Focusing on the idea of the environment as a state of emergency, I want to create a participatory network based on observing small, incremental choices we can each make to reduce our impact on the world. I am interested in creating a community around a group of people who are all focused on the same behavior.
In earlier explorations I investigated the power of RSS to act as a sort of nervous system of information, constantly monitoring the outside world and delivering status changes back to a central location. I want to take advantage of the time-based nature of RSS to track a small group of people as they make choices in their daily commute, and look at ways in which real-time notifications of group behavior can affect individual actions.
How it works
A group of ten people in Providence RI agree to use their cell phones to text a summary of their primary commute for a period of ?? days. They will use a pre-determined structure for their texts so that the information can be parsed and summarized. An RSS feed of all individual actions, as well as a summary feed, will be generated to keep everyone in the loop.
There are three parts to this: the people involved, the RSS feed, and the website. I see the website as a place for displaying whats going on collectively, as well as historically, while the feed is for daily updates. The website could potentially have the capacity for individuals to query the group behavior, or post notes. It could also be a fun place to experiment with different ways of visualizing whats going on.
Define "commute"
It is assumed in this project that each participant has a particular place they have to get to several times in a week that is not in their own home. I want to limit it to a primary commute to simplify the effort expected of each participant, so they aren't texting me with every individual place they walked in the course of a day. The lack of a consistent, daily commute is just as interesting as the presence of one.
Texting structure
Structure:
"mode - duration - note"
Modes: car, bus, train, bike, walk, other
Duration: estimate, in minutes, of how long they used this mode of transportation
Note: An optional space to put a description of where you were going
Privacy
If they are willing, I would like to have each person's name be associated with their commuting information. But in the case that people don't want this, I will ask them to pick a nickname or username that will appear instead.