Flying fingertips and cooling brakes: using what we have
Corporate Bloom Boxes
Innovations in alternative energy, always exciting and unpredictable, are certain bets for the future. But which technology is the biggest gamble – and pays off the most? The latest and most promising one, the Bloom Box, was unveiled this past Sunday. This “little power plant-in-a-box,” which can literally sit in your basement, potentially provides independent and clean energy for home and small businesses alike. Within five to ten years, Bloom Energy hopes to make its Box available to individual residences for below $3,000, quite affordable given the price of a furnace ($3,000+) or installing a central heating heating system (up to $10,000!). Great, right?
But let’s bring this to scale. The Bloom Box won’t be available for at least five years. What do we do until then? In the energy lottery, certainly there are solar, biofuel, natural gas and wind resources, among others. We use everything from algae to manure to moon rocks – but instead of producing new technologies and new sources of energy, why don’t we use what’s right under our noses? Are overlooking the most obvious source of energy – movement?
The great thing about capturing free energy is that it really is everywhere: from crashing (or lapping!) ocean waves to a busy thoroughfare, there are plenty of sources of kinetic movement. The only questions we face are what technologies we need (to develop) to harness kinetic force, and how to scale out these technologies for wide – and so more efficient – use. Even in the most unexpected places possibilities are waiting to be tapped.
Its own powerhouse: the Dynamo
What caught my eye is a new keyboard on the market. Researchers have found a way to return the kinetic energy generated while typing to local utility providers through nanotechnology connecting the keyboard to any standard 110-volt outlet. At $30, and considering Americans, especially young ones, spend increasingly more time on the computer, keyboards like the Dynamo are both cost-efficient and accessible.
Another variation on this theme is a keyboard that recharges the computer’s battery the more you type. The goal one day is to develop a keyboard that will be fully powered with the speedy clicks of a laptop’s keys. We could reduce external energy consumption while prolonging battery life – a pretty perfect situation.
Where else might we be able to capture free energy? In big, high-pedestrian traffic cities like New York and Chicago, design company Fluxxlab wants to harvest the movement created each time a revolving door spins to power that same building. Likewise, the movement generated by city walkers as they rush to their next destination can be harnessed to power traffic lights, street lamps, and other electrical needs. Private company M2E Powerhas designed a microgenerator for troops that replaces the 10-30 pounds of batteries a soldier typically carries: clipped onto the wearer, walking or shaking for two hours powers mobile devices for an hour and a half, an incredible prospect
Where we might install these MotionPower plates in roads to capture free energy from vehicles
Capturing kinetic energy avails us of innumerable opportunities. Yet, we also face challenges in cost-efficiency and scale. While engineers at Free Energy Technologies have developed plates installed onto streets that capture the energy of decelerating cars, and this might generate a great deal of electricity, it perhaps isn’t enough to offset the costs of retrofitting old roads. Likewise, the Revolution Door only makes sense in big cities with high human traffic. We need to strategically and systematically make use of new technologies, and imagine more cost-efficient means of implementing them throughout our lives.
While all technological innovations push us toward a more progressive future, developing them takes time, funding, and determination. We certainly hope that the Bloom Box will bloom into our own (green) power plants, but at the same time, let’s keep in mind that the safest bet for the future is that portfolio of mixed energy-capturing conservation measures. We need to rely on multiple sources of energy for maximal efficiency. And right now, it looks like the kinetic energy from flying fingertips and cooling brakes is our greatest untapped natural resource.
General Motors Hopes for a Battery-powered Recovery
We’re on the cusp of a battery revolution. On Thursday, General Motors will begin battery pack assembly at its plant in Brownstown Township, Michigan. It will be the first plant of its kind in the United States and, one can hope, start a trend rather than a flash in the pan.
Remember the stimulus package – that controversial, Titanic piece of legislation? Well you can thank our government, at least in part, for this leap forward on the part of GM. Way back in March, the president announced plans to reward advances in battery technology for the support of electric vehicle proliferation in the states.
General Motors was one of many companies that applied for some of the $2 billion+ in federal funding under the Electric Drive Vehicle Battery and Component Manufacturing Initiative.
The money wasn’t just to boost hybrid vehicles in the United States, but to boost our competitiveness in the “battery wars.” Most of the batteries that power your phone, laptop, and various mobile devices and pending tablets come from overseas. Companies like LG, in South Korea, currently hold a rather large market share. While General Motors will be using cells from LG, the actual manufacturing of the battery packs will be going on right here – or in Michigan, rather.
Just as the United States has a role to play in battery production, GM, and the Obama administration, is hoping that there are also gains to be made in the area of more efficient automobile. Having grown up on a steady diet of Buick Leasers, Oldsmobile 98s and Cadillac DeVilles, I can say without reservation that I do not equate U.S. automobiles with either efficiency or the future of driving.
That’s not to say that I don’t love Buicks – just drop by and I’ll take you for a ride in mine.
But when I think compact efficiency, I think Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, etc. However, with the exception of the Prius, most of the models rely on fuel efficiency. Battery-powered cars, while not new in concept, have yet to reach any sort of critical mass. So, cars like the Chevy Volt enter into a race that is still very much anyone’s game.
The Volt’s lithium-ion battery pack will be able to charge both on board, by way of an internal combustion engine, and externally, from a plain, old household current. This means that, just as we now plug our phones in overnight, so too may we, in the future, charge our cars while we sleep. According to Discover Magazine, that’s a good 40 miles out of 80 cents of electricity. Not too shabby!
Learn more about the Chevy Volt below.
