Technology, Decentralization, International Development
Byron Bay, Australia & San Francisco, USA
mitra@mitra.biz
+1(510)423-1767, (voice, sms, whatsapp, signal)
+61-491-082-515, local in Australia
This site is still under construction, my old sites are mitra.biz/joomla, and www.naturalinnovation.org.
My life's main thread is using technology for "good". How can we create and use technology to make the world a better place.
I'm a do-er rather than an advocate. I work at the creative intersection between technical and business/organizational aspects, making things happen that can lead us to a better planet, and doing it at a scale that is relevant to the challenges we face. There are three interwoven threads that recur in my career, the internet, developing countries, and clean technologies (especially renewable energy).
I'm leading the decentralized web project at the Internet Archive. Our goals are to further a vision of a decentralized internet, and to bring the Archive's content to those beyond the reach of the current internet.
We want to bring the resources of the largest online library to everyone including the half the world's population who live where the internet is slow, expensive or censored.
We are working with collaborators who support underserved communities to build a set of tools that allow deploying local servers on really cheap devices, or integrating into apps that get around cost, speed and political limitations.
The result, at dweb-mirror can run in boxes as small as a Raspberry Pi.
In 2017-2018 we worked with some of the other current and former internet pioneers, to advance a vision of decentralized web, where power lies with the users - both writers and readers. Imagine a world where storing in "the cloud" really meant the cloud - all the computers on the net - rather than server farms under centralized control.
This culminated at the Decentralized Web Summit in launching dweb.archive.org which used IPFS, WebTorrent and GunDB to provide a decentralized version of the Archive.
This isn't Blockchain, but its built on many of the same underlying tools that power Bitcoin and its succcessors such as strong cryptography and decentralized file stores or databases, and its open-source.
I've been involved in pioneering the web and its use for good, for quite a while, and in its decentralization, a few examples:
I'm passionate about developing and using technology to sustainably and scalably solve the problems of poverty and international development at scale. I believe there are many challenges in development that are amenable to solutions that are at least in part technical, and where often a solution exists in the West but for a number of systemic reasons we haven't found a solution that works for all the world's population. I've started several Social Ventures and NGO's in this theme, and since the sale of Lumeter am consulting to a number of interesting technology based projects.
Folia Water has developed technology for affordably impregnating nano-silver into paper, allowing clean water to be available to the billion+ who still lack it. By leveraging existing retail chains the problem of scaling solutions is removed. Trials are starting in Bangladesh, and they are raising their next round of finance and exploring other uses for the core technology.
We developed the leading PAYG technology, including hardware solutions embedded in the products of multiple manufacturers; and a full-stack dashboard enabling solar companies to deliver solutions to 40,000+ people. We had sales in 69 countries by the time we sold the company to Mobisol in 2017. www.lumeter.net
I'm active as a mentor, through a number of organizations including: Mentor Capital Network where I've been a board member, judge, and entrant in their competition; I've also been a judge on ASME & Engineering for Change (E4C)'s iShow competition & for CleanTech Open Global. I'm always interested in how we can improve the support that can be brought to technology based social entrepreneurs.
In particular there are very few sources of funding for technical solutions, which fall between the cracks: Too big for Angels; not enough return for VC's, too risky for Philanthropists; and too early for Impact funds.
I believe the best approach may be too work with foundations to align some portion of their funding to higher risk developments that have a chance of solving a problem they, or their grantees, care about. I'm also interested in talking with people who may have other approaches to this problem.
Using technology for good has been a thread throughout my career. Some highlights include: