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PRESIDENT'S ESSAY
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So far, I have described MacArthur programs that are being changed rather significantly. But MacArthur has also been considering how a range of technologies — both simple and complex — might amplify or enhance the work of grantees in all our fields of work.
Over several years, we have tried to identify groups or projects that use technology in highly innovative and productive ways. There is not enough space to discuss all of them in this annual report; an illustrative list of technology-related grants follows this essay. However, the projects I have in mind tend to use technology in a few key ways:
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They improve the quality of information and analysis by combining new techniques for gathering, processing, and storing data.
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They make good information widely available to the public, often from or in remote places.
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They facilitate citizen engagement by improving the ability to communicate.
Information and analysis
Using technology to improve the quality of information and analysis that is available on critical problems has been especially relevant for MacArthur grantees working on biodiversity conservation. MacArthur’s conservation program aims to protect land and seascapes of exceptional biodiversity in nine “hotspots” in the developing world.
Substantial progress has been made in places like Bhutan, Madagascar, Vietnam, and Brazil in creating national parks and protected areas. But encroachment from agricultural, mining, and timber activities still occurs.
Until recently, monitoring from satellites only revealed advanced deforestation. But now the Carnegie Landsat Analysis System can detect degradation at an earlier stage. It combines widely available satellite data with advanced signal processing, computational modeling, and pattern recognition methods to improve the detection of forest disturbances at very high spatial resolution over millions of square kilometers of tropical forest.
Tests of the system in the Brazilian Amazon uncovered twice the amount of forest degradation reported by previous deforestation studies, which had relied on satellite data alone. By bringing together a suite of new techniques for measuring environmental changes, the Carnegie System gives an early warning of dangerous activities that can alert institutions in time to save important landscapes.
Improving Communication
Technology also makes it possible to uncover and distribute information in remote places and to isolated commu-nities. In the field of population and reproductive health, for example, it is an enduring challenge to provide accurate, timely information about health care and services to women and men in rural areas. New communications technologies can help.
MacArthur has supported organizations working on population issues for over two decades. Today, our programs focus on reducing maternal mortality and on providing young people good information about reproductive health and services. We place special emphasis on three countries where we have offices — Mexico, India, and Nigeria — countries where rural areas are especially isolated from urban centers and knowledge about reproductive health is low.
An organization called OneWorld is using communications technology to help bridge the urban/rural divide, beginning in Africa. In Kenya, a pilot project called Mobile4Good uses cellular technology to spread health-related news and education. Mobile4Good sends text messages to personal cell-phones to inform individuals about opportunities for free exams or treatment. It also provides a question-and-answer service that allows individuals to ask sensitive health questions in private. This has proven especially effective among young people.
Mobile4Good shows great potential for expansion into countries where mobile phone use is high. Because Nigeria is one of the fastest growing cell phone markets in Africa — and one of our focus countries — MacArthur is supporting a new Mobile4Good project there. Information about reproductive health and services will be delivered via portable phones to young Nigerians living in both urban and rural areas.
Citizen engagement
Facilitating citizen engagement is another area where technology can play an important role.
In Chicago, MacArthur and the Chicago affiliate of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) have undertaken a comprehensive initiative to revitalize 16 neighborhoods (about half of Chicago’s low-income communities). In each neighborhood, a local development organization is taking the lead to address housing, economic development, public safety, jobs, and more.
Encouraging residents to participate in the life of their community is essential to revitalizing urban neighborhoods. A grant to the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission supports the Full Circle Project, which trains community residents to use handheld devices to collect information about neighborhood conditions and monitor progress in their communities.
Through the project, residents can report signs of neglect like trash on the streets, broken windows, abandoned cars, or vacant buildings. They can also collect information on the availability of commercial space, retail possibilities, and opportunities for housing development. The handheld devices add this material to existing data systems used by local and city officials. It can be consulted immediately and it is often accessible on the Internet.
Making good information widely available, monitoring conservation practices, and engaging citizens in improving their neighborhoods — these are some of the ways MacArthur grantees are using technology to advance our program goals.
We encourage those with creative ideas on the use of technology to approach us for a conversation.
Conclusion
The MacArthur Foundation’s embrace of technology is not uncritical. Some of our grants address the consequences of less time to reflect, the rapid spread of misinformation, the possibility that information overload drives people to intuition and inherited orthodoxies rather than reasoned discourse. But it is fair to say we are more optimistic than pessimistic about the possibilities of technology. And in any event, we take its existence as a given to be harnessed and shaped.
We imagine a future where children learn through active creation that honors visual as well as written forms of expression. We see a time when people of all ages learn more on their own initiative, assisted by institutions that adapt to a new reality. We take heart from the prospect of quality information flowing from remote parts of the world, more attention given to understudied issues, a greater diversity of voices being heard. We hope that the democratic process is more widely shared and reinvigorated by more robust citizen participation within nations and across national boundaries. We will work to enhance the opportunity of individuals to realize their potential and for communities to grow stronger and more just. While changes in our program will be gradual, we expect to be a very different Foundation in a few years.
Jonathan F. Fanton
President
PRESIDENT'S ESSAY
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