Social Responsibility and WP7

"The Love Clean London Windows Phone 7 app makes it easier for Londoners to report environmental crimes, receive feedback from London boroughs on progress and save London boroughs money...The system gives people an easy way to help their borough keep communities clean, receive prompt action when a report is sent and help boroughs direct their resources to the areas that need them most."

Stuff like this fascinate me - a new way for governments to interact with their constituents, and for people to act individually for the betterment of society. Gadgets and technological change has in some ways isolated humans from each other, but every now and again something crops up to bridge that gap again. I can't imagine that London's the only city that needs cleaning up, nor many others that are about to hold the Olympics, but this imaginative use of existing platforms and technology could serve as a model for a whole host of service improvements - if anyone's listening. Yeah, I can see the flip-side (for instance if something like this was available in pre-Glasnost Russia, or present day Libya), but I prefer to have some faith in the basic altrusim of mankind. The Love Clean London app is a free download from Windows Marketplace.

.