TED Blog

North Korean defector Hyeonseo Lee reunited with the man who saved her family

2013-05-20T21:53:22Z

TED speaker Hyeonseo Lee (right) meets Dick Stolp (left), the kind stranger who gave her a wad of cash to help get her family out of jail four years ago. Photo: SBS

A total stranger helped Hyeonseo Lee pay her mother and brother’s way out of jail as they fled from North Korea. Now, four years later, Lee has been reunited with that stranger, getting the chance to thank him in person.

Hyeonseo Lee: My escape from North KoreaIn Lee’s TED2013 talk, “My escape from North Korea,” she describes defecting from North Korea in the late ’90s and how, after nearly ten years of living in hiding, she returned to help her family make their own escape. When her mother and brother were captured in Vientiane, Laos, and jailed for illegal border crossing, Lee describes how, out of money and desperate for a solution, she was approached by a foreigner. After hearing Lee’s story, this stranger withdrew a large sum of cash — £645 to be exact — from an ATM. With the money to use as a bribe, Lee’s family was able to escape.

When Lee asked the stranger why he was helping her, he replied, “I’m not helping you. I’m helping the North Korean people.” As Lee says in an emotional moment in her talk, “The kind stranger symbolized new hope for me and the North Korean people when we needed it most.”

Earlier this month Lee was invited to be a guest on the Australian broadcast show Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), where she had an unexpected visitor: Dick Stolp, the Australian backpacker who had helped her in Laos. Lee didn’t have any of his contact information – but Stolp had seen her TED Talk and SBS, catching wind of the story, orchestrated the surprise reunion.

“I was really happy … I can’t explain with words, but it was really amazing,” Hyeonseo told Sky News after the reunion. “He says, ‘I’m not a hero,’ but I say he is a modern hero.”

Stolp, for his part, was excited to see the girl he had helped years ago. “You help a small hand and it reaches to other hands and you think, ‘That’s great, that’s good stuff,’” he said. “I’m meeting someone who is now doing good things, and inside I can’t help but feel ‘Hey! I helped this lady to go out and change her life.’”

Read more about Lee and Stolp’s meeting, or watch the SBS special on North Korea in full »

Fuel cell symphonies and art from gift bag wrappers: The Reimagine Project launches with the TEDActive 2013 artists-in-residence

2013-05-20T21:01:45Z

Soft-spoken and self-effacing, Andy Cavatorta performed with punk bands in the early 1990s, has worked with Bjork and is a graduate of MIT’s Media Lab. His counterintuitive resume has led him to create these gigantic, aural structures — both meditative and comforting — which you can see here in a video the Lincoln Motor Company partnered with TED to produce.

After an exciting night of design-themed talks at TED@250, we unveiled this series of videos that profiles three artists who came to TEDActive 2013 to show their work: Aurora Robson, Andy Cavatorta, and Gilberto Esparza. The artists’ time at TED and the resulting short documentaries are part of the newly launched Lincoln Reimagine Project, which supports pioneering thinkers in the arts, design and innovation.

Why these three? Because they turn upside down the traditional ways we imagine music, sculpture and even recycling. At TEDActive, Robson, Cavatorta and Esparza showcased original works that disrupt cultural and environmental paradigms. The videos highlight their unique artistic philosophies.

Cavatorta, as he introduced himself to the audience, aptly philosophized: “I believe new instruments will lead the way to fertile and innovative territory, challenging composers to find new voices within new expressive dimensions and constraints… Because in an ever-changing world, sometimes the only way to say something true is to say something new. Or to say something old in a new way.”

Watch the following videos to see how Robson and Esparza have combined contemporary technology with formal constraints to give unique voice and shape to their respective work.

Polluted Art: Gilberto Esparza’s Fuel Cell Symphony
Gilberto creates a futuristic symphony made from plastic tubes, an iPad and bacteria.

Recycling Plastic into Art with Aurora Robson
Robson asked TED attendees to give her the plastic packaging from their gift bags, which she used as a medium to create an ethereal, floating sculpture.

