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so as a small child I always envisioned
working in space and other apocalyptic
landscapes building communities and
creating new futures here it is 30 years
later I'm still not living on Mars but I
found myself and other desolate
post-apocalyptic environments no not as
bad as nuclear war but not so far off
either I've spent the last 15 years
working and studying with communities in
crisis around the world in the last six
years my focus has been primarily around
actually adapting technology to fit the
other 90% of the planet I like to say I
use Moore's laws table scraps using
technology to aid those at the edges
from disaster survivors to astronauts
which is how I found myself working
humanitarian aid and traveling to
desolate locations where catastrophic
events have taken place these are places
with extremely limited resources no
power no drinking water and certainly no
experts nor exact answers to be found
and it's in these times when it seems
that almost all hope is lost that I have
to ask myself
WW MD what would MacGyver do so what
would MacGyver do my old adage my
personal mantra of sorts you remember
MacGyver right he was the star of a TV
show in the 1980s where basically he had
to save the world every episode using
only a Bic pen some chewing gum a bit of
duct tape and some random person he met
along the journey and you know what he
did every damn time no crazy tech just
human ingenuity resilience and grit
don't get me wrong just because MacGyver
is my personal hero doesn't mean I don't
love technology I think tech can be
great when it works in fact I've even
worked on some of the craziest tech out
there from the first AI and human design
car
to the first factory in space but when
tech doesn't work which is more often
than I think any of us particularly in
this room would like to admit and the
whole system falls apart what do we do
then in this world of technology
emerging with humans I worried that
we're actually setting ourselves up for
major failure instead of making us
superhuman maybe Tech is slowly killing
our ability to be creative and think on
our feet what happens when it's not
there to save us if you keep outsourcing
to many of our human skills then we're
really gonna be in trouble if it fails
and inevitably it will fail if disaster
strikes natural or man-made and our tech
Goes Down will we still have the
ingenuity resilience and grit to survive
I actually think we might but only if we
don't let our creative muscles atrophy
in the face of all this cool new
technology that's coming down the road
how to do that maybe what we need is a
reminder of what human ingenuity and
resilience and grant look like when we
take technology out of the equation I
believe we can take lessons from the
extremes
we're throwing technology at a problem
isn't an option in scenarios so extreme
that the only question we can ask is wwm
D and this is where I actually get to
tell you that I have the coolest job in
the world seriously i co-founded a
non-profit field-ready
and we actually MacGyver aid solutions
in disaster zones typically supply
chains in crisis are extremely short
supply very limited or exponentially
expensive and if by the time you're
lucky enough to get the supplies a lot
of time it's not even what you need
so field-ready is requested to aid these
communities in crisis because of a
reputation of being able to not only
help people and solve problems with
limited supplies but to support
communities and thriving post-disaster
by creating life-saving tools and
supplies in the field as needed out of
materials and tools that we find there
on the ground
you see we ask survivors what they need
instead of assuming that we know we then
co.design with these communities to
ensure it's the right solution for them
and the most important piece is we make
sure they can replicate it after we
depart is sometimes it turns out that
all you really need to solve an extreme
challenge are people of materials and
determination I think it's safe to say
that we could take a number of our
operational cues from the most famous
MacGyver moment of all time
the Apollo 13 crisis where the
astronauts were slowly poisoning
themselves because they had too much co2
in the air it took the world's top
engineers to solve the problem basically
they did is they took all the
ingredients they had on the space module
put it on a table here on earth and
prototype to fix and then call the
astronauts back to walk them through the
solution thereby saving the astronauts
this means they solved this problem
under extreme duress extreme pressure
lives were on the line using only what
they had available their ingenuity and
determination well that in a inordinate
amount of duct tape I was once told we
can't fix it with a duct tape or a
martini and ain't worth fixing I'd say
they were half right so now let me show
you some of the stuff we have done at
field ready last fall one of our
deployments was to US Virgin Islands in
response to Hurricane Maria and Irma the
situation was less than ideal once we
were actually able to get to st. Thomas
five days after the hurricanes had
passed we hit the ground running we
identified a number of challenges but
what we kept coming back to you is the
lack of power so how could you make
power out of nothing so he explored the
islands looking for supplies and we kept
finding all these broken and destroyed
mangled solar panels along the way we
thought maybe we can salvage some part
maybe just get it a fraction to work so
we started hacking and testing hacking
and testing rinse and repeat
eventually it's pretty cool we
discovered that we could take current
and potentially charge a car battery the
best part is I actually learned how
fry car battery so months if we were
able to borrow another one we created
our first functional iteration using
garbage bags duct tape and chewing gum
I'm not even kidding it was amazing
then we borrowed another car battery
from someone else found an inverter and
then created a solar charging station
out of trash once you sorted the right
way to replicate the system we actually
then taught our partners on the ground
they work with at-risk youth and they
teach them job in construction skills
how to actually reproduce what we are
doing this way it was possible to have
learning all over the island now the
next time there's a problem a storm or
hurricane sadly there will be more these
kids can be their own heroes in their
communities creating safe solar charging
stations they can charge multiple phones
flashlights and batteries simultaneously
before FEMA and the like can even touch
ground that's resilience let me give you
another example
speaking of grit and determination not
that long ago we were also called in to
help with our own Apollo 13 scenario no
it wasn't in space but it may as well
have been it's that hard to get supplies
there does anyone recognize this scene
are these people this is Syria a
war-torn country we work in we were
contacted by a group working with the
white helmets to see if we could help
them to get access to more
search-and-rescue tools this is the
White House they're the Syrian civil
defense they are actual real-life
superheroes they chase planes planes
dropping bombs on innocent people they
chase the planes so they can pull people
from the rubble right after a building
collapses so when an eight story
building collapses and there are people
trapped inside you need a way to lift it
and fast sometimes you only need three
inches to save a life the systems
available in neighboring countries ran
around five thousand US dollars far too
expensive to get one to each team
let alone how would you get them all
across the border wasn't the easiest of
environments to work in we couldn't
cross the border we couldn't count on
sending them technology we couldn't
depend on electricity so we had to
figure out how to work with what they
had there and what we had here to
support so we had to ask ourselves what
did we have well we had people with cell
phones so we had them take pictures and
then send us what they found there were
lots of basically bombed out cars bombed
out buildings basic EMT kits so just
like an Apollo 13 we took all of those
ingredients poured it onto a table and
we basically re-engineered away to lift
buildings off of people I'm not gonna
lie it took a while it took us about
four months to be exact but it works we
use the canvas from army vehicles we
heat welded it together to make an
incredibly strong bladder and since
there was no dependable electricity we
actually use the o2 tanks tanana
matically lifts the buildings and it was
awesome
until it wasn't the bags kept puncturing
you to rebar and concrete and we were
like we were so close and we'd come so
far how the heck are we gonna solve this
and then it hit us car mats you know the
rubber mats you find the back of your
car so simple and suddenly so obvious
and you know what we were actually able
to make the system work for $50 worth of
spare parts found locally in a war zone
so here it is actually lifting a
foundation did I mention these bad boys
can lift 9 tons that's about nine small
cars or nine smart cars Osama who runs
our lab in Syria he's actually my
personal real-life superhero he and his
team have pulled this off in the face of
extreme adversity and now his team is
made and distributed over a hundred of
these kits all throughout the country
and they are already saving lives
even more amazing part is that now
they're teaching our team in Nepal how
to produce these out of their local
materials so they can be prepared for
the next big earthquake and our hope is
to take it around the world so that more
lives can be saved
so this life-saving device was pretty
much created against all odds no crazy
tech just human ingenuity resilience and
grit using exactly what they had
available what I'm essentially trying to
say is this technology is important but
it can only get us so far the world is
getting smaller both literally and
figuratively and we're not gonna be able
to throw tech at every situation as
efficiently nor as effectively as we'd
like to believe and as time moves on
there are more disasters more people and
fewer resources to go around so instead
of focusing on the next block chain or
AI maybe really need to focus on the
things that make us human and as we look
at the challenges ahead perhaps the only
technology or dare I say innovation we
need is really the lens at which we look
at a challenge so the next time you're
faced with a challenge before you give
up take stock in what you have the
people you're surrounded by your own
ingenuity your own grit find your
resilience all that and maybe a bit of
duct tape thank you
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