Anil's Reflections: August 2011

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Using technology for the poor

A unique experiment is underway in India which uses techonology to help deliver social and financial services to the poor.

India’s Unique Identification project, also known as Aadhaar, which means “the foundation” in several Indian languages, has as its goal to issue identification numbers linked to the fingerprints and iris scans of every single person in India: that’s more than 1.2 billion people—everyone from Himalayan mountain villagers to Bangalorean call-center workers, from Rajasthani desert nomads to Mumbai street beggars—speaking more than 300 languages and dialects. The biometrics and the Aadhaar identification number will serve as a verifiable, portable, all but unfakable national ID. It is by far the biggest and most technologically complicated biometrics program ever attempted.

Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique number which the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will issue for all residents in India. The number will be stored in a centralized database and linked to the basic demographics and biometric information – photograph, ten fingerprints and iris – of each individual.It is easily verifiable in an online, cost-effective way. It will be unique and robust enough to eliminate the large number of duplicate and fake identities in government and private databases The random number generated will be devoid of any classification based on caste, creed, religion and geography. Each individual record is between 4 and 8 megabytes; add in a pile of quality-control information and the database will ultimately hold in the neighborhood of 20 petabytes—that is, 2 x 1016 bytes. That will make it 128 times the size of the biggest biometrics database in the world today: the Department of Homeland Security’s set of fingerprints and photos of 129 million people.

There are a number of benefits that the project will deliver. The ID can be used to identify the individual in any part of the country, so even if a person travels, this card will be sufficient to establish or verify his identity. It will reduce the current problems of illegal immigrants. The ID is also expected to reduce corruption such as fake ration cards and further help in minimizing the corruption in PDS (Public Distribution System). The Aadhar card is expected to facilitate digital interaction between a government and citizens (G2C), government and businesses (G2B), and between government agencies (G2G). It will empower weaker sections who have been in the past prevented from availing services such as bank accounts, ration cards etc.

Aadhaar is a key piece of the Indian government’s campaign for “financial inclusion.” Today, there are as many as 400 million Indians who have no official ID of any kind. And if you can’t prove who you are, you can’t access government programs, can’t get a bank account, a loan, or insurance. You’re pretty much locked out of the formal economy. Today, less than half of Indian households have a bank account. The rest are “unbanked,” stuck stashing whatever savings they have under the mattress. That means the money isn’t gaining interest, either for its owner or for a bank, which could be loaning it out. India’s impoverished don’t have much to save—but there are hundreds of millions of them. If they each put just $10 into a bank account, that would add billions in new capital to the financial system.

Starting in September of 2010, more than 16 million people have since been enrolled, and the pace is accelerating. By the end of 2011, the agency expects to be signing up 1 million Indians a day, and by 2014, it should have 600 million people in its database.

The head of the agency embarking on this unique project is Nandan Nilekani, the “Bill Gates of Bangalore.” Nilekani is about as close to a national hero as a former software engineer can get. He cofounded outsourcing colossus Infosys in 1981 and helped build it from a seven-man startup into a $6.4 billion behemoth that employs more than 130,000 people. After stepping down from the CEO job in 2007, Nilekani turned most of his energy to public service projects, working on government commissions to improve welfare services and e-governance.

“I took this job because it’s a project with great potential to have an impact,” Nilekani says, “One basic problem is people not having an acknowledged existence by the state and so not being able to access things they’re entitled to. Making the poor, the marginalized, the homeless part of the system is a huge benefit.”

How many friends can you have?

According to Robert Dunbar, the director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University: we can only ever have 150 friends at most. And why is that:

"The way in which our social world is constructed is part and parcel of our biological inheritance,” he explains, " Together with apes and monkeys, we're members of the primate family – and within the primates there is a general relationship between the size of the brain and the size of the social group. We fit in a pattern. There are social circles beyond it and layers within – but there is a natural grouping of 150. This is the number of people you can have a relationship with involving trust and obligation – there's some personal history, not just names and faces."

