A type of information that one cannot easily find on a news site, while reading a news story about a politician, is conveyed to us in his own way by a 16-year-old.
Nick Rubin is a… still a kid living in Seattle, but he has managed to have the maturity to do really creative things in his free time. He doesn’t have the right to vote yet, but he is old enough, as he says, to know that the political system of the United States, where he lives, needs improvement and believes that its implementation is a step in that direction.
And so, young Nick was inspired and created Greenhouse , a free extension for web browsers (supports Chrome, Firefox and Safari) , which “sheds light” on the role that funding plays in the decisions of members of Congress , but also on what exactly they are. What exactly does it do? As you navigate a website and read some news about a politician, it displays in a pop-up window detailed data from the support campaigns that each Senator and member of the House of Representatives received during the last elections, including the total amount, but also its distribution by industry sector and by donation size. Something like this…
Thus, every American citizen can understand the “real impact that money has on the country’s political system”by learning the sources of income of members of Congress, information that has not been so easily accessible to the public until now. By reading a news story, for example, about how a member of Congress voted for a recent bill that concerns the long-suffering health sector, everyone can see at a glance how much money the health industry has supported him in the last election. And in this way, a “political” decision can have its explanations, which may be different from what “innocent” .
Greenhouse aims to “shed light on a disease for society and industries today,” says its creator , “the unfair and unjustified influence of money in the United States Congress.” Nick notes that he named the app “Greenhouse” because in America, green is the “color of money” and also to suggest transparency, which also characterizes the appearance of a greenhouse.
The young man cites the phrase of Louis Brandeis, a great American jurist who fought for transparency. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” which inspires him and not without reason. And in this way, the 16-year-old puts the glasses on many older people, not only because he has put his own “stone” in the important fight for transparency in politics and society, but also because he proves how each of us can find, if we want to, a way to contribute to changing our society, as long as we are creative.
You can download Greenhouse from here and, as we mentioned, it is available for Chrome, Firefox and Safari. And there may not be anything similar for other countries or for the Greek political scene, but who knows, maybe young Nick will inspire developers to create it. Certainly, if something like that were to happen, we would watch it with great interest.
Read a recent interview with Nick Rubin in our beloved Vice about his app.
Source: digitallife.gr
