We're selling a cook book at work called "Discovery of a Continent: Foods, Flavors, and Inspirations from Africa" by Marcus Samuelsson. It makes my mouth water. I've flip through it at every non-academic opportunity. I can't wait to find time to cook something from it.
I bring it up because it reminds me that Africa is a real place with real people, which I think is important to note in a blog about poverty. Maybe its just easier when you talk about poverty (and other complex and depressing global issues) to talk about numbers and proportions of population than about unique individuals and cultures. On the other hand, I find myself trying to explain to people why we should care about poverty with the numbers, but it really doesen't communicate necessity, passion, purpose, heart, etc. I don't think the numbers account for the rich cultural history that's not able to contribute to global well-being. So, how about this:
Let's fight poverty so we can have berbere, roti and bobotie in restaurants instead of being forced to approximate in our own kitchens. And if that works out, maybe we can recognize that Africa (and other poverty afflicted regions) is part of the global team, and that we need Africa's (and other poverty afflicted region's) cultures to be healthy and safe, so they can better contribute to the collective dialogue about the complex and depressing global issues.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
World Development Report
Peter sent me a copy of the World Bank's report: World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty. Its awesome. I'm even more baffled about the protests against the World Bank now than I was before. I have read a mere thirty pages, and already there are so many things worth sharing. Here are two:
1) The report discusses many many ways of calculating poverty. It discusses the ways in which some methods are useful and where they have their limits. In light of my first post of this blog, I am relieved to see that these issues are being considered at this level.
2) Peter was also kind enough to send me to the World Bank's Voices of the Poor project, a survey in which they did just that. The Report references this project to understand "poverty's multiple dimensions." They include income poverty, deprivation in the dimensions of health and education, vulnerability, and voicelessness and powerlessness.
1) The report discusses many many ways of calculating poverty. It discusses the ways in which some methods are useful and where they have their limits. In light of my first post of this blog, I am relieved to see that these issues are being considered at this level.
2) Peter was also kind enough to send me to the World Bank's Voices of the Poor project, a survey in which they did just that. The Report references this project to understand "poverty's multiple dimensions." They include income poverty, deprivation in the dimensions of health and education, vulnerability, and voicelessness and powerlessness.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
San Jose State Professor part of IPCC!
A professor at my school won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the other participants of IPCC. Although, according to the article, like other scientists, "he refuses to take credit for even a tiny sliver of the prize," I still think it deserves mention. Go Dr. Hamill!!
Coming soon; what does the environment have to do with poverty?
Coming soon; what does the environment have to do with poverty?
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Industrial Ecology Topical Summary
I wrote the following for my environmental studies class. When I get it back, I'll post the in-class essay I wrote connecting industrial ecology to poverty.
Topical Summary Assignment
Industrial Ecology
INFORMATIONAL ABSTRACT
The discipline of Industrial Ecology has created a systemic, interdisciplinary, solutions-based look at the environmental crisis facing our planet. A review of available literature highlights an overwhelming number of solutions to a problem that seems insurmountable. These solutions can be broken down into two categories: the first is a new way to think about things, while the second is a collection of ideas to help designers, policy-makers, and manufacturers develop and evaluate ideas within the industrial ecology lens. Although the issues facing our planet are overwhelming, industrial ecologists manage to create practical solutions to global problems at local levels. (#101)
KEY ISSUES AND FACTS
1. The world’s population will grow to 9 billion by 2050. Schmidheiny notes that much of this growth will take place in the least developed countries (LDCs), further reinforcing the cycle of extreme poverty.
2. “The last few decades have witnessed an accelerating consumption of natural resources – consumption that is often inefficient and ill planned. Resources that biologists call renewable are not being given time to renew. The bottom line is that the human species is living more off the planet’s capital and less of its interest. This is bad business” (Schmidheiny 2).
3. “As ecosystems are degraded, the biological diversity and genetic resources they contain are lost. Many environmental trends are reversible; this loss is permanent” (Schmidheiny 2).
