Running notes from Pop!Tech ‘08.  For more posts, see the Pop!Tech blog.

photo: Kris Krug 

DR. GARY SLUTKIN, CeaseFire

Dr. Gary Slutkin asks: can put violence in the past, like we once did smallpox, by thinking about it differently? 

Specifically, by thinking of urban violence not as a moral or policy issue (that is, what’s “right and wrong”), but as a public health one.  Slutkin suggests that “violence is an infectious disease”; that it operates like a virus, following the same epidemiological patterns as health epidemics such as AIDS and tuberculosis.  He should know: Slutkin is an epidemiologist and physician who spent ten years in Africa on the frontlines of infectious diseases. Today, he’s the Executive Director of the Chicago Center for Violence Prevention. CeaseFire is the Center’s anti-violence campaign uses a public health approach to reducing shootings and killings.

If violence behaves like an epidemic, can it be cured?  Slutkin proposes that at the minimum the spread of violence can be contained (and perhaps halted) by applying the same tactics public health officers use in dealing with disease outbreaks: first: interrupt the transmission; then change social behaviors and norms. CeaseFire employs a team of “violence interrupters” - outreach workers (many of whom are ex-offenders themselves) to personally intervene and stop violent acts in the community on a case-by-case basis. Combined with a vigorous PR campaign, the aim is to ultimately change social norms - in essence, to make violence as socially unacceptable as, say, smoking.

Sound impossible?  Perhaps.  But as he points out, we once thought curing the plague was impossible too.  That was because the cause of the plague was invisible - a bacteria, inside a flea, on a rat.  By identifying the “etiologic agent” (the root cause) and making it visible, we have a better chance at finding a cure.

photo: Kris Krug

ERIK HERSMAN, Ushahidi

Erik Hersman understands the power of “making the invisible visible.”  Hersman is one of Pop!Tech’s first Social Innovation Fellows, and like most social entrepreneurs, his work is a reflection his favorite things: Africa, technology and maps.  Raised in Sudan and Kenya, Hersman is rabid techie, a web developer who writes two tech-related blogs (AfriGdaget and WhiteAfrican) and an avid map collector. He begins his talk by saying that he was born of two cultures, but lives in neither. In reality, his cultural vertigo likely fuels his ability to see opportunity where others see crisis.

Following the post-election violence that engulfed Kenya earlier this year, Hersman and fellow Kenyan bloggers created Ushahidi (the name  means “testimony” in Swahili), a website that allows users to report incidents of violence via a mobile phone text message or email.  Reports were posted to a map, creating a near-real time record of events throughout the country.   (MB note: I first wrote about Ushahidi here).

Part of the brilliance of Ushahidi is that gives voice to the myriad of stories that would otherwise be missed by the mainstream press, but its ultimate aim is more than simply a platform for citizen jpurnalism- the goal is to crowdsource crisis information. With funding from grants and a prize money from a handful of prestigious awards (including NetSquared and Knight-Batten), the plan is to build Ushahidi into a free, open source mapping tool that acts as not only as an archive, but also as an early warning system, detecting crises before they happen.

photo: Kris Krug

ERIC DAWSON, Peace Games

Slutkin and Hersman suggest that violence is not only a disease, but one that can be visualized and mapped in real time.  But the question remains: how can it be stopped from beginning in the first place?  Eric Dawson, another Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow, has an idea: teach kids “peacemaking” as a skill.  Dawson starts his talk with some sobering statistics - American children today will have witnessed 100,000 acts of violence on television before they enter the sixth grade.  His organization, Peace Games, offers a K-8 curriculum that teaches kids how to become not just victims or witnesses of violence, but peacemakers who are able to diffuse it.  The underlying theory is that violence is a learned behavior that, gone unchecked, can lead to greater acts of violence. In contrast, Dawson thinks that the skills of peacemaking can also be learned.  His goal is to have Peace Games taught as an integral part of the curriculum, alongside math and science.And it seems to be working: he says that schools that use Peace Games see a 60% reduction in violence and a 75% increase in socially peaceful behavior.

Note: these are running notes from Pop!Tech ‘08; for more posts, see the Pop!Tech blog.  I stopped liveblogging conferences (for why, see In Praise of Slow Blogging); however, I’ll have more complete (and perhaps coherent) reflections up this week. 

