The future is mediocre

Are you dissatisfied with the progress of technology?

Well, it turns out that you're a minority.

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough

Wired magazine talks about how the need/want for convenience in the digital age has encouraged "just good enough" gadgets, information formats, you name it.

Ben Hescott, computer scientist extraordinaire (who I heard about this article from) says, with a snicker, that the RSA system that protects so much of our commercial and personal communication today is also "just good enough". It relies on an unproven assumption about the hardness of certain problems involving large prime numbers. This means that everytime you go on the internet, you are "just secure enough".


But there's more. This is the flip side of just-good-enough:

The last page of the article touches on Kaiser Permanente, an integrated healthcare organisation made up of for- and non- profit groups of entities, the largest of its kind in the country. I'm not really a fan of large corporations, and they have got some negative press in the past, but as of late August 2010, I have it on reliable account that they're trying to reinvent themselves not as the-cost-concerned-HMO but the-HMO-that-cares.

Here they are, at the cutting edge:

"In 2007, Flanagin and her colleagues wondered what would happen if, instead of building a hospital in a new area, Kaiser just leased space in a strip mall, set up a high tech office, and hired two doctors to staff it. Thanks to the digitization of records, patients could go to this "microclinic" for most of their needs and seamlessly transition to a hospital farther away when necessary...

What they found is that the system performed very well. Two doctors working out of a microclinic could meet 80 percent of a typical patient's needs. With a hi-def video conferencing add-on, members could even link to a nearby hospital for a quick consult with a specialist..."

This might have a developing world ring for some of you folks out there...

To me, What Kaiser is doing sounds great, especially in the world's-least-efficient healthcare system, where incredibly high costs, extreme bureaucracy, and poor incentives for doctors and healthcare providers trap people in inefficient and non-optimal plans and systems. Don't even get me started on the whole health insurance thing.

Fun has you

The problem (I'll admit I took some liberties in defining it):

People don't care enough about their communities, cities, environment, world.

The theory:

If you want people change their behaviour, to do something, make that thing fun:

watch:

How to make throwing rubbish away fun

visit:

http://www.rolighetsteorin.se/en/ -- This word means "funny safety theory" in Swedish. Google told me so.

From using the stairs to recycling, Volkswagen of all people are devising innovative solutions to make people act more positively, and have more fun, at the same time. I hope that in the future fun will be a reliable way to make people be better people.

I think the trick is finding lowest-common-denominators (or greatest? I don't quite know) of fun. For example, I enjoy riding my bike as my primary (only) means of transportation (which makes my carbon footprint smaller), but this is rare among people. The greatest successes will come from increasing the incentives to cultivate high value-to-action behaviours like recycling and using public transport.

"Cheaper" actions like recycling will of course be easier than taking the bus. I don't like buses or trains that much, they're all plastic, often dirty, never on time, people are cold, but imagine if each bus and train car were somehow unique and interesting.

The Fun Theory is a fascinating approach, and if it's been done before, I haven't seen it as well publicised, and compellingly presented as this.

Go Sweden!

Call me madam*

*Name of a chop bar in Osino, along the Accra-Kumasi road.


I've been getting no small amount of attention in Ghana on account of my earrings. I've had my ears pierced for quite a few years, and wear a pair of small steel studs these days.

One of the first people to remark on them was a mobile credit seller.
"Are you a boy or a girl?" he asked me. He was convinced the bible had a verse telling how earrings were for women, not men, to wear, and that mine must be causing me great pain.

He asked me why I wore them and I said, "Well, I like them."

"But it is for a woman," He continued," If I gave you a dress, would you wear it?"

He was just diving into the part of the conversation when he asked me how I could not believe in God and why I didn't go to church when young woman wearing a uniform (of a bank, supermarket, or filling station) came into the conversation and lectured his head off, that there was more than one religion in the world, and that I didn't have to go to church with him if I didn't want to.

"Goodbye, Michael," she said as she got up and left. She'd been listening the whole time.


A few days later, on a tro (sort of a minivan-bus-taxi), a woman selling eggs with hot pepper walked up to the window and smiled at me.

