Shorttalks Metagov 20221207
Speaker 1: So hi. Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's MediGov seminar. Today is the monthly short talk series where we have participants of the MediGov community present on the work that they're doing. Everyone gives a five minute presentation followed by twelve minutes of discussion. And today, we have three guests or participants. We have Christina Bowen, who's gonna be talking about her...
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Transcript
So hi. Hello, everybody. Welcome to today's MediGov seminar. Today is the monthly short talk series where we have participants of the MediGov community present on the work that they're doing. Everyone gives a five minute presentation followed by twelve minutes of discussion. And today, we have three guests or participants. We have Christina Bowen, who's gonna be talking about her project, Cartographies of Internet Meta Governance, this sort of a mapping project. We're gonna have Nick Merrill talking about the interchange and his interchange article, and then we'll be joined later by Deborah Tian, who'll be talking about common agency. And we'll go ahead and go in that order as well. So we'll go ahead and start with Christina. And then, also, if you're on the call, feel free to type in the chat, you know, where you're calling from, put a little high in the chat. And then, also, as we're going, feel free to leave questions, and we'll moderate the discussion afterwards. Over to you, Christina.
Great. Thank you. Again, I apologize for my broken webcam. There you go. There we go. So I am building a map stimulated by the exploring governance layer for the Internet sessions in the D. Web camp twenty twenty two. And causal loop diagramming helps surface the core dynamics in a research argument or, like, statement of how we think the world works. And I was really fascinated by this idea of a governance layer for the Internet, and I thought I could do some lightweight mapping. I have this overview map right now where you can just sort of see what's coming up next, what we what I've done, and what was completed. And I'll give you a little bit of an overview. This is a a sticky mapping space where it is like a collaborative whiteboard that I can then upload into Qumu where we've started to map core dynamics in this paper from scalability to subsidiary and addressing online harm. I guess I can just go in and say, for example, this feedback loop here where each of the arrows in a causal loop diagram is increases or decreases. So wealth will directly increase the ability for people to have automated content moderation tools which decreases the cost they then have to spend on moderation, which would, if that went up, decrease wealth. So in this case you have some pressure to automate moderation to increase your pile of gold. And how dynamics interact with each other in the argument in a single article. We can then take a few different maps and put them together and look at the sort of what has a huge amount of influence on the system as well as what might be something that is something that we know how to change and what we're looking for when we're looking at systems change is to find those things that both have a high influence on the system and the high understanding of how to change those, how to affect change in that. So something with low influence on a system might be like I don't know me talking about this stuff in a general way isn't gonna have any impact on racism in America and racism itself is something that would have a very high influence but low ability to change directly. You can't go yell at racists and make a bit bunch of change. So we're looking for things that that are worth spending time on, and I'm hoping to map at least one work by most of the core researchers from Medigov. And I also can actually go over here. I'll just switch to this. That isn't working. I got a little bit distracted because of the meltdown of Twitter and the the surge of use of Macedon. One of the original engineers at Twitter wrote a statement that was basically invitation to this charter for the Internet for the fediverse. And you can see in the map of it here that
So one minute warning.
Awesome. You can see that there's like some loops going on but not a ton. And then I can show you like the cross impact analysis shows like there's not a whole lot in the upper right quadrant, and there's a lot about freedom of communication. So there's the it kind of gives you an idea of where you wanna take an argument or or where you wanna focus on really building understanding. That's that. Thank you very much.
Amazing. Thanks a lot for sharing that work in such a nice high level overview. I wanna open up the floor for discussion. We have twelve minutes to discuss Christina's mapping work. If you know what has questions about the mapping process or how to get involved and the general trajectory, feel free to either raise your hand or just come off of mute. Now we have a pretty cozy number of participants this week, so feel free to just unmute if you wanna speak. I can go ahead and get us started. I'm I'm curious. The so your one of your goals is to kind of map out the various research projects that is are happening across Merida. I'm curious, like, how so I've been to one of your mapping sessions. It seems like the kind of goal there is to kind of very specifically within the context of the the piece, do the mapping within there, not to kind of make connections to things that are external to Yeah. The thing that's being mapped. And I'm curious, like, if there's an idea to kind of do some eventually, some cross mapping between the pieces Yeah. Or if they're all meant to be kind of these isolated islands.
Nope. Exactly. The synthesis maps is what I'm really excited about. So being able to take ideas from Amy and Seth's paper on decentralizing platform power, a design space of multilevel governance and online social platforms, and compare that to the dynamics talked about in from scalability to subsidiary and addressing online harm, is is sort of why I'm doing this. So I will have, like, a I don't know how you say it, true to the paper map of each paper.
Mhmm. Mhmm.
And then, hopefully, we'll be talking with the various researchers and and positing, like, here here's the core dynamics and how I would state them and how I would show those those core loops. So we might get just a few loops from each paper, because there's lots of side trails.
Mhmm.
