Discussion about entry: The Ninety Per Cent Solution - Channeling Geek Powers for Good in an Open Source TV Design Show
This is discussion about The Ninety Per Cent Solution - Channeling Geek Powers for Good in an Open Source TV Design Show.
This is discussion about The Ninety Per Cent Solution - Channeling Geek Powers for Good in an Open Source TV Design Show.
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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
Underserved communities seem to suffer lack of attention, lack of integration and resources and thus lack of solutions. The current belief seems to be that such attention, integration, resources and solutions should come from others. From members of well served communities, I guess?
Solutions are undervalued and instead the whole mess is turned into social experiments. That is why, personally, I prefer to build my own solutions - first of all, I then know it's done right :) secondly, I learn in the process, thirdly I don't perceive myself as unable to build a solution - I'm unable to buy what I want simply because there simply is no market, but market rule games will always produce market rule products and that means, shitty stuff for high prices, substandard quality for ridiculous prices and anything halfways useful is unobtainable or at dream prices. So market and all its ramifications are not an option: wrong rule set. And fourthly, one can waste A LOT of time trying to do all that organizing when all you want are better prosthetic hooks. Those are drafted on the computer, produced, tested and then modified. Anything else that you do away from CAD software and the workshop is a freaking waste of time. Obviously.
So, what is all this here? It's a waste of time, quite clearly, from point of view as a purely solution focussed underserved community solution builder and seeker like myself. Underserved communities could use the Internet, radio, television, public appearance on streets including demonstrations or begging, they can use advertising or mouth to mouth propaganda. There is Facebook, Twitter, websites such as this and lots more. But ultimately, talking generates warm air but it will get no one nowhere.
Personally I believe that the lack of specific solutions is the main issue. There is not a lack of managers and sales mouthes, organizers and passers-on of information, that like to stand in front and sell specific solutions as the idea they had themselves, people that need the attention and that do anything to get it. As a constructor, those guys you want to avoid like vampires avoid sunlight, they only help jacking up the prices and complicate stuff. It's coming up with specific solutions that was for some reason hard or not possible so far that lead to the current situation - not a lack of disc jockeys.
I'll keep my own stuff sleek here. I'm a not reporting to nobody. I'll post my solutions directly to my own web stream and that's where those that wish to look can look. We will sell our stuff at minimal cost so you will have a very hard time deciding whether getting the parts milled yourself is at all worth it. Why - because there'll be no middle man. Middle men screwed it up so far, so we'll stop that. I had some mails with some German prosthetic manufacturer middle men/women over their 'products'. Obstructive would be polite. Personally, inspiring a better world is stopping the bloated ill defined stuff, and starting to develop and sell hard solutions directly via the web, without highway robbery and nothing. In upper extremity prosthetics, my current heroes that do just that - WALK, NOT TALK!!!!! - are John Becker (Becker Mechanical hands), Bradley Veatch (ADA Technologies: V2P Prehensor) and runner ups are Mark Lesek (building a new arm) and of course myself (new wrist about ready to be released). We put our money and screwdrivers where our lips are. We keep the overhead sleek, minimal, on the spot.
But obviously this is media now. That's not bad if you are into group building, entertainment and all that. It's not my thing, but then I'm part of an underserved community and not part of the media cake. So you would be looking for people that do have "ready to sell" solutions that seem to be lying around on the street, ready to "become marketed" by some medium, someone channeling the idea, some sales person, an organizer and redistributor, that feels like they're the preacher boy everybody was waiting for. The last thing you want in that situation are ideas that NOW start to be built bit by bit and that end up as finished product in 2-3 years time. Now you want stuff - ready to sell ideas - that turns your bloodstream into liquid mercury within, say, minutes. Media and TV are "get it now" dogs.
If I was in your position and in the USA now, and media happy, and if I was an organizer marketing guy, the first and only thing I'd do under the current subject would be this right now:
1) Get in touch with Ruth Clark over Chaz Holder's legacy prosthetic inventions
http://maic.jmu.edu/journal/6.3/focus/tolliver2/tolliver2.htm
http://www.fashionmoves.org/site/806143/page/45030
2) Make sure you get in touch with whoever is in Haiti helping all the new amputees to cope and be fitted - US army, most likely; get the necessary bodies - Amputee Colaition, Blue Helmets from UNO - to issue a formal support statememt;
3) Get enough funding to help Ruth and whoever comes along to build these limbs such as by asking Swiss Re or other reinsurers as these may carry the burden of later damage;
4) Go there and equip people with prostheses. Get your hand/s dirty and get as many people set up as possible.
5) Do that with media involvement.
Take your fingers out now and get rolling. Haiti can't wait and neither can you.
Don't let these opportunities slip:
http://blog.physiciansforpeace.org/blog/physicians-for-peace/0/0/collect...
Good luck and may you find a lot of ready to be sold ideas!