4. “This overuse and misuse of resources is accomplished by the pollution of atmosphere, water, and soil – often with substances that persist for long periods. With a growing number of sources and forms of pollution, this process also appears ot be accelerating. The most complex and potentially serious of these threats is a change in climate and in the stability of air circulation systems.”
5. “Both population growth and the wasteful consumption of resources play a role in accelerating the degradation of many parts of the environment” (Schmidheiny 2).
6. The current system operates under six faulty assumptions:
a. “increasing indiscriminate growth of financial transactions will produce benefits and prosperity for all.”
b. “Natural resources are believed to be unlimited, and they can be exploited unconditionally; the environment is also unlimited in its capacity to withstand human activity in all its forms.”
c. “Capital-intensive manufacturing is universally more efficient and productive than labor-intensive repair and reconditioning services.”
d. “Earning a living is inevitably a demanding activity. All that is needed to satisfy workers is an adequate financial reward; the nature of the work required is of no great importance.”
e. “People have an unlimited hunger for possessions. So long as they conform to fashion they are an acceptable mark of social status and the principal means for personal satisfaction.”
f. “So long as growth and/or a good return can be obtained on savings, people are in general not concerned who invests them nor what purpose they are intended to serve” (Bennis 312-313).
7. “’Away’ does not exist” (McDonough 12).
8. It is not apparent to politicians and business people that it is in their and their constiuents’ best interests to act. Schmidheiny notes, “It is a hard thing to demand of political leaders, especially those who rely on the votes of the living to achieve and remain in high office, that they ask those alive today to bear costs for the sake of those not yet born, and not yet voting. It is equally hard to ask anyone in business, providing goods and services to the living, to change their ways for the sake of those not yet born, and not yet acting in the marketplace” (11).
KEY TERMS AND PHRASES
1. Business Ecology – “a systemic, comprehensive rethinking of business… emulating natural systems design, it presents mindware for the new millennium – values based, close-looped models for organizational management, which integrate profitability, stakeholder relations, life-cycle thinking, and environmental performance” (Abe 2).
2. Cradle to Cradle (c2c) – a design concept, which teaches designers and manufacturers to think of the end of the product, and to design it with reuse or remanufacturing in mind (McDonough).
3. Ecology – “the branch of biology which deals with the mutual relations between organisms and their environment. Ecology implies more the webs of natural forces and organisms, their competition and cooperation, and how they live off one another” (Ausubel).
4. Industrial Ecology (IE) – “an interdisciplinary framework for designing and operating industrial systems as living systems interdependent with natural systems. It seeks to balance environmental and economic performance within emerging understanding of local and global ecological constraints. Some of its developers have called it ‘the science of sustainability.’ IE supports coordination of design over the life cycle of products and processes. It enables creation of short-term innovations with awareness of their long-term impacts. It helps design local solutions that contribute to global solutions” (Indigo Development Homepage). Jesse Ausubel further describes IE, “Industrial ecology asks whether Nature can teach industry ways to go much further both in minimizing harmful waste and in maximizing the economical use of waste and also of products at the ends of their lives as inputs to other processes and industries.”
5. Industrial Systems – “includes service, agricultural, manufacturing, military, public operations, such as infrastructure for landfills, water and sewage systems, and transportation systems” (Indigo Development Homepage).
6. Sustainable Development – “a complex idea, which from a business point of view, can be described as something that: uses renewable resources in preference to nonrenewable; uses technologies that are environmentally harmonious, ecologically stable and skill enhancing; designs complete systems in order to minimize waste; reduces as much as possible the consumption of scarce resources by designing long-life products that are easily repairable and can be recycled; and maximizes the use of all the services that are not energy- or material-intensive, but which contribute to the quality of life” (Bennis 329).