And how did he come to this unique number - now called the Dunbar number? He is a student of evolutionary anthropology, which is the generic study of how we came to be modern humans – how our bodies came to be the shape they are, how our minds came to be the way they are. He says he was working on the arcane question of why primates spend so much time grooming one another, and tested another hypothesis – which says the reason why primates have big brains is because they live in complex social worlds. Because grooming is social, all these things ought to map together, so he started plotting brain size and group size and grooming time against one another. And he got a nice set of relationships and this number of 150. It seemed that human friendship scale would be larger than that of primates. But it turned out that150 was the sweet spot for hunter-gatherer societies all over the world from the Bushmen of Southern Africa to Native American tribes, as well as Amish and Hutterite communities. Perhaps the best example, however, remains the military. All modern armies have a similar organisational structure, mostly developed over the last 300 years by trial and error on the battlefield. The core to this is the company – typically around 120-180 in size – almost exactly Dunbar's Number. As anyone who has been in the army will tell you, company is family, far more so than battalion or regiment.

"The reason 150 is the optimal number for a community comes from our primate ancestors," Dunbar says. "In smaller groups, primates could work together to solve problems and evade predators. Today, 150 seems to be the number at which our brains just max out on memory." The fact is that quite simply, your brain can't keep track of more than 150 individuals in any effective way. It's not a matter of practice or experience. It's biology and neural logistics!

The theory goes on to suggest that you cannot maintain 150 relationships unless you spend almost half your available time engaging with them. In certain social situations, this can be accomplished and is sometimes necessary (e.g. military), but in common experience, we simply don't have the time to perform the necessary engagement to maintain all of the relationships. In other words, practical experience indicates that anything more than 150 is not achievable. The critical component is the removal of time as a constraint. In the real world, according to research, we devote 40 percent of our limited social time each week to the five most important people we know, who represent just 3 percent of our social world and a trivially small proportion of all the people alive today. Since the time invested in a relationship determines its quality, having more than five best friends is impossible when we interact face to face, one person at a time. Thus on average, we are likely to have five intimate friends, 15 good friends (including the five intimate ones), 50 friends and 150 acquaintances. A relationship's quality seems to depend on how much time we devote to it, and since time is limited, we necessarily have to distribute what time we do have for social engagement unevenly. Put simply, our minds are not designed to allow us to have more than a very limited number of people in our social world. The emotional and psychological investments that a close relationship requires are considerable, and the emotional capital we have available is limited.

While modern society does make it hard to hang on to friends who aren't geographically close, Dunbar says, his research shows family is different.

"Friends, if you don't see them, will gradually cease to be interested in you," he says. "Family relationships seem to be very stable. No matter how far away you go, they love you when you come back."

Friday, August 26, 2011

The three most creative minds of our times

I was looking for the three most creative minds of our times in the area of political change, social transformation and technological revolution. Here are my picks- Mahatama Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Steve Jobs. By some conincidence all three were in the news recently.

Mahatama Gandhi pioneered the use of peaceful protest- or satyagraha- as a way of changing governments which led to the departure of Britain from India and to its independance. Satyagraha, loosely translated as "soul force"or "truth force", is a particular philosophy and practice within the broader overall category generally known as nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. The term "satyagraha" was conceived and developed by Mahatma Gandhi which he deployed in the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa. Satyagraha theory influenced Nelson Mandela's struggle in South Africa under apartheid, Lech Walesa struggle against communist domination in Poland, the civil rights movement in the United States and many other social justice and similar movements. One follower of his- Anna Hazare- is using the same tactics to urge government to tackle corruption in India today. Anna Hazare has started a indefinite hunger strike on 5 April 2011 to exert pressure on the Indian government to enact a strigent anti-corruption law as envisaged in the Jan Lokpal Bill, for the institution of an ombudsman with the power to deal with corruption in public places. Dr King was another follower who used the tactics of satyagraha to win civil rights for the African americans in the US not by armed violence but by peaceful protest. His statue was finally built and was also to be unveiled this weekend in Washington DC. Non violent resistance has been the most creative tool for fighting injustice in this century.