But we wanna take kind of the core dynamics and then look at how they interact with each other across the papers. So that's that's kind of why I'm doing it. I
love it.
You've been doing this this this mapping work for a while now. I mean, have you done this type of, like, mapping out a kind of ecosystem from the the the perspective of research papers before?
I haven't. I've done a lot so a lot of my work is in facilitated groups where we have conversations. You'll have, like, five to eight people at a at a table, at a live event. I can do that online too with something like SICI and have a conversation about a problem. A lot of the time, it's for coalitions that are working on wicked problems. We're looking at energy or food security or climate change, whatnot and trying to get perspectives from what I call a microcosm of the system in the room. So you wanna get, if you're looking at energy, you don't just want ecologists at the table. You also want economists and, you know, politicians and people who understand or not politicians, but policymakers anyway, to understand the dynamics of the energy system at large. And otherwise, you have gaps in understanding because we can't map what we don't know. So if you don't have the knowledge at the table, the knowledge won't be on the map. But I haven't I mean, it's it's real I've done mapping of written work before, but I've never taken written work and integrated it with each other. But that's that's sort of what I do when I have, like, a series of games or a series of maps, that are done in person. I'll then give the group back an integrated map of all of those different conversations. Does that make sense?
No. Yeah. That makes sense. I I I see Josh here has this this this link to this distilled up hub for government. With kind of wishing that there is a version of this for governance research. Do do you wanna speak to that at all, Josh?
Yeah. So just the if you're not familiar with this still that pub, it's really a journal kind of in the machine learning machine learning slash AI field.
Mhmm.
And Distill is great because they have, like, these really, really beautiful graphics that they commissioned specifically for some of these papers. Like, the papers are some of them are well, they're all peer reviewed, generally speaking, but they, you know, they're often quite technical. Mhmm. But the nice thing is that yeah. I just realized it hasn't published since 2021. That's really quite sad. Mhmm. But for a while, like, the papers there were, like, really, really kind of excellent, because they had specific funding to have, you know, these, like, extra visualizations. And it's part of the publication process. Like, if you get accepted, you know, there's a process where they, like, help you develop these really nice graphics that illustrate, like, what is going on in the paper. Mhmm. I feel like these maps are, like, one way of doing that for governance research. Right? Yeah. So for me, that was like a, oh, wow. This is a this is great.
I have I have a a fantasy that anybody like, like, like, the TED talk framework or something like that. Anybody doing that kind of thing where you're like, come give your big idea to the world that you would have to have a causal loop diagram showing your idea. I one of the first things when I found so I I learned sort of thinking in systems through ecological diagrams and odor diagrams back in school but once I started doing this as a consultant for ideas, one of the first things that I tried it out with was a, a talk about a social progress indicator and why we shouldn't use GDP and why we should use this social progress indicator. And when you map out that talk, it's clear that why we shouldn't use GDP is a really tight argument with very, very clear dynamics. And then it's, like, breaks down as soon as you get into the part of the map that's like, and you should use social progress indicator. There's like no clear dynamics of what would happen if you did. So I think that that idea of distill of like how do we how do we get across this core idea quickly? Which puts more work on the people with the ideas but I think is is part of collective intelligence, it's part of like the visualization and making things that are very highly technical understandable. I think it's it's really cool. Thanks, Luis.
Agreed. Super important.
Anant Anant, I think you wanted to speak earlier.
Yeah. I think I I just wanted to point out a few things, actually. So I am an engineer. Right? I used to be I mean, I my education is as a mechanical engineer, but I ended up managing, you know, big projects. I mean, offshore projects where I was leading, you know, groups of engineers on building, you know, big complex things. So systems engineering, I mean, we always, you know, hierarchically, you know, trying to visualize systems has always been a useful tool, which we didn't really use very much. I mean, even though we had to do a lot of complex things. Right? So I kind of always thought that there was kind of a missing element of visualization in that. Another thing with graph visualizations is project networks. You know, that's something that I'm doing a bit of work on currently. I mean, I used to manage some of those projects. So relationships between all the companies and affected stakeholders, external stakeholders involved in a big project is something that can be mapped to be made more tangible because it's very difficult to really understand these complex relationships, you know, without these kind of visualizations. And talking about academic research, I mean, even if you take a single paper, right, if you look at all the citations, you can kind of map, you know, the papers. You can map concepts within the paper. You know, you can map semantic meanings within a paper. There's just so many different applications for this. Right? Mhmm. So it's, you know, something that, you know, has a world of possibility, really.
Yeah. For this particular project, I'm gonna focus on causal loop diagrams, but I did have to learn network mapping just out of self preservation, basically, because people people really wanna see that for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. And, also, thanks, Josh, for this till I just saw a few papers that I want to go through. So thank you for that link as well.
Absolutely. I do wanna give this this is, like, an interesting side project that somebody has that looks at map of topics in a bunch of publications that might be useful.
Yeah. Thank you. I'm gonna open that up so I can go through it once we are done. You know, looks very interesting.