SOLUTIONS
1. Much of the literature calls for ethically appropriate work, for the good of the individual, community and world at large. Abe, et al recommend beginning with “values-based organizations.” They note, “business ecology, as a values based organic model for organizations, creates an inner core of community, continuity, and resiliency. This social DNA which defines [the] organization’s identity also selectively filters value-creating flows and relationships that sustain it within its environment” (190). McDonough and Braungart also recognize the importance of values-based organizations, and refer constantly to ecologically sound building designed improving employees’ well-being. The need for this kind of work is also supported by Bennis, who disdains the idea, “Earning a living is inevitably a demanding activity. All that is needed to satisfy workers is an adequate financial reward; the nature of the work required is of no great importance.”
2. The literature also calls for closed loop strategies. Ausubel discusses zero emission strategies. There are “chances and ways to move from leaky to looped systems, and plausible scenarios for the transition from leaks to loops, especially for energy.” Abe, et al note that “leading companies are already applying systemic, close-loop thinking to create enduring success and competitive advantage” (193). Indigo Development is one such company; helping communities create eco-industrial parks, designed to eliminate the concept of waste.
3. Many are also calling for the development and use of “a new language for success” (Abe 198). This would enable business people and their stakeholders to communicate about concepts affecting their business and the world outside of the numbers on their bottom line. It would also support communication between scientists, politicians, business people and the public about what should be encouraged and what should not be.
4. Ausubel and McDonough examine the idea of a “functionality economy.” Ausubel suggests, “Conceiving industries anew as satisfying wants (e.g.. floor coverings) rather than selling goods (e.g., carpets).” McDonough’s homepage includes a space for c2c Certified products that can be shipped back to the manufacturer when the user is finished with them. This concept closes a loop and eliminates the concept of waste.
5. Abe, et al encourage organizations to learn from “the organizing elegance of natural systems, the success secrets that have accumulated over 3.5 billion years of evolution.” (211).
6. Abe further recommends “putting the community back in business” (212). He describes communities as “the heart of a healthy, life-sustaining business or organization, and it’s the essence of our spiritual well-being.”
7. Supporting the community might also lead to supporting locally grown and manufactured products, which would further the goal of dematerialization. Dematerialization would allow the “delivering of equal or more services with less stuff” (Ausubel).
8. Material substitution provides “opportunities for changes in material properties to reduce environmental burdens and the time scales for improved or new materials to occupy markets (Ausubel).
9. Ausubel also recommends decarbonization, an “evolution of the energy system for more service while burning less carbon, through more low-carbon fuel (natural gas) or non-carbon fuel (hydrogen) and through more efficient generation, distribution and use.
10. “Instead of fine-tuning the existing destructive framework, why don’t people and industries set out to create the following: buildings that like trees, produce more energy than they consume and purify their own waste water; factories that produce effluents that are drinking water; products that, when their useful life is over, do not become useless waste but can be tossed onto the ground to decompose and become food for plants and animals and nutrients for soil; or, alternately, that can return to industrial cycles to supply high-quality raw materials for new products; billions, even trillions, of dollars’ worth of materials accrued for human and natural purposes each year; transportation that improves the quality of life while delivering goods and services; a world of abundance, not one of limits, pollution and waste” (McDonough 90-91).
CONCLUSIONS, ANALYSIS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
At first glance, the planet seems in dire straits. The global party has an expected attendance of 9 billion by 2050. Most of those people will be born in LDCs; these people, like their parents, will be looking to the MDCs, and perhaps wishing different lives for themselves. More and more people will want to live the good life, and that will require environmental resources that we might not have. It also means more people will throw more things away, but as McDonough and Braungart teach, there is no such thing as away. As things stand now, we are using up non-renewable resources, and using renewable resources faster than they can be renewed. The environment is degrading. As a result, the current way of thinking about the economy no longer makes sense.
