Lighthof aims to find solutions to global problems by combining collective insights with algorithmic governance and behavioral design. The platform operates in transparent, trusted, responsible, democratic, and globally inclusive ways. It serves collective and natural purposes.
Lighthof shall be founded as a 'natural property', which is a corporation that belongs to itself and thus cannot be sold. By this deliberate choice of legal entity, we assure that the organisation thrives as long as there is need for Lighthof, and it transforms once need transforms. This independence will maximise the adaptive capacity and resilience of Lighthof, meeting the needs of the global society.
The idea for Lighthof got acknowledged in 2017 by the IEA's Stiglitz Essay Prize, and is evolving ever since.
Lighthof is primarily designed to coordinate innovation activity across science, industry, and the global society. Innovations challenge societies and break through only if widespread social change takes place. Most often, innovation activity requires global crowd organising on multiple markets. Behavioural design and algorithmic governance might be implemented to accelarate acceptance of innovations. Lighthof enables global societies to be on par with businesses and science when participating in technology assessment and transformation processes. Collective purpose projects and 'natural corporations' can prefinance the search for new collective and open source solutions. Lighthof solves this task by combining three basic modules, which we call the Box, the Poll, and the Fund.
Lighthof enables the global society to:
Communicate and reflect on complex research and innovation matters
Participate in socially relevant research, innovation, and technology assessment
Coordinate with other players in the ecosystem during transformation processes shaping the global environment
Co-determine common moral values and global norms, future dependencies, and decision-making spaces
Practice constructive critique in global markets
Reduce failure rates, secrecy, and repetition of failures
Evolve through open competition with diverse innovating niches
Democratise and diversify homogenising monopolies
Poll crowd opinion using latest, fair, and efficient computational social science methods
Increase responsible data governance, IT-security, and collective intelligence
Reduce contraproductive defense action such as production of garbage and fake data
Fund risky innovation by crowd donation, crowd lending, and crowd sourcing
Increase acceptance of socially desirable innovative solutions
Create new and sustainable business models
Create 'natural corporations' that belong to the global community and cannot be sold
Implement trustworthy and responsible global solutions
Why is Lighthof needed? - What are the problems?
Problems with communication of pluralistic science and reflection on complex research and innovation matters
Participation in socially relevant research, innovation, and technology assessment is weightless
Lack of coordination with other players in the ecosystem during transformation processes shaping the global environment
Erosion of common moral values, global norms, and basic rights
No possibilities for constructive critique, open competition, and diverse innovating niches in global markets
Questionable data governance, IT-security, and collective intelligence and defense actions
Increasing global insecurity
New and sustainable business models are not sufficiently supported yet
New business forms and natural legal entities are lacking, such as 'natural corporations' that belong to the global community and cannot be sold
Lack of possibilities to organize and implement trustworthy and responsible global solutions
Lack of harnessing new technologies, algorithmic governance, responsible behavioral design, and digitalization for the global society too
Interested to participate?
Lighthof is in the process to start up and apply to research funding calls.
If you are interested to participate in this project, reach out to the initiator, Dr. Christina Timko at the Ruhr-University Bochum.
Lighthof can evolve in future through its own platform. It aims to become a next generational Open Source platform project openly serving the Community. For this, we need you to challenge us in a constructive way.
Hack us technically
Join to build Lighthof. If you manage to reveal security flaws, help us to resolve them.
Hack us ethically
Name your concerns and let’s search together for improved solutions.
Hack us conceptually
Create new concepts and models, and challenge Lighthof that way.