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the Hope Meter

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The Idea:

What will change in the world because this Project happens?

Despite the threats of global climate change, widespread resource depletion, and nuclear proliferation the sole measure of most things in the global capitalist system is whether or not they make a profit. Furthermore, the peoples of the world seem to be facing a crisis of hope---perhaps rightly so. What if there were a secondary "economy" that measured not profitability but the potential to create hope for the future? It seems impossible but the Hope Meter Project could accomplish this with a simple Stumble Upon mashup.

It would have many secondary benefits as well:
It would serve as a space for global debate on issues that face the world.
It would create a support network for those experiencing existential crisis (a New York Times article on the growth of "ecopsychology" recently highlighted this need)
It would serve as a hub for organizing around various issues.
It could also prove useful for schools organizing debate teams.
One could refer to a product/site's hope ranking as evidence of its social currency.
The idea itself could be the first of a whole new kind of collaborative tagging.

What information will people interact with to make this change?

Stumbleupon users download a plug-in for their SU toolbar that adds the Hope Meter up and down buttons. Rather than ranking the quality/interest of the page they rank whether the subject of the page makes them feel more/less hopeful about the future. One could easily like an article (thus Stumble it up) but find it makes one less hopeful (thus HopeMetering it down).

Integrating with clipmarks.com, users may rank sections rather than whole pages. Like other social indexing sites, users tag pages and provide notes/review as to why it makes them feel more/less hopeful.

Data from the rankings would be displayed on the Hope Meter site with a visual representation of the collective rankings of all users. Clicking on/searching a particular tag shows the hope rank of that meme and the sites contributing to that ranking. Each hope ranker would have an account with their own ranking and access to all the pages they hope-marked.

Because people are cataloging pages according to social relevance (rather than "coolness") their user page inadvertently creates a social-currency database. Users of the site’s forum have more informed debates because they have immediate access to all sources. However, this benefit, while driving users to the site, is secondary to the purpose of giving people the empowerment to tabulate the direction the world is heading.

What else have you done in this Cause Area?

I have recently set up a blog to talk about feelings of hopelessness related to the global warming crisis (wordpress.feelingapocalyptic.com) but I realized that what I wanted was not a personal outlet but something participatory. I have extensive experience offline as an organizer for everything from grassroots movements (a campaign I worked on) to community service projects ( as an Americorps volunteer) to NGO beauracracies (former director of CPE).

I also submitted this idea to cambrianhouse.com several months ago.

Cause Area:
- Arts & Culture
Cause Area Tags:
Financial support?:
No
City:
Oakland
State/Region:
CA
Country:
USA

The Assessment

What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?

While the database could be run with a number of programs (such as drupal) I need someone with the coding skills to write the mashup. I believe the site could be launched with two or three people: one to write/maintain the scripts that would analyze the data (a mashup for stumble upon or a browser plug-in), one to do the html for the site and me to interact with users and promote it (I am a publicist by trade). I am in the process of buying a domain for the site. SEO would be nice but not relevant while this is still in the conceptual phase.