FRANK WARREN, curator of the world’s secrets 

Frank Warren collects secrets.  One day he printed up a few hundred self-addressed postcards, handed them out to strangers in Washington, DC and asked them to send him their secrets.  Four years and 250,000 secrets later, what started out as a community art project has turned into a hobby, a vocation and ultimately, a profession.  Of the thousand or so cards he receives each week, Frank posts a handful to his blog, PostSecret.  The blog is voyeuristically addicting; the secrets are painful, funny and profound.

While many of the secrets expose past deeds, some reveal hidden desires.  In December 2006, Frank posted this card:

Soon after, he received this email:

Sent: Sunday, December 3, 2006 8:22 AM

This Saturday evening I will be waiting for you too. This invitation does not mean that I want to do anything or talk during the movie. But when the darkness leaves the theatre, perhaps we will look into each other’s eyes, smile, decide to get a cup of coffee and share a conversation over what we just saw.

-waiting with a white hat

That email led to the creation of a PostSecret fan site called The White Hat People, which encourages people going to the movies alone to wear a white hat, and thus meet each other.   

PostSecret hits a collective nerve because it represents the paradox of the digital age: the ability to be publicly anonymous. (Or anonymously public. You choose.)  By revealing our innermost secrets to the world’s largest audience, it offers an opaque veil for the truth: one that is both staunchly impersonal and profoundly intimate. As a public confessional, perhaps Post Secret offers relief, if not absolution, by releasing people from the shackles of secrecy.

LAURA WATERS HINSON, on “radical forgiveness”

Imagine that you have a secret to confess. Now imagine that your confession is very public, and very personal. And that your crime isn’t cheating on your spouse, but that you killed your neighbor?  That you chopped off his hands and feet, until he slowly bled to death in front of you.

Is there an arena to talk about - and seek forgiveness from - such unimaginable crimes? That’s the basis of As We Forgive, a groundbreaking documentary film by Student Academy Award Winner Laura Waters Hinson that explores the human capacity for forgiveness in the most extraordinary of circumstances - the aftermath of the Rwanda genocide. 

In 1994, over the course of one hundred days nearly 800,000 Tutsis were killed by the Hutu militia and sympathizers, making the Rwanda tragedy one of the most horrific genocides in history.  As the country slowly edged toward peace and rebuilding, the new government was faced with an overwhelming backlog of genocide cases. Approximately 120,000 genocidaires were crammed into Rwanda’s prisons; it was estimated that it would take 100+ years to prosecute all of the cases.  In 2003, in an effort to decongest the prisons and promote reconciliation, President Paul Kagame ordered the release of some 40,000 prisoners back into the community.

They were free, but many remained prisoners of unending guilt and shame.  A number of religious organizations (including Prison Fellowship, which is featured in the film) have established “reconciliation programs” in an attempt to reintegrate murderers with their communities. As We Forgive explores this concept of “radical forgiveness” through the stories of two women who come face to face with the men who murdered their families, and are asked to forgive them.

Rwanda has pledged never to forget the genocide; memorials scatter the country, including this rural church (pictured above) in which 10,000 people were slaughtered.  The bodies of the victims were left in place as they died, and today the skulls and bones of the victims remain on display as a visible testament to the horror that engulfed the country.

But is forgiveness possible?  This is the backdrop to Laura’s talk at Pop!Tech: as she takes the stage she notes that “In 1994,all that was abundant in Rwanda was scarce. The scarcities were too many to count - trust, security, hope, peace … and people.”

While not everyone agrees that Rwanda has embraced forgiveness, As We Forgive is a haunting, provocative and ultimately inspiring film that asks the question: in an age of conflict, what does justice really mean?

Midway through a west coast red eye last week, I was sleepily browsing through an airport bookstore when I saw something flashing up at me from the stacks.  Was that my imagination or was that magazine blinking?  Indeed it was.

The October edition of Esquire looked like a miniature Times Square billboard, its sleek black cover eclipsed by a flashing message (and a cheeky one at that): “The 21^st Century Begins Now.”  In celebration of its 75^th anniversary, Esquire claims to be the first magazine cover to be printed with electronic ink (also known as “e ink”).