Mother Tereasa was creative as well but worked at a different level. Her path was a unique one. It was indicative of her success that she understood that in an overwhelmingly non-Christian India, her path had to be a unique one. So while she never deviated from her faith, she reached out to millions of her special constituency: the poorest of the poor, the leprosy sufferers, abandoned children or the hungry and dying, recognising their faces to be the face of her God. Their religious persuasion, or even its absence, hardly concerned her. In her ability to have found the middle path in an environment that could have easily become hostile, lay her genius. Author Naveen Chawla tell her story: "as a child of 14 in her native Albania, her imagination was stirred by the stories she heard from the Jesuit Fathers of their work in distant Bengal; at 18, still a teenager, her mind was made up. She took leave of her own beloved mother and joined the Loreto Order of teaching nuns, her only means in the year 1928 of reaching India. .. She had no helper, no companion, and no money to speak of. Imagine the Calcutta of 1948, overflowing with refugees after Partition, homelessness, poverty and disease everywhere. She wore no recognisable nun's habit; instead a sari, akin to that worn by municipal sweepresses, that cost one rupee. This is where she started her life's arduous mission." By the time she passed away in 1997, she had created her presence in 123 countries and ran a multinational charity with 5,000 nuns of her Order, without the help of government grants or Church assistance. . “We are called upon not to be successful, but to be faithful,” she explained. Mother Teresa exemplified that faith — in prayer, in love, in service, and in peace."As is often the case, it is the "singer not the song" that transforms into social change.

Steve Jobs was the most creative mind of my time in the area of technology. Steve was born on February 24, 1955, in the city of San Francisco. His biological mother was an unwed graduate student named Joanne Simpson, and his biological father was a political science professor, a native Syrian named Abdulfattah John Jandali. Being born out of wedlock in the puritan America of the 1950s, the baby was put up for adoption and he was taken in by Paul and Clara Jobs, who were a lower-middle class couple that had settled in the Bay Area after the war. Paul was a machinist from the Midwest who had not even graduated from high school but they promised that Steve would go to college. In 1974 Jobs traveled to India to visit the Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram in search of spiritual enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing. He founded Apple in 1978 but was thrown out as a CEO by his handpicked Chairman of the company. In 1998 he returned in triumph to the company he had founded and led it to becoming the highest valued company in the world in 2011 even topping Exxon. In mid-2004, Jobs was been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his pancreas. He had a liver transplant in 2011 but on August 24, 2011, Jobs announced his resignation from his role as Apple's CEO. Steve is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in over 230 awarded patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages.

His approach to life and times is summed up in a lecture he gave at Stanford. "Let me tell you three stories..you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life". Secondly, "sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle." And finally "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary...Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.. And I have always wished that for myself."

Sunday, August 21, 2011

The Uncertainty Principle

In today’s troubled times there is a feeling that the future is so uncertain that one might as well give up, curl in an armchair and wait for better times to emerge. Dealing with uncertainty has always been difficult and never more so when the external environment itself offers no help. Of course there are differed kinds of uncertainties.

In the immortal words of that famous “philosopher” Donald Rumsfeld “there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Uncertain situations are usually novel, unknown, surprising, and different from usual. Many societies try to minimize the possibility of such situations by strict laws and rules, bureaucratic manuals, a rigid adherence to precedents, and various safety and security measures, and on the philosophical and religious level by a belief in absolute Truth; ‘there can only be one Truth and we have it’. But despite these uncertainty avoidance measures, it is clear that most of us will face uncertainties at some point or the other in our lives. The real issue is how do we tackle the uncertainties confronting us when they do.

Now there is the certain uncertainty (CU) where the contours of the problem are relatively clear- but what is not clear is how it will impact you. This is the case for example of the uncertainty one feels in the days before the final exams in school or on the first day of ones job. You know what the issue is but you are not certain if you are able to handle it. The solution here is simple – preparation and research. You can lower the level of uncertainty in these cases by spending time on research and preparation so that you are able to handle the limited number of options or courses that will open up. And the more you prepare, the lower is your level of uncertainty and hence tension.

