Artifact from the future: The America_Two Voting Machine
America_Two World Recap:
The rise of misinformation, political polarization and mutual distrust among Americans has created a world where privacy has been discarded in favor of truth.
No privacy means having privacy all the time.
The government has been replaced by a digital government that makes decisions based on daily referendums from Americans.
Algorithms keep America freer and fairer than every before.
In 2069, sentiment is calculated for a minute each day to generate a “vote.”
Early sketch for the America_Two voting machine
Early Prototyping:
Early prototype: pulse sensor and mini-thermal printer
An early form of the election minute voting machine. The machine collects a pulse and uses it to determine if the user feels “satisfied” or “not satisfied” with the state of the union, and prints a receipt of the response.
Early form, laser cut.
Iterative Prototyping:
After another round of prototyping, I added additional sensors to collect a more accurate user sentiment. In the current prototype, I collect:
Smiling (left), not smiling (right)
Facial Happiness Detection using OpenCV: detect what emotion the user is expressing facially
Pulse: detect the user’s pulse
Galvanic Skin Response: detect if the user is sweating
How it Works:
User is resting at home. For a random minute each day, the user is called to their voting device when the National Anthem begins to play. If they do not report, they do not receive their daily universal basic income.
Voting device at home.
During the anthem, user places their hand over their heart and listens to the anthem, as they have done every previous day of their life in America_Two. The device collects their baseline.
A question is proposed.
A response is collected based on the 3 sensors in the machine.
Serial plotter shows sudden change in humidity when question is asked.
A hologram appears to show the result of the day’s referendum.
Participating users receive their universal basic income, and are free to go about their day.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
