February 2012
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Thinking Fast and Slow about Climate Change →
Think fast.
What’s the first thought that comes into your mind when you see “climate change”?
What’s the first thought that comes into your mind when you see “car crash”?
If you are like me, “climate change” conjures a vague image of melting ice and perhaps an image of a forlorn polar bear on a shrinking ice floe, while “car crash” produces a vivid image of twisted metal and broken glass. I’m...
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PopTech-sponsored Climate Resilience Lab, Day One
Thoughts from Lab participant Ned Breslin:
Great day, fabulous people, learned a ton. Some key takeaways for me:
Woman in Bangladesh reassess her situation after yet another flood wipes out her chickens. Decides that ducks are a better option and is of course proven right. Refers to ducks as “flood-proof chickens” – classic
We should marvel at the resilience and adaptation of many...
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“Disasters flow along social contours, there’s no such thing as a natural...”
– Joni Seager, Professor of Global Studies at Bentley University and Climate Resilience Lab participant. (via poptechlabs)
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“The silver lining of the tech-obsession in social innovation in Kenya is that...”
– Kippy Joseph, Associate Director of Strategy at The Rockefeller Foundation and Climate Resilience Lab participant. (via poptechlabs)
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WatchNext week we will be hosting our Climate Resilience Lab in Nairobi, Kenya. With this in mind, more than a few of us at PopTech have been getting our jive in sync with the help of this week’s top 10 music videos from, you guessed it, Kenya.
The Lab will bring together a carefully chosen network of climate researchers, gender experts, social innovators, technologists, designers, and...
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“The PopTech Fellows program completely recalibrated and refocused my...”
– Michael Murphy, 2011 Social Innovation Fellow
Nominate a PopTech Social Innovation Fellow for 2012
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January 2012
93 posts
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“Innovation happens best when people of different backgrounds come together to...”
– Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, talking about his visit to the White House and the State of the Union. (via bridif)
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Columbia, Stanford get $30 Million to Create Joint... →
Big news on the innovation front: Columbia Journalism School and Stanford’s School of Engineering are teaming up to create an Institute for Media Innovation. The Institute hopes to bridge the gap between journalism and technology and encourage collaboration between the two disciplines.
The institute, officially called the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation, is made...
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The beginning of Africa’s long, slow transition... →
At the end of 2011, there were the first signs of smartphone use on SMS: for the first time in some countries, rather than the volume of SMS growing inexorably, it declined for the first time. Russell Southwood looks at how wider use of mobile Internet may affect SMS volumes in Africa and at two of the new generation of interfaces designed to make it easier for Africans to use the mobile...
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Trans African Caravan of Hope →
The Trans African Climate Caravan of Hope is a road show that will seek to galvanize the cross country stakeholder voices, with an ultimate aim of telling the African story while making known the demand of Africa among its inhabitants and the rest of the world. The Caravan is a huge mobilization and awareness creation opportunity for African civil society to highlight the challenges climate...
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This Is A Creepy Robot
twicr:
This is the robot I get when I put my Tumblr name “twicr” into RoboHash.org. Yeah, kinda purple-y creepy. Give it a shot with your Tumblr name and let everyone see what weird robot avatar you’ll be turned into after the robot uprising.
(h/t PopTech)
Ha! This is ours, BTW.
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RoboHash: Turn text to robots →
Looking for a friendly robot to add some sci-fi flare to your website or blog? RoboHash is a cool little script that will turn any snippet of text, username, file name, etc. into a cute custom robot (or monster, or alien!) that you can use as you see fit. You can change the size and file type to further meet your needs.
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WatchBernard Lietaer on money: Monoculture vs. multiplicity
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Help Joel Sartore rename the Biodiversity Project →
We posted images from Satore’s Biodiversity Project yesterday.
Joel needs your help in renaming The Biodiversity Project. For the past two weeks he’s been posting about his quest to take photographic portraits of the world’s endangered animals. He’s traveled to zoos around the country—and the world—to do it. He sees zoos as “arks” helping to preserve creatures at risk in the wild. But...
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WatchWhat happens when ambitious and talented data scientists are connected with social organizations rife with data but lacking resources to do anything with it? 2011 Social Innovation Fellow Jake Porway’s Data Without Borders helps bring these two groups together, using data in the service of humanity to design transformative visualizations and decision-making tools.
Recently, we checked in...
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“It makes sense to use food as a topic and medium for design. The world has never...”
– Marije Vogelzang (PopTech 2009) in Design Indaba’s “Design:Digest.”