Yeah. We've got about another minute and a half. Christina, maybe we'll take a question from Travis, but then maybe we can also hear a little bit about, like, how people can participate or kind of, like, how you're looking to involve people in this this mapping process. So
Great.
Yeah. So, Travis.
Hey there. I I have kind of a a general question about approaching mapping projects, which may not be appropriate here. What whenever I've created, like, a causal map, I always get bogged down in, like, the relative strength of a different factors between elements as well as, you know, I know that, like, the initial conditions matter so much in terms of whether you set off, you know, positive feedback loops that reinforce one another, and, you know, those tipping points and so forth. How do you go from, like, a do you have, like, a an approach for going from, like, a a causal map that like, some of the ones that you showed
Mhmm.
To to ones that can kinda, like, help to capture the kinda, like, the current state of, like, the initial conditions of, you know, the world, you know, as we're you know, the system that's being mapped, and then kind of understanding, like, where there's, like, leverage points and so forth that are kinda connected to values and so forth. Like, I don't know, Monte Carlo simulations or anything. I just I find them oftentimes a little intractable after I've created them. So it'd be nice to be able to, you know, make them understand how to make them more usable.
Totally. I think that's a there's a little bit of a different approach. When I'm wrangling a complex problem, I think of it as not a system that's describable. Like, there is there is a tendency because people don't like uncertainty. Like, it works really, really human to just want the answer. And so there is a tendency and there is a whole bunch of work in systems mapping where the goal is to, like, map the system so much that you can understand it and have, like, prediction models. And then, I mean, you can think about, like, how meteorology works or how, like, ecological simulations work where you're you're positing how this change is going to happen and what the like, being able to predict the state. And there are tools like that InsightMate directing those simulations. I'm less interested in that because I'm mapping stuff at the strategic level that's really about, you know, getting insights to the people that are trying to change the system, and then they usually get to, oh, well, we're gonna try this, and then we're we're watch for this. It's not it's not that you have to actually wait the connections or actually, you know, put any of the numbers in the map, but they can come away from a mapping conversation knowing what they wanna watch for and knowing what they wanna measure over time over the next six months or a year or three months or whatever it is. So I kind of I personally I mean, there's a there's a lot of use, for simulations. It takes a lot more math and it it has a danger of of giving people the impression, like, this is how the world works and we can understand it and and, like, that safety of predictability, which I just I think a lot of the sort of higher level strategy work is not predictable.
Great. Thank you for that, Christina, and thanks for all the discussion, everyone. We'll go ahead and go to the next speaker at this point. But maybe, Christina, if you have a moment, you can make a note in the chat about any upcoming sessions or how people could get involved in the mapping activity. So we'll go ahead and go to Nick Merrill who will present on the interchain.
Hey. Thanks, Sant. And that was super interesting, Christina. Thanks for that. Sant, before I get started, how much time do I have?
Five minutes and then twelve minutes of discussion.
You know what? I I hate to do this. I'm actually gonna cede my time. I didn't know I was only gonna have five minutes, so I didn't prepare kind of something succinct enough to get feedback on. So I'm I'm gonna pass for now, and I'll come back to this at some other meta gov session in the future.
Okay. We'll go ahead and go to Deborah, who's gonna be presenting on, I believe, common agency.
Okay. Hi, everyone. Thanks, Christina, for your presentation. Sorry. I missed the front end of it. I was caught in a meeting that was supposed to end half hour before this meeting started, but that is that is life. That is December, especially, I feel. Hope everyone's doing well. So as Seth mentioned, I'm here to share a little bit more about the startup we're working on called Common Agency. So, basically, one what we're trying to deal with is just the notion that a lot in The US has changed in the last century in terms of how we find belonging and how we find other people to to work with. And, one thing that we've seen is that it seems like people feel like a sense of of loss of agency as individuals. And I think it's primarily or I think a big part of that comes from the fact that a lot of anchor institutions spend a lot of money to, like, talk at communities. Even those who invite community feedback, your focus groups, listening circles, co design workshops only. They they tend to hear a lot of complaints from committee members about, you know, talking too much, not enough action being like people like come when they want something, outside consultants invited and compensated without input from the wider community. And I can I can say this because I've been that consultant and I've been a leader of well intentioned organization several times? And I know this is like quite a thing that happens. And so to me, this kind of starts to look at like, I don't know. To me, a lot of this started because of my kind of deep dive into different governance processes, especially around deliberate democracy, thinking about how could we maybe bring some of those practices from deliberate democracy, which are all about people really engaging deeply with the challenge, looking at some of the principles from, maybe like Sherry Arnstein's ladders and engagement where at the top we kind of have more citizen led actions happening, where people are, kind of figuring out their own ideas and and undertaking those their different ideas to try to train their communities. How do we bring that? How do we look at that? How do we, like, kind of bring that to life? Right? So, I was I've been focused on, can we bring that to life in very localized situations, specifically neighborhoods in The US? And by neighborhood, I mean, just any geographic boundary where meeting up face to face is, like, not a big issue. So I think with most people on this call, I am not neighbors with you, but, you know, that's okay. I, I'm calling from Michigan, by the way, in The US. And but it changes, of course, depending on the type of place. So we have, of course, like a a big urban center like New York City. The neighborhood would be, like, maybe a couple streets, but kind of a more rural community and might be the whole county. So let that decide. So, can we actually create this kind of more evergreen, long lasting kind of social fabric across different communities and and what can we do about it? So I've been exploring this idea called neighborhood networks. K? I'm trying to set up, can we actually start connecting neighbors together using accessible technologies to