[via earth2tech]
Nanotechnology and the Fight Against Cancer
Last week, MIT’s Technology Review published a piece on the development of new, nanotechnology-based drug delivery techniques for the treatment of cancer. Specifically, the studies focused on pancreatic cancer, which kills about 35,000 people every year.
These “nanotechnology-based drug delivery techniques” constitute a major breakthrough in the War on Cancer which, since it was first declared in 1971, could use a boost (*If you’re interested, a quick review of the biological mechanisms in cancer can be found at the end of this post).
Currently, cancer therapy includes surgery to remove affected tissue, and chemotherapy and/or radiation to kill cancer cells. The problem with chemotherapy and radiation is that it exposes all cells to their toxic load. An analogy: It’s kind of like having a poisonous snake problem in a certain section of the woods behind your house. Radiation, in this example, would be much like burning down that section of woods to combat said snakes. The Result: You get rid of a lot of snakes, but you also kill many natural, non-obtrusive, animals.
Now, imagine that you have a special beetle (just go with me) that can infiltrate the snake’s defenses and infect them with an anti-drug, nullifying their poisonous bite. Not only would you be taking care of your snake problem, but you’d be doing so with minimal impact on the other species present.
This is kind of how nanotechnology works. In a nutshell, the drugs are contained in tiny, engineered particles which, when injected, fight the cancerous cells from the inside. Since nanotechnology works at an atomic level, teeny-tiny agents of destruction can be customized for the particularities of a type of cancer. This is what they accomplished in the research labs at Massachusetts General Hospital where they’ve designed two new types of agents to treat human pancreatic cells.
Each cell fights the cancerous pancreatic tumor in a unique way.
- The first cuts off blood supply to the cancerous tumor, starving it. The drugs used are already approved by the FDA, but had much more success within the nanocell, as they are able to deliver the drugs directly, from inside the cancer cells.
- The second nanocell is designed to prevent cancer cells from developing resistance to chemotherapy. They do this by targeting two specific proteins, which promote cancer growth, and blocking them.
Such advances in biotechnology (at the nano scale) open doors to all kind possibilities, from curing cancer to manufacturing new tissue. The latter has the potential to repair damaged tissue, such as exists in Parkinson’s, diabetes, heart disease, or spinal cord injuries, among other things.
Strides toward such a future are already being made: In early 2008, researchers at the University of Minnesota Center for Cardiovascular Repair, created a functioning heart from a dead rat heart and new cells from baby rats. Sure, humans aren’t going to benefit much from an engineered rat heart – pig, maybe – but the point is that it’s possible. And what’s possible on a small scale, usually, can be adapted to work on a larger scale.
Like the researchers in the video below say, there’s no reason to stop at hearts – why not any organ?
*Every cell in our body has the same strands of DNA, the complete blueprint for every type of cell in the body. Nearly all of the sequence will be covered except for the genes related to its particular function (i.e. nerve function, if it’s a nerve cell, or gut function if it’s a gut cell).
The unexpressed part of the DNA is blocked by “repressor proteins” that help coordinate the on/off switch to accelerate or slow cell division at different stages of development. If the protein fails, it can uncover the growth gene and kick the cell back in to a rapid multiplication state again, which is what cancer is. “Carcinogens” are named as such because they have the capacity to break down repressor proteins (among other things), a process that also happens as a normal part of aging. - CS
Taking Your Life on the Road
Designing for reality: people won’t be hanging up their cell/smartphones anytime soon inside (what I refer to as) their traveling telephone booths. Microvision is working on ways to integrate social interactions while keeping your eyes on the road. It doesn’t help to focus attention, just your sight lines.
The Stuff of Life
Where was this book when I was studying chemistry?!
There wasn’t an easy way around rote, brain-numbing memorization of the Periodic Table of Elements when I was in school. I’d practice filling them in like a crossword puzzle, putting abbreviations and atomic weights of each element in the right square. There was absolutely nothing engaging about it, it was just a grind.
To transform a string of memorized data into something meaningful — the stuff of knowledge — is to give that data a context. Tell a story, show its utility, demonstrate something remarkable. Which is what Theodore Gray’s new coffee table book, “The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe” has done for the Periodic Table. Suddenly elements are sexy little beasts, each with its own history and a glossy two-page spread.
You’ll recognized some, of course, like Calcium (Ca) and Sodium (Na), but have you ever gotten a close look at Promethium (glow-in-the-dark paint on diving watches), Tellurium (even tiny amounts will leave you reeking of garlic for months), or how ’bout the honorific Einsteinium (which, unlike the man, has little utility). Beautiful photos and interesting tidbits make the world, at the atomic level, interesting and comprehensible….and memorable.
[via Boing Boing]
Nature's Orchestra
“If we don’t take the opportunity to form a baseline understanding of natural soundscapes, we’ll lose part of our own humanity. These sounds taught us to dance, and they’re part of our language. I think we owe them something.” – Bernie Krause
Western culture has long favored sight over hearing. Bombarded with thousands of visual images every day, we pay very little attention to the subtle sounds that enter our ears. Middle school sleepover games of “Would You Rather?” always resulted in a unanimous group decision that being blind would be, like, WAY harder than being deaf. American bioacoustician Bernie Krause thinks otherwise and has devoted the last 40 years of his life to recording the earth’s rapidly disappearing “biophony” — a term he coined to describe what the world sounds like in the absence of humans.
He believes that biophony is unique all over the world; nowhere in nature sounds anything like anywhere else. He also believes that in a biophony, animal groups each communicate at a different frequency so they don’t interfere with one another’s voices. When the pitches are mapped out, it ends up looking like a musical score, with each instrument in its proper place.
