Foresight Engine

Critical Imagination in response to:

What are the barriers to creating these new civic innovations?

Constant proprietary innovation, lack of open data and attempts to solve problems at a systems/city-scale level present barriers.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Better neighborhood-level data, but managed at a neighborhood level.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Antagonism in response to:

Better neighborhood-level data, but managed at a neighborhood level.

Patchworks of data formats and analytics, and lags in usage or updating, could create a crazy quilt of data in a single town.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Barriers to privatization of public space. Limits to how much of public space and resources can be licensed to private interests.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

Barriers to privatization of public space. Limits to how much of public space and resources can be licensed to private interests.

Allow for easier organization of local co-operatives and stakeholder ownership of local resources.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Antagonism in response to:

Allow for easier organization of local co-operatives and stakeholder ownership of local resources.

Private extraction needed as a source of income by governments.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

Private extraction needed as a source of income by governments.

New forms of social 'corporations' and greater transparency around use and monetization of public resources.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Critical Imagination in response to:

What are the barriers to creating these new civic innovations?

Over-reliance on technology as a silver bullet to most problems.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Critical Imagination in response to:

What are the barriers to creating these new civic innovations?

Overfocus on developing for dense environments that scale quickly (b/c size) and lack of attention to low density, lower tech communities.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Identification of certain critical civic "platforms" on which to build priority services: health, education, safety, food, etc.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Critical Imagination in response to:

What are the barriers to creating these new civic innovations?

Drones.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Wider use of timebanks and other non-monetary value exchange to encourage participation for reward in ways other than formal employment.

A game runner marked this card Super Interesting.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Theirs or ours?

Theirs, primarily. Sudden overuse, even ours, could harm quality of life as much as help.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Community-controlled drone fleet monitoring flood damage, traffic, etc.

Who controls?

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Momentum in response to:

Creative commons, et al. proposals to have all publicly funded research be publicly available could help in this regard.

This is a good place to focus open access!

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

Good idea, but how can you collect/manage data at hyperlocal level? Perhaps work to change behavior & teach neighbors the value of data.

That, and create opportunities for localities to devise their own systems of collection and management, eg open hardware.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

what kind of data and who would manage it?

Local energy usage, local environmental conditions, variations from norms, etc.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Does this mean stronger city and neighborhood governments? More decentralized governance?

It could, and would certainly create a greater local buy-in to neighborhood/community health and performance against norms.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

Many levels of services can be achieved by connected citizens. Government becomes less of a provider and more of a broker. Citizen power!

More of a standards manager than a central point of power.

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Investigation in response to:

Local schoolchildren.

Who trains?

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Antagonism in response to:

Local schoolchildren.

Opponents could object on grounds of indoctrination.

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Investigation in response to:

Veterans.

Haven't we eradicated war? Veterans of??

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Antagonism in response to:

Soon drones will deliver pizzas and that's cool!

May be hard to mix commercial and civic drones. Latter would suffer as former is exploited.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

FEMA's war on climate change.

So, like the CCC in the 30s in the US?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Antagonism in response to:

Tools and protocols to help people understand better the consequences of their choices of consumption and offer alternatives based on ethics

How does this avoid going down the same route as 'nudge' governance? Haven't behavioral economics been less than successfully applied?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Classes are crowdsourced and taught on demand. As soon as there are 15 students who express interest in a topic, a teacher is commissioned

How does this avoid fragmenting the structure of a commonly agreed education system and curriculum standards?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Systems such as aquaponics and vertical farming that yield multiple beneficial outputs (food, fertilizer, air filtration) as a focus.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

How much of a city's food supply do you see as being provide through urban farming?

Not a majority, but these multi-output systems could set an important model or template for how other systems are organized.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Roaming 'appropriate technology' task-force.

Whose "appropriateness" will they measure by?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

connect this with community emotion and vital sign data automatically harvested and visualized into 1 person's well-being

Accessible only to individuals, or publicly?

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Investigation in response to:

It places the responsibility in the hands of the individual. It could do what democracy fails to do : empowering citizen, making him decide.

So greater transparency about the impact of decisions? Calling out social impact of personal choices?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Critical Imagination in response to:

What are the barriers to creating these new civic innovations?

Devolution to greater community control may not yield positive benefits to whole—eg history of states rights in US protecting inequality.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

programs to facilitate data exchange between departments and citizens for blended analytics and visualizations from different data sources

Especially if different stakeholders are able to architect systems and exchanges off common building blocks: civic objects.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Government enforce use of open APIs: if everything can talk to each other, it's easier to innovate.

How does government manage for uses of open data that might create conflict (eg NY state gun owners published by media)?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Critical Imagination in response to:

What are the barriers to creating these new civic innovations?