build the neighborhoods they want? And what this looks like is we again, we're focused on people who are not easily reached because even if we host all those different events that we invite all these community members to and try to get their inputs, Most of the time, we will not be able to reach people who are not comfortable with English. We will not be able to reach people who are, you know, third shifters because the community events are usually planned around the white collar hours. Right? And we can't really reach we can't really reach people who are busy, like, raising kids or doing family things because they're they're doing you know, they're they don't really have that much time. I'm sure we've all wanted to go to some of these events, but we couldn't make it because of time. And that's just the reality of things. So, yeah, we want to explore, can we actually engage people in more, like, smaller ways? So what we do is we, are setting up these neighboring networks. We've got two pilots set up now. And what I would like to discuss today is maybe what the third pilot could look like, because there's been some partnership that I'm very excited about, and I'll get into that in a second. So the basic premise of what the Sabre network looks like is we kind of get people to sign up for this network. And then if people sign up, then we'll send them one question a week. Okay? We wanna keep the spam low and the flow very slow. So we send them one question a week, and that question is from another neighbor that we're talking with. So we're kind of codesigning these questions. It's a very, it actually takes a lot of energy to do that. But anyway, so we're designing these questions, and then we send them out. And then, we display the answers on a website so that people can look at them and start to get to know each other. Now most people are not gonna log in to that website because, humans are humans. They're just not keen to do that. And I I I don't know if I mentioned this. We send it out via text or email depending on what's people preference are, and we can change the language as needed because it's a text or email. Like, it we can just use Google Translate for that. And so we use choose text and email because, of course, a lot of people are not online as much as maybe people on this call are. So that's okay. So we'll display the answers on this website And but, again, most people are not gonna log on. So what we do is we start matchmaking. We find people who, who have maybe shared interest and ideally have diverse lived experiences. And we say, hey, you can meet up, you've got these things. So there's small groups and ideally people meet up again in real life, to explore some ideas and build community. And, the next great step would be if they act and neighbors actually take action with potential help from local mentors. And so we're also building kind of more like, we're getting to know who's kind of the who's who in the neighborhood who can help out. Right? So one pilot we've got set up is in New Jersey. The other is in Holland, Michigan. These are picked, not really picked to be honest. They were because someone in those communities said, hey, this sounds interesting. I would love to try it out. And we're like, great. Sounds good. Tell us by community. In New Jersey, the community is very like, they have high community engagement levels, but there's a lot of silos. So what our goal here is to, like, focus on the kind of building relationships across different side. In the other community in Michigan, there seems to be some sort of neighborhood fabric, but it's a little bit like, there's not so much of the action side. So then we have it's like a different type of approach that we're we're trying to engage there. And we focus on those particular elements, social cohesion and willingness to act because studies show that this is actually what leads to collective efficacy, which to me is what leads to, like, actual, like, the the community taking more action as a group. And, again, one of our big kind of things we're looking at is, like, how do we strengthen democracy at the local level? And to me, getting there means, like, again, strengthening collective efficacy in general. So my question today and I can give more details here. I kinda went through it quickly. But the question today is so we've got some we've got an interest so what so far, it's been kind of fun. We've got some responses, but, of course, we haven't gotten. Like, we haven't heard from from a lot of people. Like, for example, in Michigan, that one's last longer. We've heard from more than 50% of people, but that's still let me see. We've heard of 63% of people, but that still means, like, 39% we haven't heard from right. So we we're keen to think, like, can we actually or 37. Sorry. Arithmetic is not my strong suit. So can we hear from more people? And it is something that we're very keen to explore. So for this third pilot, what we've done is there's this county government agency that is interested in this concept, and they really want us to kind of host the dialogues a little bit more around affordable housing. It's a big issue in The US, where are people going to find housing to live in. And there's right now the conversation is very asked for STEM. There's the people who want affordable housing and the people who very much don't want it and they kinda just butt heads and nothing really gets done because everyone's just arguing all the time and just calling each other names. So what we're trying to do is, like, can we use what we're doing to to approach this conversation in a more, I don't know, in, like, a slower, more human way? So maybe starting with questions like, how does this county feel like home to you? And then try to, you know, I feel like they'll get a little bit more warm responses than how do you feel about this development coming up on Seventeenth Street or whatever. And so we'll we'll focus there. So the question, though, is, like, how do we how do we set our people to actually participate in this thing if it feels too feel good? So I would love to hear, some thoughts on, like, maybe questions, etcetera. The other thing that we're playing with is, this county government agency, which is very exciting, has agreed that they have some funding that they're willing to, like, create into, like, this kind of participatory fund we can call it for now. We're, like, we're people like, we're they're happy and willing to put I don't know. We can just say $5,000 and let people decide what to do with that money. And so what what I'm thinking is maybe we can actually have, we can have people, like, who actually engage with the network, like, be allowed to, like, decide what to do with that money. But that concept of being allowed to decide what to do with the money and engagement in the network, those are all things that I know, this group probably can get very specific on and thinking about how do we actually, like, design what that decision making process could look like. So I would love to try to hear some thoughts there about what what that could look like. I've got some ideas, but very open to it. I think those are the main yeah. Those are the kind of the two prompts I would like to share with the group. I hope I didn't go over five minutes. I I wasn't keeping track.