20+ resources for better giving and living a more altruistic life

2013-05-20T19:34:36Z

Peter Singer explains the “effective altruism” movement at TED2013. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Every day, most of us do something morally indefensible — we go about our lives without sending help to the 6.9 million children under the age of 5 who will die this year from poverty-related disease. In today’s talk, philosopher Peter Singer makes the case that ignoring these kids is as inhumane as ignoring a child who’s been hit by a car on the street in front of you.

Peter Singer: The why and how of effective altruism “Does it really matter that they’re far away?” asks Singer. “I don’t think it does make a morally relevant difference — the fact that they’re not right in front of us, or the fact that they’re of a different nationality or race.”

But he’s not saying this to make us feel bad and helpless. Today’s talk actually delivers good news: that through what Singer calls “effective altruism,” we all have the ability to make a difference. Effective altruism begins with reason – the realization that all lives are of equal value — and looking for charities that affect the most lives, the most effectively.

To hear how a single person — and one who is nowhere close to a billionaire – can make a big impact for good in the world, watch this talk. And below, some resources to get you thinking about giving more effectively.

Peter Singer’s top 10 recommended charities:

Against Malaria Foundation. Of those 6.9 million children who die every year of poverty-related illness, 1 million succumb to malaria. AMF provides insecticide-treated bed nets, which only cost $5 apiece.
Schistosomiasis Control Initiative. Protecting a child from worm-based disease for a full year costs around 50 cents. This organization works with governments to make sure it happens.
The Humane League. Invests time, money and energy to reduce animal cruelty and save the lives of animals, focusing on farmed animals.
GiveDirectly. This nonprofit transfers money to poor individuals in Kenya, letting them spend it for food and other basic needs, or on high-return investments.
Oxfam International. This mega aid organization works in a wide range of areas, including disaster relief, education, sanitation and women’s rights.
Proven Impact Fund. Dedicated to data and results, this fund from Innovations for Poverty Action supports interventions with strong evidence of success.
The Fistula Foundation. Fistula is a ghastly injury during childbirth, and it afflicts women living in the poorest areas of the world. This organization provides needed surgery.
The Hunger Project. Encouraging men and women to end their own hunger, this organization assists poor villages for five years, relying on the local workforce to build skills and take over before they leave.
Vegan Outreach. A nonprofit that seeks to expose and end cruelty to animals.
Population Services International. A global health organization that focuses on family planning, a simple service that can improve the health of women and their children.

Resources for finding other charities to support:

GiveWell. This nonprofit does in-depth research on charities and highlights a small number that do a remarkable amount of good per dollar they receive. (Singer recommends this site.)
Effective Animal Activism. One of the causes nearest to Singer’s heart is animal liberation, and he is impressed with this charity evaluator that focuses on animal suffering.
Charity Navigator. The largest charity evaluator in the U.S., Charity Navigator has data and ratings for nearly 6,000 charities.
Great Nonprofits. A site dedicated to informing would-be donors through reviews from board members, volunteers, experts and regular folks who’ve interfaced with a charity.

Resources Singer recommends for connecting with other people interested in doing good:

Giving What We Can. The members of this international society make a bold pledge: to donate 10% of their income to eliminating poverty in the developing world. A good place to connect with others, and to find high-quality organizations to support.
The Life You Can Save. At this site, you can pledge to donate any percentage of your income to those in need. In addition to directing you to great charities to support, it’s also a log for local volunteer opportunities.
Effective Altruism. A blog from Peter Singer and William MacAskill dedicated to the tenets of effective altruism.
The High Impact Network. This group has a great acronym – THINK. Members meet up to ponder effective giving — both strategically and creatively.

A resource for finding the career that does the greatest good:

80,000 Hours. Named after the number of hours most people will work over their lifetime, this career advice site has a twist – it gives advice on how different careers can have an impact on poverty. As Singer mentions in his talk, the site doesn’t shy away from unusual answers; it suggests that working in finance and donating a percentage of your income could fund multiple aid workers.

And further reading in effective altruism:

The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty. Peter Singer’s book about how each person can be a part of the solution to poverty, it calls for a cultural change to consider poverty eradication a natural part of a moral life.
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution and Moral Progress. Peter Singer’s classic study of ethics, which examines the question: Where does our desire for altruism come from? He shows how it might come down to the biological drive to protect or kin — but that it is also a matter of reason.
The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. A bold look from Peter Singer and Jim Mason on how our individual food choices affect animals, the environment and our fellow human beings.

Want more advice on how to parse the world of nonprofits and giving? Check out Dan Pallotta’s tips for picking a charity that’s right for you »

Turning Haiti, Tunisia and the West Bank inside out: A documentary on JR’s worldwide participatory art project to air on HBO tonight

2013-05-20T19:16:43Z

“We use images like a weapon to fight for social causes,” says a man in the trailer for INSIDE OUT: The People’s Art Project, a new documentary that airs on HBO tonight. The doc tells the story of JR’s INSIDE OUT, a global art project in which anyone, anywhere, can send the artist a portrait and have a poster-sized version sent back to them for pasting in public spaces. JR's TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside outSince the project’s launch in 2011, when JR received the TED Prize, these oversized black-and portraits with a faded polka dot motif in the background have become a fixture on the walls, fences and sidewalks all around the world. To date, more than 130,000 INSIDE OUT posters have been pasted in more than 100 countries.

INSIDE OUT: The People’s Art Project, directed by Alastair Siddons, isn’t about untangling the identity of JR – who always appears in public wearing Ray Bans and fedora. Instead, it aims to show how people around the globe have made this fascinating project their own. Yes, cameras show JR in his Paris studio but, from there, they travel to Haiti, where photographer Benoit has pasted up dozens of images of those living in tent cities following the devastating earthquake of 2010. The message: that while hardship continues in the country, people remain infused with hope.

The film goes on to bring viewers to North Dakota and the West Bank, where major INSIDE OUT actions have been launched, as well as to Tunisia, where portraits of everyday people are revolutionary in and of themselves. “We were always seeing pictures of the dictators,” says an INSIDE OUT artist in the country. “Now it’s people—Tunisians.”

INSIDE OUT: The People’s Art Project premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in April. And tonight, the film makes its television debut on HBO at 9pm ET/PT. The documentary will also be available on demand through June 30. Find out more about the film and its airdates at HBO’s website »

See JR interviewed about the documentary by Christiane Amanpour last Friday »

Are you or someone you know interested in launching a worldwide project on the scale of INSIDE OUT? Nominations for the 2014 TED Prize are open, from now until June 16 »

New playlist: The big picture

2013-05-20T12:46:38Z

Ready for a Sunday binge of talks that will make your head spin? In this new playlist, twelve speakers take on our biggest issues: shifting global powers, the value of democracy, climate change, the nature of time, the future evolution of the human race. Some of these talks bring good news and some bring potential bad news — and all of them bring to mind new questions as they supply answers to old ones.

Watch the TED playlist, “The Big Picture,” which includes talks by Misha Glenny on global crime networks, Rory Stewart on why democracy matters, Stewart Brand on why we should think ten thousand years in the future and Juan Enriquez on how the next generation may be a different species »

TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built to illuminate ideas in context. A new playlist is added every week. We hope you enjoy this installment.

TED Weekends investigates why we judge others

2013-05-17T23:22:52Z

Rebecca Saxe speaks at TEDGlobal 2009. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Above and slightly behind your right ear, exists a part of your brain many scientists believe is specifically dedicated to thinking about other people’s thoughts – to predicting them, reading them, and empathizing with them. It’s called the temporoparietal junction, and this is the area cognitive neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe focuses on in her research.