"You have these," she said, pointing to her earrings.

"Yes I do," I replied, grinning.

"Do you also have these?" she said, gesturing to her breasts.

I wanted to tell her I wished I did, but hesitated moments too long.

---

I'm enjoying all this attention I'm getting, which is a little out of the ordinary for me. I take secret delight in bucking the status quo (in such small ways) in a place like this, dominated by stubborn, hard-headed, (often aggressive, often very muscular) men.

Interesting fact: it is indeed true that only women wear earrings. Girls and boys alike are required to have hair cut close by lower grades of schools, which means that they are nigh indistinguishable before puberty. This means that most Ghanaian kids are going to school (yay!) and that earrings become a very apparent distinguishing feature between boys and girls, which seems to make an idea persist and carry on to define men and women.

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Little did I know that a year later, I would wear a dress to my graduation ceremony and royally piss my family off.

Eyeh small

Koforidua is a city with a small, dense bustling centre, and large lush green suburbs spread out at the foot of some hills in Ghana's Eastern region. The surface of this country is like the palm of the hand, with small, even (but steep) undulations.

I woke up in Koforidua this morning to roosters crowing and Muslim prayers from nearby mosques. After a quick breakfast of bananas, peanut butter and brown bread, we jumped on bicycles while the day was still cool and set out for Suhum, 25km away. Creeping upslope in low gear and then speeding down, we wound our way on a wide road through the Ghanaian countryside: hills covered with small trees and tall grasses, fields bursting with bananas and maize. It was green and so gorgeous.

At Suhum, we chopped (ate) koko and kosi: thick homogeneous porridge made from millet flour spiced with ginger and nutmeg, and (which goes together with) fried bean cakes. Holy fried bean cakes it was good.

Back in Koforidua, after a quick shower, we chopped a quick banku (fermented maize meal) with beans, okro (okra), palmnut and groundnut soup, and spent the day at Ability Bikes. It is perhaps the first worker owned cooperative bike store and workshop in Ghana, and is run by six disabled people. How culturally cutting edge is that? Most of them have had polio. One of them is a strong rider, who came out to Suhum with us, and all of them are on the Koforidua wheelchair basketball team, which recently defeated teams from Accra and Kumasi, the two largest cities in Ghana.

David, an ex peacecorps volunteer is the Bikes Not Bombs man in the country, mentoring Ability Bikes in mechanics and co-op management. Read about their story here! This is where, after leaving the IPA project unanticipatedly early, I will spend a week before moving on to Kumasi.

As we sweated over the wheels we build and bikes we overhaul, the sky grew dark. "Let's move the table in," David said as rolled in over the hills, "There will be a strong wind."

Sure enough, minutes later, a fierce wind whipped across the front of the workshop, ahead of a thick grey curtain that obscured everything behind it. We sprinted to the roof of the three-storey building, uniformly punctuated by rusted steel rebars poking up, ready to build the next floor.

I was speechless as I climbed the last flight of stairs and beheld the awesome panorama that rose up over me as I stood level with Koforidua's rooftops. Below the wide open sky, we watched the city scatter and scramble as the nearby hills were almost completely hidden by the storm pulling in. It was so beautiful that if the lightening had struck me down right there I would have went happily.

(where did that photo go!??)

In a matter of seconds, the storm was on top of us, and we were soaked.

Obruni, part 1

Accra is awesome despite itself. It wasn't designed to be particularly pedestrian friendly but it can be walked, it isn't particularly well organised, and the roads and sidewalks are beginning to crumble. Heat boils up from the concrete baking under the sun in the middle of the day.

What make Accra a surprisingly comfortable, liveable city are the people. Ghanaians seem friendly by definition, sometimes hospitable to a fault. The first night I arrived, two Ghanaian boys insisted on helping me find my way to the sketchiest hostel in Ghana. The first thing I did the next day was to check out and walk into the city.

Since then, I've assimilated well, eating at food stands, talking to the nice ladies who run them, and grinning at their children as they play. One little girl actually asked me to buy her chocolate and started to cry when her mother tried to take her away. I've given my number to too many people -- it's one of the first things kids ask for. Next is usually "where do you live?"

