Politricks
Politricks (2003-2007) started as my radio show on WNYU, which I did all four years of college, and evolved into a research project I did while working 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: drum & bass, with a side of breaks, hip-hop and electro. My other DJ sets, as Jamie Dubs, leaned more hip-hop, funk, breaks and electro. Broadcasting from Washington Square, part of the broader community of music obsessives at WNYU — one of the best college radio stations in the country.
In February 2007 the WNYU site listed it under schedule changes: “New program on Thursdays, 10:30pm-1am: Politricks with Jamie Dubs, a drum & bass/breakbeat mixshow. Crank your subwoofer and lock on.” The studios were in the basement of 721 Broadway, and the transmitter was up at University Heights in the Bronx.
The Politricks MySpace header, 2007.
Shows went into the station’s archive along with everything else on the schedule. The Thursday, February 1, 2007 show is right there in the Wayback copy.
Politricknology
In 2007, while I was webmaster and sysadmin at Eyebeam, where I also helped artists with their projects, 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
In 2007 I put together a holiday mixtape called Politrixmas featuring the best tracks of the year. In other years it became an “Xmix”, a FAT Lab tradition. 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.