You may be aware of the recent events in Ukraine: civil unrest based solely on the political matters. A large part of the country's society deems the current government to be incompetent and organises a peaceful protest. The government decides to counter it with police attacks, violence ensues and suddenly everyone who has an opionon on the current political situation becomes involved in one way or another.
It is an ugly situation that gets the country on the brink of a civil war for no real reason, just some political argueing. Both sides can be right, both can be wrong, but none of them are offering anything that's worth more than human life.
How could situations like these be avoided in the future? How could people express their opinion and get rid of the authorities that they are dissatisfied with without the violence and real life animosity?
This half-silly proposal describes an ideal system that would allow people to express protest or support easily and without any physical interaction. Is it possible in the real life? No. Does it look tempting? Yes.
Coordination
The protesters and loyalists of the future won't have to rely on their Twitter or Facebook feed to find out what is going on and who controls which areas. They will be able to get a Foursquare-like list of important locations that can be captured or defended. Each object will have an icon that can easily explain what political force it belongs to right now, using political parties' colours to allow that.
The politically active human will then be able to find the place they want to help capture or defend and head straight there.
Capture
Capturing government buildings, taking them back and just maintaining control over an area is a violent process that should be avoided as much as possible. Foursquare mayorships are known to be an object of desire for some people, yet no or very few fights have ever been caused by two people fighting for that free mayorship special chai latte.
Capturing government buildings, taking them back and just maintaining control over an area is a violent process that should be avoided as much as possible. Foursquare mayorships are known to be an object of desire for some people, yet no or very few fights have ever been caused by two people fighting for that free mayorship special chai latte.
The same idea could be transferred from individual mayorship to collective control of the buildings and other objects. The more people of an individual faction there are, the bigger is the chance of them winning the control (which should be given for some particular period of time, very much like it works in player versus player areas in some popular MMORPGs).
This maintains the tradition of massive protest or support gatherings, but removes the need for violence.
Social media
While the dedicated social media solutions (this phrase applies to pretty much anything, even the Twitter app) do exist, having a more custom-tailored visualisation of the Twitter feed, especially with real time updates, would not hurt.
The user of this political system would be able to see tweets of people who share their political beliefs right on the map of action. This would help organise all sorts of aforementioned activities and present the person with most up to date information without being limited to just one point of view.
None of this should be taken seriously. This study uses photos of the Kiev protests as backgrounds, but does not imply that these solutions could actually work there or in any other place in the world.
However, I would be very glad if in the future peaceful protests do look like this.
Credits
Photos of Kiev by Ilya Varlamov
Icons by Saman Bemel-Benrud, Scott lewis and Thibault Geffroy.
iPhone templates by Gwénolé Jaffrédou and Joe Mortell.