No. That's okay. We we have so much time now. So we'll go ahead and open it up for discussion. There's already a comment in here from Josh
Yeah.
On this idea of incentivizing democratic participation through a dating pool, kind of coffee meets bagel approach to digital democracy. I don't know if Josh wants to kind of
it's it's not directly related to Deborah's presentation, but she was just saying, oh, we're gonna send just one question a day to, you know, to subscribers. And that's that to me sounded exactly like how Coffee Meets Meets Bagel functions, right, compared to if you're not familiar with this, this is like a like an app, like a dating app where
Yeah.
Yeah. That that Yeah. This thing from I don't remember the I guess what's it called? OkCupid and Tender
Okay.
That, you know, give you all the options as it were. You can scroll you can doom scroll through, you know, all the eligible singles in your area, this gives you one match. So it's it's kinda like same kind of mechanic. Right? It was a cute app for a while.
Yeah. I I didn't know I didn't know Cognite Bagel was that's how Cognite Bagel actually works. I I, yeah, I actually do think of us as sort of like the eHarmony for neighborhoods. Just because eHarmony is answering a questionnaire, and that's how they do the matching. But, yeah, I I I didn't realize constantly Never mind.
No. No. It's not about the surveys. Just the pictures. Just the pictures.
Yeah. Right. Right. I mean, people will be able to upload a profile picture on the website. And, again, if they actually choose maybe that's what we how we incentivize them to log in is they can actually see their dating potential.
This is where the monster begins. It's where the project turns into the next Facebook.
Oh, great. Like a Facebook, Tinder, like, hybrid.
Exactly. Yes. But slow. Great. We have some questions here from Sarah. Do you wanna give some voice to to this, Sarah?
Mhmm.
I just have lots of ideas that will be better to share if I have more information. So I can read the questions
if that would be helpful.
Yeah. Please.
How do people sign up, Deborah?
Yeah. So we've done we've we've done kind of a mix of, like, hybrid or, in person and online, and it's mostly through the the local network steward, whatever they decide makes sense. So, for one of them, we we we had, like, a table at a mural fest block party. So very much a community event, and people just came, we chatted with them, and had flyers and very traditional kind of community organizing. And then, the other one, similarly, we were at a farmer's market, and we all the networks were also shared on their local Facebook groups, like the especially the mom's group got a lot of interest because those are groups which is more active. I was actually surprised because I was like, doesn't this feel like Facebook feel? But apparently not. People are excited if if they say it feels fresh.
That's awesome. So when you shared those stats of the Michigan cohort, the 37% who haven't responded, is that from the people who have signed up, or are you are you keeping track of how much of the total population of the county has signed up?
It's the people not who have signed up. I wish we had, but that would be pretty impressive. No. We are very early stage.
Yeah. Totally. Well, I listen.
I don't know.
I don't wanna I didn't wanna assume. Somewhere.
Yeah. I
appreciate I appreciate the maybe that we get there. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And and, specifically, around so it sounded like if I understood correctly, the participatory budgeting opportunity was through the Michigan County and a collaboration with a county level agency. Is that right?
No. So the the Michigan one is with a neighboring organization who it's interesting that these I don't know if these are bodies I didn't know these bodies existed for a long time, but their like, their primary goal is just to build more social cohesion in the neighborhood and, like, also improve the reputation of the neighborhood. And so because this particular neighborhood, it's a it's a city that's pretty primarily, same demographics, very homogeneous, very white in in this part of Michigan. And then this particular neighborhood has, like, a a more, Latinx population, a growing Latinx population. And so it's a neighboring where people will be like, oh, don't go south of, you know, whatever street, because it's dangerous. So then this neighboring organization is also trying to, like, change that reputation while also building the social cohesion in general here. And there's neighboring organization like this all over the country, which is quite cool, and they're very grassroots and and very interesting. Mostly focused on events like mural, like murals, block parties, beautification stuff especially.
