On March 5, the South Coast Air Quality Management District held its monthly meeting in Long Beach, the heart of the most polluted part of its jurisdiction for cancer-causing pollutants. They unveiled a draft plan to "backstop" the ports ongoing efforts to reduce pollution, and--as a relatively minor note--they also announced the release of a new smartphone app, described in this short video, shown at the meeting, now on their website:
The Power of AQMD in Your Hand
Designed and developed exclusively for the iPhone™, iPad, and iPod Touch®
NOW you can find out about air quality within the South Coast AQMD, as well as air quality news alerts, alternative vehicle fueling stations, and much more all in the palm of your hand, with the AQMD App for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Download the AQMD App for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, available now in the App Store.
Get the AQMD Smartphone App and you will have the power to clean the air.
As I watched the video in the meeting, I was immediately struck by the enormous potential it represented, not just in itself, but as a prototype of potential citizen empowerment. It both enables individuals to make personal, timely use of government-collected information, and empowers them to contribute to government effectiveness in protecting and securing the common good. It makes government a partner in people improving their individual quality of life, and it makes people a partner in government improving everyone's quality of life.
Conceptually, there's nothing really new in this. This is what liberalism has always been about: recasting government as a servant of the people, rather than their master. But it does represent finding new ways to realize traditional liberal ends. And pragmatically, it represents a potential gain in effectiveness that's virtually impossible to grasp at this early stage. Just one example: Could a properly designed and implemented smartphone app have prevented the theft of the 2000 election in Florida, by exposing problems, enabling real-time corrections, and deterring malicious interference with people's voting rights? And would that have drastically changed the course of history? Is water wet?
We've already seen the difference that mobile phones made in Iran last year. Without them, the opposition would have been quickly crushed, and there would be little public record to even preservea dim memory of what had happened. With them, the long hard struggle for democracy in Iran continues with a vigor that would otherwise be unimaginable. And there was no special app to help them, much less any force-multiplying infrastructure behind the app.
Imagine what an election-protection smartphone app could do. It could feed into a dynamically-updated online database that everyone with an internet connection could monitor. Any irregularity at any polling place in America could immediately be documented with a time-and-place-stamped video, linked to the precinct number, along with a violation code, so that anyone could track how many instances of different sorts of violations had been recorded at any level, from the individual precinct to the nation as a whole. Of course the media--from blogs to broadcast news--would also be watching this national database, calling quick attention to developing problems.
Could it be messed with? Of course. But there would be far more rapid and public consequences than we've seen when past elections were messed with.
Saving the planet would be a bit more complicated. But the AQMD app already gives some hints of how this might develop. A single app wouldn't be the answer, but certain kinds of apps, working together could prove dramatically revolutionary. Conceptually, the biggest problem we face right now is that powerful special interests can make money and gain or preserve power by externalizing their costs to the social and physical environment. Global warming is just one result of this process. Ecosystem services depletion is a more comprehensive way of describing it.
What enables this is the simple fact that a small, concentrated, well-coordinated group of individuals benefits, while a large, diffuse, un-coordinate mass of humanity suffers. The role of smartphone apps in saving the world would be to help change that calculus--to enable enough of the un-coordinated mass of humanity to coordinate itself in real time, without direction from above.
One key factor that could make this work is integration of two types of functionality. One is everyday usefulness, the other political action. Most people are not political junkies, nor should they be. But there are natural, inherent connections between the two--and the concentrated special interests understand this very well. Well-designed smartphone apps would be ones that are primarily useful to people in their everyday lives, but that seamless integrate appropriate forms of potential for political action that flow directly out of those same everyday life experiences and needs.
Your Turn: An Invitation
I know this is a somewhat vague description. But I think it's enough to spark some ideas, and sparking ideas is what I'm really interested in. So I'd like you to post your suggestions about examples of smartphone apps that could be used to accomplish a public good by harnessing citizen cooperation. No example too trivial or too ambitious. You just vaguely indicate what the app might do, or go into detail, like the AQMD videro does. Just brainstorm and share the results.
All other types of comments are welcome, too, of course.