Industrial Ecology (IE) is a discipline that teaches business people, product designers, manufacturers and consumers that there is a way to promote economic growth, while preserving the environment. Ideas in this discipline fall into two groups. The first requires achieving one goal: we need to reframe the way we look at the material goods we interact with everyday. We need to eliminate the concept of “away” to eliminate waste. We need to reconsider the concept of ownership, which is not as important as function. We need a new way of talking about success. We need to return to our communities, and we need to create values-based, ethics-driven organizations. Achieving this goal will be a breakthrough for humanity; the way we work together and perceive one another will be revolutionized with its achievement.
The other set of ideas stems from this philosophical ideal. IE thinkers propose specific ideas for improving the situation. We can use less and use what we do use more effectively. We can create better products with less energy. We can close loops, with better design, recycling, reusing and repair, in order to eliminate the concept of ‘away’ and reduce, if not eliminate, waste. We can use things until we are done with them, send them back to the company for reuse, and use something else. We can use energy more efficiently, and recapture what is lost in the release of heat to be reused in another way. These principles simply require thinking the design and manufacture of products through before their creation.
Although the situation seems overwhelming, IE provides a practical, hopeful philosophy in support of a better future. In Business Ecology: Giving Your Organization the Natural Edge, Joseph M. Abe and coauthors write, “Life is the real bottom line and those organizations able to grasp the implications of sustainable development, embrace its values, and transform themselves into sustainable enterprises will have a clear, competitive advantage in the next economy” (Abe 189).
REFERENCES
Abe, Joseph, et al.
1998 Business Ecology: Giving Your Organization the Natural Edge. Boston:
Butterworth-Heinemann.
Ausubel, Jesse H.
1998 Industrial Ecology: A Coming of Age Story. The Rockefeller University. Electronic document, accessed on October 13, 2007. http://phe.rockefeller.edu/RFF_IE/.
Bennis, Warren, et al.
1996 Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology. Cambridge: Blackwell
Publishers, Ltd.
Indigo Development
2007 Homepage. Electronic document, accessed on October 13, 2007.
http://www.indigodev.com
McDonough, William and Michael Braungart
2002 Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: North Point Press.
Schmidheiny, Stephan
1992 Changing Course. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Topical Summary Assignment
Industrial Ecology
INFORMATIONAL ABSTRACT
The discipline of Industrial Ecology has created a systemic, interdisciplinary, solutions-based look at the environmental crisis facing our planet. A review of available literature highlights an overwhelming number of solutions to a problem that seems insurmountable. These solutions can be broken down into two categories: the first is a new way to think about things, while the second is a collection of ideas to help designers, policy-makers, and manufacturers develop and evaluate ideas within the industrial ecology lens. Although the issues facing our planet are overwhelming, industrial ecologists manage to create practical solutions to global problems at local levels. (#101)
KEY ISSUES AND FACTS
1. The world’s population will grow to 9 billion by 2050. Schmidheiny notes that much of this growth will take place in the least developed countries (LDCs), further reinforcing the cycle of extreme poverty.
2. “The last few decades have witnessed an accelerating consumption of natural resources – consumption that is often inefficient and ill planned. Resources that biologists call renewable are not being given time to renew. The bottom line is that the human species is living more off the planet’s capital and less of its interest. This is bad business” (Schmidheiny 2).
3. “As ecosystems are degraded, the biological diversity and genetic resources they contain are lost. Many environmental trends are reversible; this loss is permanent” (Schmidheiny 2).
4. “This overuse and misuse of resources is accomplished by the pollution of atmosphere, water, and soil – often with substances that persist for long periods. With a growing number of sources and forms of pollution, this process also appears ot be accelerating. The most complex and potentially serious of these threats is a change in climate and in the stability of air circulation systems.”
5. “Both population growth and the wasteful consumption of resources play a role in accelerating the degradation of many parts of the environment” (Schmidheiny 2).