The problem with this lovely orchestra concept is that man-made noise (anthrophony) greatly intrudes on this natural symphony. The noises of machinery and cars interfere with a part of the sound spectrum already in use and suddenly some animal can’t make itself heard, which Krause has proven can have a significant impact on evolution.
Today, there are fewer and fewer places on Earth where man-made noises don’t prevail — over 40 percent of his original field-recording locations have been lost due to increasing habitat degradation and human noise. To combat that, Krause is making it his mission to compile the largest private archive of natural sound anywhere — fittingly named Wild Sanctuary. The collection of sounds represents over 3,500 hours of wild soundscapes and nearly 15,000 species. Even more intriguing, Wild Sanctuary’s Internet home base is Google Maps and Google Earth, an innovative bridge between the virtual and the natural world that allows you to click on any location you’re interested in and hear exactly what it sounds like.
It’s easy to see ecological problems. Now we need to learn to listen to them as well. Should we be focusing on developing quieter, as well as cleaner, technology and machinery? Would more noise ordinances benefit animals in nature? There isn’t really an answer — it’s just about using all of your senses when trying to make sense of the world around you.
Physicists Kept Awake by Seven Wonders
Stress, excitement, and indigestion are common causes of interrupted sleep — for most of us, that is. Not so for physicists, whose insomnia stirs for far less pedestrian concerns, as cataloged in this month’s New Scientist as the Seven Questions that Keep Physicists Awake at Night.
Number One: Why this universe?
“In their pursuit of nature’s fundamental laws, physicists have essentially been working under a long standing paradigm: demonstrating why the universe must be as we see it. But if other laws can be thought of, why can’t the universes they describe exist in some other place?”
I’ll be honest, I double-majored in philosophy because I was pumped up on French existentialist novels. Ironically, they were the last novels I ever read in a philosophy class. Instead, I ended up reading essays on multiple worlds and van Inwagen’s Doctrine of Arbitrary Undetached Parts. While I’m flattered to have spent so many sleepless nights mulling over the same topics as professional physicists, I feel they may have been confused on a slightly higher level.
The question is this – if I postulate a set of laws for a world (other than this one), and I’m able to imagine/reason how things work in that world without contradicting those laws, then who’s to say that this world could not exist?
Though the scenario is rather complex, the exercise is as simple as imagining a world in which I start my day at 4:30 instead of 6:30(oops)…. Meaning that, though the concepts are over most of our heads, it’s a reminder that the ability to imagine different worlds is available to us all.
For a lighter look at parallel worlds, check out this Nova special “Parallel World, Parallel Lives,” featuring Eels frontman Mark Everett. (The rest of the show is available on YouTube.)
Number Two: What is everything made of?
“Ordinary matter” is classified here as “atoms, galaxies and stars.”
Ponder this: if ‘ordinary matter’ only accounts for four percent of the universe’s total energy, what’s the other 96 percent?
As evil as it sounds, dark matter simply designates matter whose light either does not reach us, or particles which are not emitting light to begin with. We know dark matter is out there because we can see its effects, such as the continued expansion of the universe. It’s not the stuff from the X-Files that lets aliens take control of you body … or scientists are keeping that part on the low.
So what else keeps physicists up at night?
3. How does complexity happen?
4. Will string theory ever be proved correct?
5. What is singularity?
6. What is reality, really? (see also: The Sixth Sense, The Machinist, Identity, The Fountain and others of
the “it was all a dream, or was it” ilk)
7. How far can physics take us?
This last question is the wildest one of all. What it suggests is that physics, the (scientific) language by which we make sense of our world, may have its own limits. I think I’ll mull that one over the next time I can’t get to sleep…
3D TVs: Coming to a Living Room Near You
I remember waiting for an episode of “Family Matters” (long ago) that was going to be in 3D. We’re talking paper glasses with one red lens, one blue lens. You know what I mean — the type of 3D where, if you watch it without the glasses, it looks like you slipped and fell through the cracks in a table of RGB variants.
The good news is, the 3D TV of the future will be smoother, more efficient and come with cooler glasses. Better yet, it could be here by 2010!
Then again, maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising. Hollywood has been steadily releasing an increasing amount of films formatted for 3D. Think Coraline, Up, the U2 concert film and James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar. While Beowulf may not have been strong support for the need of 3D in the home, one has to imagine that film companies are hungry for the DVD market these films could bring.
Whether or not consumers will be able to afford 3D-enabled televisions just after upgrading to HD and plasma TVs is another question entirely.
Google Makes Us Smarter (Whew!)
After so much wailing about how computers are dumbing down a whole generation, comes evidence that it’s the older generation that may benefit most: turns out that computer activity helps keep dementia at bay.
Mental stimulation is the name of the game when it comes to keeping our wits about us, and the simple act of searching for information online (“Googling”) is great for keeping those synapses snapping. Even more than Sudoku or crossword puzzles, searching for new information online is a continuous learning experience.
The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
William Kamkwamba was 14 years old when he was forced to quit school due to his family’s inability to pay the required $80 student fee in his small village in central Malawi.
Eager to continue his education any way he could, he spent a considerable amount of time at the library where, one day, he picked up a tattered U.S. textbook and saw a picture of a windmill.
Malawi is short on many resources, but they do have an abundant supply of wind. Thinking “If somebody did this thing, I can also do it,” Kamkwamba set out to build his very own windmill. To get supplies for it, he salvaged all sorts of junk (another man’s treasure) from his father’s broken bike to old tractor pieces and was often greeted with “Ah, look, the madman has come with his garbage.” Several people thought he was smoking marijuana to which he replied that he was “only making something for juju [magic].”
