Crowd-Sourced Compound Eye
Image by BioBus
Our project at Figment NYC this year: a crowd-sourced compound eye. We took pictures of participant’s eyes using our microscopes then pasted all together on this collage. EYE’ve never seen anything like it!
Crowd-sourced robots
Image by narnua
This picture seems to get clicked quite regularly, so here’s the story (posted on Economies of the Commons conference blog ecommons.tuxic.nl/?p=2116)
"While the production of these films is not entirely democratic, Veenvliet for the remainder of the presentation, very much stressed the point of the benefits of making your work (and source files) accessible for a world-wide audience. For example, by posting a 3d-model of a humanoid robot called ‘Petunia‘, other artists took this model and started animating it. The story of the crowd-sourcing project was eventually featured by i.e the MIT newspaper and the Dutch NRC newspaper." (Petunia video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOlwuAvmnrY)
Interestingly enough, there is something BP can do with all these suggestions, and it would be good to get out ahead of the negativity in the media and their trashing of BP’s Brand Name. Let’s face it there are nearly 50,000 wells in the Gulf of Mexico and it supplies almost 30% of our US oil – we can’t just turn it off.
Here is my suggestion to the challenge British Petroleum has when it comes to what to do with 1,000s and 1,000s of suggestion tips which have been coming in non-stop to its tip hotline. What BP needs to do is to borrow some help from the online community and use “Crowd Sourcing” techniques, those like DARPA recently used when it “Challenged” everyone to find the “Red Balloons” 10-of them which were scattered around the country. MIT found all ten, in an extremely short time.
This strategy makes sense for DARPA as it could someday be used for military purposes, such as it could be used to look at satellite photos of Iran to find anomalies, nuclear facilities. It also has potential space applications with NASA – finding locations on Mars that might have ice or water, potential landing sites, maybe even surveying galaxies to find similar exo-planets to Earth, which might contain life, etc.
What I am saying is that British Petroleum should post ALL of the suggestions online, put it out there, as it shows transparency and it is a good PR move too. Something Congress is afraid to do with the bills it passes. This will allow independent teams to work through those lists of suggestions and citizens to “rate” the ideas. Then teams can whittle all the ideas down, find duplicates, and see if the “wisdom of the crowd” prevails and finds consensus on various types of solutions.
Let’s help BP find the best ideas and when this is completed give out prizes to the winners.
The ideas that win, go ahead and give 5-scholarships to MIT, or a top engineering school. Perhaps, give $ 100,000 seed money for any innovative project that the team with the best idea, might like to do. Why not turn an unfortunate situation into a positive one. Rather than playing all the doom and gloom in the media with screaming environmentalists, or any mean-spirited person the media can drum up for a sound bite, we can make some progress on potential future solutions in case the present solutions don’t work out.
Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes oil is very important in America. http://www.oilchangeguys.com.
I need your help planning my roadtrip through Portgual and Spain (this is a crowdsourced trip)
Image by Zach Klein
This summer I’m going to visit Portugal and Spain. I’m traveling with my girlfriend and two buddies. We have no specific plans but have following conditions:
+ We have 10 days
+ We’re flying in and out of Lisbon.
+ We’re renting a car and consider this a ‘road trip’
+ We’re willing to camp some nights
+ We expect this to be a gastronomic experience more than anything else
This maps show a basic circuit I’m planning, however we’re quite flexible. If you have any experience with this area, please place notes on the map indicating the location of your suggested stops.
Thanks ahead for your help with this crowd-sourced vacation project.
crowd sourcing
Image by Peter Čuhalev
Competition entry for Crowd Sourcing book by Jeff Howe
Cloud Sourcing.
Crowd sourcing environmental governance, March 2011 Goldsmiths U. Design & Environment
Image by cesarharada.com
www.designandenvironment.co.uk/2011/02/crowd-sourcing-env…
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“Crowd-sourcing Environmental Governance” workshop by Cesar Harada & Shannon Dosemagen.
2011 March 8 & 10, Design & Environment, Goldsmiths University of London.
Hello! Here is Cesar Harada and Shannon Dosemagen writing from the Gulf of Mexico, USA. We are thrilled to announce the upcoming hands-on workshop we’ll be having together in London : Come! And let’s ignite the discussion here.
ABSTRACT : Problem, Questions, Objectives
Each of us is not only witnessing, but actively participating in the degradation of our environment, our only life support system. The symptoms range from climate change, man made catastrophes, resource wars, resulting environmental refugees, etc. We are lacking a powerful environmental authority, a court of justice, and coordination in general. We have amazing earth science but poor individual education, international collateral treaties but no capacity to reinforce them. Governments and institutions are powerless to mitigate such complex and border-less issues. Can the solution emerge from the civil society? Can the people re-invent environmental governance with new technologies, collaborative medias, crowd sourcing, and mobile technologies? Do we need a central authority or can we generate decentralized, local, humble, bottom-up solutions? Can we design alternative services, products, technologies, infrastructures and behaviors as the new form of environmentalism. How can we go beyond activism and sustain long term positive change – what is your strategy?
WORKSHOP
Social Geometry, Architecture of play, Natural or Man-made Catastrophe, Humanitarian response to crisis, Crowd sourcing Environmental Governance. During 2 days, 10 students will be supervised by Cesar Harada (France – Japan) and Shannon Dosemagen (USA) at the Design & Environment department at the Goldsmith University, London. During the first half, they will experiment with social networks and how they can generate an operational organization and architecture. The students will be introduced to existing forms of environmental governance and cutting edge design and activism. During the second half, groups of students will elaborate their own designs in the area of their interest. Workshop leaders will help them model-building ideas that are creative, local, replicable and scalable. The workshop is aimed at starting a discussion, to encourage the students to take action in the “real world” and have short-term local experiments to learn from.
THE PEOPLE : Students, Workshop leaders
The workshop for the Design & Environment students from Goldsmiths University will require the students to venture their thinking into diverse fields : architecture, law, economy, politics, environmental engineering, anthropology, computer science, social media etc. The groups projects are expected to be diverse and exploratory. Cesar Harada has a background in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art, won the Ars Electronica Golden Nica [NEXT IDEA] with the Open_Sailing project, worked as project leader and researcher at MIT, and is coordinating the making of the WEA (World Environment Action) website started in *iHub_ Nairobi, Kenya. Cesar is currently coordinating the development of Protei : an oil cleaning open hardware robot.
Shannon Dosemagen has a background in Anthropology from the University of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Shannon is the coordinator of the Oil Spill Map at LA Bucket Brigade, mapping the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, using Ushahidi, a software allowing people to report by SMS, twitter, mail, on the acclaimed website oilspill.labucketbrigade.org. Shannon has also been piloting the aerial mapping of the Oil Spill by communities as part of the Public Laboratory group. Shannon has extensive community, field and teaching experience, interested in social implications of environmental events, and environmental refugees in particular.
DAY 1 : March 8th
Morning : Oil Spill mapping, World Environmental Action. Environmental governance and cutting edge activism. Groups brainstorming.
Afternoon : Social networks and Architecture of Play (choreography, construction)
DAY 2 : March 10th
Morning : Design. Theory in practice.
Afternoon : Thinking by doing.
Evening : Presentation of project ideas.
Discussion
We would like to start asking questions to open up the discussion, please comment below and ask more questions – we’ll answer in line 🙂
1>> When you think about environmentalism, what comes first to your mind? Is it the little actions like recycling / the activist social group / the green ‘leaders’ / green designs and brands / the materials we use / scientific research / global warming / your own body / your children / the philosophical current / something else? Which action has the strongest and longest lasting impact? Can you make a personal numbered list below here, in the comments?
2>> When you think about environmental politics, what comes first to your mind? How do you feel about the current relation between the environment and politics today? How does it affect the majority of peoples life?
3>> As a designer what do you think is your role about environmental issues?
Feel free to contact us before and after the workshop : contact {at} cesarharada {dot} com _ shannon {at} publiclaboratory {dot} org. Looking forward to meet you all! Cesar and Shannon.
Vídeo produzido por Kattia Hernandez
Hometown IPO & BPO from China
