Episode 152 – Friends, Romans, Geeks, lend me your code!

In this episode, so soon after the recent US election, Phaedra & Michael M discuss the nature of civic engagement, and how the model of open source software could lend itself to bringing more people into the civic process. Showing up is always the first step, and the model for commits made to open source software could be applied to policy, whereby contributions by citizens could be upvoited or downvoted for inclusion in emerging policy.

The pair bring up the idea of cities with personality — if you’re in Chicago, you know how that city’s personality was expressed after the Cubs World Series victory — and how this could be brought to bear by an art installation, with color, shape & form that is dynamic based on what the city is experiencing at that time. This thought carried the conversation further with the kinetic scuplture in the video above from the BMW Museum in Munich, Germany, as well as how cities sense & respond, going back to Chicago, for the example of their “Array of Things”.

How would you imagine how engaged citizens could make their world better through social apps for good, gain a stronger voice in making things better for their families & neighbors or respond better to the needs of the communities they live in?

Phaedra and Michael wind up the show with some fun — a couple of kickstarters, the Babies vs Bears card game from the makers of Exploding Kittens and the Fidget Cube, as well as the Kidscode event this past Saturday where Phaedra engaged new coders with bots, drones & the Emotiv headset.

We hope you enjoy the show!

Links

Games for Civic Engagement — https://progrss.com/connectivity/20160906/5-cities-using-games-for-civic-engagement/

Engage the Bay — http://www.engagethebay.com

Chicago’s Array of Things — https://arrayofthings.github.io

Speed Trap Lottery — https://www.wired.com/2010/12/swedish-speed-camera-pays-drivers-to-slow-down/

Apache crowdsourcing — https://www.apache.org/dev/new-committers-guide

HP help example — http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Inkjet-Printing/Can-t-print-black-and-white-with-empty-color-cartridge/td-p/5705416

Debugging politics — https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/18/debut-politics

Losing weight using virtual reality — http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/06/asia/vr-technology-fights-obesity

Bears vs Babies card game — https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elanlee/bears-vs-babies-a-card-game

Fidget Cube — https://www.backerkit.com/projects/antsylabs/fidget-cube-a-vinyl-desk-toy/backers/6241511