very much first draft - needs work
Hacking Society
I’ve been spending time thinking about the current touch points within western democratic systems, these are the parts where we ordinary citizens (not politicians or those in power) interact with them. The most obvious is elections, whereby we go to the polls and choose a candidate on a ballot paper (or more if we are lucky / unlucky) who will then go forward to represent us. Then there are public services, our interactions with municipal government, right through to active participation in public duties such as jury service. How can these be twisted, into serving different social purposes than what was originally intended? What new outcomes can be built on top of these systems? How can they be made hackable? and where will the next generation of social hackers come from?
There have been interested attempts at hacking the electoral system, though some reach critical mass more than others in terms of public consciousness. MP’s who would vote according polls conducted by constituents, Independent representatives networks, tactical vote swapping buddy sites. For some reason though, these never seem to take off. Jury Team, the anti party party for example, failed to gain ground in the EU elections, and is now becoming more like a traditional party with set polices. that must be agreed on in order to participate. Its a shame that public appetite still seems to be between choosing between established parties, and that calls for reform are based on which system is best for choosing from the same bunch on representatives. It’s a shame as the area of design politics, currently based on old traditions and institutions is ripe for innovation.
The open data movement provides an interesting starting point. They have campaigned for the release of countless amounts of government (and other) data, building mash ups and other services (primarily online) that have become tools for allowing hackers to create new services on top of this data. Everywhere the call is out, data must be open, so it can be transformed into something.
Mysociety and other services have used this data, and other touch points to provide to collate and in some ways access and ways for people to engage with legastive procedure (I particularly like their write to a random lord feature). Even MP’s have in the past, tried to hack Mysociety by gaming it’s statistics, asking question and the like, so they appear to have better ranking.
Outside of political space, on a local and hyper-local level are having differing levels of success in subverting and building on top of existing local norms and building communities. Local currencies such as Brixton Pound are encouraging trade, a social hack that works on top of Pound Sterling, but becomes localised in helping local traders. Other community currencies, such as Local Exchange Trading Systems, have shown their success in allowing people to exchange their alternative worktime for alternative work, that also serves as a community building exercise, again a social hack that takes the idea of work, trading and community building are combined. Empty shops project provide an interesting parrell, playing on the notion of re-using empty space on a temporary basis, they become projects that build communities.
This then is a call to arms. The open data movement has proven successful in prying open the often closed systems. Other social hacks have brought forward ways of building communities. What new tools can we build, what new systems can we create that will bring forth a generation of ‘Hackers of Society.’