GLOSSARY

Democracy: A system of governance founded on the principles of equality, freedom and public participation. Citizens have a voice in decision-making processes with the ideal that government actions reflect the will of the people. Democratic institutions seek to uphold the rule of law and protect fundamental human rights.

Discourse: Activism, the right to consent, the right to protest. Free speech against oppressive regimes. Openly debating vs. burying problems.

Economy: It’s a monetary system that demands greater transparency. Most economies work on speculative markets that penalise the most economically vulnerable. It incorporates the negative influence of dark money that wields disproportionate power. Economies prey on the commodification of nature, beyond mining to  essential public resources like water being owned and monetised by corporations.

Ethics: The moral principles and values that guide individuals or groups in determining what is right or wrong. The moral, the fair, the just, the integral and the honesty of thought and action. The alignment of principles in navigating complex moral dilemmas.

Governance: The frameworks, policies and tools to organise and lead society.

Politics: The link between citizens and governance.

Society: A structure of solidarity amongst citizens from village, to city, to country through to planet.

Affordable Housing: For basic human needs, housing is not a luxury. There is an increasing disparity in the accessibility to affordable and comfortable housing. We are on a trajectory for a small handful to own and operate all the available housing.

Civil Engagement: There is a need for earlier awareness, engagement, incentives and connections towards a plethora of global challenges. Family and school education along with behavioural changes are at the centre of engagement. Building communities of solidarity, programs for critical thinking are essential. Conversely, media and governments are slow to react to new technologies. State funded media outlets are not surfacing adequate value. Independent news and watchdog organisations are not sufficiently funded. Civic principles hamper citizens’ actions to be more coordinated in socio-economic development. Engagement reward is limited.

Economic Disparity: The deepening divide between social classes and wealth calls for a transformative shift in wealth distribution and property ownership, demanding a fairer and more equitable society for everyone.

Migration: Accessibility to global borders and safety to cross. Rights for refugees and people fleeing unsafe places.

Mobility: Equitable access to means of moving around (EU freedom of movement as an example or the German 50€ Bahn ticket).

Smart Cities & Connected Towns: Rural-Urban linkages. How cities relate to its citizens, how cities relate to other cities, and how towns and cities make themselves more equitable for residents and visitors. More transparent guidelines, better utilisation of data and better planning thereof.

Urban Planning & Rural Development: The (de)humanisation of densely populated areas and sparsely invested rural areas. The enablement of places to attract and comfort diverse residents with citizenship involvement . The articulation between divergent areas from better planning and development.

Biodiversity: The diversity in the ecology of any system that helps to sustain life, as opposed to monocultures of any kind.

Circular Economy: Closed cycles of consumption and solidarity-based economy. Policies of sharing goods, makers labs, recycling stations for creative uses, instilling a reuse-repurpose motto in schools for early education. Moving toward regreening the planet.

Ecology: Down with monocultural thought, up with multi-species thinking. Invoke the support of pluri-cultures: a tapestry of diverse aspects in human and natural development be it culture, tradition, language or the surrounding self-organising organic structures.

Environment: Environment is nature, all of it, including us. Nature is not just a resource, it’s our support, our veins, our livelihood. Heal it, rebuild it, make peace with it, reunite with it. Nature is subject, not object.

Sustainability: An awareness and practice. Closing the consumption cycle of one’s own living. All levels of society contributing to a paradigm shift, especially that of industries (closed-loop manufacturing) and governments through strong legislation.

Wildlife: Both domesticated and non-domesticated fauna and flora and their rights of existence.

Ageing: How to improve the equation between retirement and increasing unemployment and job availability (retirement reduction). Addressing ageing issues with better health, tackling ageism, fostering solidarity between generations.

Disease Control: Big-picture thinking and prediction of disease control and epidemics. Globally-factored data points that address individual needs (i.e: data sharing). Consideration of best way to build transnational/global movements to address disease, especially as these contain fluid dynamics which will change with climate change (i.e., Malaria in Northern Europe).

