Feel-good story of the day: The man who used Google Earth to find his long-lost family. Saroo Brierley was only 5 when a train zoomed him hundreds of miles from home. It took 25 years and a technological revolution for him to get back.
“I kept in my head the images of the town I grew up in, the streets I used to wander and the faces of my family.” Brierley spent hours on Google Earth zooming around for clues, obsessively looking for something, anything that he recognized. Finally, he identified his hometown: Ganesh Talai.
npr:
Turning Homeless Men Into WiFi Hotspots At SXSW Ignites Debate
Wired magazine says it “sounds like something out of a darkly satirical science-fiction dystopia.”
BBH Labs, the “skunk works” of marketing firm Bartle Bogle Hegarty, created “Homeless Hotspots” in Austin for the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival that’s underway in the Texas capital.
As CNet News writes: “Yep. It is exactly what it sounds like—walking, talking homeless people who provide access to a 4G network in exchange for a donation (BBH Labs suggests $2 per 15 minutes). … The 13 men who have been chosen to participate in the program are roaming the streets of Austin in T-shirts that say ‘I am a 4G hotspot.’ The campaign has drawn ire from some who claim it’s dehumanizing.”
Jon Mitchell at the ReadWriteWeb blog says “the digital divide has never hit us over the head with a more blunt display of unselfconscious gall.”
BBH Labs, though, says its “test program” lets the “Hotspot Managers” (the homeless men) keep all the money they earn. It sees the project as an attempt “to modernize the Street Newspaper model employed to support homeless populations.”
And one of the homeless men — Mark from Houston — tells ReadWriteWeb that the program is “awesome.” It “helps kill the stereotype” that all homeless people don’t want to work, he adds. BBH, he says, “is not taking advantage of us.”
It’s a case of teaching him how to fish, “rather than just giving me a fish,” says Mark, because he’s learning how to market himself thanks to the program.
Does this “Homeless Hotspot” program sound like a good idea to you?
This is awesome.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Heartbroken over the news that New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid died in Syria yesterday. Shadid was on Fresh Air six times, most recently this past December, where he talked about covering the Arab Spring. We’ll be devoting a portion of the show today to remember him.
In 1950, a young man from Central Point, Virginia, went seven miles down the road to hear some music. Seven brothers named the Jeters were on that night, playing bluegrass in a farmhouse. The young man had come for the music, but couldn’t help noticing a young woman in the audience. The man, Richard Loving, was white; the woman, Mildred Jeter, was black and Cherokee. Seventeen years later, as a result of their meeting, the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act, along with anti-miscegenation laws in fifteen other states, ending the legal prohibitions against interracial marriage.
On view until May 6th at the International Center of Photography, “The Loving Story” highlights the human element of the Loving v. Virginia case, bringing the ardor that fueled the Lovings’ half-decade of appeals into heart-rending focus…- For more selection of photographs of Richard and Mildred Loving: http://nyr.kr/wLrC3t
