Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 26, 2011

The students are, of course, the treasure of a place like Caltech. You just to have to imagine thinking better and more creative thoughts while dreaming in a place where Einstein once slept! I think their biggest issue is trying to find a transportation company who would be able to move their net-zero house from LA to DC.

Student 133

Student DC University Washington 133

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 4, 2010

But then, I remembered that we’re doing something to make the world a better place, and that cheered me up. We heard loud and clear this past year from the team how much value you place on hearing more about what everybody is doing. It’s easy to forget in the daily grind just how unusual Benetech and our people are.

Team 100

Team Impact Celebrate Place 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 17, 2011

It may be that people move away from damaged buildings (perhaps to places where humanitarian assistance is being given) before texting. That is, the presence of text messages suggests there are fewer (not more) damaged buildings in a particular area.

Statistics 263

Statistics Data Haiti Stream 263

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 30, 2010

The archive includes documents generated during Guatemala’s internal armed conflict which took place from 1960 to 1996. While the Guatemalan National Police were disbanded after the country's 1996 Peace Accords, very few people have ever been held accountable for crimes that took place during the 36 years of violence.

Guatemala 149

Guatemala Help Analysis Statistics 149

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 9, 2018

First, they are place-based. What if you live in a place without physical books or can’t get to where the books are? However, as a technology, printed books come with serious challenges for some communities (like blind people) that technology can unlock. Consider the issues with printed books.

Accessibility 135

Accessibility eBook People Copyright 135

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 6, 2013

and work often with people in miserable conditions (yes, in both places!);

Job 238

Job Open Source Global Government 238

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 27, 2014

Join us , and together we can realize the potential of technology to make the world a better place for everyone. Thank you for your support! This post also appeared on the Benetech blog.

Challenge 144

Challenge eBook Social Ohio 144

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 29, 2011

And, of course, it was that high quality work product that Samasource connected with us in the first place, and now has been sustained for several years. He notes that students with these backgrounds have already overcome great obstacles, and he sees that they have the skills and the motivation to do high quality data entry work.

Kenya 228

Kenya Student Africa University 228

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 12, 2009

From the week of March 30 to April 4, five Bookshare training sessions took place in four of the island’s Service Centers for Special Education. They took place in Las Piedras, Bayamon, Hormigueros, and Ponce. The conference was attended by 600 people and took place over two days in the San Juan Convention Center.

Puerto Rico 100

Puerto Rico United States Student Library 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 29, 2009

This is a guy who as his daughter put it, piled books onto a little vegetable cart and trundled it into the market place so that the common man in small town India would be exposed to the literature of Tolstoy, Gibran, Ruskin and others. And he worked to abridge and translate much of their work. Literature destroys your sleep."

India 104

India Classroom Hosting Picture 104

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

Obviously, there was a lot of buzz about the financial meltdown, especially in a place like Dubai that has built itself up as a major international business center (Dubai as an emirate has relatively little oil compared to some of the other gulf emirates).

United Arab Emirates 100

United Arab Emirates Oman Los Angeles UAE 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 14, 2012

Guest Beneblog by Vijaya Tripathi The first ever Martus users group meeting took place earlier this month in Chiang Mai, the capital of Northern Thailand. It was surreal and incredibly exciting to see these inspiring people, my colleagues and friends, assembled in one place to launch the next generation of Martus.

Global 157

Global Group Thailand Burma 157

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 8, 2015

You’ve come to the right place: Benetech. You are someone who dreams about using your management and leadership skills and love of technology for social impact, exceeding the bounds of what a regular for-profit business can do. We are Silicon Valley’s deliberately nonprofit software company.

Technology 100

Technology Literacy Social Uganda 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 30, 2013

There is no better place to engage with colleagues about new technologies, changing business models, fresh ideas, and shared standards. Guest Beneblog by Gerardo Capiel, Benetech's VP, Engineering One of the highlights of my meeting circuit each year is the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference in New York City.

Accessibility 171

Accessibility eBook New York City Social 171

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 19, 2009

It's always exciting to be covered in the press, and AARP is an organization that has long been on our list of places from which we'd love to get coverage. Of course, we explain that access to Bookshare is only for the purpose of helping a person with a print disability.

eBook 100

eBook Children Press Stream 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 18, 2011

Scott McNeil came to Benetech and we talked about their MetaMouse project (getting multiple mice to work on the same PC, so that kids in low-PC resource places can work together). We connected at the recent Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference and decided we should get together.

Uganda 124

Uganda Africa Proposal Survey 124

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 10, 2008

I'm on an exciting trip to places I've never been before! As a history buff, I didn't know the new names for some of these places. Although the mission of the trip is to understand the situation of visually impaired students in Micronesia, I absolutely get the benefits of visiting these islands and enjoying the scenery.

Micronesia 100

Micronesia Guam Honolulu Hawaii 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

I'd read about the incredible drive to house the newly urban, but these places were for people with money. One place where we came face-to-face with tougher reality in China was the orphanage. And, there was an incredible building boom going on. Plus, not all work is done to U.S.

China 100

China San Francisco United States Europe 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 5, 2009

It's a place to plant seeds for future collaborations. The MIT Media Lab showed off some really exciting technology that I immediately was thinking of disability applications. Many (most? of these presentations will end up on the web soon. And, the networking is also great (because of who the performances attract).

Brain 100

Brain Game Conference Awareness 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

There's a common mission of making the world a better place that lends itself to conviviality! I placed a more extensive upload of photos from the Social Enterprise World Forum 2008 on my Flickr pages. One of the great things about social entrepreneurs is that they enjoy having a good time with each other.

Social 100

Social United States Government Homeless 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 15, 2007

and many other places) combined with minimal new roads will increase our problem. Because you are all going to (more or less) the same place, you can implement something that looks like a hub network with the place of work at the center rather than gazillions of point to point connections. but better than it will ever be.

Technology 100

Technology Global Structure Problem 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 7, 2011

The arrest of commanding officer accused of involvement in the many disappearances that took place during Guatemala’s 36 years of armed internal conflict is a big step towards justice in that country.

Guatemala 129

Guatemala Statistics Analysis Sample 129

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 17, 2013

You are an inspiration to all of us and we look forward to your future work that no doubt will continue to make the world a better place. I am having a lot of fun promoting key policies related to competitiveness, corruption and poverty elimination.” Congratulations, Martín!

Paraguay 142

Paraguay Award Africa Conservancy 142

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 20, 2013

From capturing the stories of human rights violations in Guatemala, Burma, Syria and Uganda, to helping a biologist plan a better restoration of a wetlands, or matching up an open source geek with the social good project of his or her dreams, Benetech’s team is using technology to make the world a better place.

eBook 221

eBook Award Copyright Syria 221

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 30, 2007

There were more than fifty people on-line with us, and the entire talk was recorded and placed on the web. Earlier this week I was invited to speak on an on-line conference by the Friends of Benetech, an independent support group for our Bookshare.org digital library for people with print disabilities.

Audio 100

Audio Library Course Volunteer 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 17, 2010

placards with tiny vases of flowers placed in front of them or a few memorializing words quickly scrawled on them (in the night when no one would know, she said). As we walked around the cemetery, I could smell the powerful odor of the most recently arrived dead bodies which were interred without coffins in the wall of a sepulcher.

Colombia 122

Colombia Statistics Analysis Data 122

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 8, 2009

We've been supportive of an effort by the World Blind Union to get an international treaty in place that sets up a global system much like the one we have today in the United States. Lots of excitement recently in Geneva at the World Intellectual Property Organization. I was part of an expert panel that drafted the original proposed treaty.

Copyright 100

Copyright Paraguay Ecuador Brazil 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 13, 2007

Coming up just in the next month, I'm also giving talks at Stanford and Kellogg Business School(at Northwestern), and trying to schedule talks lots of other places in the not so distant future. The amount of enthusiasm on campuses for socially relevant learning is terrific, and gives me great confidence for the future of the movement.

Conference 100

Conference Social Classes Fun 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 15, 2013

During that time, HRDAG has also grown to a place where it can be self-sustaining. The process took us longer than we anticipated, but that is due in large part to the great things we’ve been able to achieve from the collaboration between the technology and the analytical sides of our work.

Analysis 174

Analysis Project Open Source Analytics 174

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 28, 2011

. - Locations with high rates of drowning deaths are correlated with locations with high rates of ice cream sales because people tend to eat ice cream and swim when they're at leisure in hot places with water, like swimming pools and seasides. If we care about preventing drowning deaths, we don't set up a system to monitor ice cream vendors.

Issue 160

Issue Data Haiti Stream 160

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 3, 2006

It was great to see the enthusiasm of the different developers, and at a place with Google's culture, that counts for a lot. Of course, when I talk about accessibility, I'm focusing on access for people with disabilities, and Google people are typically talking about access to more material.

Accessibility 100

Accessibility University Google Video 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 18, 2007

Some folks are fanatical about it, and it's touching a lot of real world places. Second Life, the on-line parallel universe, is a controversial topic. I was wandering by Second Life interviews onsite at Davos. At the same time, I have heard that it is overhyped and that the number of participants is exaggerated.

Second Life 100

Second Life Copyright Law Life 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 27, 2008

You place the book in a cradle and cameras overhead take pictures of the pages, and then someone turns the page. And, hopefully in the future we'll be able to do books in Indian languages like Hindi and Tamil (and many others, of course). The Worth Trust also has a cool scanner that we don't have, a nondestructive book scanner.

India 100

India Language Camera Library 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 7, 2008

I actually got my first massage ever in Fuzhou at a blind massage place. We had noticed that there were no blind people at one of the big universities we had visited in Fuzhou. There is still a feeling that blind people should become massage therapists. English-speaking masseurs command higher wages because they can work with foreigners.

China 100

China Seattle University Student 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 15, 2009

If a few dozen dead trees could cause so much grief, imagine living in a place where whole forests are being clearcut, coral reefs bleached, or entire species threatened. Rather, the incident demonstrated just how affected we are by something as simple as a chopped down tree (some citizens were so angry they threatened city officials).

Bahamas 100

Bahamas Mongolia Thailand Conservancy 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 12, 2014

Furthermore, they even decided the Authors Guild did not have standing to bring the suit in the first place. They decided that it is fair use both to create a full-text searchable database of copyrighted works and to provide those works in alternate formats that are accessible to patrons with disabilities.

Accessibility 205

Accessibility Copyright Law Library 205

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 10, 2012

But first: why was I, a fresh graduate of UCLA, in Guatemala in the first place? Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard the playful notes of a street band wafting through the window while in Guatemala with Benetech's Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG). You see, HRDAG is anything but a typical organization.

Guatemala 137

Guatemala International Project Statistics 137