Rebecca Saxe: How we read each other's mindsAt TEDGlobal 2009, Saxe delves into our amazing capacity to identify and predict others’ emotions and actions, and how this ability is learned throughout childhood. This skill serves an important function in human relationships – we learn how to fill in the unspoken blanks between what someone is thinking and how they are presenting themselves. This is what allows us to glance at a photo of someone and be able to know what she is feeling.

Saxe’s talk is this week’s featured idea for TED Weekends on the Huffington Post. Below, find essays all about our ability to, in a sense, read minds.

Rebecca Saxe: Learning to Read Someone Else’s Mind

My TED Talk, above, is about the process by which we learn to read each other. Here are five reasons that I study how human brains think about other minds.

(1) It is a hard, and awesome, problem. To me, the most breathtaking idea I’ve ever heard is that each thought a person ever has, every moment of experience, of insight, of reflection, of aspiration, is equivalent to a pattern of brain cells firing in space and time. How does a pattern of brain activity constitute a moral judgment? A moment of empathy for a fictional character? The idea for a sentence you’re about to write? Someday, scientists will be able to imagine, simultaneously, these abstract thoughts and how each corresponds to a specific pattern of brain activity. I don’t expect this understanding to arrive in my lifetime. But it’s thrilling to imagine that future, and to feel that my research might be a small step on the route that gets us there. Read the full essay »

Phillip M. Miner: The Neurology of Disgust

Growing up believing you are an abomination is strange. But, if you are gay and grew up in Kansas (or many other parts of the world) — like I did — it’s not all that uncommon. We’re told from a very young age that being gay is wrong and gross. The lesson that men who have sex with men are disgusting is repeated so frequently, your average kid quickly gets the message.

Sometimes the moral judgment is delivered directly — often times through someone with religious moral authority or family. Other times it comes more subtly through language cues. In my experience, the euphemisms for men who have sex with men seem to bleed together to form a powerful and often false identity, saying all men who have sex with men are feminine (“pansy”, “fairy”, “poof”), perverts (“pillow biter,” “corn holer,” “sword swallower”), and abominations (“queer,” “bent”).

There’s disagreement on the physical mechanisms for creating moral beliefs in the brain. Read the full essay»

Barbara Ficarra: Equipped for Empathy

“The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” These are heartfelt words by award-winning actress Meryl Streep.

Do we all have the power of empathy? Are we hardwired to know what other people want? Is it easy to think about other people’s thoughts?

Rebecca Saxe’s enlightening TEDTalk ”How To Read Each Other’s Minds” asks: “Why is it so hard to know what somebody else wants or believes?” “Why is it so hard to change what somebody else wants or believes?” And “How is it so easy to know other minds?” Read the full essay »

Your weekend reading: The case against empathy, gorgeous photos from the NatGeo contest

2013-05-17T23:07:55Z

If you can only digest six awesome pieces of Internet content this week (plus one congrats), look no further. Here’s a round-up of the best stories on the webs this week.

Paul Bloom: The origins of pleasure

TED speaker Paul Bloom makes a compelling case against empathy, arguing that empathy alone is not sufficient to uphold morality — and may even work against it. [The New Yorker]

42 truly stunning photos from the 2013 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest. [The Atlantic]

Would you be friends with Humbert Humbert? Authors weigh in on whether fictional characters ought to be likable. [New Yorker blog]

Damon Horowitz: Philosophy in prison

The most popular way to spend time at Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center in Virginia is … reading Tolstoy? [The Washington Post] Watch a talk on philosophy in prisons »

Scientists show an electronic jolt to the brain can improve mental arithmetic skills in the long-term, and without negative side-effects. [New Scientist]

Chris Hadfield alights from space with another social media masterpiece, a cover of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” along with a full-length music video. Shot in the International Space Station. [YouTube] Watch a TED Blog playlist we published to welcome him home »

Raghava KK: My 5 lives as an artist

And a brief congrats to TED speaker Raghava KK, who was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer this week, and TED Fellows Skylar Tibbits and Marc Fornes, who were both awarded the 2013 Architectural League Prize for Young Architects + Designers.