Technology providers will have to forgo some profitability and lock-in to their solutions.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Generational "schools" to promote intergenerational transfer of skills, knowledge, practice.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

Suspecting something isn't like knowing it and having an equal access to different approaches allows a conscious and responsible choice.

For example, like cigarette warnings or calories on menus, only calculating some form of societal impact instead of personal.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Antagonism in response to:

Absolutely, the engine must include visualization tools (just as live infographics) that helps citizen to explore data in an intuitive way

What about the data illiterate or people who don't have access to such tools or supporting technology?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Critical Imagination in response to:

What are the barriers to creating these new civic innovations?

An overflow of "real-time data and visualization" may make citizens data-blind, data-bored and disengaged.

A game runner marked this card Super Interesting.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Concerns re: privacy, could lead to Big Brother style govt (or exacerbation of it, if you see things that way!)

What about the opt-outs and people who don't want to be tracked by a single SS#?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

Apprenticeships for all employment sectors.

Segmenting of schools back into vocational tracks. Not pushing all graduates to go to college but training some for preferred jobs.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Antagonism in response to:

You obviously can't work with people who live under the radar eg not paying taxes etc, but they wouldn't be in the system in the first place

This would exclude citizens based on privacy preferences.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

elected officials are beholden to financial supporters and can not act in the benefit of citizen constituency

New systems of public financing of campaigns to reduce this problem?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

do 'data-blind' citizens forfeit their ability to participate in government and society?

There shouldn't be exclusion based on technological or data literacy.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Citizen movements agitate against public institutions ever paying for locked-in solutions. Open becomes a demanded, global norm.

How do you then create incentive for R&D and innovation among commercial providers?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

Reality shows appear where data visualisation hackers vie for "Most Popular Visualisation". Data Viz as pop culture.

Some might say this is helpful "popularization" of the value of data.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

I like the idea, but major (revolutionary)reforms of the public educational model would be necessary. Pub. ed. - very tough to alter.

Doesn't necessarily have to happen within the public system as currently structured. More of a community service.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

By honest I mean people who pay their taxes etc, who don't live in the "black economy". Benefits would include instant govt payments/refunds

Clearly people who pay in benefit. This is more about people who aren't willing to be tracked for privacy reasons.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Critical Imagination in response to:

What are the barriers to creating these new civic innovations?

Hacking, data theft and vigilantism (ie Anonymous, Lulzsec).

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Citizen #mapping.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

Re: citizen #mapping, what kinds of flows and geographies are low-hanging fruit? Ie-Already we see mapping of flu trends for public health

In some cases, just basic information about boundaries, demographics etc. Outside US and Europe particularly.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Networked vigilantism as an alternative to police? Open source policing and intelligence?

As corrective, not destructive, to official system?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

What structures could we institute to protect the dissenters and encourage them to speak out?

Less a concern about dissent, and more about localities that choose radically different paths.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Antagonism in response to:

There'd be tax savings, for sure. The question is how to make sure it wouldn't be abused. Sousveillance?

Who's hacking the hax0rs? This becomes a complicated system of multilayered monitoring.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Smart (pitchfork-wielding) mobs. Rough justice. Effective, but probably not pleasant.

How does this not end up as a Wild West situation, with the biggest pitchfork winning?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

Rather than work time, reinstitute civics classes in middle, and high schools to engage students in politics and HOW IT AFFECTS THEM.

Get the students involved in creating and evolving their own civics, instead of just being preached to about history.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

The hackers of today are the consultants and IT experts of tomorrow. Hire them and learn from them!

Change the law's outlook on hacking to encourage application skill to benefit community rather than immediate criminalization.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Focus on strengthening the overall community biome rather than simply local economy.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Neoenvironmentalism focuses too much on the parts of the environment thought to benefit humans. Leaders will need a wider view.

What elements are missing?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

Citizen monitoring of health indicators - soil, air, water, species diversity, invasive species.

Communities viewed as bioregions, with data viewed through a more holistic lens than just individual performance and wellbeing.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

Mobile apps to help find out bioregion interconnections of local features – where does this drain flow to? What's the region of this plant?

Encourage cataloging of local natural assets (flora, fauna) via smartphone to better illustrate community connections to environment.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Shared neighborhood credits for installations of solar, wind, other renewables (see examples in Arizona and NM).

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

Valuing nature for its own sake. Perhaps more importantly, humility to recognize that focusing on the wrong parts might be ineffective.

Focus on environment in this case is to ensure long term community sustainability, proper management of all assets.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

Valuing nature for its own sake. Perhaps more importantly, humility to recognize that focusing on the wrong parts might be ineffective.

Focus on environment in this case is to ensure long term community sustainability, proper management of all assets.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

Rentable electronics and free public wifi to increase low income community presence on the internet.

Include swap of community investment time (teaching, assisting, harvesting) for additional use time.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

I think we should be concerned with the problems that drive people to do what they do. Try to find the root cause.

Finding ways to give these groups a seat at the table early can help avoid higher costs, greater problems later.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Reducing or eliminating tax subsidies to attract relocating businesses and instead fund homegrown development.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Community-run food prep kitchens, packaging and marketing clinics, to encourage more people into local food production economy.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Tool-sharing programs to enable those with work but no tools to find them for temporary use.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

I very much support this idea, but I have seen it is hard to actualize. How do cast a viable argument to support this excellent idea?

Amount of economic data against tax subsidy case is mounting. Show hard ROI from growing local businesses.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Re: local food production economy, do you see these kitchens being run as a gov. service? #productivecapacity

Yes. Localizing health dept presence, licensing, taxation, etc. so producers can go to market quickly with minimum bureaucracy.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

Govs, like all orgs, consist of brilliant, average, and just bad people. How do you get the best people to work on the most critical issues?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Involve more citizens in planning simulations, to enable them to experience process of urban planning, similar to http://bit.ly/R0EGUC

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Debate 1 of the top 20 Twitter trending topics each week in the legislature. Allows government to focus on what people are talking about

How to avoid easy gaming of trending topics? Not have Bieber discussed each week in legislature?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

have doctors living in every housing estate to tackle challenges of ageing population. doctors have access to each unit in the block

Returns to old model of the local GP who lived nearby anyway. Encourage employment in critical services through $/housing/ed incentives.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Fund distribution of inexpensive tablets to schools and community centers to enable use of augmented reality for community discovery.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Develop open civic coding language to enable non-experts to build apps for community use, open tagging of places and assets.

A game runner marked this card Super Interesting.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Encourage citizen stakeholder involvement early in life, particularly where there is possibility of large youth population, unemployment.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

Create "impact metrics" for civic innovations, so citizens can see the ROI of these publicly. Label infrastructure, etc like products.

A game runner marked this card Super Interesting.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

Create "impact metrics" for civic innovations, so citizens can see the ROI of these publicly. Label infrastructure, etc like products.

This may be done both as visible signage, but also as a data layer accessible through augmented reality, or readable via NFC.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Could this be done only in a local/national scale or also globalized?

I imagine only on a local/regional/national basis, as it involves local property rights.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Critical Imagination in response to:

What are the barriers to creating these new civic innovations?

Over-reliance on data as a magic bullet. Not enough focus on tying it to narratives, knowledge of context, environments.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Critical Imagination in response to:

What are the barriers to creating these new civic innovations?

Technology and networks too brittle, vulnerable. Sandy a good example of what can happen to complex systems.

A game runner marked this card Super Interesting.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

You have to be more specific about this.

Not hard to anticipate demographic bulges. Work early to ensure large youth populations are well integrated into civic life.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Positive Imagination in response to:

What civic innovation can you imagine to improve our communities?

StumbleUpon for the city: platforms that enable serendipitous encounters in communities.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Is it plausible that all 20 topics would be gamed?

Twitter example says yes.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Is there anything we can build into the infrastructure to stop it? Automated analysis to identify bots, etc?

Filtering, but who decides what gets filtered?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

If we want comprehensive networks, must be extremely redundant and fed through several mediums.

Distributed power generation, mesh networks as two components. Also, manual processes as backup.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

spaceships.

Headed where?

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Investigation in response to:

spaceships.

Local, national, or international?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

Can you agree that in a referenda, & bootstrap the whole process?

Potentially. A tricky area that has been shown to be vulnerable, even simple levels. With corruption in national voting, needs protection.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Momentum in response to:

If the Chicago School of Economics brought us the Neo-Liberal mess we live today, where is the incubator for positive change tomorrow?

Somewhere in the Global South. India, Brazil, Indonesia, Kenya?

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

RE: ROI metrics, fun to imagine those growing w/each generation. Highway or train nets x impact today, but 2x impact by 30 years from now.

More interesting needs to be generated not just in data, but in metrics of change. Less infop0rn, more credit for progress.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Adaptation in response to:

How much is culture and how much is innovation? Brazil's participatory democracy. Botswana's peaceful governance; Bhutan's Happiness Index

Post-growth economic thinking will likely push us toward discovering new metrics for social progress and stability, away from GDP and Gini.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Investigation in response to:

How do you end growth-based economic thinking?

Run out of growth.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Antagonism in response to:

public referenda are useful to help gauge public opinion but need to be well crafted to get a useful response for decision making

In the case of California, referenda have begun to distort politics and be seen as problems not solutions.

played 4 months ago by cssmith

Played

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