Institute For The Future

Investigating the Social Good Summit

The Social Good Summit has, since 2009, been the most open, tech savvy forum
for discussion during the UN Week. The UN Foundation co-hosted this year’s event with Mashable, Ericsson, the UNDP, the 92 Street Y and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As speakers dipped in and out of high level meetings for the 68th UN General Assembly, the summit brought people from all walks of life together to discuss how technology can solve global challenges. Diplomats, politicians, celebrities, artists, policy experts, corporate CEOs, nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, and passionate volunteers all gave short 9-25 minute talks on stage. Live-streamed and translated into 7 languages, thousands of people watched online from UNDP satellite events in over 60 countries.

The theme of the conference was #2030now. What emerging challenges and opportunities should we address now to create a better future in 2030? In attempting to address global issues like poverty, climate change and disease with technological innovation, Elizabeth Gore, the UN Foundation’s gregarious entrepreneur-in-residence, underscored the need for global input on envisioning the needs of #2030now. We are laying the groundwork for how technology and society will interact.

Discussing everything from how Project Meshnet uses drones to carry payloads for disaster relief to how Catapult provides a crowdfunding platform specifically for women and children, the summit had a fast paced, eclectic feel.

The conversation on stage wasn’t limited to tech used for “good,” but also the past and potential misuses of technology.

“Governments are growing more and more sophisticated at shutting down the Internet, blocking, filtering, using technology to trace human rights activists,” said Ambassador Powers, talking with Pete Cashmore from Mashable. She told the story of the famous incident in Syria where Marie Colvin, an incredible war correspondent, was possibly tracked down by the coordinates on her phone and then killed by the Assad regime.

Using the same mobile technology as the corrupt government, she countered, a 26 year old Syrian “hacktivist” created a service that allows individuals to text reports of SCUD missile launches in order to roughly predict time and location of the landing point. It’s called Aymta, meaning “when” in Arabic.

"Next year," said Melinda Gates, "95% of the global population will have cell phones, and 40% are already online," she emphasized.

With more people able to connect from their mobile phones, people are creating opportunities to collect and disseminate information. Technology can enable people to get the information they need almost anywhere in the world. Sarah Ingersoll, for example, provides a mobile information service, Text4Baby, that connects expectant mothers  with relevant health information.

How can we begin to shape a new agenda for a connected world? When more and more people are joining the conversation online, how can we frame discussions to promote cross-sector dialogue?

In the Philippines, Maria Ressa created Rappler, a social news network that combines citizen journalism and activism as a means to fight corruption in the Philippines. They’ve benefitted from partnerships with the World Bank, the President of the Philipine's Department of Budget and Management, and the International Center for Innovation, Transformation and Excellence in Governance (INCITEGov). Rappler's civic engagement arm #budgetwatch shares information, reports, and opinions about the national budget. Connecting people to information, Rappler provides a place for government institutions and civil society to interact through online discussions and the "mood meter” which tracks the public opinion.

Advocacy groups have now learned to harness this “people power.” Jeremy Heimans, for example, founded Purpose to draw on technology, political organizing and behavioral economics to build movements that have proven to transform culture and influence policy. Co-founder of Avaaz.org, the fastest-growing online movement in history with more than 8 million members from 190 countries, and GetUp.org, a grassroots community advocacy organization, for him, “movement building is [his] form of culture jamming.”

Anyone with access to a mobile phone or a computer and the Internet can join what's rapidly becoming a global conversation—a bottom up environment that Kathy Calvin, president of the UN Foundation, said is moving the dialogue away from governments to a far more peer-to-peer environment. People are demanding a right to have their own analysis of what's going on in the world, to tell their own stories, and bring these narratives to decision makers.

There was a debate about clicktivism—the pejorative word for online activism—and how much of an impact it really makes. The panel on "Bold and Effective Social Issues Campaigns," asked how to move “connection to action.” Dr. Neeraj Mistry explained how End7, a nonprofit dedicated to ending 7 tropical diseases, used shock value to create the viral video “How to Shock A Celebrity.” By adding the element of “frictionless giving,” those who felt moved were able to donate a couple of quarters that will protect a child for a year. The news outlet RYOT also employ this technique by adding an option for people to take action with every breaking story.

Giving isn’t just limited to money, though. Rachel Chong, CEO and founder of Catchafire, added that her platform connects professionals interested in applying their tech skills to help non-profit organizations in their field. Rather than looking for traditional place-based volunteers, nonprofits now need help improving their web presence to better tell their story online. Tech savvy volunteers are able to donate a digital makeover from anywhere in the world.

Whether offline or online, the consensus was that we need to work together to solve these problems. With technology, we can foreground personal narratives and communicate them to a larger audience, giving us a better understanding of the challenges we face.

Al Gore described the importance of personal narrative in his new project What I Love, which shows how climate change impacts what you care most about. "We want to help people think about how they relate to the climate on a day-to-day level, and then show how that change will affect them personally. Unless we can relate to climate change personally, it's hard to comprehend. That's human nature—we want to know, how does it relate to my experience?"

National Geographic photographer Marcus Bleasdale asked us to consider the unintended outcomes of our mobile electronics through understanding the personal stories behind them. With the art of photography (another technology), he showed life in the African villages near mineral mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bleasdale called it a "Faustian bargain,” and said the responsibility is on those who buy the products to understand where it comes from.

Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock, said that in fact we are experiencing a narrative collapse—there is no grand, overarching story anymore like there was in the mid-20th century. Connected to time through how we track it with technology, Rushkoff urged us to let go of linear time modality so popular in the industrial revolution. “We should liberate ourselves from the winner take all mentality. The means do not justify the end. In fact, there is no ‘end.’” Citing the popularity of MMORGs, he said the goal in life is not to win, but rather to keep playing.

There’s no denying technological innovation has brought about disruption that’s changed how we live our lives and experience the world. How has technology changed your life? At the Social Good Summit, we sought to understand how this can create new possibilities for understanding our world, ourselves, and our global challenges.

Major technological breakthroughs tend to bring about great uncertainty. The Institute for the Future's Technology Horizons program focuses precisely on how these changes could affect our daily lives, organizations, and communities. Whether good or bad, the Chinese proverb goes, it's too soon to tell. Regardless, the Social Good Summit gave glimpses of #2030now through a well curated display of amplified individuals using technology to change the conditions for people all over the world.