PeaceX Global Response - FAQ
What Is The Collective Research Opportunity?
The overarching research question of the Peace Innovation Lab is “How good can we be to each other?” Given this unique moment in human history, we are going to refine our focus together, to how good we can collectively be to each other in our shared covid-19 context--specifically focusing on creating new mutually beneficial economic activity. Under this still broad theme, community members will develop more specific research questions that all build towards a common operating picture, focused on the intersection of their domain and positive peace.
Our objective is to design fast small experiments that our community can collectively do with each other, for each other, by each other, to determine the best ways to care for each other and our larger communities, organizations, and societies.
Together we will collect, refine, develop, and prioritize these specific research questions asked by the community, through the lens of positive peace under our main research question. Some examples could include:
“How can we keep the environment clean with the knowledge that we gained from this crisis?”
“What are effective ways governments promote public health initiatives and access to health care?”
“Have we crossed cultural boundaries since the start of the pandemic?”
What is positive peace?
When many people hear the word peace, they think “not war” or “not violence”. While the reduction of violence (or any bad behavior) across different boundaries is an important piece of the puzzle, it is being addressed by many excellent initiatives around the world. But there is another approach to creating peace that is often overlooked. Instead of reducing bad behavior, what if we focused on increasing good behavior between people and groups? Here the focus is generative rather than remedial, and preventive rather than restorative. This part of the design space of peace is broadly referred to as “positive peace” and is where we focus our work.
Why is positive peace important to this Global Response?
Our research effort is focused on looking at all the positive ways people are responding to the crisis across all domains. And we’d like you to be our eyes and ears as we try to gauge the positive impact of the rapid creative evolution we’re now seeing.
What is expected from me once I’ve signed up to this Global Response?
As a volunteer: you have the option to dedicate 10 minutes to 7 hours per week on developing research questions, conducting experiments and being a change-maker in your community that helps capture data that is happening today, but won’t exist tomorrow.
What if I signed up but don’t have a lot of time?
An alternative is to help us as a citizen scientist. You don’t need to register yourself with us, however, if you do you can specifically engage completing our Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs). This was based on NASA’s experiment when the three researchers mapping the moon realized it would take over 600 years to complete. By scaling down the work into tasks that could be completed within five minutes the research opportunity was released to the general public. The surface of the moon was mapped in less than 18 hours. These are released on a daily basis online for you to engage in. A HIT should not take you longer than three minutes to complete.
What is PeaceX?
PeaceX is the umbrella of the project, the intersection of your domain expertise with peace. In this response we are not asking you to become an expert in what you’re not. We want you to be yourself.
How do I become a volunteer?
Sign up here and you’ll receive an email from us.
Why is capturing data so important?
Capturing perishable data during a global event of COVID-19 magnitude allows research to be done in the future that provides essential information to building more resilient systems in the future.
Why does my institution need to pay for my internship?
When you join our team, there are many resources that you need access to that cost money to add new people to. Having each institution pay a small fee for you to participate allows us to be able to provide opportunities for many more people.
How is this project tackling the role of the depleting economy in this?
There is an opportunity to create a new supply and demand model that allows us to harness our differences to produce new products and services to serve needs and promote peace, while also creating something that is profitable.
Rapid scalable citizen-science experiments can quickly increase economic activity while creating enduring wealth that civilization can harvest and build on for millennia. Unskilled consumers, now unemployed or under-employed, can do this valuable work from home. Our research project includes a focus on how consumers can generate new, scalable grassroots economic activity in their communities, from home.
The pandemic provides a unique opportunity for researchers, scientists, and citizens to collaborate—to engage citizens around the world to discover and capture otherwise perishable data about this unique event in human history that researchers can build on for centuries to come.
How is the programme set up to tackle the solutions?
We are constantly moving between the discovery of data and the movement to solutions. Although we don’t expect solutions to arise as fast as the discovery process some data may be effectively implemented in different disciplines and contexts faster than others.
We do this through data sharing, a large network of interns who assist in the project and through observation, create rapid experiments that enable fast data collection. From the many experiments we can slice the top of results that had the most positive impact and integrate the knowledge into different fields and contexts.
Our ability to capture perishable data we’ve never seen before is what we are calling this effect: The Rumplestiltskin Experiment where we are turning straw to gold, and then using that gold.
What is a citizen scientist?
A citizen scientist is anyone with an internet connection who can complete small, rapid human intelligence tasks to further research on a global level.
What is a volunteer?
A volunteer is a person who can dedicate anywhere from ten minutes to seven hours per week on projects and uses their expertise to help develop experiment designs, and use their skills to intersect with positive peace.
What is the Peace Innovation Process?
TBC