Design for the Other 90% Exhibit + “Micro-Giving” Global Needs Index to Connect Rich to Poor/Fullfill Global-to-Local Requests

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Economy, 04 Education, 06 Family, 07 Health, 12 Water, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Geospatial, Gift Intelligence, International Aid, microfinancing, Mobile

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.”
—Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises

Exhibition on view National Geographic Museum, Washington, DC through September 6, 2010

Imagine connecting item & service-requests to those lacking basic needs into a global online and mobile market forum like a Craigslist.org merged with Kiva+ SMS/txt message capabilities, something like Ushahidi, Wikimapia, as well as GoogleEarth-like & SecondLife-like 3D map to post photos and messages of requests and successful transactions without a centralized “middle-man” who manages everything.

Example: An African farmer needs a part for 1950’s Romanian pump. An aid worker posts need via UNICEF Rapid SMS. A Romanian engineer volunteers to make the part; a German pays for FedEx from Romania to Nigeria; a tourist commits to personally delivering it and posting a photograph of the farmer and repaired engine online to close out need.

It would be designed so that anyone could add “affordable” items (that meet a particular criteria) to the list. Please email earthintelnet |at| gmail.com if you have suggestions. For more info on the concept, see page 7 of the Earth Intelligence Network overview draft and this global range of nano-needs graphic. On 7/21/10 Craig Newmark of Craigslist.org sent this email: “..a number of people say they're working on similar efforts,” but he did not specify. Another great example is Practical Action's “Practical Presents” store where a goat, fish cage, farm tools, and many more products can be purchased for donation.

Global Range of Needs Index/Map/Forum could include the following items:
+ Cheap colloidal silver-treated water filters: see Potters Without Borders & Potters for Peace

+ Lifestraw, the one person water filter that can be worn around the neck

+ Saline water condenses into drinkable water using the WaterCone (video) (product info)

+ Various water storage products (bladder & plastic lined pond)

+ Peanut butter project (child malnutrition) connected with UNICEF, Doctors without Borders, USAID, etc and PlumpyNut

+ Affordable burn-proof stove | Guatemala Stove Project | stoves fr the Congo | Darfurstoves.org

+ Hand-Crank Battery-Free Dynamo Flashlight | “Light Up the World” solar powered battery L.E.D. lighting

+ List of innovations here from the Honey Bee Network

+ Cell phones (regionally compatible) / One Mobile per Human / One Mobile per Child / instead of just One Laptop per Child (see the $12 computer project) There are phone donation campaigns but the closest one found so far aims only at health care workers. And this wireless, local, do-it-yourself, telephone company toolkit.

+ KICKSTART water pumps for crop farming

+ Micro-irrigation systems for small plots (mentioned in this video at the chapter 6 mark), also called PEPSEE systems (also see DripTech)

+ Moringa seeds/leaves (nutrients + water filtering)

+ “Pot-inside-Pot Cooler” filled with sand and water (see 36 sec video). When that water evaporates, it pulls heat from the interior of the smaller pot, in which vegetables and fruits can be kept. See this African “refrigerator” called Zeer Pot (also: link1 | link2 | link3) which can keep meat fresh for five days mentioned in the book Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

+ Shoes (Soles4Souls.org)

+ Shelter (mini-domes) and Architectureforhumanity.org (video in Haiti), Open Architecture Network, rammed earth, tires, and plastic bottle innovation, Earthship Biotecture, Grassroots United, and Uber Shelter (video).

+ 10 cent blood-type test, 99 cent ovarian cancer blood test

+ Toothpaste & toothbrushes or teeth-cleaning twigs | African twig brush/chew sticks (sell to Westerners, sold here) | traveler feedback on chewsticks | Miswak | Other African info and some historical perspective on chew sticks

+ Solar dynamo radios + Farm Radio (African rural poor)| Healthy Radio

+ Bicycles / bicycles for humanity (and locks!) ONE | TWO

+ Devices powered by bicycle (Global Cycle Solutions)

+ Durable versatile safer wheelchairs Video 1 | Video 2 | Whirlwind Wheelchairs International (open source)

+ Low-cost infant warmers

+ Affordable prosthetics, eyeglasses, mobile eye exam lense

Other needs: medical supplies ($3 negative pressure pump, telemedicine microscope, Rice Univ project list), seeds & fertilizer, toilets (see this loo, & one-time use bags), electricity and medical equipment in Afghan hospitals, products for the elderly, games for children, and services such as the needs for software to be developed where there is a desire for “Code in Country” (CIC), and a global “classifieds” tool for job-hunting via mobile SMS (Craigslist.org but with more reach and aware to those without a web connection). Continue reading “Design for the Other 90% Exhibit + “Micro-Giving” Global Needs Index to Connect Rich to Poor/Fullfill Global-to-Local Requests”

2010/07/132010/07/13

Whitehouse Needing Online and Mobile Crowdsourcing & Collective Intelligence for Decision-Support

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Government, Mobile, Open Government, Technologies

The Next Apollo Project in 140 Characters

Innovators are being asked to friend Uncle Sam as the next good ideas for the government are being sought through social networks.

By Emily Badger

Anil Dash sums up the power of crowdsourcing with a simple question he put to his Twitter feed a few months back. It was time for a new cell phone, he announced. What should he get?

“Somebody I don’t even really know said, ‘Here’s a list of the most popular handsets in America ranked by how much radiation they put out,’” Dash recalled.

Now he had an info stream he hadn’t even thought to consider. And if social media could better inform his relatively small cell phone conundrum, imagine what it could do for the big-picture questions we really want to get right — the questions government answers on behalf of us all.

“We have this disconnect where, as a private citizen, I can ask for my friends’ opinions on something on Twitter or Facebook,” Dash said. “But yet, someone can be making decisions that affect all of us” — a government official, that is — “but not have that ability.”

Full article here

Related:
+ http://expertlabs.org
+ http://expertlabs.org/thinktank.html (Open Source crowdsourcing web application)
+ Large list of “virtual democracy” related resources

2010/07/132010/07/13

Emergency response after the Haiti earthquake: Choices, obstacles and finance

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 06 Family, 07 Health, AID, Civil Society, International Aid, Non-Governmental, References

Report link

Six months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti on 12th January 2010, this report describes the evolution of MSF’s work during what is the organisation’s largest ever rapid emergency response. It attempts to explain the scope of the medical and material aid provided to Haiti by MSF since the catastrophe, but also to set out the considerable challenges and dilemmas faced by the organisation. It acknowledges that whilst the overall relief effort has kept many people alive, it is still not easing some of their greatest suffering.

Report link

Related:
+ The sad math of U.S. aid in Haiti: 6 months, 2 percent (Washington Post, July 13)
+ Haiti Rolling Directory from 12 January 2010

2010/07/12

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Denies Access to WTC Collapse Data

09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Civil Society, Government, Open Government, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

FINDING REGARDING PUBLIC SAFETY INFORMATION
Pursuant to Section 7(d) of the National Construction Safety Team Act, I hereby find that the disclosure of the information described below, received by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”), in connection with its investigation of the technical causes of the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers and World Trade Center Building 7 on September 11,2001, might jeopardize public safety. Therefore, NIST shall not release the following information:

1. All input and results files of the ANSYS 16-story collapse initiation model with detailed connection models that were used to analyze the structural response to thermal loads, break element source code, ANSYS script files for the break elements, custom executable ANSYS file, and all Excel spreadsheets and other supporting calculations used to develop floor connection failure modes and capacities.
2. All input files with connection material properties and all results files of the LS-DYNA 47-story global collapse model that were used to simulate sequential structural failures leading to collapse, and all Excel spreadsheets and other supporting calculations used to develop floor connection failure modes and capacities.
~
Patrick Gallagher Director National Institute of Standards and Technology
Dated: JUL 09 2009

(From http://cryptome.org/nist070709.pdf)

Cryptome.org claims that the above letter pertains to the below photos
+ Batch of 52 photos in zip file (37 MB download)

Keywords: Opendata, opengov, secrecy

2010/07/092010/07/09

Journal: When are Leaks Good for Society?

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military, Peace Intelligence

Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Charges for Soldier Accused of Leak

The New York Times

By STEVEN LEE MYERS
July 6, 2010

BAGHDAD — An American soldier in Iraq who was arrested on charges of leaking a video of a deadly American helicopter attack here in 2007 has also been charged with downloading more than 150,000 highly classified diplomatic cables that could, if made public, reveal the inner workings of American embassies around the world, the military here announced Tuesday.

Army intelligence analyst charged in Wikileaks case

By Leila Fadel

Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 7, 2010

BAGHDAD — The military said Tuesday that it has charged an Army intelligence analyst in connection with the leak of a controversial video and the downloading and transfer of classified State Department cables, in a case that is likely to further deter would-be whistleblowers.

Click on headlines to read each full story.

Phi Beta Iota: PFC Manning swore an oath to defend the Constitutions, not the chain of command and not the secrecy of immoral, illegal, and unaffordable policies that are funded by the U.S. taxpayer and done “in our name” but not at all in our interest. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

His charge sheet rests on “discrediting the Armed Forces” which is laughable–it is the behavior of our leaders that is a discredit to all of America; and on subverting “good order and discipline.” His behavior in revealing the webs of deceit and incompetence that characterize our military, our “diplomats,” and our spies is precisely what America needs in order to re-establish good order and discipline in harmony with our Constitution.

America needs MORE leaks, MORE “misbehavior,” because we now suffer a “system” that is so far removed from the Founding Fathers' vision, and so deeply divorced from the principles enshrined in our Constitution, that we must, without question, consider PFC Manning to be a “just man” whose best place in a time of injustice is to be in jail as an example to us all. BRAVO ZULU for courage and intelligence in the face of the enemy–he is us. If the lawyer for the defense has any integrity at all, this will be a public jury trial and the PFC will walk free, as he should. It's time to trash this pathological system and get back to the basics of freedom and a foreign policy of commerce and peace.

Wikipedia on Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War.

Resistance also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor which compared the government to a machine, and said that when the machine was working injustice it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be “a counter friction” (i.e., a resistance) “to stop the machine”.

2010/07/08

NSA To Monitor Critical Computer Networks Looking For Imperfect Citizens

Civil Society, Commerce, Computer/online security, Corporations, Cyberscams, malware, spam, Government, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

(IEEE Spectrum) By: Robert Charette // Thu, July 08, 2010

There is a story in the Wall Street Journal about a new, $100+ million, classified program being run out of the National Security Agency (NSA) that will monitor critical commercial and government infrastructure systems such as electricity grids, nuclear power plants, air traffic control systems and the like in order to detect cyber attacks.

Dubbed “Perfect Citizen,” the NSA hopes the program will hep it fill in what the WSJ calls the “big, glaring holes” in knowledge about exactly how massive, coordinated cyber attacks might negatively affect the US.

The Journal story goes on to quote from an internal email from US defense contractor Raytheon, the program's prime contractor, as saying:

“The overall purpose of the [program] is our Government…feel[s] that they need to insure the Public Sector is doing all they can to secure Infrastructure critical to our National Security.”

“Perfect Citizen is Big Brother.”

Full article here

2010/07/072010/07/08