The garbage-collecting madman succeeded in making magic when he managed to hack together a functioning windmill from strips of PVC pipe, rusty car and bicycle parts and blue gum trees.
Originally, all he wanted to do was power a small light bulb in his bedroom so he could stay up and read past sunset. That dream got bigger in a hurry and one windmill has turned into three, which now generate enough electricity to light several bulbs in his family’s house, power radios and a TV, charge his neighbors’ cellphones and pump water for the village’s fields and household use.
TEDGlobal heard about him, invited him to speak at their conference, and inspired by William, started a non-profit called the Moving Windmills Project. Moving Windmills supports Malawian-run rural economic development and education projects in Malawi, with the goals of community economic independence and self-sustainability; food, water and health security; and educational success.
All this from a tattered library book, a few old bicycle parts and a boy with a seemingly impossible dream. Juju indeed.
(William will be a guest on The Daily Show tonight!)
Washington Researchers Crank Dat Robocop
Being born with genes that pretty much rendered me blind by fourth grade, I think it’s completely natural to retain some lingering fantasy of super eyes. Sure, Cyclops would be great, but I would settle for Robocop. If that didn’t work, well, I guess I would just settle for being able to read signs while I’m driving.
Then again, Robocop may not be out of the question. (Good luck with Cyclops.)
At the University of Washington, scientists, doctors and professors are working on a contact lens that may one day allow us to scan a room like the man machine, himself. Yes, I’m serious. Body stats and everything.
Project participants hope to develop an augmented reality contact that can be used to monitor an individual’s personal health information. Want to check your blood glucose level? Pull it up. Or, if you’re a runner – imagine monitoring your speed, heart rate and mileage, all out of the corner of your eye.
Of course, that’s only the tip of an iceberg jutting out of the imagination and into the world around us. What if you were able to view a friend’s social network information on the go or run through the business plan one last time while walking up the stairs to your presentation.
Take the features we discussed with Metaio, and add them to a hyper-technical, eye-based super computer. You almost feel overwhelmed just thinking about it. And you thought information was cluttered now …
[Scene] You’re walking down a street in Minneapolis. Augmented reality mini billboards pop up as you approach the businesses they represent, clamoring for your attention. Graffiti that was designed on a computer and superimposed onto the wall of a restaurant jumps out at you with a jarring clash of orange and blue.
You switch to “friends only” mode. As you approach the corner of Hennepin and Seventh, a tiny red light beeps three times rapidly in the upper-right corner of your vision. Below it, an image of your friend David appears – his full name below. You have the option to view more information, but you don’t need it. You quicken your pace to reach your friend before he crosses the street.
It’s all happening people. In 25 years, you may have to explain to your grandchildren why Robocop was such a cool dude.
[via Wired]
I'll see your "RSS is Dead" hype and raise it by a "Cloud Computing is the Future" claim
Quick, you’ll want to retweet this:
If you’re among the exploding population of people who like to share “new kinds of fast, witty, easy-to-assimilate exchanges” (Gartner) that micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter allow.
A specialty technology research house, Gartner comes out each year (since 1995) with a semi-predictive graph of which new technologies are likely to make it. The Hype Cycle of Emerging Technologies, 2009 was released on 07/31/09 (graph at right). The following technologies make Gartners’ Top 10
Next 5 years:
- Web 2.0
- Cloud computing
- Internet TV
- Virtual Worlds
- Service-oriented architecture (at Push, we’re betting on the new Google OS)
The convergent potentials (i.e. Augmented Reality applications) are far more interesting and where innovation is really headed.
>5 years:
- RFID (see our recent post on the new Coca-Cola RFID-enhanced, social networked vending machine)
- 3D printing (my opinion: potential for massive disruption for retail)
- Context-delivery architectures (taking customization to the next level: location, preferences, identity, etc. Again, convergent potentials with these other technolgies/platforms will lead the way)
- Mobile robots as helpers and friends (check out firefighters and iCub)
- Human augmentation (prostheses and memory chips for starters, with so many monkeys pointing the way)
Social Media is Dead – Long Live the New Fresh
My Google homepage looks like “Night of the Living Dead.” RSS feeds roam the screen like zombies with unfulfilled shopping lists. I don’t have a helicopter, so there’s no way I’m getting out of this.
Oh, didn’t you hear? Sometime ago RSS died. There wasn’t a big going away party – just a few close friends. And yet … it wanders the Web … hungry for brain.
I’m late to the party. To be fair, TechCrunchIT is not in my Google Reader and I wasn’t there when Steve Gillmor took its pulse. Rather I was alerted to the fact that RSS had passed by way of Twitter. (case in point?) Sam Diaz concurred last week – RSS is, indeed, dead.
In fact, it seems like everywhere you look, things are dropping. I keep waiting for someone to tell me that social media is dead – and then what’s next? No media at all? Will we transmit thoughts and perception telepathically through Motorola chips implanted in our brains?
It seems like an ongoing trend to declare things in absolute statements. These are a few I’ve heard over the last year:
- Teens don’t tweet.
- Newspapers are dying.
- Public relations is dead.
- Kill your blog.
I could go on. I think it’s a mistake to relegate things that are no longer the trending norm to eternal slumber. Plus, more often than not, it’s simply not true. Teens do tweet – they’re just not the homo superior of the realm. Newspapers, as a whole, aren’t dying; the medium is becoming sustainable in the new information economy. Public relations isn’t dead – it’s certainly due for a shift in perspective, but it’s very much alive.
