DesignLife + the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum

So I went with a friend of mine to the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum today. If you've never been, it's a very rich experience into what has been part of the innovative history of design and what is on the forefront of design. Most particularly interesting to me was the work that is being done by designers trying to help out third world countries . Interestingly enough, on TED.com, I had seen Amy Smith, a professor at MIT, who was spearheading some work that will help save roughly 1,000,000 children a year. I've posted a YouTube video from the conference:

Curious about what she's doing? Well according to her research, the leading cause of death in children in developing countries is respiratory problems from breathing in hazardous smoke from cooking oils: it kills 2,000,000 children under 5 every year. So her team of MIT students worked to help locals develop sustainable clean-burning cooking fuels from waste products like corn cob briquettes. This is absolutely incredible and deserves attention.

The Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum had some other interesting designs that helped solve globally relevant issues.

These projects are of particular interest to me as my dad who was working on his master's degree in technology education at UGA actually worked on these same types of projects.


What looks like a satellite dish from the 1990s is actually a solar reflecting stove. Using the most accessible energy source on the planet, you can heat pans enough to fry eggs and bring meats to safe temperatures. The best part: it's completely clean and you can use it every day the sun comes up.




In the top image (on the right), you'll notice a very important innovation: a rolling water container used to help transport water for people living in areas where this is a daily and essential part of their life. The other is the importance of being able to connect some of these people to the most important resource in the history of the world: the internet via broadband connections. I was previously of the opinion of "Why would you ever want to give laptops to people in underprivelidged countries? They need food, shelter, and water, not computers." But the answer to their problems is not the quick fix solution of just food and shelter, but giving them tools to access information is one of the few methods we have to help them innovate and find solutions to their own problems rather than having to send technological mercenaries and enormous quantites of food aid to solve those problems.

Contrary to popular belief, educated, developed nations don't always have a monopoly on scalable technology solutions. These people will probably use the internet to its best potential.

Another great part of this movement to eradicate the world of poverty is the use of KIVA microloans. You can do a search for this on Google and Wikipedia and find others who are doing this as well. This is real business ventures that save the livelihood and lives of people around the world. Makes you feel good about being a venture capitalist. :)