6. The current system operates under six faulty assumptions:
a. “increasing indiscriminate growth of financial transactions will produce benefits and prosperity for all.”
b. “Natural resources are believed to be unlimited, and they can be exploited unconditionally; the environment is also unlimited in its capacity to withstand human activity in all its forms.”
c. “Capital-intensive manufacturing is universally more efficient and productive than labor-intensive repair and reconditioning services.”
d. “Earning a living is inevitably a demanding activity. All that is needed to satisfy workers is an adequate financial reward; the nature of the work required is of no great importance.”
e. “People have an unlimited hunger for possessions. So long as they conform to fashion they are an acceptable mark of social status and the principal means for personal satisfaction.”
f. “So long as growth and/or a good return can be obtained on savings, people are in general not concerned who invests them nor what purpose they are intended to serve” (Bennis 312-313).
7. “’Away’ does not exist” (McDonough 12).
8. It is not apparent to politicians and business people that it is in their and their constiuents’ best interests to act. Schmidheiny notes, “It is a hard thing to demand of political leaders, especially those who rely on the votes of the living to achieve and remain in high office, that they ask those alive today to bear costs for the sake of those not yet born, and not yet voting. It is equally hard to ask anyone in business, providing goods and services to the living, to change their ways for the sake of those not yet born, and not yet acting in the marketplace” (11).
KEY TERMS AND PHRASES
1. Business Ecology – “a systemic, comprehensive rethinking of business… emulating natural systems design, it presents mindware for the new millennium – values based, close-looped models for organizational management, which integrate profitability, stakeholder relations, life-cycle thinking, and environmental performance” (Abe 2).
2. Cradle to Cradle (c2c) – a design concept, which teaches designers and manufacturers to think of the end of the product, and to design it with reuse or remanufacturing in mind (McDonough).
3. Ecology – “the branch of biology which deals with the mutual relations between organisms and their environment. Ecology implies more the webs of natural forces and organisms, their competition and cooperation, and how they live off one another” (Ausubel).
4. Industrial Ecology (IE) – “an interdisciplinary framework for designing and operating industrial systems as living systems interdependent with natural systems. It seeks to balance environmental and economic performance within emerging understanding of local and global ecological constraints. Some of its developers have called it ‘the science of sustainability.’ IE supports coordination of design over the life cycle of products and processes. It enables creation of short-term innovations with awareness of their long-term impacts. It helps design local solutions that contribute to global solutions” (Indigo Development Homepage). Jesse Ausubel further describes IE, “Industrial ecology asks whether Nature can teach industry ways to go much further both in minimizing harmful waste and in maximizing the economical use of waste and also of products at the ends of their lives as inputs to other processes and industries.”
5. Industrial Systems – “includes service, agricultural, manufacturing, military, public operations, such as infrastructure for landfills, water and sewage systems, and transportation systems” (Indigo Development Homepage).
6. Sustainable Development – “a complex idea, which from a business point of view, can be described as something that: uses renewable resources in preference to nonrenewable; uses technologies that are environmentally harmonious, ecologically stable and skill enhancing; designs complete systems in order to minimize waste; reduces as much as possible the consumption of scarce resources by designing long-life products that are easily repairable and can be recycled; and maximizes the use of all the services that are not energy- or material-intensive, but which contribute to the quality of life” (Bennis 329).
SOLUTIONS
1. Much of the literature calls for ethically appropriate work, for the good of the individual, community and world at large. Abe, et al recommend beginning with “values-based organizations.” They note, “business ecology, as a values based organic model for organizations, creates an inner core of community, continuity, and resiliency. This social DNA which defines [the] organization’s identity also selectively filters value-creating flows and relationships that sustain it within its environment” (190). McDonough and Braungart also recognize the importance of values-based organizations, and refer constantly to ecologically sound building designed improving employees’ well-being. The need for this kind of work is also supported by Bennis, who disdains the idea, “Earning a living is inevitably a demanding activity. All that is needed to satisfy workers is an adequate financial reward; the nature of the work required is of no great importance.”
2. The literature also calls for closed loop strategies. Ausubel discusses zero emission strategies. There are “chances and ways to move from leaky to looped systems, and plausible scenarios for the transition from leaks to loops, especially for energy.” Abe, et al note that “leading companies are already applying systemic, close-loop thinking to create enduring success and competitive advantage” (193). Indigo Development is one such company; helping communities create eco-industrial parks, designed to eliminate the concept of waste.