At this stage in communications, things are changing so fast, we don’t have time to see the gradient shift. The next hot item is just stepping out of the car and something needs to clear space on the runway. It seems like we’re no longer content to watch things play out. We have to kill off yesterday’s headlines so that we can herald tomorrow’s.
Plus, the age of Twitter is very much the age of catchphrases. “Microblogging is emerging as a viable, and worthwhile, form of expression and networking,” doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like “blogs are dead.” Plus, the latter leaves room for a link to the full article and any subsequent re-tweets.
I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. I love Twitter … most of the time. Best of all, I have the option of skimming in Twitter and then doing a deeper diver later into my reader. I also check certain sites, friends’ Delicious accounts, etc.
I just don’t think that Real Simple Syndication is dead. It’s been tweaked, torqued, twisted and integrated. I think the main idea, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that we no longer rely soley on our Web aggregators to inform us. Well, yeah, we have a few more options. That doesn’t mean that RSS died, it’s just not the only player on the field.
Collective Soul just released their eighth album, but I still take the time to listen to “Shine” and “Pretty Donna” – they’re just part of a steadily growing playlist.
At most, I think we can say that certain functions of RSS have been adapted and customized to fit other formats. The future of social media, newspapers, public relations and so on and so forth isn’t death, but integration and adaptation. We don’t have to predict the future, because it’s constantly shifting – and it won’t be the same for everyone.
Some of us will abandon RSS for Twitter. Others will use both. Perhaps some will just use RSS. Or maybe some new tool will come along that combines the best features of everything and then we’ll all use that?
Isn’t that what Google Wave is supposed to be?
Announced in May, and recently available to some Apps users, Google Wave seems to be a jack-of-all-trades for communications. Is it a messenger, a mailbox, document sharer, collaboration tool, project dashboard … all of the above? But it enters the picture with a basket instead of a scythe. It’s not here to kill AIM or Twitter or e-mail – it’s here to take the best of relevant technologies and integrate and adapt them.
Evolution is constantly going on, but we don’t have to qualify things in absolutes. Remember, video did not kill radio – radio went online.
Dear Detroit, from Your Neighbors
The first thing you’ll notice about Broken City Lab’s “Cross-Border Communication” project is that they’re playing with a bit more firepower than your grade school teacher had when he or she taught you subject against the oft-malfunctioning, pull-down projector screen.
But then they’re trying to reach a larger audience – a whole city, actually.
Broken City Labs, based in Windsor, ON and across the river from Detroit, is a creative research group. Led by artists, they are committed to “tactical disruption and engagement” – thinking in between the lines to create conversation and, hopefully, consolidati0n, around pertinent issues affecting Windsor, specifically, but often with great significance to other communities as well.
What’s this have to do with a several-thousand dollar projector and Detroit Rock City? Broken City sums it up in the first of 12 planned messages to be broadcast against the Windsor skyline, “We’re in this together.”
It’d be hard to pin down a state more affected by the current economic state than Michigan. From Flint to Detroit, Michigan’s 15 percent unemployment towers above the national average. Just across the Detroit River, Windsor has experienced similar economic decline.
Understanding is a powerful tool for both conversation and forward momentum. Understand the issues. Understand each other. Naturally, we understand those who we can relate to. And so, Broken City Labs plans to throw up a signal for those across the river, separated by distance, country – but not so remote after all.
My Teacher is on Facebook: Is That Cool?
Danah Boyd, an employee at Microsoft Research of New England and a Fellow of the Harvard Berkmen Center for Internet and Society recently blogged about the technicalities behind teachers and students communicating via online social media networks. It is a controversial topic that tends to rear its ugly head every couple of months or so, with some teacher is being made a martyr of for something they blogged or posted – whether the situation is deliberately sensationalized or legitimately wrong – we hear about it…and it only serves to heighten parental fears and to deter potential mentors from reaching out to students.
Beyond Boyd’s commentary, which accurately outlines the risks and benefits of teachers choosing to communicate with their students outside of the classroom, I have read a lot of articles on the subject and am rather annoyed with the way a teacher’s online role is presented. A Washington Post article chooses only to use the voice of 22 year olds that provide allusions to racy commentary, inappropriate photos, and a level of general ignorance – i.e. “Ohmigod, I had no idea everyone could see my profile!” CNN highlights the older demographic, 52 and up, which therein garners the connotation of a creepy older man perving on his students. Neither case is true.
First, being a 22 year old myself and a part-time outdoor adventure guide for youth, let me speak up on behalf of the 2o-something professionals that work with kids and also maintain an online profile. We’re not that stupid. Some of us, yes, but most of us – no. We grew up with invasive technology, we watched Myspace turn from cool to creepy, we’ve seen enough online scandal to know that what we post online is for the world to see and we’ve dug around for album leaks of the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Wilco, or Animal Collective enough to know where to find something even when it doesn’t want to be found. We were also young once too and not so long ago; we remember how impressionable the actions of adults were on us only because we’re just starting to recognize and appreciate just how influential they were, now that we’re coming into our own careers. That being said, the vast majority of us do not post obscene content on our profiles because we are in the best position to realize what kind of negative impact it can have.
For older teachers choosing to use facebook or myspace as a way to relate to their students, I personally applaud their efforts to connect with their students beyond an academic setting. Teachers are commonly told that their responsibility is to be an instructor to their students, not their friends, but I find this mentality somewhat cold and too business-like for the already too-cruel halls of high school. If anything, what students need is a teacher and a friend, an adult that they can come to with anything. You can’t encourage a person academically without investing in them personally, it simply isn’t human.
I have been extremely fortunate in my life to have a wealth of good teachers in high school and university. My primary form of staying in contact with them today is through facebook and email. A facebook profile filled with interests, ideas, and personality humanizes a teacher and makes them accessible in a way that a mahogony desk and a token framed family photograph never could. In order to relate with your students, you need to connect with them on a level that they can understand and right now – that level is facebook, myspace, twitter, etc. – it’s online.
The beauty of these online mediums of communication is it often serves as the perfect middle ground. Students are often uncomfortable coming to teachers with problems in person. It takes a lot of courage. A facebook message or an email, however, is much easier than face-to-face to initiate a conversation. If they learn by viewing their teacher’s profile that their teacher may be able to relate to them due to common interests, students may feel less intimidated in approaching them to ask for advice. Anything that can be done to humanize teachers instead of cornering them into the realm of authority-bearing, homework-distributing, tardy-delivering automated machines is going to create a stronger classroom environment – a breeding ground for much needed mentorship.
Of course, as Boyd cautions in her blog, it should always be the students taking the initiative. Teachers have Federal Rights and Privacy Act to follow and should always abide by their administration’s rules. I personally think a social media network should be created specifically for each school – a online yearbook of sorts. This would eliminate any gray area between what’s private and what’s professional as teachers could create profiles specifically for interaction with students and keep their personal lives separate. Facebook already offers several different friend categories, but it may be better off in the long run to keep your profiles entirely separate. This is a much better option than keeping the online world completley off limits to teachers and students. Constructive conversation should never be stifled, no matter where it takes place.
As Boyd notes, “We used to live in a world where space dictated context. This is no longer the case. Digital technologies collapse social contexts all the time. The key to figuring out boundaries in a digital era is not to try to revert to space. They key is to focus on people, roles, relationships, and expectations.”
Cell phones can create hope or cause conflict
Your cell phone keeps you more connected than you think – and not always in a good way. Recently, the Enough Project and You Tube teamed up to launch their “Come Clean 4 Congo” video campaign to raise awareness on how your small electronics purchase could be fueling one of the deadliest wars in the Congo. The current death toll reaches 5.6 million (with 2,000 more dying per day) and 70% of the world’s rape is reported from the Congo. In order to fund their armies, the three warring militias take control of the lucrative mines and extract bribes from transporters, local and international buyers, and border control.
According to the Enough Project’s report “Can You Hear Congo Now?” The four principal conflict minerals are:
•Tin (produced from cassiterite)—used inside your cell phone and all electronic products as a
solder on circuit boards.
• Tantalum (produced from “coltan”, 80% of the world’s supply is located in the Congo)—used to store electricity in capacitors in iPods, digital cameras,
and cell phones.
• Tungsten —used to make your cell phone or Blackberry vibrate.
• Gold—used in jewelry and as a component in electronics.
The Enough Project and YouTube’s call for filmmakers to produce a short, 1-minute documentary on how cell phone purchases are linked to the war in Congo is the first step is raising awareness on this issue. Most people have no idea where their cell phone materials come from and there is no legislation currently in place to reveal the origin of these supply chains.
Even though most of us already own a cell phone that was more than likely produced with some of these conflict minerals, there is hope. As soon as conflict-free phones are introduced to the market, we can switch to one of those, and then we can donate our old phone to Hope Phones. Hope Phones is an organization that works in collaboration with kiwanja.net, the Hewlett Foundation, and FrontlineSMS: Medic, to provide phones to health care workers in developing countries. For every cell phone donated, the money from trading in the old phone goes towards purchasing new phones for health care providers. By giving remote communities a cell phone, they can stay in closer contact with their doctors, receive better care, and cut down on the response time when a medical emergency arises. A $10 cell phone will give 50 families access to emergency health care. Cell phones, like everything, can produce both bad and good, but as long as we’re aware of both sides of the conversation, we can make it work things work the right way.
Give me your chocolate, your plants, and your Prius
If we erected a Statue of Sustainability today, her placard would undoubtedly read: give me your chocolate, your plant-based products, and your people-powered Priuses; at least, that’s what the latest innovations from Toyota, Coca-Cola, and the NASCAR racing industry would imply…
* Toyota released a behind-the-scenes preview of their 2010 Prius commercial that is choreographed and constructed entirely out of people. It looks like a scene straight out of a Dr. Suess book made for TV! Love it. Have a look at the video below where the production team describes the innovation and logistical challenges behind its debut.
* Despite Coca-Cola’s tarnished human rights image abroad, they are making important strides in sustainability at home with their partnership with the World Wildlife Fund. The Atlanta Coca-Cola headquarters has put out a fully-recyclable bottle prototype that is made entirely out of plant-based plastic. Traditional PET bottles are made from petroleum, a non-renewable resource, but the new plant bottle is made with up to 30 percent plant-based materials.
“The Coca-Cola Company is a company with the power to transform the marketplace, and the introduction of the PlantBottle(TM) is yet another great example of their leadership on environmental issues,” said Carter Roberts, President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund, U.S. “We are pleased to be working with Coke to tackle sustainability issues and drive innovations like this through their supply chain, the broader industry and the world.”
*Last, but obviously never least – race cars are always in the lead – is the introduction of a plant-powered Formula 1 race car from the Warwick Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre as a part of their WorldFirst project. The Vegetable Car boasts a carrot-based polymer steering wheel, wing mirrors made of potatoes, and a bio diesel engine that – I kid you not – runs on “waste chocolate.” And the sustainability measures do nothing to compromise speed, the Vegetable Car can still hit upwards of 125 miles on hour!
“Following the recent turmoil in Formula 1 arising from the high costs of running competitive motor racing teams, and doubts in sponsors’ minds over the commercial value of their involvement, the viability of motor racing is being critically questioned,” the WorldFirst website explains. ” We are seeking to prove to the motor industry that it is possible to build a competitive racing car using environmentally sustainable components.”
Move over Mother Liberty, the call for sustainability is getting louder and more creative every day.
My Search Engine Special Requests
Wolfram Alpha is the talk of the town in the online world. There are whispers that it may be Google’s usurper or at least, it’s number one contender. Set to launch this month, the Wolfram Alpha search engine strives to compute any kind of question you throw at it in a matter of moments. Instead of offering suggested web pages for further browsing, as Google does, it simply gives you the answer. Like that. The presence of British mathetmetician Stephen Wolfram as the brains behind the design of this super-powered calculator is fitting. A peek at his website will show you that he is the epitome of overachievement. [Spoiler alert: He joined the ranks of Oxford University at the age of 17!]
Anyway, although I am curious to see if Google has finally met its match, I’m really not that impressed. There is still a lot of ground that needs to be covered in search engine progress and quite frankly, I’m waiting. Just for sport, here are two suggestions for new search engine development that once implemented, could easily rival Google by sheer necessity.
1. SongSlut – a search engine that enables you to find out the artist and title of that song that has been stuck in your head since fifth grade. The one that continues to haunt you in your sleep…you know what I’m talking about. If you hear it, you never catch the artist or the song title on the radio – something always happens – you go through a tunnel, your mother calls, or the DJ doesn’t indulge. You Google the few lyrics you know, but they’re so non-specific that the results always prove fruitless. You query your friends and relatives, but you’re all in the same boat. Nobody knows. By the time you’re twenty two, you’ve heard it 357 times and you’re convinced that if you don’t find out soon, you may slowly go insane. For me, it was this song…
All I knew for fifteen years of my life is “do do do da da” part. Ahhh – can you imagine my agony?! With SongSlut, everything would’ve been okay. There’s my testimonial.
2. KeyJangler – a search engine for locating your keys. Like Google Earth, but instead of locating your house, it would find your keys. Of course, this would require GPS in all of our keys, a slightly more expensive investment, but considering how much time it would save you – I think well worth it.
If you can think of more annoying knowledge gaps that need to be filled, by all means, let me know!
Green Xchange provides platform for sustainability collaboration
Nike, Best Buy, and Creative Commons all seem to agree that “corporate colloboration” has a much better ring to it than corporate secrets. Their debut of a new sustainability cooperation tool called “Green Xchange” paves the way for the sharing of intellectual property in the name of widespread innovation. Within this platform, companies can grant the access of their sustainability research and development initiatives to other companies. This access can be provided free of charge or for a price, at the individual company’s discretion.
Obviously, competing companies are not always going to be keen on working together, but conclusive research on product sustainability can be used by more than one industry. The example that Agnes Mazur gives on the WorldChanging blog is that of a truck tire manufacturing company using Nike research on maximizing the efficient of air pressure in sneaker design and applying it to truck tires. This type of collaboration, with some consideration for free market competition, can save a lot of time and money. It also has great potential to accelerate the sustainability movement, which is good news in a world where it is increasingly evident that our carrying capacity has already been reached. Check out the informational preview here: Green Xchange
Why Moldova Still Matters
These past two weeks, I have been sitting back and observing the aftermath of the Moldova riots with a more critical eye. Regrettably, as is sometimes the case with journalists who have the hots for a headline before they know what they’re getting into, I find myself wishing to retract my “Twitter Riots Take Moldova” post. It is a clear example of my wanting to “jump on the bandwagon” with the buzz behind the latest technology. In particular, I get excited any time a social networking tool manifests some form of concrete social action, but I may have OD’ed on that excitement too soon. I’m not sure the Moldova riots consitute positive social action as much as they represent a lot of very pissed off people living in what is ranked as the “world’s unhappiest country” and it is becoming increasingly clear that Twitter, although present, was not the fulcrum of the April 7th events.
In much the same way we must first suffer the consequences of partaking in a rounds of shots before discovering the wisdom behind slowly enjoying a beer, I fell prey to the knee-jerk reaction of journalistic fever. Knee-jerk reactions are not uncommon – (take internet guru Clay Shirky’s incredibly articulate apology to Amazon after the LGBT book de-listing drama, for example) – and it is often harder to detect in the digital world, being that the “need for speed” is tantamount to today’s news.
First, I must tip my hat to blogger, Daniel Bennett, who critiqued the error of my eagerness with his own commentary on the same day that I posted my Moldova entry. Bennett is a PhD student researching the impact of blogging and new media on the BBC’s coverage of war and terrorism at King’s College in London and since checking out his link that day, I have found him to be full of excellent insight on the subject matter. We appear to share a mutual interest in Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society and a PUSH 2005 Speaker. Zuckerman has been doing an extremely informative follow-up on the use of Twitter and other social networking tools during the Moldova riots on his own blog, My Heart is in Accra. He was also featured on NPR’s On the Media on April 17th, adding a technological lense to the events.
“My take on it at this point is that Twitter probably wasn’t all that important in organizing the demonstrations,” Zuckerman states. “Where I think they were enormously important is in helping people, particularly people in the Moldavan Diaspora, keep up with the events in real time.” Zuckerman also recognizes that social media tools were involved in disseminating information after the riots in regards to arrests and other issues and that it is even arguably being used as a channel of disinformation by others. As a person who shares a strong connection to the livelihood of a sometimes tumultuous Northern Ireland and as someone who has been arrested (as a reporter, mind you) at the RNC riots, I can definitely appreciate the value of social media tools being used for communication and organization in the aftermath of important events.
