The Ninety Per Cent Solution - Channeling Geek Powers for Good in an Open Source TV Design Show
We're making better science TV to solve problems no one else will. With DIY fun, a social conscience, and participation, it's Mythbusters meets American Idol with a crunchy center. Instead of taking up couch space, our viewers will create the show, helping people, and helping promote science and engineering.
About You
Section 1: About You
First Name
Jonathan
Last Name
Kuniholm
Organization
Shared Design Alliance/Open Prosthetics Project
Country
United States
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
Shared Design Alliance Open Prosthetics Project
Organization Website
Organization Phone
919-491-2819
Organization Address
PO Box 306, Durham, NC 27702
Organization Country
United States
Your idea
Name Your Project
The Ninety Per Cent Solution - Channeling Geek Powers for Good in an Open Source TV Design Show
What is your idea? What makes it innovative? Why is it important?
We're making better science TV to solve problems no one else will. With DIY fun, a social conscience, and participation, it's Mythbusters meets American Idol with a crunchy center. Instead of taking up couch space, our viewers will create the show, helping people, and helping promote science and engineering.
Will you launch your idea as a business or non-profit?
Non-profit
Country your work focuses on
What will be the impact of your idea?
The majority of the world lives in conditions that would be unacceptable to most in the developed world. They lack the economic power to generate the solutions that they really need: clean water, safe cooking tools, and access to information. Tens of millions of people suffer from orphan medical conditions that number in the thousands, with many affecting as few as tens of people each. These groups have in common that neither capitalist nor command economies, nor the combined efforts of NGOs worldwide have solved their problems.
Volunteers, engineering students, community activists and others stand ready to try to solve these problems, and many would gladly give their ideas away for free. Rather than participating in robot wars, building concrete canoes or dropping eggs off of buildings, these volunteers could be learning and demonstrating real problem-solving and engineering skills while tackling the worlds real problems.
In addition to going some of the way to publicize the needs of underserved communities worldwide, this show will energize Americans and people worldwide about science and engineering education, making these topics exciting and showing their true impact.
Who will help you develop your idea? Why are you the one to make this happen?
I'm inviting everyone to help me develop the idea of the show, as well as help define and work on the projects presented on the show. Using the experience that we've had with The Open Prosthetics Project, we're going to help others use the crowd to help solve their own problems. We've had great success drawing attention to an area that hasn't gotten much before, with almost no resources. I believe that this is repeatable, and that by implementing the lessons that we have learned about what works and what does not in distributed collaboration, we can help everyone solve problems for which we've failed to find solutions.
If we are successful in getting the seed money from Changemakers, we will leverage contacts in the documentary and reality TV industries to make a pilot demonstrating the entertainment possibilities of this idea. We will follow several problems through presentation, online collaboration, prototyping and testing, to completion and implementation, using volunteers and our distributed production model from start to finish.
Who will help you develop your idea? You will. Let's put our heads together! Join Right Now!
How much will it cost to launch your idea? (This can be an estimate)
Using crowd-sourced content and volunteers, the pilot as well as the show itself will be inexpensive to produce. We believe that a pilot can be made for less than $50,000, significantly less than most television pilots cost to produce (the "Lost" pilot was reportedly $12 million). Indeed, it may be that the pilot will be more expensive than the show itself to produce, because of the advantages that the show will have in user-contributed content once the model has been in place for a while.
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Comments
Please explain why your idea/project, is suited/perfect to using... 'media' ...to bring about A BETTER "WORLD"...the entire planet...? Thank you! a.
Media includes the traditional--television--and new media--the internet, and, more specifically web 2.0 tools where users get to add content of their own.
By using user participation through the ability to contribute content of their own using web 2.0, and the more traditional broadcast television medium, we hope to create an energy and focus on solving the group of problems that our governments and society have failed to solve.
In this way, we can systemically address the problems of underserved communities that currently make this a less than perfect world--hunger, waterborne disease, unhealthy cooking, unavailable adaptive devices for the disabled, you name it.
Because this is a meta solution that addresses a systemic problem--there are many problems that our governments and society utterly fail to address--it is perhaps better positioned to have an impact on improving the world than any more narrowly focused effort.
Does this help?
Jon
Hi a b,
I can weigh on the how this project will leverage traditional media like TV. I'm a TV producer and I see on a daily basis, the power that the medium holds to energize its audience. Viewers of shows can get extremely passionate about what they watch. They post comments on message boards about the show, often criticisms, sometimes accolades, but either way, they love to be involved. Usually, their contribution ends at the online forum. This concept not only gives them the power to get involved beyond simple comments - it may get them on TV.
I've seen the kind of weight that promise can hold to people. Having geek skills is one thing - being able to show off your smarts to millions is an entirely different thing. There are numerous examples of how that allure of fame has motivated people to great lengths. This show gives the viewer the opportunity to show off their skills to a large audience but also to be recognized as someone who did it for the public good.
A person who helps people by being smart and coming up with an elegant solution that could have a huge impact on people's lives? I'll put that person on TV in a second - and make them a hero in the eyes of the viewers.
This show will make that opportunity available to people. Different kinds of people than the ones on American Idol or Amazing Race. These are people that spend their time making things. After they get off work, they hit the shop, garage, or workbench...and tinker. They produce works of genius sometimes and many of them are not only happy to apply that effort towards helping people, but would gladly take the opportunity for a little (or a lot of) recognition for their efforts.
This project will use the power of television to make the world better - by energizing the people with the smarts and the skills to do it.
Chuck
Is there currently a common solution you guys are looking for from the community? What's the problem to be solved?
Damon -
Great question. First off, I would say that we are trying to solve the problem of underserved communities. That's very broad, and a pretty tall order. It encompasses the problems of the developing world, those with orphan medical conditions, and more.
Let me give an example. Our inspiration and experience with these ideas came from my interest in improving prosthetic arms, as a dissatisfied user. Check out the http://openprosthetics.ning.com for some examples of the community working on control with LEGO hands, reverse engineering out-of-production hooks, and improving existing products.
One thing that we have learned is that a lot of people would love to help, but just don't know what they could do. With no budget, and a bunch of volunteers, we've accomplished a lot.
With more attention and access to more volunteers (a nationwide TV audience), we could accomplish a lot more, and I don't believe that these results are limited to prosthetic arms. In America, tens of millions of people suffer from thousands of orphan medical conditions. Worldwide, billions live in poverty.
We'd like to channel the collective creative energy that's now devoted to other things to solving all of these problems. If you have a suggestion for one that we should tackle in the pilot, please go to http://90percentsolution.ning.com/ and suggest it.
Let's put our heads together!
I got it - an engineering render farm of people. I think it's an interesting idea with lots of room to run. The social aspect feels "right" as well. I like the ideas Chuck presented regarding incubators developed/produced from readily available pre-existing components for countries where they are currently unavailable.
I like that Damon - a render farm. Also known as crowd sourcing. The people behind projects like Firefox and Linux have seen it in action. Linux has had thousands of people working to make it happen. Some have said that it has been the single project with the largest number of humans participating ever. Most of them have been volunteers.
A render farm of people working together to pick off one problem after another that would have otherwise gone unnoticed and unsolved. The exciting thing is that the show may not even end up featuring but a fraction of these problems. It's possible that only the most interesting or the most dramatic will filter their way up to make air time. The rest may still get solved - by the render farm of people that are part of the momentum built by the community and the TV presence.
Hi Damon - there are a ton of possible problems that underserved markets experience. We could choose to tackle any of them. Some examples might be:
- Water quality issues in a particular village in Kenya. How to get the water out of the well without contaminating the source.
- A low cost incubator for Africa. Incubators cost tens of thousands of dollars but really just need to keep a baby warm. There's no motivation for a medical device manufacturer to make one out of low cost materials but surely it can be done.
- A device to calibrate EKG machines in the developing world. Machines that are old and forgotten by the west - no longer supported by technicians, but that still need calibration for safe operation.
There are really thousands of problems like these. Essentially, just think of any problem that people have that is not solved by financial motivations. We have connections with several organizations that have lists of problems like these, just waiting for solutions.
We can search for the right problems to approach but I have no doubt that a shortage of problems will not be what limits us.
C
I understand and applaud the idea of bringing engineering solutions to underdeveloped countries, but what about the education needed to create and utilize these solutions for themselves?
Shannon -
Thanks for the comment.
I believe that these two goals--the delivery of *appropriate* technology to those who need it (not all in the developing world) and the sustainability of that technology through local expertise and knowledge, go hand in hand and are indeed inseparable.
Because what we are talking about is open design, all of the know-how and decision-making that led to a particular design will be openly available. The benefits of this model manifest in both the process of creating the solutions (education), and in the targeting of the solutions themselves (targeting underserved communities that our society has failed).
It's probably better to think of this as the delivery of engineering solution-making, rather than the delivery of solutions. To extend a metaphor, rather than giving a fish, we are creating a worldwide network for the improvement of fishing techniques, and trying to incentivize the free sharing of ideas that improve fishing.
Jon
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