A far more difficult case is that of uncertain uncertainty (UU) i.e. where you do not even know what the future is going to be because there are no precedents or guides to help you. This uncertainty in the future makes it almost impossible to prepare for or research to provide a measure of confidence in your ability to handle it. How does one handle the UU issues is one of those most difficult issues facing say the employee who has just been let off in an environment with vast unemployment or some one diagnosed with an incurable disease. In these cases while some research would help but the underlying uncertainty renders most people to retreat from the world or take refuge in cynicism and perhaps despair. What does one say to people facing UU? What remedies can one recommend to them?

Perhaps the first, and most obvious one, is to understand that this will pass, that it is not a permanent state of affairs but that times and tide will change. The fact is the life is full of transitions. And every transition process contains a period where uncertainty reigns. Change is an inevitable part of life. Impermanence is a given. But in order to manage change effectively it is essential to not fear or resist change and challenges, but instead empower oneself with the necessary skills to navigate through the uncertainty.

As human beings, we often become attached to our, roles, responsibilities, work group, and historical and current structures within an organization. The normal reactions to significant change cover a wide gamut of emotions: from shock, numbness, and withdrawal to fear and insecurity. Many times it leads to frustration, resentment, and anger coupled with a feeling of unfairness, betrayal, and distrust. This tends to come out in a lack of interest in activities and life in general or worse to a distrust of everything expressed in quietness or cynicism.

So how does one get over this period?

First thing to understand is that successfully managing the uncertainty that accompanies any transformation will ultimately increase one’s resilience, self - confidence, motivation and productivity. To begin with one needs to simply acknowledge ones current situation, and be aware that normal reactions to the transitional period are to be expected. Then you need to take charge and plan in advance how you will respond to the changed workplace environment and prioritize steps that will aid in minimizing your anxiety and stress levels. It is inevitable that when any major change occurs, both positive and negative feelings will often emerge often at the same time. It’s important to talk and confide in a few people you trust about current changes and pressures associated with the transition. It is helpful to seek out individuals who have a sense of hope and who can help you strategize about managing your current situation. Clear communication and information in times of uncertainty can aid in minimizing stress and anxiety levels. Acknowledging ambiguity and what you don’t know is equally important.  It is time to also develop adaptable coping skills. Think back to challenging times in your life and draw upon how you coped, managed to get through the transition period successfully, and thrive. Each individual has the capacity to cope and deal with situations effectively. And finally use this interrugm to do something one has always wanted to do but never found time for – learn a new language, hone a craft, read a new book or travel and see the world. A change of scenery can sometimes turn a UU into a CU but that is an advance, is it not?

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Beyond the “lokpal” bill

The recent events in India have captured the world’s attention – the New York Times did two pieces on this theme in a week- and the country seems enraptured with Anna Hazare’s fast unto death for the passage of the anti corruption Lokpal bill. The problem is that what happens even if the bill passes? What are the next steps? Does the existence of the bill miraculously eliminate corruption from public life? Does it deter politicians and civil servants from acts of nepotism and chicanery? Is the legal system ready to imprison those whom it so recently worshipped? In short does the mass hysteria over the Lokpal bill really get at the roots of the problem of corruption in India or is it merely the first shot in a very long battle – a battle which sorely needs both analysis and development of a long term strategy.

There are a number of theories how developing countries like India can tackle corruption at its roots. The two most prevalent are the “wholesale/retail” theory and the second is the “ broken windows” theory.

According to the “wholesale/retail” theory, the best way to attack corruption is to focus on the large projects which have substantial payoffs. Curtailing these payoffs will lead eventually to a cleaner public life. To that end one should therefore focus on the procurement process – making it clearer and more transparent. Using the Internet to publicly detail and follow all large government procurements could deter the advent of agents and people willing to bend the rules to benefit some individuals. Followed by a detailed monitoring of financial outflows, argues this approach, would lead to a more honest system that people could believe in and that this would invariably” trickle down” into all transactions at the retail level as well. Economic growth coupled with this trickling down would eliminate the retail or “tea money” type of everyday corruption. That at least is the theory.

