What is Graffitos?
Graffitos is derived from italian word Graffito, meaning a scribbling. Some of the mankind’s greatest ideas start in the form a scribbling on a wall, drawing on a napkin, or some words on untitled.txt. Graffitos is just a collection of those singular musings whose time hasn’t come yet.
That was deep, so here is some food for thought. These are some ideas me and my friends like to tackle.
Ubiquity and Internet of things: True ubiquity can only be achieved when devices disappear into the very fabric of reality and serve us as an invisible servant. Not my words, but words of the man who I consider my buddha, Mark Weiser. How do we achieve this?
here’s a thought, see: www.graffitos.com/wise
Civic participation : We need to solve the problem of civic participation and transparency in governments. How do you encourage the ‘SnapChat generation’ to take interest in politics, their rights and nation building beyond lip service? How do we keep our representatives accountable and work in favor of their constituents?
Fixing science : We need a better way to fund scientific research. Having worked in labs for a while, I am sorry to report that its in disarray, brilliant minds are discarded in favor of political capital. When I arrived at Georgia Tech, I was told to pick a disease if I wanted to do research as the NSF funding has dried up, and NIH had a lot. I always thought the focus of research is scientific discovery. This needs to change if we are to help humanity, we need a better way to fund and fuel research. There is a lot of knowledge stuck inside this nation’s labs and minds of people that are waiting to be let out.
New way to be charitable: Traditional charitable foundations and failing mankind. They are straight up mismanaged shams (Yes! I am looking at you Susan G Komen foundation) or not attacking the root cause of the problem, or just a reason for rich socialites to drink some champagne guilt free. Why not use the same kind of rigor we use in startups and industry to this model. There have been a lot of breakthroughs in terms of behavior design, data sciences, and crowdfunding (Watsi we love you).
Hot or not for charities: To start, I want to build an app where the people decide which charity the money goes to. Investor X decides to give $500 to charity, then the crowd decides where the money should go into. So user’s do the research, and based on their votes. The trick here is, when we are spending someones money we will derive the satisfaction of being charitable. This in order will fuel Mr.Y who is part of the crowd to put in atleast $10 for the cause or into the app. Just a thought.
Focus on curiosity in education : There is a lot of emphasis on teaching children to code. Before that we need a better tool to make children curious. Make them believe they can make things, fix the world around them with technology. We need to teach them to build things but before make them understand why. Not just create tomorrow’s workforce but thoughtforce.
