Accelerated Democracy: How technology might change voting

http://www.accelerateddemocracy.net

How might campaigns and government change if voters received personalized electronic updates when politicians fulfilled or violated their campaign promises? What if software watched your computing behavior—what Web pages you surf and the emails you send & receive—and then recommended political candidates based on its interpretation of your interests—even automatically voting for you?

The Accelerated Democracy project is a series of scenarios that illustrate how interactive technologies could impact voting and politics in 5-10 years time. Each scenario is rooted in trends in voting, politics, and technology that are happening now and likely to continue into the future. The scenarios illustrate both the forms that new voting technologies & interfaces might take, and, more importantly, the potential impacts these might have on society.

In addition to the scenarios, the Accelerated Democracy project identifies seven potential benefits and dangers of technology-driven voting. Several of these effects can already be seen in current applications, while others may become more pronounced as technology further impacts the voting process.

This presentation includes a discussion of the design methodology used in the Accelerated Democracy scenarios, known as evidence prototyping. This design method creates artifacts from potential future scenarios to help people envision and discuss new opportunities without prior knowledge of the given topic or skills in long-range analysis.