Peace technology, as it is defined at Stanford Peace Innovation Lab, is fundamentally mediating technology — it acts as an intervening agent, augmenting our ability to engage positively with others. According to this definition, peace technology contains four sub-components working together:
- Sensors that can measure human engagement behavior with ever-greater precision (such as cameras, microphones & GPS) between any two social entities across difference boundaries such as gender, income, ethnicity, age, nationality, etc.
- Communications technology, including things like the cellular radio, Bluetooth, and wifi capabilities in your phone and laptop, as well as landline, fiber optic, and satellite networks.
- Computation, particularly distributed and cloud-based computing.
- The addition of actuators, which can include humans or devices that can perform actions in the world, allows us to trigger and coordinate actions.
These four component technologies are now so inexpensive and ubiquitous that your smartphone contains many of each. And unlike previous technological revolutions, individuals can now design and deploy peace technology at scale almost anywhere in the world.
While PeaceTech has now demonstrated the ability to elicit positive social behaviors at scales and speed previously unimagined, the potential for misuse, and particularly for disastrous unintended consequences, is very real. Critics have discussed the ethics of persuasive technologies and their capacity for behavior change, questioning the (predominantly Western) norms they implicitly promote. This panel is a conversation between the perspective of the Stanford Peace Innovation Lab that believes in the powerful potential for good implicit in these technologies and the perspective of practitioners that views process design and ownership as critical questions in determining whether technologies can build peace.
Panel Chair: Mark Nelson
Former relief-worker, investment banker, and social entrepreneur, Mark founded and co-directs Stanford Peace Innovation Lab, where he researches mass collaboration and mass interpersonal persuasion. Mark focuses on designing, catalyzing, incentivizing, and generating resources to scale up collective positive human behavior change. He leads the Global OPEN Social Sensor Array project, and designs technology interventions to measurably increase positive, mutually beneficial engagement across conflict boundaries. Mark’s mission is to create an entire new, profitable industry, where positive peace is delivered as a service.
Panelists:
Mukhtar Hersi Mohamed, Head of the Audio-Visual Unit of Puntland Development Research Center (PDRC).
PDRC is a Somali organisation based in Garowe, Somalia, and works in the areas of peacebuilding, social reconciliation, security & rule of law, democracy, human rights and other equally important issues. For more than 11 years, Mukhtar has been a peacebuilder in a country devastated by civil conflict and droughts, mainly by making peace-promoting films and exposing them to the general public, as well as across conflict-divided communities in order to create channels of communication so as to facilitate peaceful dialogue.
Valerie Oliphant, Projects Manager, SIMLab (Social Impact Lab)
Valerie is an international development practitioner and a Projects Manager at SIMLab, where she works on advancing peace and social equality using ICTs, with a commitment to reflective practice and continuous learning. Prior to joining SIMLab, she worked with Search for Common Ground, including helping to develop an early warning system using FrontlineSMS to prevent conflict in Nigeria; Partners for Democratic Change; Niger Delta Professionals for Development; and for the Peace and Collaborative Development Network.
Ronny Edry, Founder, The Peace Factory and Sanbox
Ronny Edry is a graphic designer, teacher, father and frequent Facebook updater. While he often posted images on the site without much fanfare, in March of 2012 one of his images garnered international attention. The image showed himself and his daughter, along with the words “Iranians, we will never bomb your country. We heart you.” The image became a catalyst for dialogue between the people of two nations on the brink of war, starting an online movement the “we love you” community, the PEACE Factory and Sandbox.
Dr. Samir K. Doshi, Ph.D., Science, Technology & Innovation Advisor, Digital Development and Higher Education Solutions Network, U.S. Global Development Lab (U.S. Agency for International Development). Samir’s work includes advancing real-time data systems for adaptive learning, monitoring and evaluation; helping to design the data infrastructure and informatics system for the US Government’s Ebola response in West Africa; designing a digital adaptive learning system for the Indian Jan Dhan Yojana scheme; and progressing the Principles for Digital Development. Samir is on leave from the University of Cambridge, where he teaches and conducts research on development economics, sustainability, community resilience and complex adaptive systems.