ConnectingTheDots

"Occupy" Wall Street

As with most recent scaled protests, Occupy Wall Street has a virtual presence. The simple wearethe99percent tumblr highlights and aggregates stories of individuals in the movement.  Moving beyond story sharing, some are also leveraging web-based networks to organize direct actions. Applying grassroots mapping and adapting an online balloon mapping kit, a few folks recently organized a collaborative aerial mapping of downtown occupy wall street. Reflecting a more distributed form of organizing, on youtube this guy is asking folks to keep wall street occupied, and to continue communicating with wall street when not protesting on site, by sending back junk mail.  His youtube call for action has a healthy thread of comments, perhaps similar to the face-to-face comraderie created on the streets. 

Punk'd Augmented

While hunting for a popsicle in Central Park this balmy Saturday, I encountered some bewildered tourists intrigued but confused by this  .  Ironically, it was part of a mobile interactive boardgame  meant to raise awareness and engagement with Central Park.  Ended up verbally explaining the concept of QR codes, rather then demonstrating, as for some reason my reader wasn't registering the code.  (My favorite exploration/"deep mapping" project remains one of the pioneers Yellow Arrow.)  

Confusion isn't likely a design intention of the Central Park game's creators, however confusion (leading to self-examination) is the primary objective of an augmented reality PSA (almost like a technology enhanced Punk'd/Candid Camera) in the Netherlands.  Using an interactive billboard to augment a live, crowded street curb with a violent incident, onlookers see a "mirror" of their own reactions to a violent act being committed in front of them and gawking vs. action to help the victims. 

Helping Haiti: Missing Persons Aggregator

With the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti blanketing the news waves, everyday citizens are wondering how they can help.  Governments are sending money and troops; and coders that care are rising just as quickly to direct action.  Although not yet styled, a few of my friends are presently building a site for people to post and find Haitian missing persons information.  They're now focusing on scrapers for data on other sites to centralize as much as possible.  It will hopefully be updated every 10-15 minutes.

Be Extraordinary

The new year has me cleaning out my cluttered iPhone of underused apps.  One of my favorites from 2009 that will remain on screen 1 is The Extraordinaries.   Fusing crowdsourcing with volunteering and mobile life, the app (and website) enables people to easily take on miny missions for organizations, causes, and people they care about helping in their spare time.  Ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes, while traveling or waiting in line, users can complete concrete micro-tasks like tagging a museum's digital archive.  35K+ micro-tasks have been completed for 50 organizations.  Most are image tagging, mapping, or photo collecting related, but imagine folks will continue to explore other creative customized uses.

Hack the Debate with Current TV & Twitter

Second chance tonight to participate in round two of Hack the Debate.  Pushing at the envelope of conversation vs. consumption, the collaboration between Current TV and Twitter allows real-time Twitterer reactions to the debate (and to other viewer's comments). Detailed coverage and excerpts from McCain/Obama Debate I at Wired.

Thinking Twice about MacBook Air

I'll admit, when I first saw Steve Jobs holding "the world's thinnest laptop" I kind of wanted one, even though my own Powerbook is only 1.5 years old.  Despite the fact that the MacBook Air uses a mercury-free display, has bromide-free and PVC-free circuit boards, and uses less packaging than past systems, this innovation doesn't innovate on the short consumer love life of electronics.

Some Portraits of Mass Consumption by Chris Jordan may inspire some purchasers already toting several new gadgets to re-evaluate their impluse buys, and/or encourage designers to think twice about sustainable innovations.

The Most Terrifying Video on YouTube

It's fascinating what (unpromoted) video posts make or don't make the popularity cut on YouTube -- I'm sure there are researchers already hard at work on that question.  The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See has quickly risen to over 4 million views (interestingly mostly not on the producer's own account link) and enough comments for the producer to generate a second reponse video. 

Perhaps green is already the new black, however, with basically just a felt tip marker and YouTube account, this science teacher is aiming to give Gore a run for the money in spreading the Inconvenient Truth about the need for every citizen to address climate change.

If Looks Didn't Matter

Riding the online social networking craze, it is unsurprising that this has been an election of candidate cameos on MySpace, facebook applications, and Youtube.  A new site, Glassbooth, takes an idealistic twist.  Visitors are quizzed on the issues that matter to them most, and then matched with the candidate who best aligns with them on those issues -- borrowing from Wired, kind of like Match.com for your soulmate candidate. 

Most research indicates that candidates' personal characteristics play a large role in voters' choices.  But even if not predictive, the site is an innovative experiment in focusing voters on substantive policy issues rather than personality.  After your match is made, you still can't see pictures or videos of your recommended mate, but you can look at his/her quotes and voting record.

Visualizing Eco-data

Gore's Inconvenient Truth was not the first attempt to make our environmental statistics visually compelling, and luckily it is not the last. 

This Black Cloud caught my eye, part of World Wildlife Foundation's media campaign in China to visualize the pollution prevented by driving one day less per week.  More examples of pro-environmental art and design projects can be browsed here. 

Following the everyone-is-a-potential-creator ethos, some organizations like Eyebeam have launched contests to encourage creative types to spend some more time with eco-statistics.

Interacting with the Future

The building-sized, glowing red lights of the "Save Domino" sign is a visual call challenging residents to take a role in the controversial changes around them. 

In a different way, Future Perfect compellingly uses scale to highlight community voices.  It's interactive audio/video installation of Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards development project contrasts the vision of architects/developers with the vision of local school children and the voices of local residents.  Once stepping into the installation, the dynamic video images move with the viewer, allowing comparisons between different architectural futures (watching the Demo Video Link does more desciptive justice).

UTube / Digg / Flickr-like Game with a Social Change Twist?