3. Many are also calling for the development and use of “a new language for success” (Abe 198). This would enable business people and their stakeholders to communicate about concepts affecting their business and the world outside of the numbers on their bottom line. It would also support communication between scientists, politicians, business people and the public about what should be encouraged and what should not be.
4. Ausubel and McDonough examine the idea of a “functionality economy.” Ausubel suggests, “Conceiving industries anew as satisfying wants (e.g.. floor coverings) rather than selling goods (e.g., carpets).” McDonough’s homepage includes a space for c2c Certified products that can be shipped back to the manufacturer when the user is finished with them. This concept closes a loop and eliminates the concept of waste.
5. Abe, et al encourage organizations to learn from “the organizing elegance of natural systems, the success secrets that have accumulated over 3.5 billion years of evolution.” (211).
6. Abe further recommends “putting the community back in business” (212). He describes communities as “the heart of a healthy, life-sustaining business or organization, and it’s the essence of our spiritual well-being.”
7. Supporting the community might also lead to supporting locally grown and manufactured products, which would further the goal of dematerialization. Dematerialization would allow the “delivering of equal or more services with less stuff” (Ausubel).
8. Material substitution provides “opportunities for changes in material properties to reduce environmental burdens and the time scales for improved or new materials to occupy markets (Ausubel).
9. Ausubel also recommends decarbonization, an “evolution of the energy system for more service while burning less carbon, through more low-carbon fuel (natural gas) or non-carbon fuel (hydrogen) and through more efficient generation, distribution and use.
10. “Instead of fine-tuning the existing destructive framework, why don’t people and industries set out to create the following: buildings that like trees, produce more energy than they consume and purify their own waste water; factories that produce effluents that are drinking water; products that, when their useful life is over, do not become useless waste but can be tossed onto the ground to decompose and become food for plants and animals and nutrients for soil; or, alternately, that can return to industrial cycles to supply high-quality raw materials for new products; billions, even trillions, of dollars’ worth of materials accrued for human and natural purposes each year; transportation that improves the quality of life while delivering goods and services; a world of abundance, not one of limits, pollution and waste” (McDonough 90-91).
CONCLUSIONS, ANALYSIS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS
At first glance, the planet seems in dire straits. The global party has an expected attendance of 9 billion by 2050. Most of those people will be born in LDCs; these people, like their parents, will be looking to the MDCs, and perhaps wishing different lives for themselves. More and more people will want to live the good life, and that will require environmental resources that we might not have. It also means more people will throw more things away, but as McDonough and Braungart teach, there is no such thing as away. As things stand now, we are using up non-renewable resources, and using renewable resources faster than they can be renewed. The environment is degrading. As a result, the current way of thinking about the economy no longer makes sense.
Industrial Ecology (IE) is a discipline that teaches business people, product designers, manufacturers and consumers that there is a way to promote economic growth, while preserving the environment. Ideas in this discipline fall into two groups. The first requires achieving one goal: we need to reframe the way we look at the material goods we interact with everyday. We need to eliminate the concept of “away” to eliminate waste. We need to reconsider the concept of ownership, which is not as important as function. We need a new way of talking about success. We need to return to our communities, and we need to create values-based, ethics-driven organizations. Achieving this goal will be a breakthrough for humanity; the way we work together and perceive one another will be revolutionized with its achievement.
The other set of ideas stems from this philosophical ideal. IE thinkers propose specific ideas for improving the situation. We can use less and use what we do use more effectively. We can create better products with less energy. We can close loops, with better design, recycling, reusing and repair, in order to eliminate the concept of ‘away’ and reduce, if not eliminate, waste. We can use things until we are done with them, send them back to the company for reuse, and use something else. We can use energy more efficiently, and recapture what is lost in the release of heat to be reused in another way. These principles simply require thinking the design and manufacture of products through before their creation.
