One of the perks of the life of a consultant is the incredible flexibility.  This week, I am working from my kitchen table overlooking the lake [...]]]> Marc posted “What does working on technology mean?”  After reading through my post, I realized that I had this question on my mind: “What does working on philanthropy mean?”

One of the perks of the life of a consultant is the incredible flexibility.  This week, I am working from my kitchen table overlooking the lake in our 19th floor condo.  I don’t say that to brag about our great little condo in a downtown high rise  (a very spoiled life indeed).  I point that out to emphasize the image I am about to paint.  A few weeks ago, visited the Boys and Girls’ Club of Orlando which is right next to the Hunger Coalition in Orlando.  The children at the Boys and Girls’ Club that day were homeless children.  When I looked up the address the club, I did a double take because it was on my same street address.  The same street as my neighborhood of high rises and 1st world problems (more about 1st world problems later).  To be exact, this place was 0.8 miles from my our condo complex.  I could see my building from the hunger coalition.  Going to school in Atlanta and volunteering around downtown, I was used to the stark contrast of economics from one block to another.  New to Orlando, however, I was surprised to see this for myself.  I remember it started storming while people were still scattered in the streets with their belongings while I was there from 0.8 miles down the road thinking my day of volunteer service would make an impact.  I will post images soon.

That said, is there bad philanthropy?  By bad, I mean harmful or useless to the population.  I often wonder this.  Does cleaning up a park in an urban, run down neighborhood really help? Does volunteering one day a year at a soup kitchen or playing with homeless kids really make a difference?  I don’t ask these questions in a cynical way.  It is an honest, what type of aid is really worth it?  The actions I just mentioned are on a small scale.  I often think about large scale aid like providing money and food to poor and disaster stricken areas around the world.  When we see pictures of skin and bones kids or houses completely flatted by disasters, we as a society feel inclined to donate money.  It is the natural thing to do right? Text a certain number to give or submit paypay payments or send in checks.  I think of instances with Japan, Haiti, Africa and many other areas where our 1st our nation hurries to donate.  But does that really help?  Setting aside everything that might come with handling the money and properly distributing it, does providing funds to a different economy help?

A great example and listen of the negative effect of aid is NPR’s Planet Money: How Foreign Aid is Hurting Haitian Farmers.  It discusses how foreign donation of rice, food and money hurt the local farmers.  They cannot compete with the free food from abroad and thus cannot make a living and regrow their businesses.  Other examples come when 3rd world regions are given aid and money and sometimes do not develop skills on their own, become dependent on aid and do not grow their own economies.   I am not currently any kind of expert in social and economic growth and what causes different dynamics to occur.  However, I often wonder about the value in the aid we provide locally and internationally despite how great the intentions.

That said, I will forever be a champion and advocate of philanthropy in regions that need it.  I just need to figure out the right aid and how to do it properly to help the economies build and thrive instead of provide them with solely a crutch.

It used to be clear to me. My computer was technology, my desk was not. My cell phone was technology, group meetings were not. Technology was this grand intellectual pursuit that led to new ways to manipulate and control nature. If humanity was on a journey to a better [...]]]> What does working on technology mean?

It used to be clear to me. My computer was technology, my desk was not. My cell phone was technology, group meetings were not. Technology was this grand intellectual pursuit that led to new ways to manipulate and control nature. If humanity was on a journey to a better tomorrow, technology literally designed the vehicle that took it there. To me, the epitome of working on technology was writing computer programs, and it was totally unambiguous what “technology” meant. However, that confidence has weakened over the years.

Imagine a programmer leaning back at his desk, cracking open the first can of Mountain Dew for the night. He is trying to decide what he wants his next program to do. He could write a website to organize an online community about his favorite video game. Or, he could explore some fractal geometry by generating the Mandelbrot set. Perhaps, he would settle on a malicious piece of software to satisfy his desire for mischief. If he were living in Silicon Valley, he would make the next great Facebook-killing-gamified-location-based-social-photo-sharing app.

Clearly, the act of being a technologist in this case is not a linear pursuit. That is, there isn’t some scale of progress that is incrementally added to. Furthermore, the values of the technology’s creator guide design; technology reflects the values of its creator.