Whether (or when) we decide to call the Moldova uprising the “Twitter” Revolution is another story. Zuckerman loosely traces the food chain of this headline as originating from a UK Telegraph story which was then picked up by a highly-trafficked blog; eventually, Twitter and Moldova ended up on the front page of the New York Times the next day. Anne Applebaum, a columnist for the Washington Post, also offers a great critique of the Twitter flashpan. She suggests, “What we witnessed…was not a new kind of Twitter Revolution but, rather, a new kind of manipulated revolution; not an Orange or a Rose Revolution, but a revolution deliberately led astray. There were special circumstances, of course: It’s relatively easy to make people angry and get them to burn down government buildings in the world’s unhappiest country. Still, I predict this is a sign of more such “revolutions” to come. A scenario like this one is too good to waste on Moldova alone.” Twitter revolutions they may not be, but do they have the potential? We’ll see.
A Preview of A Global Dinner Party
This Monday, I had the opportunity to attend a test dinner of the Push Institute’s much-anticipated Global Dinner Party (now in its pilot phase) at the home of Sam and Sylvia Kaplan. The guest list included four lawyers (from corporate to entertainment to constitutional/security-torture-rendition, our mayor, a singer, a serial entrepreneur, a college student in need of a free meal/younger blogger (me), and others. The three-course dinner featured matzoh ball soup and salad, a Middle Eastern main dish, and chocolate meringue for dessert, but the conversation undoubtedly proved to be the main affair – so much that, I confess, I rather slacked off on taking notes. Like a good meal after a long day (when you don’t stop to wipe your face until you’ve cleaned your plate), I became so engrossed in the conversation that I did not pause to take notes for fear of missing the debate.
In our review of the evening, Cecily explained that “The aim of A Global Dinner Party is to bring people together over food and ideas, to share and challenge thinking about where we’re headed. We’re creating a 3-course menu of questions on topics such as energy, immigration, life expectancy, worldviews, exploration of space and ocean, morality, and other such juicy stuff. If the conversation broadens and inspires people’s thinking, all while having fun, then the dinner is a success. Ultimately, these are the kinds of experiences that ultimately impact how decisions are made — which is how change is made — and that’s what we’re after! Share a dinner, create community, and change the world — what could be better?”
Discussion for the evening focused on (which) factors that create a stable and robust society. I’m not sure that we arrived at any answers, though there was agreement that a malleable framework (ability to identify and adapt to change) was indeed a key aspect. Some thought that framework depends on the soft stuff of trust and community, while others leaned toward the hard stuff of social institutions, i.e. government, constitution, laws, banks, schools, health care, philanthropy, etc. It’s a chicken-egg/nature-nurture dialogue, but consensus wasn’t the goal, rather this group preferred to describe how a stable and robust society feels, looks, behaves. Terms used included safety, diversity, education, resilience, identity, production of goods and services, access to opportunity, common good, and leadership. Tom Wiese, my partner in the one-on-one discussion even argued that lazy people were an important aspect of society because the ambitious are motivated by others lack of action. – Interesting take!
The conversation then moved to encompass the benefits of our increasingly open-source government. With the introduction of interactive internet tools, more people are able to weigh in and hold sway. Nate Garvis of Target Corporations argued, “We have been suffering from a failure of creativity. We tend to throw the government and military at every problem. We use old tools for the new age when what we really need is more social innovation. The internet tools we now have allowed us to expand greatly in the world of social innovation.”
I could continue, but it doesn’t merit much for me to give you a play-by-play. It is our hope that every global dinner party will have its own unique face, but all will offer the opportunity to engage.
“The dinners are by design,” Cecily says. “It’s a way of humanizing ourselves.”
“I think we are surrounded by messages that drive us apart,” Nate adds. “We need to focus more on what we have in common and what better place to bring us all together than over the dinner table?”
We Are Not Alone…No, Seriously
The complete IMF World Economic Outlook was released this week with much anticipation and inevitably, disappointment as the conclusion was made that a recovery by next year is highly unlikely. With headers such as “Sovereigns Under Stress” and “How Did Things Get So Bad So Fast?”, we might as well add, “Oh Holy #$%@ What Are We Going To Do Now?!” Fortunately, astronomers at the the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (of England) gave us the answer on Tuesday: we can move. Where to? Your choice: Planet Gleise 518 e or Gleise 518 d. Neither has quite the ring to it as “Earth”, but they may very well be the next hospitable planet in our vicinity.
“This discovery is absolutely extraordinary, ” Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkley explained to the Associated Press. While Gliese 581 e appears to be too hot for life, it demonstrates that nature has made small planets similar to our own. (Gliese 581 e is only 1.9 times the size of earth, the first planet discovered closer in size to Earth than to Jupiter.) Many more planets are likely to exist in the “hospitable zone”, a distance from the sun that allows for water to be present on the planet. Gliese 581 d, discovered in 2007, also lies within this range. Research so far suggests that Gliese 581 d is a rocky planet, but the potential for a deep ocean, still undiscovered, is present.
Astronomers released their findings at this week’s European Week of Astronomy and Space Science. Gliese 581 e was first located using the European Southern Observatory’s telescope in La Silla, Chile. This telescope comes equipped with a special instrument that splits light in order to find wobbles in different wavelengths. These “wobbles” can then unveil the existence of other planets in other galaxies. Absolutely fascinating stuff.