Although the situation seems overwhelming, IE provides a practical, hopeful philosophy in support of a better future. In Business Ecology: Giving Your Organization the Natural Edge, Joseph M. Abe and coauthors write, “Life is the real bottom line and those organizations able to grasp the implications of sustainable development, embrace its values, and transform themselves into sustainable enterprises will have a clear, competitive advantage in the next economy” (Abe 189).
REFERENCES
Abe, Joseph, et al.
1998 Business Ecology: Giving Your Organization the Natural Edge. Boston:
Butterworth-Heinemann.
Ausubel, Jesse H.
1998 Industrial Ecology: A Coming of Age Story. The Rockefeller University. Electronic document, accessed on October 13, 2007. http://phe.rockefeller.edu/RFF_IE/.
Bennis, Warren, et al.
1996 Beyond Leadership: Balancing Economics, Ethics and Ecology. Cambridge: Blackwell
Publishers, Ltd.
Indigo Development
2007 Homepage. Electronic document, accessed on October 13, 2007.
http://www.indigodev.com
McDonough, William and Michael Braungart
2002 Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: North Point Press.
Schmidheiny, Stephan
1992 Changing Course. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Give One, Get One
The October 1st issue of Newsweek rocked an article about the fate of the $100 laptop. They're finding difficulty with funding in the last stages of production, so they've opened the program up a little bit. In November, you can buy two for $399: you get one and a kid somewhere else gets one. Check out xogiving.org. They're so cool.
I looked at the specs, and they have a preview of how the interface interacts with the user. When I had heard of these things before, I hadn't realized it was not just an inexpensive, shock resistant computer, but a breakthrough in technology and the way we view computers. Instead of a filing system, the computer journals what the user does with it, so the student and teacher can track progress, etc. Its open source code too, so if the kid wants to modify the thing, they can. It also all looks very collaborative, which is important in this day and age.
This is such a neat solution. It puts the tools to solve problems into the hands of children they affect. I look forward to seeing how it plays out.
I looked at the specs, and they have a preview of how the interface interacts with the user. When I had heard of these things before, I hadn't realized it was not just an inexpensive, shock resistant computer, but a breakthrough in technology and the way we view computers. Instead of a filing system, the computer journals what the user does with it, so the student and teacher can track progress, etc. Its open source code too, so if the kid wants to modify the thing, they can. It also all looks very collaborative, which is important in this day and age.
This is such a neat solution. It puts the tools to solve problems into the hands of children they affect. I look forward to seeing how it plays out.
Monday, October 15, 2007
ONE Campaign
This Wednesday, the ONE Campaign is holding rallys across the world, attempting to break a world record. There is an event in San Francisco. I might attend. I might even purchase a t-shirt.
I'm interested in their campaign because it is consciously a meta issue. They're campaigning to end poverty in our generation by working to make it an issue in the 2008 U.S. elections. They even have contests between university campuses to see which campus is the most committed to ending poverty.
I find three things fantastic about this organization:
1) it is committed to doing what it can from the activists' perspectives.
2) it doesn't provide western solutions to non-western problems.
3) it uses the forces of globalization to manage the effects of globalization.
The ONE Campaign should be super cool. If they succeed in putting global poverty on the list of issues instead of abortion or gay marriage issues, it might be an interesting election.
I'm interested in their campaign because it is consciously a meta issue. They're campaigning to end poverty in our generation by working to make it an issue in the 2008 U.S. elections. They even have contests between university campuses to see which campus is the most committed to ending poverty.
I find three things fantastic about this organization:
1) it is committed to doing what it can from the activists' perspectives.
2) it doesn't provide western solutions to non-western problems.
3) it uses the forces of globalization to manage the effects of globalization.
The ONE Campaign should be super cool. If they succeed in putting global poverty on the list of issues instead of abortion or gay marriage issues, it might be an interesting election.
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