Even if you missed this edition of Esquire, you’ve likely seen eink in action before. It’s used in electronic displays, including in the top ebooks on the market, Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony’s Reader. However, this is reportedly the first time the digital technology has been incorporated into a print page.  Esquire explains the arduous, innovative (and somewhat chilly) path its creation: first, EInk Corporation (creator of the technology) had to design circuitry thin and flexible enough to bend with the cover, as well as small enough to draw a level of energy that would allow the battery to last at least 90 days. The display, electronics and batteries were assembled in Shanghai, then shipped to Mexico (via refrigerated trucks) where each unit was embedded by hand.

How does it work? Our friends at Wikipedia say: the principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair…each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule to become visible to the reader.

This makes the surface appear white at that spot.

At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot. 

The long road to the future

So, what’s the future of eink?  While it’s been heralded as a “game changing” technology for nearly a decade, it’s just now coming into its own - a tad longer lead time than its inventors (and its investors) anticipated. But like most game changers, the road between getting in the game and actually changing it is often paved with hype.

E Ink cofounder Joseph Jacobson, a professor at the MIT Media Lab, was working on the discovery which led to the development of eink technology in 1997.  The company launched that year with $100 million in funding and predictions of an $80 billion market opportunity. Three years later the first working prototype of electronic paper was unveiled. While it got rave reviews, what it didn’t get were a lot of customers. According to this Forbes article, by 2003 E Ink was out of money, having run through its initial funding without delivering a product to market. But the company was resurrected the following year when the CEO was replaced and it nailed a contract to provide the displays for Sony’s ebook Reader. In 2007 it landed the Amazon Kindle contract. Last year reportedly more than half of the company’s $15 million in revenue came from companies that sell ebook gadgets.

The vision of E Ink isthe next-gen RadioPaper, a lightweight, flexible display similar to organic paper that could be used to create an electronic book or newspaper “with real pages that can be leafed through, thumbed over and read on the beach.” Ultimately electronic ink could transform almost any surface to into a dynamic display: clothing, buildings, everyday objects, turning the whole world into an information (or perhaps advertising?) mecca.

Note: this is cross-posted on the Pop!Tech blog. If you don’t read Pop!Tech, stop by and have a look around. It features a cadre of stellar bloggers and is chock-full of interesting ideas.

(Photo credit: Chosun Ilbo) 

I have a new addition to my ever-growing list of favorite robots (including those that play the violin, teach science and comfort the elderly): a robotic plant. Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper is reporting that the robot research laboratory at Chonnam National University has developed a robotic plant that has humidifying, oxygen-producing, aroma-emitting, and kinetic functions. As someone who has been directly responsible for the slow (albeit involuntary) death of scores of houseplants over the years, this is - literally - music to my ears.

In fact, that’s part of the point. In addition to several real-plant characteristics (such as emitting oxygen, moisture and aroma), the four-foot-tall robotic plant also responds to external stimuli including people, music and light. According to the article “when a person comes within a 40 cm radius of the flower, its supersonic sensor perceives the approach, the stem bends towards the person, and the buds come into full bloom. When the person leaves, the plant returns to its original state. If a person’s voice becomes louder than a certain level, the flower buds will come into bloom, and the stem shakes slightly to suggest a greeting. When the room lights up, the buds open and close, and when music is played, the plant dances.” Users could build a “robot garden” of several robots embedded with a ubiquitous networking system or use them for indoor interior decoration.

Finally, plants with a purpose! No more composting, weeding or watering. Come springtime, stop by my robot garden and smell the circuitry.

You may have noticed that FringeHog has been on bit of a hiatus. At least we *hope* you’ve noticed. While I wish I could say that the reason posts have been scarce these last few months is because I’ve been windsurfing in Aruba, that’s only partly true.  In fact, I’ve been buried in an avalanche of work and projects - some wrapping, some launching - but all incredibly exciting, filled with adrenline-rushes of OMG-you-mean-I-get-paid-to-do-this-for-a-living!? moments.

More on that work and what’s been keeping me away from the blogosphere in coming posts (hint: it involves cities, maps and a fabulous intellectual soup called the “10by”). But for now, time to get back to the business of blogging the future.