The ideal civic technology for me would be one that is affordable to anyone, not only for their price, but also for their convenience of use and for their learning curve, it should also be widely spread and as transparent as it could be. I don’t think there’s one technology that could be THE civic technology, but I could think about some examples of technologies that help the citizens and that get some of the characteristics.
The first one is the bicycle, this transportation technology has enabled the communication between communities for a long time, their presences in the cities is something normal, the learning curve of riding a bicycle is not to high. The main reason that I consider it a civic technology is because their use is getting people to transform their communities, in some rural areas the use of the bicycle help to get clean water, medical assistance or even get to school. One of the projects that I find more fascinating is in the Wixaritari mountains, where the Huicholes lives, a group of social entrepreneurs had been working with the local people in different kind of projects, but they realised that the children had to walk around 5 to 20 Km each day to get to school, the students would get tired to school so it could affect the way they learn. With the use of bicycles they could get faster and easily to classes, and not just to the school they could also travel to other communities.
Distances between communities. Photo: Wixabikla
The impact of the bicycle in the community is both in short and large term, in the short one the kids could get a more easy access to school and to other places, but in the large term preventing the childrens to drop out school or facilitating that they could attend, the community at large would get benefited. The use of bicycles in rural communities isn’t something new but from time to time is good to look back and see that a simple invention powered by human force could help to change a community and that we don’t always need to use the latest electronic technology or the most complicated line of code to change lives.
Photo: Esteban Gutierrez Hermosillo
The other technology that I have in mind is the use of SMS and text based applications like WhatsApp, the uses of sms had been around for a long time, from notifications to direct communication between people, and to banking transactions. The use of this technology has allowed rural areas of Mexico to get banking services, with the sms’s people could get p2p transactions, check their account balance and send money to others, the use of this kind of techonolgy in rural areas where banking/ATM’s aren´t accesible could help to change the communities, not just enabling them to do transections, but to get financial education and start saving money within their accounts and use less cash. It also helps to the government to facilitate the cash flow in this communities where some of them have the closest bank several hours away.
Both technologies -bicycles and SMS- are widely available, their uses help people to get a better live and to engage in some activities that other wise they couldn’t, the civic participation goes beyond voting or engaging with the government, it goes to the engagement with the community, in both examples the people could engage with their communities and use the technologies to get some changes, using the bicycles to attend to schools, get medicines or even attend community meetings could empower the citizens. In the othe hand the sms not only enable the people to get financial services, they also enable them to communicate between communities, get news faster from outside and even start selling their goods to other communities.