The “broken windows” however starts from the other end. The theory derives from the way crime was reduced in metropolitan cities in the U.S in the eighties and nineties by its focus on small and petty crimes. Originally the “broken windows” theory was a criminological theory of the norm setting and signaling effects of urban disorder and vandalism on additional crime and anti-social behavior. According to this theory monitoring and maintaining urban environments in a well-ordered condition would prevent further vandalism as well as an escalation into more serious crime. A successful strategy for preventing vandalism is to fix the problems when they are small. Repair the broken windows within a short time, say, a day or a week, and the tendency is that vandals are much less likely to break more windows or do further damage. The theory thus makes two major claims: that further petty crime and low-level anti-social behavior will be deterred, and that major crime will, as a result, be prevented. This theory can be applied to everyday corruption as well.

A major factor in determining individual behavior is social norms, internalized rules about the appropriate way to act in a certain situation. Humans constantly monitor other people and their environment in order to determine what the correct norms for the given situation are. They also monitor others to make sure that the others act in an acceptable way. In other words, people do as others do and the group makes sure that the rules are followed. But when there are no people around, as is often the case in an anonymous urban environment as well as in most petty corruption cases, the monitoring of or by others does not work. In such an environment, corrupt individuals are much more likely to get away with their graft. When there are no or few people around, individuals are forced to look for other clues—called signals—as to what the social norms allow them to do and how great the risk of getting caught is. An ordered and clean environment sends the signal that this is a place which is monitored, people here conform to the common norms of non-criminal and non corrupt behavior. A disordered environment where the common wisdom is that “everybody does it” or that “there is no other way but to bribe to get your way” sends the opposite signal: this is a place where people do as they please and where they get away with that, without being detected. As people tend to act the way they think others act, they are more likely to act "disorderly" in such an environment and thus multiply the petty acts of corruption over a larger and larger area. So if there is a stringent application of the law for all petty crimes of extortion – starting with “tea money” or “bribes to evade transport fines” among others- this will slowly percolate the society creating an environment where larger corrupt acts will be seen to be unacceptable and hence less prevalent.

And what is the empirical evidence about the efficacy of either strategy in real life?

South Korea started opening up all its procurement on the Internet. KONEPS (Korea Online e-procurement system) was created in 2002 to win public confidence by improving transparency and efficiency in procurement administration. In the past, procurement works for entire public institutions had been processed in paper based form and manual works, which required that business people personally visit the government offices frequently and register repeatedly with each procuring office. Since its creation KONEPS has become the world's largest cyber market reaching an annual trade volume of USD 43 bn by 2005. It is estimated that transaction cost worth about $4.5 billion have been saved yearly and 90% of this value has been related to cost savings in requiring information and visiting government agencies for private agencies. What is left unstated is that it managed to eliminate a great deal of public corruption as well.

New York had the police more strictly enforce the law against subway fare evasion, public drinking, urination, and the "squeegee men" who had been wiping windshields of stopped cars and demanding payment. According to the 2001 study of crime trends in New York by George Kelling and William Sousa,[3] rates of both petty and serious crime fell suddenly and significantly, and continued to drop for the following ten years.

One can argue that in dire cases like India, what is required is the application of both of these theories simultaneously!

Friday, August 19, 2011

Pizza, anyone for a pizza..

I recently read a very learned discussion on what makes the best pizza. Yes, in these hard times, issues such as a good pizza make a lot of sense, dont they. Here is what they came up with:

"What do I look for in a pizza? I look for things on a micro level, and things on a macro level.

Micro:

1) Tear off a piece of the end crust, with nothing at all on it. Is it worth smelling? Is it worth eating by itself? So many of the great pizzas I've had have almost a "propane-like" smell, and I'm not sure if it's because of the rise in the dough, the hot, blistery char, or a combination of both.
2) Pick off the individual toppings by themselves. Would you eat the cheese by itself? Is the sauce (canned though it may be) delicious and not pumped full of sugar, salt, or other items of distraction?
3) How are the toppings? Are they nitrated Hormel-level? Or are they things you'd gladly eat if they were served on a charcuterie plate? Are the roasted vegetables delicious by themselves, or do they need cheese, garlic, and tomato sauce to make them enjoyable?
4) Is there anything on the pizza, individually, that's weird, or stands out like a spike when eaten on its own?
5) Even though you can't always taste this, are the ingredients honorable? From a farm, or from a factory?

