Politics and democracy is broken and under assault. But what can we do? How can we make a difference. Individual citizens feel overwhelmed and intimidated and are likely to just give up. But what if we could change that?
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Listen, the idea I am putting forward is un-formed, vague and may in some instances be contradictory, and I leave it up to others to make sense of it and if it has merit, develop it. The concept involves a management suite that helps constituents in any modern democracy to start press for desired change and help them to objectify what’s urgent and what must be done, in what particular sequence of steps, to end up in a better world.
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So how does it look? Well, this “app” should be both a desktop environment (or software package) as it should be a mobile phone extension as it should be a comprehensive web site. Ideally the whole infrastructure should allow for inconsistency and political opposition and resulting from that (hopefully dialogue). So let me describe the process to you.
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1. You create an inalienable and unique registration somewhere, preferably linked to social media accounts such as Google, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (and there are many others). The software environment gives “you” a system weight (i.e. credibility) depending on your online activity and general believability of your online presence. As you act, and your existence in the real world is affirmed by other people and events, the system starts elevating your “credibility”. You can choose whether or not you make that credibility and your personal data accessible to other people, corporations, governments, police and such, and the system takes steps to make sure this data is not breached, stolen, abused, farmed, falsified, etc. Yes I know that is a tall order these days, but we gotta try, right?
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2. The software environment now starts asking you questions about where you stand ideologically. From your answers the software starts charting what you believe, what you desire, where your ambitions lay, what you expect of your country, what you expect of your politicians, how much time you have to act (vote, protest, organize, rally, provide support, anything as long as it’s legal in your country). The software does not judge however and will objectively make suggestions to different registered users that are contradictory. For example, it may provide suggestions how to take action against climate change, life extension, birth control, atheist values, andsoforth as it just as easily helps people do respective opposites. The software doesn’t care what you want, it only exists to facilitate you being able to do what it is you need to do to affect as much change in the world as possible.
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3. As the respective “credibility” levels of people in general, and the respective credibility of these people in respective fields starts coming in to focus, the software can always be consulted by its users why it makes the recommendations it does, but however intricate algorithms it applies, the software environment starts using geospatial data collected by your mobile phone, your previously established choices, preferences, skills, general levels of commitment (etc.) to provide recommendations, in a specific order. At any time the user can decide to scale back recommendations (“I am tired today”. “I feel depressed”. “I am not in the mood”, “I have a flu” etc.) and the app makes as much as possible objective suggestions on how to overcome certain personal constraints as to become more motivated, provided that is what you want. These software recommendations are always legal in the jurisdiction you are in, the software helps streamline what action you can take and actively tried to reduce “bullshitting” as to stop people waste their time when they made absolutely clear they want something. The suggestions provided are color coded, with RED (=critical) suggestions at the top and BLUE (=if you get around to it, sure, go ahead) suggestions listed at the bottom.
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Let me provide you with an example.
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Let’s say you are really concerned about climate change, and you enter a whole bunch of answers why you are concerned about climate change. The software establishes a profile based on your personal take and beliefs on climate change. The software also tries to get a feel for how open you are to debate and organizing yourself. The software establishes a detailed as much a profile as it can and then starts recommending, based on absolutely unambiguous terms, what you can do, and in what order or urgency. The software determines urgency strictly on what statements you provide the software with in the first place. So if you make clear in unambiguous terms that you regard climate change as an absolute existential risk, and you are social, gregarious, somewhat smart and able to walk some distances the software starts listing a whole bunch of rallies, write-ins, clicktivism, protests, organizations, fellow-organizers and actions you take take in everyday life.
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And an important feature is the software works towards hard casual relationships. Right now someone really miffed about climate change might have been led to think that sorting your municipal garbage is a good thing to do. But depending on your geographic location this may not actually be the case. So the software makes a series of judgement calls, based on hard programming algorithms and objective, falsifiable science, established prejudices, statistical heuristics, and mountains of data – and whatnot – what you can do, what you want to do, what kind of thing you want to do, where to do it, and in what order.
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An important feature of the software would be to constantly and carefully confront users with hypocrisy, inconsistency, incorrect assumptions, your core values and why you might have them – while all the time actively avoiding alienating the user.
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Concluding – all this may seem almost magical to most people in the real world, but I guarantee you, big (data) corporations are right now working hard to use all these technologies to confuse and manipulate you and to spend money benefiting other corporations that pay facebook (et.al.) for such (arguably corrupt) services. So in essence I can guarantee you this technology is very much alive today, and it’s used AGAINST you.
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Making the above software would be fucking expensive, but I believe the effort and investment would be worth it a million times over, and the situation on this planet can be argued to be so dire we seriously start thinking about how to get people off their couch and start doing what they can. And in an ideal world such software would bring together categories of people in parallel causes who wouldn’t have met one another in a thousand years otherwise. And it may even make you grow to be a more educated, more gentle, more patient, more socially aware and more effective citizen in an increasingly complex world.
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So, I have only one thing to add
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