I'm always on the lookout for figures in the media who eschew the common horse-race, zero-sum paradigms that dominate the public sphere these days in favor of more nuanced explanations of the events that dominate our society. I've stumbled across a couple media figures over the years who have been able to sustain that level of sophistication (e.g. Jeff Greenfield, David Broder, Cathy Young) but they are sadly few and far between. Read more about Understanding the Other Side
Well, it looks like Negroponte has done it...
"A prototype of a cheap and robust laptop for pupils has been welcomed as an "expression of global solidarity" by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The green machine was showcased for the first time by MIT's Nicholas Negroponte at the UN net summit in Tunis. He plans to have millions of $100 machines in production within a year." Read more about The $100 Laptop
Those of us in the conflict resolution field like to think of our work as apolitical. Trying to keep dialogue constructive, trying to help disputants work toward mutually acceptable solutions -- these tasks don't seem readily categorizable as liberal or conservative. In fact, an inordinate amount of effort is focused upon the concepts of "neutrality" and "impartiality" in my field. If disputants don't trust us to be impartial, the wisdom goes, we have no legitimacy to offer to assist them in their attempts to find a resolution. Read more about Conflict Resolution: A Pacifist Agenda?