I'm a fan of World Without Oil, an alternate reality game that just launched.  Players submit online blog, video, audio, and image stories as if an oil shock is happening.  What I like most is the decentralized (and potentially far reaching) way the game touches real life.  Stories are posted on people's own blogs.  Similar to Digg, and appropriate since it is after all a game, the great stories "win" and get awards.

"Missions" and other functions encourage player-created communities, collaborative stories, and collective efforts. It will be interesting to stay tuned and watch to what extent those communities and missions stay intact outside of the game.

Zooming with Google into Darfur

I remember the first time I saw Google Earth.  After exclaiming, "Wow! Cool!"  the first address I searched for and zoomed into was my apartment's street number.  Aside from gaining a bird's eye view on where one lives, people can also use Google Earth to gain a closer view on faraway places. 

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has collaborated with Google Earth to create a unique zoom into unfamiliar and unsought for addresses, the locations of crises in Darfur.  People can visually navigate into the 133,000 plus homes, schools, mosques, and buildings burned to the ground.   The topographical images are fuzzier than those of Manhattan's avenues, however quotes, photos, and videos, interspersed with icons flagging the areas of destruction, spotlight incidents, people, and places affected by the genocide and create another close-up of the ground.  Perhaps a future tool for aid workers and policy makers, there is definitely also an advocacy (click and learn more) bent.  The folks at the Holocaust Memorial Museum are hoping Joe Public will zoom here as carefully as he zooms into his own home. 

Video Games Meet Capital Hill, Palestine, and Darfur

What do video games have to do with social change?  Part of the explanation behind my even sparser postings than usual has been several new projects including one researching and writing about that question. 

The hero's mission = eliminate corruption on Capital Hill.  Instead of slinging bullets, players sling subpoenas in a video game about using the legal system to defeat shady lobbyists, Senators, and Congressmen.  Supoena Power is part of what some recent news coverage has called a trend in socially-conscious games. 

Although some might criticize games about real world conflicts as "trivializing" the issues, in a media society dominated by simplistic sound-byte news, supporters of politically-conscious games rebuke that new ways of getting information is needed.   

Recent games such as MTV's free, internet-based Darfur is Dying have succeeded in engaging players.  Set at a refugee camp, it puts users in the perspective of a displaced Darfurian who must dodge the forces that threaten her survival.  The game, which can be spread virally from friend to friend (and had 700,000 players in its first month) moved tens of thousands of players to send politicians emails urging action on the crisis. 

Much of the excitment comes from a belief that games have the potential to allow people to explore and situate themselves in someone else's reality (and thus care about and better understand complex conflicts and issues outside their personal comfort zone).   

Drawing from the troubles in the Palestinian territories, a game set to be released in early 2007,  Global Conflict: Palestine aims to let gamers see different perspectives and experience why the conflict won't just go away.  Players are young journalists who can potentially shape the region's future.  As the conflict escalates, the player must navigate between Palestinian and Israeli sources, maintaining their trust, while trying to uncover the truth.   The game will support educational uses with encyclopedia, teacher's manual, assessment, and other features.   

Perhaps more food for thought: the process of developing a game itself can be a form of education and engagement.  Darfur is Dying was the winner of a contest sponsered by mtvU, the Reebok Human Rights Foundation, and the International Crisis group.  The partnership offered a grant prize for a student idea about a game on Darfur.  The Californian graduate student who eventually won developed the game in close consultation with genocide experts and humanitarian aid workers who had extensive experience on the ground. (Read more here.)

Spreading Human Rights YouTube Style

YouTube blasted the little-known, lip-synching Chinese "Back Dorm Boys" across the world into an Internet phenomenum.  Could it do the same for human rights violations in China (and elsewhere)?  In creating The Human Rights Video Hub, nonprofits Witness and Global Voices think so.  Tapping into the viral nature of user-generated content, the partnership hopes to aggregate, attract attention, and spark calls to action against human rights abuses.  The hub aims to be the destination where anyone can upload and share first-hand video recorded on mobiles/handhelds documenting police brutality, anti-gay violence, and other human rights violations. 

So far, the number of posts has been modest.  Aside from the common issues of filtering and quality control faced by all user-generated, aggregator communities, there are unique challenges in transferring the delicate work of human rights online.  Tricky questions include how to protect submitter anonymity, how to deal with graphic sexual and violent content, and how to verify credibility (more details on MediaShift).  For now, someone is at least investing the time and money to experiment.

Green Blogging About Her Best Friend's Wedding

Travel channel (or reality show) watchers have another option to follow over the next month, Barbara Haddrill.

The plot summary:

• A committed environmentalist lives in the UK
• A best friend's wedding is 10,000 miles away in Brisbane Australia
• Air-based travel would create 5.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions while land-based travel would create a calculated 1.4 tonnes of CO2
• What's a girl to do?

This environmentalist decided to set up a blog, "Babs to Brisbane", chronicling her experience taking methods less destructive (and convenient).  Already, she is attracting supporters and critics.

One of the most inspirational individuals I've ever met, John Francis never wrote a blog about his personal choices.  Then again, this was the 1970s, before email, to say nothing of Blogger, reached livingrooms.   After witnessing an oil spill, John decided to live car-free (and talking-free) for 17 years.  Once, even when injured, he refused an ambulance -- intent on walking to the hospital instead.  He founded a nonprofit called PlanetWalk and in 1991 was appointed a UN Environment Program Goodwill Ambassador (he had started talking again by then).  By living what he preached, he eventually attracted admirers without using his voice, much less the Internet. 

Now a new generation of environmentalists is being noticed even before they take action.  With RSS and whisper-down-the-Web, we can quickly follow these potentially equally inspiring figures.