UPDATE ON TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVES FOR PEACE

AND INVITATION TO JOIN OUR GROUP

 

Dear «First_Name»

This mail is going to all the people that I have been in touch with since TIP (Technology Initiatives for Peace) was kicked off in April 2005. Some of you I know from my peace involvements. Some I have had the good fortune to meet in person, or speak with on the phone and others are just email and web/blog friends.

There have been lots of activities, lots of new ideas and we have made some very steady progress. The purpose of this note is to bring you up to date.

 

And very importantly our purpose here is to INVITE you to become part of the conversations to move TIP forward - at a brand new yahoo group called tip-conversations. The link to join the group is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tip-conversations/

Click on the JOIN button at the top right.

 

** The yahoo group and the website are open to all. So please share this invitation with others you may know might be interested **

 

Websites

The website providing the primary documents about TIP (the key concepts and call to action, appendices and additional information in the fashion of Q&A) are still hosted at http://www.infinisri.com/TIP

The Gandhi video produced by Italian Telecomm (won the "epica" award) is still such a draw. I have seen it a dozen times while showing to people; it continues to inspire me each time. The Weblog for TIP continues to thrive with quite a few wonderful resource and ideas there. The posts cover a wide range of facets of TIP. Some recent posts there are:

 

 

Main Idea

New technologies for promoting freedom, cooperation, human dignity, understanding and mutual trust are needed. Research in Information Technology, Biotechnology and Nanotechnology - needs the guiding hand of humanity striving for peace and harmony. TIP intends to plan and incubate a series of research initiatives that would spawn a new generation of technologies that serve our mutual cause. Eventually envision entrepreneurship and special investment funds for a broad range of technology initiatives. [From the TIP website]

 

"And there is no dispute that war was the original motivation and has been the continuing source of support for the development of computer technology."

 

"If it is true that the personal computer started out as an aid to ballistic calculations, it is also true that a population equipped with low-cost, high-power computers and access to self-organizing distributed networks has in its hands a potentially powerful defense against any centrally organized technological tyranny."

 

"It is up to us to decide whether or not computers will be our masters, our servants, or our partners.

 

"And the deciding must be shared by as many citizens as possible, not just the experts. In that sense, the most important factor in whether we will all see the dawn of a humane, sustainable world in the twenty-first century will be how we deal with these machines a few of us thought up and a lot of us will be using."

 

from Tools for Thought by Howard Rheingold

 

Conferences 

Sri attended two conferences recently where TIP flyers were handed out to interested people. You can download the TIP flyers from the TIP website

The first was the Department of Peace campaign in Washington hosted by Peace Alliance. The conference coincided with the anniversary of Sept 11th. It was primarily for the purpose of supporting the reintroduction of the DoP house bill on Sept 14th. Marianne Williamson was so so so inspiring with all her love and all her pragmatism - it was amazing. Speaking of amazing, Judy Collins put in a surprise appearance and led us in a sing along of Amazing Grace! What a treat. Speaking of treats, Dr Patch Adams appeared in person. I was so moved by the video he showed of a woman in wheel chair with MS. His ability to communicate deeply without every saying a word touched me deeply. His message was not lost on me: we can converse even with those we have judged to be incapable of communicating. Love is the answer. Patch Adams does a pretty good impression of Robin Williams doing an impression of Patch Adams. Azim Khamisa spoke of forgiveness and I could clearly see how he lives his life in forgiveness. Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious Evolution, simply rocks!! Terri Mansfield showed how inclusiveness works. Not to steal anyone's thunder, I discretely handed out a few flyers about TIP and invited them all to join us in conversation.

 

The second conference was called Accelerating Change 2005, held at Stanford University and hosted by Acceleration Studies Foundation. Never have I been in an assembly with such a wide range of interests and such depth of knowledge. There were futurists, technologists (nano, bio, virtual reality, brain mappers and Artificial Intelligence experts), scientists (neurobiologists, physicists, chemists) and also lawyers, psychiatrists and even a meditation teacher from the Brahmakumari organization. It was a tremendous place to connect with people and with novel ideas. It was also a place to connect ideas and fields that were not well connected in my own mind.  I proposed and conducted a “Birds of a feather” session on TIP and about 8 people attended.

 

TIP Community

Some interesting people I have been in touch with and who are on this distribution list. This is just a sample; the October 2005 list is about 70 people long.

Mubarak Awad, a man whom I admire greatly, a nonviolent activist from Palestine – greatly inspired by Gandhian Ahimsa. I met him in Virginia. He was expelled from Palestine as his nonviolent forms of activities clashed with rising militancy. He is now working with youth and nonviolence and working to build a great society through teaching nonviolence in schools. Azim Khamisa is now working with him.

He founded Nonviolence International (NI) in Washington, D.C., to continue his efforts on behalf of nonviolent transformation of conflict in the Middle East, as well as to promote the global educational process on nonviolent methods for the resolution of conflict. NI is a nonprofit organization' that has offices in Russia, Thailand, and Palestine.

