When I consider an inclusive civic technology, it must satisfy the following three criteria:
- The technology must be free to the end user.
- The technology must require minimal dependency costs.
- The technology must have minimal time and effort costs on its end users so that all people can use it regardless of their other time commitments or level of education.
- The technology must not have any norms about who uses it or why they use it so that nobody from any background is discouraged from using it.
With that in mind, let’s play with these criteria while examining three similar technologies: Lawn signs, street art and bumper stickers. While all three of these technologies accomplish similar goals, to allow an end user to publicly display and endorse a cause that they want to promote, the way they enable their users to do so places them in different locations within our inclusivity space.
The first technology to consider is lawn signs. With respect to the first of our criteria, lawn signs are frequently given out for free by the organizers of campaigns and movements. This means that anyone who is in the vicinity of someone who is either a leader in a campaign/movement or is connected to a leader in a campaign/movement can likely get free access to them. So the upfront cost to the end user is zero. Yet when we look at the second criterion, dependency costs, we see a different scenario. Because lawn signs are mostly useless unless one has a lawn, the dependency cost is the cost of a lawn (ie property) which is actually very high. With respect to the third criterion, the only effort required to use the technology is the amount of time required to push the sign into the ground. And with respect to the fourth criterion, lawn signs do have some norms about who should be using them: those with lawns to put them in. For those who don’t (the poor or even just those who live in apartments) a lawn sign is not a useful way to publicly endorse a cause. For a politician to hand out a lawn sign, they are essentially saying “I’m handing this out to gain support among the land-owning class and nobody else.”
Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/legacy_assets/articles/assets/PoliticalSignsRepub2.jpg
Another example that works toward the same goal is street art. Various political movements hand out slogan bearing stencils to people with the hopes that they will use them to create street art which promotes their message. Again, the cost of the technology is born by the movement organizer making it free to the end user. To use the technology, the end user does need to have access to some form of marking device (spray paint, chalk, etc). While this is theoretically a dependency cost, it is extremely minimal so I’m not willing to exclude this from the category of inclusive for this reason. Again, the time and effort cost are also minimal, as it really does require just the time it takes to hit a wall with spray paint or chalk. Yet, this fails on our last category of inclusivity – it requires the end user to potentially break the law or reject certain values in order to be able to use it. Even if it isn’t breaking the law, some may view the act of writing a message on a public space as disrespectful, even if in chalk. By handing out stencils with political slogans, a movement leader is excluding those who may be against marking public spaces with their messages. Thus, stencils and various other forms of street art do not fit my criteria for inclusive.
Source: http://s198.photobucket.com/user/zombiedollmaster/media/Aug131.jpg.html
The last example is the civic technology of bumper stickers. Bumper stickers are mostly free to the end user – politicians and leaders of political movements frequently cover the capital cost of printing stickers and hand them out for free as a means to promote their cause. While the name ‘bumper stickers’ might suggest that there is a similar dependency cost caveat because they are only for those with cars, I argue that this does not apply because bumper stickers are very frequently placed on personal items that are not cars, many of which are extremely cheap or even free. Bumper stickers also impose minimal time and effort costs on the end user – the only cost in this domain is the amount of time it takes to peel off the back and stick it to something that will be publicly viewed (the bumper of a car, a window, a street sign, etc). Lastly, bumper stickers have no community or stigma associated with the technology itself as people from all backgrounds can be seen using them, meaning they won’t exclude anyone for social reasons. Therefore, bumper stickers pass all of my criteria for being an inclusive civic technology.
Source: http://www.makestickers.com/image/makestickers/bumperPolitical.jpg
These three civic technologies – bumper stickers, lawn signs and street art – all accomplish the same goals. Yet the implications of using these technologies place them in very different locations within our inclusivity space, with only bumper stickers falling within the ‘inclusive’ boundary.