Meeting Announcement

Can We Help Google Create a Better World?

Reuters Digital Visions Lounge

Cordura Hall, Second Floor

220 Panama St., Stanford University (parking is in Panama St. Parking structure. Bring lots of quarters.)

1:00 -3:00 PM May 26, 2004

Google has announced in their SEC Filing that they seek to make the world a better place: "We are proud of the products we have built, and we hope that those we create in the future will have an even greater positive impact on the world...Our intense and enduring interest was to objectively help people find information efficiently. We also believed that searching and organizing all the world’s information was an unusually important task that should be carried out by a company that is trustworthy and interested in the public good. We believe a well functioning society should have abundant, free and unbiased access to high quality information. Google therefore has a responsibility to the world." 

The purpose of this meeting will be to discuss and brainstorm innovative ways of using the associative technology of Google for humanitarian uplift. This might include the concept of Elevator Links, which might topically relate web information to uplift organizations.  For example, a news item about violence in Jerusalem might have an "elevator link" to organizations working towards peace in the area, perhaps Hello Peace.

Organizations would earn these links by their trustworthiness and the demonstrated value of their program activities.  Effective collaborative efforts would be rewarded, and organizations would  thrive by effectively acting on their vision, rather than their fundraising acumen.  This introduces a new notion of trustraising which could empower larger number of smaller-scale activities.   Associating these activities with web-based information could create virtuous circles of civic involvement and new models of philanthropic interaction.  The traditional "invade the donation" model of philanthropic giving views the non-profit organization as the owner of the gift, from which they take their operating expenses.  Economies of scale tend to drive them to larger, more hierarchical organizations, with ever-greater emphasis on fundraising activities independent of the program activities for which they were created.  The trustraising model would allow the organization to shift its focus to program activities, allowing their good works to be rewarded by increased attention via the elevator link mechanism.

Previous GivingSpace workshops have examined trust and reputation mechanisms,  complementary currencies,   scalable trust models,  and an uplift pattern language,  We have also focused on ways of finding what works and amplifying it, rather than starting with the assumption: "so many problems, so little money."  These ideas have been collected in the Uplift Academy design wiki.

The goal of this meeting is to consider ways in which we may use web technology to bring attention to organizations and patterns of uplift in a self-organizing, scalable manner.  This meeting is not formally associated with Google, but we will present any appropriate ideas to them.

To attend, please contact Tom Munnecke via email at (my last name) at csli.stanford.edu