Very cool. Very cool. And so when the the neighborhood I'm sorry. I forgot the term you said. The champion or the the neighborhood steward, they are how there's one of them. Is that accurate? We
want at least two just to have it not be feel like a dictatorship. So it's ideally at least two. So far, it's just been two or three in each community. And, ideally, they do it for, like, about six months, and then we rotate. Again, kind of going away from the Facebook idea of, like, whoever started the group is the moderator kind of for life. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Okay. Great. I'm gonna if that's okay, I'll marinate and maybe let let you answer some other I
Hello? My Internet.
Oh, was it did I was I bouncing cutting out?
For me, you were. I think it's just my Internet. Can you say it again, Sarah?
I appreciate you answering all the questions. I'm gonna marinate. I see somebody else has some questions, so I'll, I'll come back when I have some more cohesive thoughts.
Cool. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks for the questions.
Avi, would you like to jump in here?
Yeah. Sure. Hi, Deborah. So cool to to see you and hear about the work. And I was curious. I've been sort of obsessed with this notion of slowing down and kinda researching it from different angles. And I've been curious about sort of how you're thinking about it and, what sort of mechanisms in the whole concept could empower that. And maybe they're not necessarily, like, sort of technical mechanisms, but, like, what else are you thinking about to sort of make people feel, like, empowered to slow down? And I've been thinking about it from the lens of psychology and psychologist Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast and slow theory of human reasoning and and so on and his way of thinking about system one and system two. Right? And, like, what do we mean? And where system two, right, is slower, and it's really about, like, self reflection and, like, conflict resolution and a lot of those things that I think, like, a community collectively could also engage with, while also sort of resisting how a lot of the technology that people interact with, like, oftentimes it is sort of designed to have this sort of, like, very fast, frictionless experiences for people, and, like, we're inevitably sort of impacted by that. But, yeah, I'm super curious about about that notion.
Yeah. Thanks, Bobby. Yeah. We have so much to talk about. Okay. So, but I think the word friction hits really well. Right? I think people are sort of like I feel like in The US, we've designed our communities and our our way of life to, like, minimize friction as much as possible. And I think that means that people, again, like you're saying, avoid kind of, like, trying to deal with conflict. And I think that means that people are starting to, like, find people who they don't have to have conflicts with. And if they find there's a conflict, they just kind of disengage entirely. And so it's like, how do we how do we design to to build something that, like, encourages friction, actually? I kinda want the friction to happen, but I want it to happen in person. So what we have with, like, how we've done it, like, how it looks again, it's, like, one question a week, so it's very slow. And then when we display answers on that website, people can like react in one of two ways right now, which is like a I'm curious and also like a bookmarking of that answer just to remember it. But there's no like reply. It's very much like, Polis software where, like, you can't actually reply to the actual statement, but you could only write a new statement for yourself. And so we thought that maybe that could actually kind of help with, like if people if there's enough people who are who are just like curious about something, then maybe they can reach out and ask. The only thing that we see is like, so like one of my side gigs is actually doing like dialogue, facilitating dialogues across different and stuff like that. And so there are practices that we that I would love to incorporate, but, again, this starts moving to the in person interactions where, let's say, we ask a question that's quite controversial and gets, like, four different opinions. What we can do then is we can actually invite people from each of those groups to be like, hey. You're all neighbors. Can we meet up and, like, chat about it, and chat about this issue and kinda, like, engage on it more? And, like, we can have there's facilitators kind of all over the place, but, you know, I have facilitation background, but also we could sure there's local facilitators in that community who could also come and, like, kind of make sure that conversation feels really good and isn't, like, just like an online kind of dehumanizing thing. Because I feel like it's all about just rehumanizing each other and remembering that we're all very complex, nuanced beings. But, yeah, so that's some of the inspiration. Oh, yeah. The once a week cost that comes from I have to give credit to you know, Front Porch forums is like a social network in Vermont, and they only post once a day, which I at 4PM. And I always found that, like, quite I like that a lot. So it feels like more like a newspaper, and it allows peep they've seen in their studies that some people will post something and then will realize that, like, something you know, if if they realize that it's not a great post, like, three hours later, they can email the people and say, can you please remove that post? So it allows people to have that kinda cooling off time that I think is lost when we, like, completely go too fast, right, like you're saying. Yeah. Thank you for sending the link.
No. Yeah. For sure. I mean, we we had Eli Parser here from NewPublic talking about this concept as well. And I was like, what was it that he actually referred to? And it was exactly this thing that you had just you had just mentioned.
Yeah. I think it's I think it's a cool world that we're living in. But yeah. So, anyway, I am very much open if anyone wants to continue chatting about I don't know if the time is up, but it and it again, like, kind of thinking on that question of how do we how do people even decide, like, what to do with that with that participatory fund stuff. I think that could just that's just it's kinda like a fun prompt. I'm not looking for answers here. But if anyone is interested in engaging with that more, it's it's something I'm literally working on right now and would love to have some thought partners on too.
