September 06, 2005

Heather Greer: Techno-Altruist

It was during the second half of this, my second ITP class ever, that I first had an inkling of what I would be getting out of two years here. It took a few more weeks for me to realize that Red's class would be one of my favorite classes (although the realization that I had but two real assignments for the semester didn't hurt).

Heather spoke to us about her work since leaving ITP in the mid-90s. She is essentially a documentary filmmaker, but she has done numerous projects intended to reach across divides (digital, socioeconomic, geographical) and touch one another. She has spent time in Rwanda organizing refugee camps, in the south recording oral histories, and so on.

I was really inspired by what she said, and her words strengthened my resolve to use technology to do good. Her projects all, in some for or another, involved using technology to connect people, and I was reminded of NPR's StoryCorps a booth set up for everyday people to record their own life stories. The StoryCorps booth traveled around the US a couple times, gathering stories.

Posted September 6, 2005 12:18 PM. Categories: Week 1 | Permalink

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://itp.nyu.edu/~cf831/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2