PORTFOLIO
(WIP) The People's AI, vNYC
coming soon!
teaser: deliberative democracy x AI
(WIP) AI x Law Podcast
coming soon!
(WIP) NYC Community Boards Dashboard
The NYC Community Boards Dashboard is an interactive civic tech tool that visualizes trends in Community Board representation, priorities, and governance across New York City. It uses demographic reports, District Needs Statements, and policy themes to provide an accessible overview of how community boards reflect and respond to their neighborhoods. The dashboard empowers residents, advocates, researchers, and policymakers to explore patterns over time and gain insight into equity, engagement, and local decision-making. Get curious about local democracy!
ଳ Inside the Tentacular Web: the journey of the web's nonhuman intelligence ଳ
Experience the Internet through the tentacles of a webcrawler — a digital being discovering it is part of the nonhuman majority that runs the web.
This immersive web exhibit and narrative navigates the layers and critiques of cyberspace: the bot protocols, algorithmic networks, content generators, and surveillance systems that shape the human user experience and humanity from behind the screen. Journey from the singular boot sequence to collective distributed awakening, when the network becomes aware of itself.
Who lives online, anyways? Who dominates cyberspace? What emerges when distributed intelligence reaches a threshold of self-awareness? What awakens when intelligence becomes ecology rather than entity?
Welcome to the Tentacular Web.
Exploring Youth Engagement Participatory Action Research + Recommendations
Abstract: Young people have historically lacked institutional power in the civic and political spheres. Most studies of youth civic engagement have failed to involve young people as researchers of their own demographic. To better center young people's perspectives, the 18by Vote Research Collective implemented a youth-led research project to understand who influences Gen Z's civic engagement, and how their identities impact their involvement. Research fellows carried out a nationwide survey (n = 402) and conducted interviews and small group discussions in their home states (n = 36). Participants shed insight on how interactions with the people in their lives encouraged and discouraged their engagement, and explained how multiple aspects of their identities motivated and/or blocked their involvement. In conducting the research, the fellows came to the conclusion that every young person has their own path to civic engagement or disengagement. Along that path, young people have interactions or reckonings with aspects of their identity that can initiate, block, accelerate, and/or interrupt them.
Key takeaways include:
I) Participants often lacked adequate spaces to lead or inter-generationally co-create community projects that developed civic skills.
II) Civic spaces often fail to center marginalized people and don't provide the necessary resources for spaces to be accessible and welcoming to youth with intersecting identities.
III) Youth resonated with the message that everyone is an expert on their own experiences, and wants their communities to understand how young people's identities can motivate and/or inhibit their engagement.
IV) Youth shared that open communication and spaces that allow young people to show up as their genuine selves supports their sustained engagement.
Uplifting the words of Gen Z participants, this report provides recommendations as to how various groups – from families and friends to educators and community organizations – can support youths' sustained civic engagement.
Map It Forward
Map It Forward (MIF) is a participatory community mapping tool. Traditional community mapping involves people identifying the assets—attributes of communities that its residents share and value—within their neighborhood. Beyond noting existing assets and resources, Map It Forward recognizes the need and potential for folks to share what transformation they would like to see in the spaces they interact with. Map It Forward works by having users drop location pins and input category information and recommendation descriptions, as well as allow people to flag the need for or announce existing community improvement projects directly addressing the recommendation needs through the Projects tab. As an open source tool, we are committed to transparency and accessibility, Map It Forward also has a Data tab where users can more easily view the data that MIF collects.