Tech’s Impact on Politics
For the past week our team has been focused on the project landscape of technology’s impact on society. A big (huge) problem space. Our challenge so far has been to narrow that space down to an approachable design challenge. To do this we each chose a topic to explore further and come back this week with some opportunity statements.
My topic: Politics.
Politics is an important part of modern-day society, and technology is already having a huge impact on the way we view and interact with political affairs. Staying current with new technological advances is proving to be critical for citizens to be able to rapidly retrieve data, obtain the information they need and apply a critical lens to finding solutions for our greatest political challenges.
We identified several systems that intersect with politics, I went forward exploring three — education, information, and elections––and identifying challenges we might investigate further.
1. Education + Tech
- Employable skills are rapidly evolving as technology and automation continues to make certain industries obsolete. This has somehow become a partisan issue in modern politics.
https://www.technologyreview.com/f/608981/what-skills-will-you-need-to-be-employable-in-2030/
- The value of civics education goes beyond politics. Quality civics education helps students vote and discuss politics at home, work on issues in their community, and speak publicly and communicate with elected representatives while building builds skills in critical thinking + civil debate. Students in wealthier public school districts are far more likely to receive high-quality, experiential civics education than students in low-income and majority-minority schools.
http://neatoday.org/2017/03/16/civics-education-public-schools/
Potential challenges:
Designing for the Future of Work
Designing Access to Civic Education with Emerging Technologies
2. Information + Tech
- Access to the internet, mobile phones and social media has made people more informed about current events and increased the ability for ordinary citizens to take part in the political process while at the same time making people easier to manipulate with rumors and false information.
- With the rise of smartphones, information is more readily available than before. But, it also means politicians need to put relevant, credible information about their campaigns and goals where their voters will see it.
https://www.business2community.com/social-media/5-ways-technology-shaping-politics-2017-01838986
Potential challenges:
Tech you can trust: design for misinformation
Designing for communication between lawmakers and their constituents
3. Elections + Tech
- Politicians are becoming increasingly wary of accepting money from special interest groups. Watchdog groups and technology make the political process more transparent which pushes politicos to raise money directly from the people. There are many apps out there that assist with fundraising for political campaigns as micro-contributions will eventually eclipse the deep pockets of corporations, hence cutting down on influence peddling.
- Cambridge Analytica is a political data-analysis firm that worked on the 2016 Trump campaign. They claimed to have enough data points on every American to build extensive personality profiles, which its clients can leverage for “psychographic targeting” of ads.
- https://www.wired.com/amp-stories/cambridge-analytica-explainer/
Potential challenges:
Design for financial transparency
By the people: redesign the micro-contribution
Not my data: designing for privacy
