Science and Industry

Apps for Democracy-competition¹ will be held here in Finland during the Mindtrek Conference 2009. The rules etc. are still open, but the deadline is decided: 31 August. So, whole summer time for development.

The idea of this competition is to create same sort of buzz that the DC version and UK version created. It is cool, that goverment is pushing their data open and allowing creation of mashups based on their data. This is the right way to move on, using ICT to create a better place for some people.

My 2 cents on this topic are rather simple: remember mobility and context. Mobility allows you to use the application casually, on the way to work² . Contextuality will make the mobile application much smarter than what it would be usually. Let’s see if I manage to write some application to the competition my self.

1. I don’t think that is a good name for the competition, as apps usually crated are not related to political processes, like democracy, but just visualization of existing data in new ways [↩]
2. But, you should still have a desktop version of the application there… [↩]

Now I do something I most likely should not be doing: speak of my ideas in the spirit of open innovation. So this is an idea that has been bubbling in my head for some time already. Let’s put the pink glasses on and start dreaming… What if…

I see the future being ubiquitous and extremely contextual. There will be smart devices around us to support our daily life. But what’s more important is that these smart devices will know something of their environment, they know where they are.

This feature will allow create potential in several services, not just the location based ones but wide variety like smart devices that sense what you need and offer it. But my idea actually is location based service that could be done with today’s technology.

There’s lot of research done to build political discussion forum to Internet. Actually even know I know it’s trialled in Finland at least. But let’s take this one step further: at this moment you need to be the active partner, looking for the information. And the information might be scattered to several places. But, actually – most political questions have some sort of locational meaning.

Yeap, I think we both see the same thing now: even mapping the current political debate into a map would be interesting. Just a plane old mashing up — nothing new to see here. But I take the next step: we have the contextual device that pushes these messages while you’re in the area. No need to look for the information just stay where you always are and the system will know what’s up with the community around you.

And of course, as I speak about deliberative things, there need to be discussion part also. Or it’s the most important thing. In deliberative framework it’s emphases: to get good decision you need to discuss of it. And now with discussion I mean real discussion, real arguments, and citizens & administration taking part to it. And finally there would be some sort of common understanding of the resolution and reasons why they ended up there.

I call this CODED. It’s just in (and only in) my head and evolving rapidly to different kind of concepts. What would you like to see? Why? Or do I just have an invalid hunch of the future and humans there — as usual?

Everything good ends some day: today before 9 am I walked back to my workplace at Ruoholahti. Well, actually I was sort of glad: it’s nice to be there and do something useful. Today I started getting everything I planed to do before the holiday done. Luckily I didn’t have pile of mails in the inbox, using mobile mail during holiday helped with this well know issue and kept me well in the cutting edge. As I said to my buddy at the office: “My summer holiday? I just worked less than usually.” Maybe later on I could analyze the relationship of work, school and freetime…

But it was break after all. The short break for my brains was rather usefu. Today I made some modifications to user survey and asked for comments. I made progress with service metrics. I still need to rewrite the Mindtrek-paper The Use of Ubiquitous Media in Politics – How ubiquitous life effects into political life today and what might happen in the future. I’ll keep this blog posted on the development of it — but the core idea is that new technological tools like video sharing and location based services might have something to offer also for political life.

But, actually this is my last full day at the office this week. Tomorrow I’m in Nokia House for lunch date and generally just stop by. From Wednesday to Sunday I’m supporting the Summer Assembly team and thus working remotly most likely from the scene.