Ambient Politics
Political engagement is for life, not just for elections. So we should think about ways to get relevant, useful, locally-sourced information into people’s lives on an ongoing basis.
I am building an internet-connected information appliance. It’s designed to be mounted on a wall and be mistaken for a picture frame. But quietly, it projects a picture of local and national events into people’s homes. Items of interest build up over days and weeks using a visual metaphor of stacked blocks. The more information is left to accumulate, the fuller the picture appears.
Information sources incorporated:
Local:
- planning applications
- local problems via fixmystreet.com
- others to be confirmed…
National:
- Your local MP’s statements in parliament
- Online news articles about your local MP
- Edits to your local MP’s wikipedia page
- information from theyworkforyou.com
- How your local MP voted from PublicWhip.org.uk
As information accumulates, the display will gently prompt an individual to check on his or her feed at www.ambientpolitics.org to view the items of interest.
Here the user is also presented with actions that they can take in response to items which interest them, for example, writing to their MP via www.writetothem.com
Links
- Demo URL: http://www.ambientpolitics.org
- Source Code: https://github.com/gareth-lloyd/ambientpolitics