FutureEverything has explored how the power of the Internet and digital tools can enable mass participation and citizen-led innovation.
This dates back to the Environment 2.0 lab (2006-9), and has since developed into a main focus of interest.
It is the focus in the OurCity prototype developed for FutureEverything 2011 by Adam Nieman, Lancaster University, FutureEverything and Manchester Communication Academy.
This focus was brought to life at FutureEverything 2010, when the call to action at the City Debate 2010 was that the future should be for everybody, FutureEverybody.
OurCity
OurCity combines physical connections in Manchester with feelings about and aspirations for the city. It is a prototype for a new way for people to have their voice heard and to act together to shape a new plan for the city, to reduce the gap between citizens and policymakers, and to form new groupings based on commitment to social action.
OurCity is a response to a new technology and the opportunities it provides for connecting people and place. It is driven by VoiceYourView, developed at Lancaster University, a system for collating and analysing thousands of individual comments, to reveal patterns of theme, sentiment and actionability. In OurCity comments are solicited in a number of ways, but mainly by text or via a web app optimised for smart-phones. The comments do not have to conform to a fixed format so the analysis avoids reducing individual perspectives to ‘mere’ statistics the way a survey might. The project combines individual perspectives with statistical insight in a way that helps viewers / participants identify themselves as active constituents of Manchester, not mere observers. In this way, OurCity is about how individuals relate to the whole and about how ideas about a city map to its geography.
Environment 2.0 and Climate Bubbles
The Environment 2.0 lab looked at how participatory observation and mapping combined with global information sharing creates an unprecedented capacity for participatory mass observation of the environment and climate. The focus were the Environment 2.0 participatory mass observation projects in 2009.
One project was Climate Bubbles, a collaboration between FutureEverything, Met Office and Lancaster University which developed a playful technique for the public to generate a data set on local climate that the Met Office could not capture in any other way.
Environment 2.0 led to the GreenEyes consortium involving FutureEverything, Fing, Waag and others, which looked at social sensing and the potential of citizens gathering and making sense of environmental data by deploying personal sensors in the urban environment.
These projects look at mass participation in people generating data, people using data, and making that data meaningful. Mass participation can unlock local knowledge, create networks for community sensing, and enable gathering data it is not possible to gather in any other way. The lab looks at both top-down and bottom-up approaches to the gathering, analysis and exploitation of large datasets.