Medicine Equity: How to ensure reciprocity in any global health crisis, considering the web-of-life scenario, when one unhealthy part affects the well-being of all, even if the effects come at some point later in time.

Mental Health: Pandemics of mental health through situational depression (i.e: young people and the climate crisis) and civic dissociation (i.e: wealth inequality).

Transhumanism: A highly contested term, hijacked by the silicon-bro to live forever. But to counter: How we, as humans, transcend our biological setup for living better in the posthumanist spectrum. From prosthesis, pacemakers, IVF to neural (re)links and the integration of other futurist technologies.

Censorship: The removal of artefacts deemed unsavoury or undesirable in certain factions or time periods. The conformity of things, ideas or beliefs to suit a dominant ideology.

Equality: The equal treatment of individuals, regardless of social standing, ethnicity, culture, religion, etc.

Equity: Equal access to all aspects of life, regardless of social standing, ethnicity, culture, religion, etc.

Feminism: The movement of women and allies for women to achieve equal rights to men.

Free Speech [Anti-hate (racism, islamophobia etc.)]: The rights of individuals to (hate-free) speech and the role of government in protecting this right. An individual’s obligation to respect those who are dissimilar to themselves and speak of different experiences.

Inclusivity: The movement for adequate inclusion of disenfranchised fractions with equal treatment.

Intersectionality: The intersection of disenfranchised positions from any number of positions; gender, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, etc.

Privacy: The position of an individual’s private matters to not to be curtailed, brutalised or publicly disseminated. To be protected from unwanted intrusions and to maintain personal dignity. The active protection of personal data and individual personhood.

Surveillance: The rights of individuals not to be ‘collected’ into any type of recording by private persons, businesses or governmental institutions. Within for the purpose of unwarranted observation (bullying/stalking), for monetary gain or in-transparent targeting or for wrongful scrutiny and curtailment of personal freedoms in society.

The Human Rights Declaration: Time for an upgrade?

Art: Art is self expression and an agent of societal challenge, a way of posing questions inducing a change of perspective, a way to consume a point in a non-confrontational or confrontational way.

History: A cumulative repository of human and planetary existence.

Literature: Recording of thought, presenting us with the gift of various perspectives in literal form.

Language: A communication tool possessing prowess to express a thought or share a notion. It’s an evolving cultural code. Language is a construction of reality, new realities and the possibility of generative realities.

Philosophy: The question is, “what if!?” To question life, the universe and everything!

Science: The systematic and evidence-based approach to understanding the world through observation, experimentation and analysis. It is reliant on empirical evidence, logical reasoning and healthy scepticism.

Theology/Religion: The attempt to comprehend and engage with the divine or spiritual aspects of existence. The systematic study and interpretation of its beliefs, practices and texts that signify guidance that can shape cultural behaviours.

AI [Artificial Intelligence]: Any algorithm-based function. It is the simulation or replacement of human intelligence in machines, allowing them to enact tasks that typically require learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception and language understanding.

Data: Any information collected or generated by digital apparatus or digitised from analogue sources, including how data is collected, used and disposed.

Decentralisation: A movement away from industry’s centralised thinking to opensource and decentralised structures. This paradigm shift brings out concerns of ownership of data: who owns it, how it is protected, and how to enforce reliable gatekeepers on both private and public data.

E-waste: This relates to the increasing repository of stored data and necessary processing requirements of large volumes of information and code. Much of this foregrounds the prospectus of storage requirements against precious energy resources necessary to fuel-the-machines and ever-growing storage centres.

Energy: Everything requires energy. It has to come from somewhere, which raises the question if the energy transition will be sufficient to power our data storage, devices, machines, etc.

Green Software: Companies hold responsibility to adhere to best practices in creation of resource-heavy applications and infrastructures. The establishment of principles and reinforcement of these is essential. The Green Software Foundation Manifesto can be referred to as a starting point.