Lucas A – Approach 1

Approach 1 – Social Kiosks for Campus and Local Areas

A lack of news, context, and involvement has become normal to a majority of millennials, younger generations, and more and more people as other things consume our lives. Whether this be work/school/technology/hobbies, people often become unaware of current and political major events and because of this they either don’t know how to become involved or what to do about it, resulting in doing nothing. With the Social Kiosk program current and political events would be integrated into a communities daily routine, filtered for and by the community.

Budget – The Cost of Educating the Public?

Work – $20/hr per person for a one month complete installation – $3200/person

Location – $2,000 – $10,000 this price is extremely variable due to the varying possible locations. Creating an installation like this on campus (UMaine) for example the mall would be much less expensive than an installment say in Central Park, NY.

Upkeep – $10/hr 8hr/w Cleaning/Vandalism – $80/week

Developers – $xxx this price has been left undetermined because it is unknown if the installment would update automatically (i.e. fetch news sources) or be manual. The ladder would be much more expensive because it would require employees, but the former would be a higher startup cost.

Kiosks – $xxx worked into developer cost.

Total – $5,200 – $13,200+ plus a weekly maintenance/cleaning fee of $80.

Cost Absorption – Conclusion

While the cost may seem high for something not returning a direct revenue, we must ask what the cost of uneducated in a democratic system is. Whether it leads to a lack of population voting or being involved in current events could cost most than the price a large company could absorb to prevent it.