X marks the spot: TEDx event brings hope after bombing, plus this week’s TEDx Talks

2013-05-17T22:12:58Z

The TEDxBahrialUKarachi show went on, despite a bombing in the city the day of the event. Why? To give hope. Photo: TEDxBahrialUKarachi

The city of Karachi, Pakistan, was on lockdown after bomb blasts claimed 57 lives in the midst of a tumultuous election. And on the day of TEDxBahriaUKarachi, yet another bomb shocked the area. Still, organizers Furqan Hussein and Sana Nasir boldly tread onward toward putting on a memorable event. “‘Ideas for Survival,’ our theme, sowed the idea of surviving in situations when there’s [little] or no hope,” Nasir tells the TEDx Blog in an interview. “The one thing we wanted our audience to take back [with them] was hope.”

These are the lengths some TEDx organizers go to in order to put on great events — dozens of which are held across the world every week. From these events, the TEDx team chooses four favorite talks each week, highlighting just a few of the enlightening speakers from the TEDx community and its diverse constellation of ideas. Below, listen to this week’s talks – on topics ranging from the data revolution to how we perceive pain.

Democracy’s data revolution: Simon Jackman at TEDxSydney
At TEDxSydney, Stanford researcher Simon Jackman demonstrates some of the ways in which an increased availability of data gives us a more accurate picture of electoral trends, the political zeitgeist, and the serious implications this has on the shape of public conversation. (Filmed at TEDxSydney.)

Pain is all about perception: Silje Endersen Reme at TEDxNHH
Nearly everyone will suffer from some form of back pain during their lifetime, often without a specific cause. At TEDxNHH, Silje Endersen Reme explains how our mental state can affect the way we perceive chronic and acute forms of back pain. (Filmed at TEDxNHH.)

Detecting cancer before it spreads: Raj Krishnan at TEDxSanDiego 2012
Curing cancer isn’t just about better treatment, says Raj Krishnan. If we can improve detection, patients will enjoy much better odds of survival and recovery. Krishnan demonstrates how doctors can use existing technology to scan for DNA markers of cancer cells — even before the patient is showing symptoms. (Filmed at TEDxSanDiego.)

African thumb piano jam: Hiroyuki at TEDxTokyo
At TEDxTokyo, Japanese artist Hiroyuki plays a remarkable musical performance on the kalimba — also known as the thumb piano. A handheld plucking instrument still relatively obscure in Western music, the kalimba is an ancient part of the heritage of several cultures in sub-Saharan Africa. (Filmed at TEDxTokyo.)

And here, some of the week’s highlights from the TEDx blog:

An in-office TED all about design

2013-05-17T22:15:18Z

Paola Antonelli, MoMA’s design curator, talks about why she acquired 14 video games for the museum’s collection at an event in our office called “Design is Everywhere.” Photo: Ryan Lash

Whether we’re conscious of it or not, design affects us in hundreds — if not thousands of ways — each day. Just think back to your morning. A designer made the decisions that went into the craftsmanship of your bed, your futon, your mattress. A designer determined the form and materials of your toothbrush, your shower, your towel — helped create the experience of your first cup of coffee or tea. Less tangibly, a designer was involved in the way you caught up on the news or checked the weather. And that’s all before you’ve even left the house!

Design can be big — think of the subway systems or highways. Design can be small — think of the details in the fonts we stare at on screens and in books. But design is truly all around us. And so Thursday night in the TED office, we held a salon called “Design is Everywhere,” hosted by our Ideas Editor, Helen Walters. Over the course of the night, four speakers gave talks on their unique approaches to design.

First up was Jake Barton, whose media design firm Local Projects creates systems for museums to unearth works in whimsical ways, and to let the citizens of a city tell their stories in their own voice. In a very moving talk, he shared how the team approached creating the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. As Barton says, September 11 exists somewhere “between current events and history” and all of us – no matter where we were at the time — are witnesses to the event. He explained how the museum sees its mission as collecting stories of that day — even from museum visitors. He also explains how names on the memorial are arranged by an algorithm attuned to “meaningful adjacencies” of personal connections.

Next, came designer Ayşe Birsel, co-founder of Birsel + Seck, who has been called, among other things, the “Queen of Toilets,” for her innovative TOTO toilet seat. She calls her design process Deconstruction: Reconstruction. Birsel talked about her workshops, in which she asks people to rethink their greatest design product: their lives. She presented thoughtful maps and charts that different clients have made of their priorities, influences and loved ones, and how it helped them reconstruct — and ultimately express — what’s meaningful to them.

In November 2012, New York’s Museum of Modern Art acquired 14 video games for its design collection — causing a few gasps among art critics. How dare they place Pac-Man and Portal alongside Picasso and Picabia?! In a very funny talk, MoMA’s design curator Paola Antonelli makes the case that, yes, video games do belong in her museum. Why? Because, as one attendee tweets: ”Video games are the purest form of interaction design.” She details how to acquire a video game for a museum (forget the game gear, get the code) and shares her wishlist for the next few acquisitions.

And finally, in a lighthearted and sharp-witted talk — the kind you could only expect from the cartoon editor for The New Yorker magazine — Bob Mankoff offered his reflections on the nature of good humor and gave tips to would-be cartoonists. (Hint: “That’s the nature of any creative activity – you’re mostly going to be rejected.”) While sharing scores of his favorite “idea drawings,” and divulging the intentions behind the magazine’s occasional abstruseness, he showed how no joke is funny unto itself. Context is everything.

“Design is Everywhere” was part of TED@250, a series of salons held at our New York office at 250 Hudson Street. Since our main conferences are only twice a year, TED@250 is an opportunity for talks that rethink headlines and respond to conversation happening in real time. It’s also a place for speakers with the kind of personal stories that simply work better on the small scale. Stay tuned. Some of these talks may be coming to TED.com.

Only connect!: Fellows Friday with Erik Hersman, on the rise of his go-anywhere modem BRCK

2013-05-17T18:05:47Z

Five years ago, the non-profit tech company Ushahidi exploited existing technology to create a powerful platform that allowed users to crowdsource crisis information sent over SMS. Now the Kenyan company is set to do the same with the BRCK, a wireless, rugged, battery-powered modem ready for any environment. As the BRCK’s Kickstarter campaign gathers steam, Ushahidi co-founder and TED Fellow Erik Hersman tells us his vision for the BRCK and how it could change how we connect — in Africa and beyond.

It sounds like the BRCK could be a pretty groundbreaking device.

Yes. It’s always hard for people in the West to understand, just the same as it was hard for technologist to understand Ushahidi. They looked at it and said, “Yeah, what’s special about that?” To be honest, technologically there’s nothing special, and there wasn’t even five years ago. It was that we were just using technology differently to solve a certain type of problem.

Same thing with the BRCK. It actually uses a 15-year-old technology. Modems and routers are not new — it’s the way we’re putting them together into a package that makes it really valuable. So sure, you can tether your phone. Sure, you could buy a wifi device. Those will each last two hours and can be shared with five people. Ours lasts 8 to 12 hours and can be shared with 20 people. Ours is made to deal with power on/power off all the time.

Then there’s a cloud backend. You can go to our site and get into your own devices from anywhere in the world, and write software for it from that level. There’s also a hardware side where you can basically plug anything into it, and the devices stack like bricks. So you can plug in extra batteries, maybe a water sensor. Maybe you want connect a Raspberry Pi CPU to it and make a little server. Fine — you can do all that and actually control that anywhere in the world. So layer two is how the BRCK becomes this bridge between the cloud and the internet of things.

Who are the intended users?
At the moment, I think there are two kinds of users for the BRCK. In Africa, it’s will be anybody who needs to connect to the Web often, and who feel the pain of power outages and the less-than-stellar ISP activity that we have in Kenya or in Nigeria or wherever you are. Small businesses across Africa will use it for connectivity.

