Politricks (c. 2006-2008) started as my radio show on WNYU and evolved into a research project at Eyebeam exploring bottom-up politics, crowdsourcing, and civic technology.
The radio show
I hosted Politricks on WNYU 89.1 FM in New York City, spinning hip-hop, funk, breakbeats, and electronic music. Broadcasting from Washington Square, part of the broader community of music obsessives at WNYU — one of the best college radio stations in the country.
Politricknology
In 2007, at Eyebeam R&D, I wrote Politricknology — a research paper on “Bottom-Up Politics” exploring how crowdsourcing and internet technology could transform civic engagement. The paper covered:
- Citizen-generated political databases (MapLight, OpenSecrets, FundRace)
- Crowdsourced journalism and distributed document analysis
- The “Dissidence Toolkit” for secure communications
- Poliwonk — a legislation wiki I built to make pending legislation transparent and hold authors accountable
The research drew on Surowiecki’s “Wisdom of Crowds” to analyze how diversity of identity, skills, and political investment enables effective crowdsourcing — presaging a lot of the civic tech movement that would follow.
Politrixmas
Every year I’d put together a holiday mixtape called Politrixmas featuring the best tracks of the year. The 2007 edition included Vampire Weekend, Radiohead, Hot Chip, M.I.A., Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Justice, and some of my own edits.
Related projects
I also built WNYU Archives (Chives), the automated stream archiving system that recorded every show on the station and made them available as podcasts.