Is it possible to draw a line between the value-driven part of technology and the objective part of it? Programming is just the process of manipulating symbols to structure a calculation. But is programming working on technology? You can’t do it without first deciding what you’re programming in the first place. What I mean is, it’s impossible to engage in the objective part of technology without first making a decision on the subjective part of it. Technology affords varying degrees of virtue. A bigger bomb kills more people. While a better water filter saves more lives. An optimized machine learning algorithm could be used to find terrorists or help those same terrorists plan their attacks. “innovation is not, of itself, virtuous. The carbon economy is the result of innovation. The financial crisis is the consequence of innovation. The parlous condition of global food systems is the result of innovation.” (Change Observer)

Where does this leave us, the technologists? Are we obligated to get into these questions? Or are we expected to be completely objective puzzle solvers? I suppose every engineer has to come up with their own answer to this. To me, the answer is about opportunity. The understanding that working on technology means more than just making things work reveals that engineers can embed meaning into the world’s mechanical, digital, and built structure.

“Making… an art out of your technological life is the way to solve the problem of technology.”
Robert M. Pirsig, NPR Interview (1974)

Starting Team Curious with Marc for http://www.imaginecup.com/ was one of the best experiences of my life.  I fulfilled so many passions and found an outlet for public service, technology, people, travel, adventures, exploration and changing [...]]]> To follow what Marc started:  You can blame my undying constant stream of ideas and restlessness for revival of this blog.

Starting Team Curious with Marc for http://www.imaginecup.com/ was one of the best experiences of my life.  I fulfilled so many passions and found an outlet for public service, technology, people, travel, adventures, exploration and changing the world!  I found a land of nerdom, technology and public service.  We will soon update the About page with our history and experience with Imagine Cup and the formation of Team Curious.  We embarked on an amazing journey as two American college students who randomly met in a computer lab in France and wanted to change the world with technology.

Enough of Team Curious.  I am now a Road Warriorette traveling for Big Blue (IBM), learning about business and how to use technology to improve business through informative analytics.  A big jump from my hippie, couch surfing, backpacking college student days!  The goal is to learn as much as I can here and eventually apply it all back to my passion – technology for good and technology to solve humanity’s greatest problems throughout the world.  I have so many thoughts and opinions on all the news surrounding tech for good.  However, Marc made a good point of posting often and succinctly as opposed to long, verbose regurgitation.  For now, I will talk about IBM’s 100th Birthday on June 16th!  To celebrate, Big Blue had a worldwide Centennial Day of Service.  There were over 300,000 volunteers worldwide (we’re over 420,000 strong!), 120 countries impact, 5,000 service projects and 2.5 million hours of service. I was so proud!  I spent time at the Orlando Homeless Coalition down in Florida with other local Orlando IBMers. Many other great service initiatives from IBM and the Smarter Planet campaign but I’ll save that for another post.

I will end this post with a picture that sums up what started it all for us:  The Imagine Cup Finals in Cairo, Egypt in 2009! <3

I have been travelling and volunteering on environmental projects all over the country for the last three months. Instead of getting the urge out of my system, the experience just raises more questions about how to make the world a better place.

Let’s set one thing straight: [...]]]> You can blame Vietnam for the blog reviving.

I have been travelling and volunteering on environmental projects all over the country for the last three months. Instead of getting the urge out of my system, the experience just raises more questions about how to make the world a better place.

Let’s set one thing straight: I don’t see myself as some savior to the developing world. Every day I realize how little power I really have to effect change. One day the challenge is institutional barriers, another it is economic, and still another it’s a vast gap in culture that is impossible to surmount.

But, at the same time, I can’t help but think of all the small things that can be done. As a mechanical engineer (and fire bug), anytime I see smoke, I go check out what is causing it. So far, I have seen burning trash, cooking over wood fires, traditional brick-making, the torrefaction of rice hulls, and the drying of tea leaves. Every one of these processes has a simple mechanical tweak that can render it smoke-free and more efficient (usually one of the 3 T’s: Time, Turbulence, or Temperature). Why isn’t more being done? It seems like it would be so easy.

The stories of why it isn’t so easy will come later. For now, I just want to reveal what I think is possible. I believe there is a deep well of motivation in our generation to do things that are more meaningful. I think online networks and software tools will afford us new ways to manifest that motivation. However, I have a feeling that the approach is not going to come from what people traditionally think “technology” and “innovation” mean; I expect philosophy, history, and art to guide the conversation instead.

Kathy and I have decided to restart the blog that we kept during Imagine Cup in order to start making progress on the questions we have had since.

Kathy will come at things from a different perspective. She and I argued a lot during our time working together on Imagine Cup. However, we always ended up agreeing once we had stripped away our initial impressions and gotten to the heart of what we were trying to accomplish. It has been almost two years since our time in Cairo, and I can’t wait to see what new ideas we will explore.