Technosocial scenarios for Sutton: 2: Street faults

Early one Sunday morning, Mark walks to the newsagent for his paper. He almost literally trips over a metal street bollard that has been uprooted from somewhere and dumped a couple of doors down from his house. He scans the bollard with the RFID reader in his phone and learns that the problem has already been reported to the council. Mark rolls the bollard to the side of the pavement and with a tap adds this street fault’s progress RSS feed to his phone’s reader so he can make sure it gets fixed soon. The problem was reported by a neighbour of Mark’s who has waived his privacy and allowed his name to appear on the fault report. Later that day, Mark meets his neighbour and they discuss various incidents of vandalism which they think might be related to drinkers from a local pub. The neighbour invites Mark to a Neighbourhood Watch meeting and sends the event details to his phone, which Mark then forwards to another couple of neighbours. Two weeks later the police representative at the Neighbourhood Watch meeting agrees to increase pro-active patrols around the pub area at weekends. They’re also pleased to see (with a couple of taps on a phone) that the bollard has been cemented back in place. With another tap, Mark rates this transaction as “positive” on the council’s feedback system.