That's one thing I'd be curious, and then we'll we'll pass over to Sarah again, is does this idea of slowness or purposeful friction also play into participatory budgeting? I mean, the like, or I like, I don't know. There was, like, Val and I did a a a run through of, like, a game a governance game that we're designing. And it was interesting how when the players were in the kind of benevolent dictator modality, some of the players who were more engaged previously, we just kind of step back because they knew that someone else can make that decision. So there was, like, a different kind of temporality that the decision making process afforded. And so I wonder how, like, what kind like, what's the speed of decision making for participatory budgeting? Do you also imagine it having a certain kind of slowness? Or does it, like, does it move at a different pace than the kind of other systems in your in your larger construct?
Yeah. That's a great question. Thinking thinking about it. I mean, I would I would imagine it would be different somehow. And I think it I think the I think there's things to look at when it comes to, like, slowness. Like, I think there's, like again, our basic premise is once a week because we wanna keep it pretty slow. That can change based on the situation and, again, also the community themselves. So we've done like there's one kind of mock up that we did like a hypothetical case with this local environmental policy group and they and like thinking about what would it be like to use this kind of platform for engaging people around lead water pipes, for example, and trying to, like, get testing done for lead water pipes. And that it felt like would make more sense as, like, a daily message because it's kind of an important thing that just people wanna get done with. And so it depends, I guess, on the level of kind of urgency of the the topic at hand and the kind of the emotional response people will have to it. Like, we don't if people are gonna just be worried for a long period, like, we don't I'm not I'm not keen to to do that, like, fear mongering kind of thing and to, like, build up suspense to get people to respond to the one message. So that's one thing. When it comes to participatory budgeting itself, I get so maybe it would yeah. It's something to sit on, and I'd be curious to hear what, like, some ideas of that might be because I think there's many different ways we could go with what kind of pace it is and what that process even looks like. Sarah, I see you have your hand up. Maybe you have some thoughts here.
Thank you, Deborah. I am I I do. I'm I think this is so cool because I love the work of people connecting, and it's cool to hear about a little bit of your background as a facilitator and a kind of across difference. Someone who's looking to support people in finding, how they can celebrate their differences together. I, my kinda background is coming in this question is coming a bit from my work in New York City, working with, public school youth to challenge school segregation. And so doing that, we I have some thoughts about kind of some ways of you asked a question about, like, how to develop those questions, and I have some thoughts on on on that. And then also from a kind of participatory budgeting standpoint, we work closely with several city council members here in New York City who all all the New York City council members have a discretionary fund that they can use to fund different things, and a few different districts opt to use that as a participatory budgeting opportunity having constituents in their district be able to propose and vote on how those that money is allocated. And so from my experience in working in that process I had some, things I wanted to share also. All of this again is I have just only this little bit of information about what you're doing so you might have already decided these things are not what you wanna do, you might already be doing them and you might already, they they might not be helpful. So we're you know, anything that isn't, of course, obviously, it goes without saying, take only what's valuable. The from the kind of how do you design the questions that meaningfully engage the community, I think the, like well, before I even start about this, I also really identify with the, like, part of being a well meaning, person coming into a community trying to help. So these also might be strategies that are from that perspective and outmoded and not helpful too. So, anyways, the the best people to develop the meaningful questions for the community are the community themselves. And so can you find a way to kind of with your two people is there is there a secondary kind of group of committed and passionate individuals? Maybe if you look at your participation rates, look at the people who have been participating every time as opposed to just occasionally and asking them to play a little bit of a more kind of drafting role in some of those things. Like, what what are questions you wanna have answers to, you know, about this issue or bringing them together for one of those, like, mini actual in live person events where they generate some questions and some discussion together. And then kind of also having them be ambassadors for getting more people to sign up. Oh, I forgot. I also had some sign up ideas. I'll do that at the end. Then for the for the participatory budgeting. I think again the way that it worked here that I thought was really effective was having some people do the extra work of making proposals. And so having kind of, again, that kind of that somewhat there's a complication with this. Right? But it's a somewhat elevated group, not in status necessarily, but in time commitment and investment that is is interested in proposing things. Potentially having that be something that you could even kind of backwards design where you have some people who are willing to do that work, ask generate questions that could generate problem statements that maybe then they can think of solutions. I saw from your website your like, that kind of solution oriented, not just complaint is a big seems feels like a big part of this. And so not necessarily asking people just what's the problem, but maybe what's the problem and what might fix it. And then having a group of people from the community who can take those and generate them into meaningful proposals that have budgets. Because I think that's kind of a big ask for someone who might wanna only interact with these questions one time a day. But it so, again, I think, like, the the parallel thing is finding the small community that's really committed to that. And then from the voting standpoint, one of the cool things, again, because I worked with young people, that I thought was so cool about the city council members that we worked with is they were able to push the voting age down, which is a great way to build kind of connection to young people and then therefore their families often. So if you could work with, like, local high schools or something to make those proposals vote honorable from the you know, within the high school or something like that, like, that's an interesting depend again, I guess, depending on the size of the county, that might be one. Maybe it's more. You know? But kind of a a direct place to reach a big group of people. And then that connects to ideas about how to find how to get more people to, like, sign up and engage, which was, one, grocery stores and two, auto repair places if it's a card centric place.