Macro:

1) Is the pizza, when eaten all together, in balance? Does acidity balance fat? Is there too much sauce or too much cheese? Is it too salty or sweet, or do all the flavors mesh together in harmony?
2) Does the pizza retain your interest from start to finish, or is it a "pizza of first impact," having a dramatic first bite, and quickly losing interest as you get towards the end of the pie?
3) Once it cools to room temperature, does it still taste as good as it did when it was piping hot from the oven? Many types of bad food rely on bubbly, gooey, hot fats and oils that serve as <<maquillage,>> the temperature covering up lesser ingredients which get downright nasty when they come down to room temperature.
4) Does it taste good the next day, unheated? (I'm not talking about texture; I'm talking about taste.)"

I believe this is now going to become an app on the iphone so that it can tell you which pizza to buy and eat!

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Innovators of the year

35 Innovators under 35

Every year, Technology Review lauds 35 innovators under the age of 35. They are chosen because they are transforming technology.

Our process for selecting the innovators is rigorous--not to mention arduous for our editors. We seek nominations more than six months before we announce the winners. Candidates, who may come from either industry or the academy, are nominated through a form, open to all, on TechnologyReview.com, or through nomination by an editor.

An important source of the latter nominations are the editors of Technology Review's editions in Germany, India, China, Italy, and Spain: we want our list to be as international as possible, because technological innovation is a global enterprise, and because we are particularly interested in innovations that will solve persistent problems in the developing and poor world. The nominees are screened for appropriateness, and we collect curricula vitae, personal statements, and at least three reference letters. Simultaneously, we convene a panel of judges who are experts in different technological fields and who may be past TR35 winners themselves. We ask each judge to assess about 10 candidates. The editors consider the final list, which may include several hundred names, weighing the judges' comments and seeking a mixture that represents current trends in emerging technology and the diversity of innovation around the globe. The list is whittled down until 35 innovators remain.

The whole process, as well as the editing of the stories about the young innovators, is led by Stephen Cass, Technology Review's knowledgeable, wise, and eloquent special-projects editor, who writes in the introduction to the TR35, "We strive to identify those individuals who are tackling problems in a way that is likely to benefit society and business. ... We pay special attention to those solving some of the most intractable and critical problems in the developing world." He notes that this approach can lead to the selection of a technologist who is developing new materials for new devices--and also to rewarding an entrepreneur who is creating new business models that will move technology from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Over the last decade, many of the young innovators we've selected have gone on to be spectacularly successful. Previous winners include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the cofounders of Google; Mark Zuckerberg, the cofounder of Facebook; Helen Greiner, the cofounder of iRobot; Jonathan Ive, the chief designer at Apple; Max Levchin, the cofounder of PayPal and founder of Slide; David Berry, who cofounded and funded (as a venture capitalist at Flagship Ventures) the biofuel companies LS9 and Joule; and MIT neuroscientist Ed Boyden, one of the inventors of the emerging field of optogenetics, which makes it possible to control neurons with light.

This year's winners have created innovations over a wide variety of fields, including biomedicine, energy, materials, communications, and transport, as well as software, hardware, social technologies, and the Web.

And as we do every year, we have selected for special attention a Humanitarian of the Year, the TR35 winner who we believe is most likely to improve the condition of humanity. This year, the winner is David Kobia, a Kenyan expatriate who designed the open-source Web service Ushahidi (the name means "witness" in Swahili). Ushahidi collects citizen reports and pinpoints them in space and time on an interactive map so that election fraud or ethnic violence can be more easily reported. It also makes it possible for first responders to disasters to react more rapidly and effectively. Since Kobia created the service as a way to document the violence following the disputed Kenyan presidential election of late 2007, Ushahidi has become central to coördinating the response to crises around the world.

Although Kobia is especially concerned with the plight of the world's dispossessed and unfortunate, he shares something with all the young innovators this year and in the past: they inspire and expand our sense of what is possible. The innovations of the TR35 allow human beings to do something difficult that they were not able to do before.

Here is the list of the 35 innovators and what they are working on: