Daniel Mackisack

Every time a new technology is inserted between people and institutions, it reshapes how trust is formed and sustained. Tech is also pitched as a solution to a lot of the problems that emerge. AI to detect disinformation, verification systems to authenticate the real, etc. But each of these is itself a new thing demanding our trust and comes with its own opacity, incentives, and PR problems. We solve for one layer of doubt by introducing another.

Key Question/s: When technology mediates civic trust, how do we keep it from simply relocating the problem? Where should a civic tech builder actually start? With the tool, the institution, or the relationship the tool is meant to serve?

Previously built the Stone Transparency platform to surface and humanise journalistic research as a way to grow trust, as opposed to introducing AI or other automated processes in the middle. I can run a workshop, where I help fellows to assess whether a proposed intervention genuinely builds trust or just makes the process more complicated (and also how to design for the former).

The systems around us have spent centuries expanding what we're expected to absorb. Writing overcame the physical constraints that held information exchange to folks in the same time and place. Print overcame the limits of replication. The internet promised to remove barriers entirely, with instant transmission and infinite copies. Yet there are still constraints. Humans can't absorb everything all the time. There is a question of information management that pairs with the question of truth. 

Key Question/s: Given our ability to process and form narratives is not infinite, how can civic tech help people take in what matters without drowning? How can we filter and pace information to fit the people using it rather than the volume available?

Alternative title: “The Monkeysphere and the Machine.” There's a bunch of design philosophy we can dive into here. The calm approach. Not overwhelming people with info. Having only the most critical stuff front and center. Then, progressive disclosure and choose-your-own-adventure stuff. Giving people control of their experience a bit. Having been through this a lot in a variety of different product scenarios from e-learning tools to B2C software, I can help fellows develop a clearer sense of how to treat the structure of information as a priority design constraint rather than an afterthought.

There is now a metalayer (metaverse?) of information. Content that feeds on other content, putting new distance between what we deal with online and lived reality. The same infrastructure that lets legitimate distant voices reach us also lets sources completely divorced from reality permeate and subvert the trust networks we once reserved for people and institutions close to us. Our trust circles evolved for a world where proximity was a filter. That filter is gone, and hostile or hollow sources can now occupy the same space as a trusted neighbour.

Key Question/s: When trust networks can be invaded by actors detached from any grounded reality, how can civic tech help people re-establish meaningful signals of proximity, accountability, and authenticity, without simply appointing (or becoming) a new gatekeeper?

Alternative title: “Network Subversion and Me”. If you’re familiar with “Cognitive Security”, then you have a basic handle on this. We can look at approaches for strengthening the integrity of tech-moderated trust networks against infiltration while preserving the openness that makes them valuable. Finding a balance between broad connectivity and local or authenticated networks. We can also look at the kind of social geometry our tech fosters. Both the stuff we use. And the stuff we’re building.

The practice and process of democracy was already an alienating topic for a lot of people. Yet as governance becomes more entangled with tech platforms (as well as the institutions and money behind them), there's a risk it becomes even more so. A challenge of civics education in democratic societies has always been to convey simply how democracy works and how to engage with it. While new participatory and deliberative tools might offer new ways to do so, they don't necessarily make the topic simpler and more accessible.

Key Question/s: how can technology lower the barrier to civic participation rather than raise it? How can it help ordinary people understand and engage with systems that are becoming more technical by the year?

First and foremost, this is about meeting people where they are. Building new stuff and expecting people to fully onboard with a new thing every time is a real issue in a lot of places. Not saying it's not sometimes important, but a lot of folks default to it. Also gradiating the kinds of things you can do and ways you can interact. This could be a workshop where we examine whether fellows’ own designs risk deepening alienation, and try to ensure we’re widening access to participation instead of narrowing it to the already-fluent.

Like every emerging paradigm before it, the space sector seems to inspire a mix of optimism for the future and deep concern that it will entrench or overwhelm the laundry list of problems we already have. For others (perhaps most), it feels like an irrelevant distraction. We often hear something along the lines of "what about all the problems here on Earth?" But that framing is a false choice. Earth and space systems are linked. And what happens in space will shape life back home, from the integrity of our democracies to our ability to address issues like climate change and inequality. Space is also a rare thing: a literal and figurative vacuum in which to test new ways of living, working, and making decisions together. It is, in many ways, the perfect place to test truly innovative civic tech.

Key Question/s: What does space actually need from civic tech, and what can civic tech learn by treating space as a proving ground for systems built from scratch?

The focus of a lot of my recent work, from a Lunar Governance sim to a participatory space policy initiative and current academic research on “Democracy at a Distance.” I’ve also worked with organisations like the Open Lunar Foundation, LunARC, MoonDAO and more recently the Planetary Society, who are all supporting different kinds of civic purpose in space. With so much going on out of public view, there’s a huge opportunity being lost to design civic infrastructure for a domain that doesn’t yet have entrenched systems. The feedback loop between off-world experiment and on-world implementation isn’t limited to science.

Institutions, policies and practices might define democracy, but they're not the only thing that keep the whole show running. Relationships, openness and social self-awareness are foundational parts of a healthy and sustainable democratic system. The ability to be honest and the ability for that information to flow freely from one place to another, so that we all know what we're dealing with. But every society (not just the authoritarian ones) has a self-awareness problem. Walls go up, we lose track, and the effect compounds over time. The collapse of Arab Spring revolutions after an initial outpouring demonstrate a stark example. When those walls have been there for too long, building them again can seem easier than dealing with the flood.

Key Question/s: How can civic tech expand, maintain and protect the relational foundations of democracy such as trust, transparency and social cohesion? Where do these considerations come in the design process?

Drawn from my background, not only as a product developer, but as a graduate researcher mapping shifting social trust networks through the Arab Spring revolutions (for 4 years) and building/adapting civic tech for co-op formation and collective decision-making in the midst of this environment. I’d love to work with fellows on ideas that support democracy as an architecture of relationships that needs to be actively maintained. We can also discuss civic tech's role in keeping information flowing before the walls go back up.

Most civic tech projects (like most other tech projects) start from a problem and push forward. But strategy works the other way. It begins with a clear vision of where you want to end up and reasons backward to the steps that get you there. Bit by bit, asking "what would that require?" until you arrive at the present with a roadmap. Backcasting resists the pull of incrementalism and the tyranny of what currently seems feasible, forcing a project to name the future it's actually trying to build.

Key Question/s: what does it look like to design a civic tech intervention by starting from the world you want and working back to today's first move?

Backcasting has been a key strategic principle for me for 15 years, through numerous development cycles as a startup founder and product lead. Adapted from sustainability work, the practice is not dissimilar to traditional strategic planning, except that it takes a more assertive approach to the future. Instead of relying on forecasting to tell you the future and then working backwards. It starts with an ideal. I think that’s incredibly important. And I’d love to work with fellows that have (or want to develop) unapologetically big and bold ideas.

The Civic Tech Field Guide is the largest curated collection of civic tech projects, tools, and organisations in the world. And now, it's queryable directly through a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and API. Rather than starting from a blank page, fellows can ground their ideas in what already exists, who's working on a given problem, what's been tried, what's succeeded or stalled, and where the genuine gaps are.

This topic is entirely practical. I can walk you through connecting to the Field Guide, searching and filtering the dataset, and using it to pressure-test and situate a new civic tech idea. Ultimately, we want to help you become better equipped to use the Field Guide as a live research tool throughout your project. It will help you avoid reinvention, find collaborators, and situate your work within the wider civic tech landscape.

• The Civic Tech Field Guide