Mhmm.
Those are if yeah. Just if if they might have been things you've already done, but there are two places where people often have a little bit more time, or are planning to spend some time, which often helps when you're asking for people to think about something. And that also made me again, I'm sure it's something you're thinking about, but if you have a kind of segregated community that you're trying to make, like, change perspectives of and and bridge gaps, thinking about representation from all parts of that segregated community and and, you know, especially having Spanish language resources. And if you need groups that do translations to help projects like this, you can just reach out because I know some folks who who do that.
Wow. Sarah, that was an an incredible download. Thank you for all of that gold. I really appreciate it. I really I the grocery stores and auto repair places is, like, such a great suggestion. Alongside, like, so much of else that you said, I actually would love if I could just reach out to you after to continue chatting.
Please. I love stuff like this. I I think it's awesome, and I think tools that help us do it is really beautiful. So thank you for your all your time and investment in making that happen. So, yeah, excited to talk more for sure.
Thank you. Thank you. Looking forward to it. Christina, I see you have your hand up.
I just wanna echo, or underline what Sarah said about getting people to think about a possible future state that that they want. When you're doing when you're wrestling wicked problems and doing stuff in participatory networks, my collaborator, Aldo Demora, calls it minimum common ground. And if you start with problems, you you kind of devolve easily into the standard sort of broken civic dialogue that we have, like people getting entrenched in their things. But if you can come up with like future pictures, statements of how things could be, you begin to find, like, places where people overlap. So from a just a systems approach point point of view, that's really powerful shift to make.
I love that, Christina. Thanks for sharing that. And it's great reminder. And I I was curious actually because I do come from a little bit of the maybe more design world where it's like there is always such an emphasis on, like, really understanding their problem, like, love your problem and then find the solution. And I wonder, like, are there times where that makes more sense than looking at solutions? Is there, like, a, like, is there a, like yeah. Are there different instances where one makes more sense for the other that you've seen in your research or have others submitted their research from work?
I would just say I start with the statement of how like, you you have to start with minimum common grounds. And then as I get into mapping out the dynamics of, okay, well, given what we know we want together, where are we today? And then you can get into the problems. But you have that thing to point out when when people start to fight about the problems, you begin to kind of point them at, okay, but how do we what does that mean for where we wanna go because we've already defined where we wanna go together?
That's exactly what I was just gonna say is when people have a like, have a very deep existing sense that they have a shared vision and purpose, you can start with problems, I think, more effectively because you can always ground in, well, this is why we're all here. But if without that, starting from that positive place makes a big difference in terms of building initial kind of trust and connection, a like, a lived and and and visceral sense of trust and connection that can help you get to handling the problems.
Amazing. Yeah. That makes total sense. And I definitely feel like I've been on that, yeah, I've been on that line of thought too. I've been in groups like that too where I'm like, we're focused on this big problem, and I'm like, I don't really understand why we're like, why are we even solving this problem? Or, like, what what are we even doing here? So yeah. I I love that phrase, Christy. I've never heard that minimum common ground because
that's Aldo, that's not me. I'll I'll put his link in there. It's amazing.
Okay. Yeah. Please do because I find that's just such a it's a beautiful thing to work towards. Because I do feel like it's the I don't know. I am one of the people who thinks that, like, we do all kind of want similar things at the end of the day. At least this in, like, very broad strokes of general well-being for everybody. I think I think we all want that. But it's sort of like it's like that that gets lost, of course, in in a lot of other things. And, Seth, I'm seeing your comments today. Yeah. Sorry. I hope you feel better soon as well. And I I think you missed the intro. So it was maybe you're I would imagine you might be a bit like, what's going on? But I just basically talked about the startup initiative I'm working on, kind of building these neighborhood networks. And there's a couple pilots going on, and there's more pilots coming up. And so I'm just getting some advice on, like, what that could look like and what are some ideas. Because I also wanna see these networks as almost like experimental zones. But because, like, as I said, I kinda got into this work because because of questions around governance, and, like, how do we actually make decisions together, and how do we encourage people to actually feel, like, confident enough to be part of that decision making process, and how do we do it in ways that, like, get people to feel like they want to make decisions and things like that because it is a lot of energy. And so seeing, like, can we actually, like, try out cool ways of governance with these different neighborhood networks?
Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Deborah. Very inspiring presentations from both you and Christina and also really, wonderful, like, engaged and really thought provoking discussion. I'm looking forward to, seeing how those conversations that started here carry on, into the coming weeks, and, really glad that everyone could be here to make this space together. So I'm gonna go ahead and end the recording.