Communication culture here is to "flash" the other party on mobile: to call them but cancel before they pick up, as a way to say hi or to ask to be called back. So, rather than give out fake numbers, I've saved a bunch of numbers in my phone as "Don't pick up 1", "Don't pick up 2", "Ok kid 1", and so on.

Accra isn't a particularly tourist friendly place, and doesn't have a lot of things to do. It bustles and moves, and is itself a spectacle.


Alas, I'm leaving the city. My next destination is a village called Osino where I'll be working with an organisation called Innovations for Poverty Action, which is the face of Jameel Poverty Action Lab away from MIT. It's pretty exciting stuff. Already I'm learning little facts that I hadn't thought about before. For example, there's a lot more to microfinance than I understand. There are so many lending methods, subtly different to suit people from different economic and geographical situations -- and I'm only just getting to know them as simplified models.

Another lesser known fact is that farmers have traditionally got the short end of things with banks. Because their income is often unreliable and very heavily dependent, in size and timing, on the harvest, they make poor customers even for the microfinance institutions aimed at alleviating poverty. Most farmers can't pay back a fixed sum regularly through the whole year, but do need sizeable sums of money every now and then just like everyone else, whether it's to pay for a hospital visit or the childrens' school fees.

One idea IPA is exploring is products to help farmers take loans they can repay, often involving some bet against the weather and crop prices. IPA is also running studies to look at products to help organise their stream of income to allow them to accumulate substantial savings. In a country that is over 50% small, subsistence farmers, this is pretty significant.

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It has become very clear to me these days how little I walked in Boston -- only between my bicycle and anywhere else I had to be. I can feel my legs growing and adapting to how I transport myself these days, walking what feels like a long way between places. My calves and shins hurt.

Nor Easter

Time really stretches out as I fall, even though it's just a twenty foot drop from the creaky, rotting train bridge.

And then the world is suddenly deep rust-red brown and frigid cold, rushing up around me. My head breaks the surface and I look up to a blue sky, green hills. Oatbran is on my left, shaking water from his golden locks. It's an amazing day.

In fact, today approached perfection. It might be the day this year with the single highest density of awesome people that I managed to see / run into. Stars are aligning in small worlds. People are headed off to a host of different coasts, states, countries to do a wide range of awesome research, life, study, work that they are excited about. When I think about all the people I know, here now, I'm amazed it didn't hit me like a ton of bricks (or socks, you know) that I've been hanging with the coolest cats this side of the Amazon. I'm so happy I got to spend any time at all with them.


I'm struggling with myself these years in college, and I'm glad that the gods conspired to hint to me that I shouldn't. I'm starting to feel pretty happy about the people, projects and things of this last year.

-worked on projects such as Global Cycle Solutions (congratulations on winning the 100k development track prize! and the audience choice at the final!) with Don Gwyn, Lisa Taco, and other amazing people
-got hands dirty, enjoyed the warm hospitality of an organic community-farm
-raced in an alleycat with greasy greasy bike hipsters
-met the most incredible developingworld engineers/mechanics whilst volunteering at D-Lab
-found professors who I like and who are excited about what I want to do and who (seem to want to) guide and encourage me


The list goes on. I almost don't want to leave just yet, I wish I could stretch out this state for just a little longer. But it's time to go.

pow wow

I just spent an hour listening to the Habeas Schmabeas episode of This American Life. It's superbly well done (won a Peabody Award) and incredibly moving.

I must require that if you have not already, you must listen to it, here.

Habeas Schmabeas tells of the unbelievable atrocities committed by the US government on the premise of national security in places like Kandahar and Guantanamo, from extensive research and firsthand from detainees and volunteer attorneys.

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A few weeks ago, I also saw Jacqueline Novogratz of Acumen Fund speak, and she was super awesome. She's a hero I don't have time to worship.

Acumen Fund is doing really awesome stuff supporting innovators and entrepreneurs in developing country, both by investing in them and by providing them with top notch advice and consultation. And I haven't even begun to describe how effective and amazing what they're doing really is.

If you have time, you should watch all of her TED talks.