Hopeful Developments

This is civic tech: “Just what is this little $14 million boutique coding shop doing that threatens the powers that get the lion’s share of $80 billion of federal IT spending?” That’s the question about the U.S. Digital Service that Backchannel editor Steven Levy answers in glorious detail in a lengthy piece about its work with the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense.

And yes, the office of the Defense Digital Service does have the words “Rebel Alliance” on its door. Levy’s got the photographic proof.

Also in Backchannel, longtime tech journalist (and Civic Hall member) Dan Gillmor reports on Guifi.net, which he calls “one of the world’s most important experiments in telecommunications. Guifi is a community network that has long since transcended its local roots. From a single node more than a decade ago, it has become a vast mesh-and-more system linking tens of thousands of people in hundreds of communities to each other and the global internet.” He adds:

For people who want to see an internet at least partly liberated from the grip of rapacious, government-connected telecommunications giants, Guifi is one of the most hopeful developments to date. Its core values, ownership, and operations are testament to the idea that you and I, and our communities, can — and should — control how we communicate. For the tens of thousands of people using it, some at no charge, Guifi operates as well as Time Warner Cable does for New Yorkers (and maybe better).

Louisville, Kentucky’s Ed Blayney reports on how the city’s accelerator team drove a hackathon focused on helping reducing fires in vacant properties, and the winning solution—a low-cost sensor that listens for for the alarm sound of a standard issue smoke detector and then send a signal to the appropriate entity via a 3G device.”

Jessica Singleton, New York City’s chief digital officer (and longtime friend of Civic Hall), has announced that she is stepping down after two-and-a-half years and heading to Harvard Business School. Godspeed!

Tech and politics: When Peter Thiel, the outspoken billionaire tech mogul, takes the stage at the Republican National Convention tomorrow night on behalf of Donald Trump, most of Silicon Valley will be cringing, writes Farhad Manjoo for The New York Times.

Pokemon Go Vote: The Hillary Clinton campaign in Ohio is setting lures near PokeStops and registering potential voters as they play Pokemon Go, Emily McCarty reports for Bitchmedia.org.

Wanna get a postcard message to your least favorite representatives? Check out TheWorst.is, a new site that lists the worst politicians on a number of issues (gun control, immigration, climate change, etc), and helps you mail them physical protest postcards to their office, built by Travis Valentine of Civic Hall.

What sharing economy? The words “platform cooperatives” are never mentioned in Amy Cortese’s New York Times story on Stocksy.com, a photography coop, but her article is all about the emerging trend of online gig economy start-ups that are designed to be owned by their users.

Airbnb has hired former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to help it craft a new anti-discrimination policy for its platform, Kate Conger reports for TechCrunch.