markets and states: polycentric governance of complex economic systems,’ American Economic Review, 2010
• Sarah Schulman, Conflict Is Not Abuse, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016, Introduction & Ch. 1
• Edward Hallowell, ‘The human moment at work’, Harvard Business Review, 1999

Join us for our bi-weekly Campaign Lab Hack Night - a regular session to work on your tech side projects to help the progressive left campaign more effectively. You can either bring your own project or help out on one of our ongoing ones.

​​​​​Snacks and drinks are provided, all you need is to bring yourself and a laptop! 🙂

​​​​​All technologists, activists, organisers and campaigners are welcome. We also welcome any new people who are interested in politics, technology and evidence based campaign innovation on the left. 

Join remotely at https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82959644687?pwd=cG9BdEFha3dmNzVjcFd2RUFTWGVNZz09

​​​​​Campaign Lab is a community of politically-minded progressive data scientists, researchers and activists who are working together to build new election tools and change the way we analyse and understand political election campaigning.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​In this session we will discuss results from the previous session, including challenges of interacting with others’ systems and benefits of networked knowledge discovery.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

In this hack night, we’ll explore the inner workings of an MP’s office, focusing on how its processes operate and identifying opportunities where technology can streamline and improve efficiency. This session will provide practical insights into the daily functions of an MP’s office, with a forward-looking view on innovation.

​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​In this session, we’ll dive into the world of political technology, exploring what makes certain tools effective. We’ll examine three key campaign technologies, discussing their successes and weaknesses and the reasons behind them. We’ll also cover how to identify opportunities for innovation within campaign processes. This is a great opportunity to understand what works in political tech and how innovation shapes the future of campaigning.