In the West, I think the user type are the people who travel, who go camping, who go backpacking or hiking and want some type of internet connectivity in a rugged case. We’re happy if it gets picked up in the US and Europe, but we are much more interested in providing a device that works for people like us here in Africa.

But I’m guessing there are many other possible applications we haven’t even thought of yet.

Where did the idea for the BRCK come from?

It came to mind as a product during a meeting with some colleagues in South Africa. On the plane back, I pulled out my notebook and started writing down the different things that would make a router/modem for Africa really work. At that time, it was just a fun idea.

It wasn’t until last summer that we got serious about it. We got a prototype level and said, “Oh, this might actually work.” We got a guy that came on part-time and would do the prototyping with us, and it kept accelerating. Rapid prototyping is very hard to do in Kenya, because you don’t have all the tools you would have elsewhere and you can’t overnight components that you might need, if you bought the wrong ones — which we did. But when we realized this was at a very serious point, we hired two people, one with expertise in actual product prototyping in manufacturing, and a firmware guy who’s really deep into the IO side of firmware design, which is difficult stuff.

Everybody says you can’t do hardware in Africa, and we’re like, well, let’s try before we just say you can’t. And what we’ve found is that they’re wrong. You can do it, it’s just harder.

Will the BRCK come with a network connection?

It’s made just like your normal everyday router. So you can plug an ethernet cord into it and just use it that way, or of course use it over a wifi network. We want it to come with a SIM card in it. We’re still trying to figure out who will be our global partner on that – we’re talking to various providers right now. Either way, you can just pop any SIM card into it for 3G connectivity. It’s unlocked, so you don’t have to worry about that. That automatically creates a wifi hotspot that you can move anywhere. And if you have more than 20 people, you can put more BRCKs around, and they automatically mesh, so it makes it easy to expand.

What about battery time?

Our minimum requirement is that, if the power goes out, you’ll still have a full eight-hour work day’s worth of connectivity. We’re trying to make sure that it can take almost any type of input as well. You can plug an extra battery pack, for example. It has this micro USB slot, but underneath it is also has a GPIO port, which allows you to plug in any type of sensor.

The BRCK can take anything from four to 15 volts, so you could plug in any solar kit. You can plug it into your car charger. If you want something seriously off-grid for a long time, then grab a car battery and that will last you, with full-time usage, probably 10 to 20 days. It doesn’t have a huge drawing power, but it does decrease depending on the amount of people on the device.

It has 16GB of on board storage as well, so you can make a DropBox sync right there if you want, or you can make the whole device into a BPN, that kind of thing.

I can imagine this will be a godsend for rural communities, boat communities, photojournalists, and other off-grid folks.

Yes, I think there will be many people we didn’t expect who will need what the BRCK will provide. In fact, what I want to know from the TED community is: What other circles of people or communities be interested in the BRCK and should know about the Kickstarter campaign? Are there other niche communities — or even big communities — that this would make sense for? I think we’re closing in on $90,000 of the $125,000 we need. We need at least that amount to get to our minimum production run to get our economies of scale on certain components.

How does the BRCK fit in with your vision at Ushahidi?

At Ushahidi, we believe that older technology is not fully utilized. Where in the West people move to a new technology really quickly, in Africa we don’t. So there’s a reason why USSD and SMS are still really big things on mobile phones here. It’s why we think Ushahidi worked — this idea that you don’t have to throw away the old right away, you can actually use it for other things. And sometimes the problem sets that you’re solving for aren’t going to come from places that look like Cambridge or Camden; they’re going to look more like Nairobi or New Delhi. And these neighborhoods and communities are sometimes using technology that isn’t made for them. They’re trying to shoehorn in a newer technology.

Part of our job at Ushahidi is taking a look at those things and questioning the very nature of where they are and why they stand there. And then if possible — if it has something to do with increasing information flow from ordinary people, we’ll look at it. That’s why the BRCK is something that Ushahidi is interested in doing as well.