 

 Mohammed Abu-Nimer and Abdul Aziz Said are professors at the American University. Mohammed taught me a summer course on peace. He also hosted Dwarkoji’s visit to American University last year. Abdul Said is currently thinking about Peace and Profitability – a way to take the great force of profitability to assist in greater peace in the world. He is an editor for the book Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding: A Resource for Innovators.

 

Prof Said is a founder and director of the Center for Global Peace, and the International Peace and Conflict Resolution Program.He has written, co-authored, and edited sixteen books, including Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam: Precept and Practice, Concepts of International Politics in Global Perspective 4th Edition, Human Rights and World Order, Ethnicity in an International Context, The New Sovereigns: Multinational Corporations as World Powers His deep commitment to nonviolence, human rights, political pluralism, cultural diversity, and ecological balance has furthered the expansion of Peace and Conflict Resolution as a field of study throughout the world.

 

Arthur Kanegis, a film maker who found me through a daily newsletter sent by Robert Muller. http://www.futurewave.org/ is developing feature films with new kinds of heroes wielding techniques and strategies more advanced than violence. WAVE stands for Working for Alternatives to Violence through Entertainment. Such playful imagination marks Arthur’s many works including Bullyproof Shields and Astrocops.

 

So let me then mention Barbara and Robert Muller next. Their website is at http://goodmorningworld.org/.

Robert Muller was formerly Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, Chancellor Emeritus of the University for Peace. Robert has received many awards including the Albert Schweitzer International Prize for the Humanities and the Eleanor Roosevelt Man of Vision Award. He and Barbara live in Costa Rica and were among the first enthusiastic supporters of TIP initiative upon its inception in April 2005.

 

While still an engineering student in 1957-58 Copthorne Macdonald designed the slow-scan TV system used by radio amateurs to send pictures around the world using their voice radio equipment. During the 1970s and 1980s he wrote a regular column in The Mother Earth News concerning the use of SSTV and ham radio for personal growth and social change. More recently he has written three books on the nature and development of wisdom, and ten years ago started The Wisdom Page (http://www.cop.com/wisdompg.html), a popular resource for people interested in wisdom.

Ronit Kampf, a Reuters Digital Vision scholar at Stanford University and a Post Doctoral Student in Communication. Her research covers: Social-Cognition, Conflict Resolution, Utilizing New Technologies to Study Conflict Resolution, Inter-Group Perception, Out-Group Homogeneity Effect, Ethnocentrism, Stereotypes, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Her project “Building Digital Bridges” develops a multiplayer online gaming space that will provide Palestinian and Israeli teens with a learning experience of cooperation

 

Now that is just a sample of the company we are in. I hope that in future newsletters, we can continue to showcase other exciting participants and contributors to TIP. You are all so very precious for being like-minded and lending this initiative your support.

 

Core Team

We have been very busy with a small core team exploring technologies for collaboration to support our rapidly building TIP group. They are

  • John Stautner is President of ETSZONE in The Woodlands TX, a company promoting cooperation among businesses, supported by open source technologies http://etszone.net/main.php
  • Jamie Roy is President of Planetary Tribe a small research/ creative dialogue Organization in the UK http://www.thebigconversation.org and http://planetarytribe.com
  • BJ Peters is an independent facilitator and consultant in Phoenix, coach and practitioner of Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry and Nonviolent Communication practices
  • David Watkins is retired and living in Landenberg, PA, a man seeking to build communities, practicing integral thinking and living and very interested in spiritual evolution and critical mass http://mywebpages.comcast.net/daviwat/
  • Richard Otto is an independent consultant and cognitive designer in Phoenix http://cognitivedesignsolutions.com/index.htm
  • Bill Dixon is a Compensation consultant residing in The Woodlands TX and interested in economics of cooperation and incentives
  • Sri Sridharan is a retired technologist and founder of Technology Initiatives for Peace http://www.infinisri.com

 

The function of the core team has been three-fold: (1) to explore the use of a Wiki tool for shared authoring of TIP including construction of the needs framework, the development of a technology roadmap, project examples, financing models; (2) to develop shared values and common identity; and (3) to publicize the initiative and to recruit broad participation.

 

Finally the community Yahoo group for TIP conversations

A budding community is now gathering at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tip-conversations. This is set up in the traditional fashion to foster dialogue, to promote inquiry, to suggest projects, to expand contacts. A decent collection of links and files are now at the site. The site does not duplicate what is at the main website http://www.infinisri.com/TIP and the Weblog at http://tipfaq.blogspot.com.

We shall continue to maintain these sites in tandem. The wiki experiment is still ongoing. We anticipate publishing the wiki for community view, review and update as soon as it feels ready.

 

Your action plan

As you can see we have gathered some momentum. We have both a core group working to provide the infrastructure and an extensive community of participants. Your suggested action plan consists of:

  • Join up at the yahoo group
  • Forward this invitation and news update to people you would like to invite
  • Contribute ideas, stories, examples, links to other initiatives and make this TIP launch a great one.

 

Text Box: Working together to achieve a tipping point