Stories of ThinkTech

ThinkTech Holiday Party and Awards Ceremony We are organizing our 2021 Holiday Gather and Awards Ceremony to take pace on December 8th.  Our keynote is Chip Fletcher of SOEST at UH. We will be presenting three community service awards along with awards to deserving shows and hosts in our lineup, and as in previous years to the underwriter of the year.   Given current attitudes about covid we are doing this event virtually, as we did last year, and will be inviting all our hosts, guest, viewers and friends to attend by Zoom.  We hope you will join us. Thanks.  Looking forward. ThinkTech Hawaii

Discovery of Stripo and Calendly Great new software for ThinkTech ThinkTech is always on the lookout for new   powerful software, and indeed over the years we have found great software that makes our operation and administration increasingly more efficient.   Without boring you on all the software we have found, developed and deployed, we want to tell you about two new applications we have found, and about which we are very excited. One is Stripo out of Kyiv, which lets us create HTML emails and graphics.   We are excited about it because it will help us make eye-catching email to let you know what we’re doing in our talk show advisories, in our weekly bulletins and of course in our fund drive appeals.   Stand by for some great looking email from ThinkTech. The other is Calendly, out of Atlanta, which lets us present an array of available show dates and times to individuals we want to invite to join us on our talk shows.   It is remarkable in that it avoids multiple exchanges of email

  A Commentary by Victor Craft How do we reverse the seemingly inexorable trend of sliding into apathy and oligarchy, covered by a thin veneer of democratic play-acting? How do we revitalize the ideals envisioned by our   founders, and the few of us still bearing torches against the darkness? Especially those of us who swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution.   PROPOSED SOLUTION NO. 1 – A NEW POLITICAL ENTITY?   Given this overwhelming political inertia, it seems highly unlikely either party will take the first step towards reestablishing amity. However, earlier this year, some former Republican officials publicly floated the idea of splitting from the GOP. Traditionally, third parties have been doomed from the start. Any alteration of our current direction is going to require cooperation from both sides of the aisle. The time for hypothesizing is past. We require politicians from the current parties to exhibit courage.   Any new direction should embrace our traditional co

ThinkTech will be Covering the Action Live in Glasgow Joshua Cooper, host of our Cooper UNion ThinkTech talk show (alternate Tuesdays at 11:00 am), will be doing a special live series on sustainable development and climate justice from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP26), which is scheduled to take place from November 1-12, 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. Two shows have been scheduled from Glasgow, November 4 and 11,  2021, at 9:00 am Hawaii time.  Cooper UNion will report on the negotiations and focus on the voice of the Pacific and Hawaii and other international players who will be there.  This will help us understand developments in climate change and the prospects of collective global action at this critical conference.  Contact   joshuacooperhawaii@gmail.com   with questions.  It will be worthwhile for us all to tune in to learn what is happening in Glasgow, live.  We all need to raise our awareness about the world’s most existential thr

ThinkTech 2021 Fall Fund Drive Fall 2021 Fund Drive: ThinkTech Gives Thanks We give thanks to each of you for supporting ThinkTech during these especially challenging times. We have strived to provide you the most up-to-date and relevant content in this rapidly changing environment.  With your help,  this past year we have produced 1,500 shows, interviewed 1,800 guests, produced our first documentary (Spiraling Crisis: The Alarming Convergence of Climate Change and Pandemics), started work on our second documentary on agricultural diversification for Hawaii, and expanded our platform to new social media channels and a number of new series on Olelo 54.    However, with the economy in a state of uncertainty, we have experienced diminished underwriter support. In addition, several of our grant applications have been denied. Help us continue as the only free media platform of its kind in Hawaii. Please join us in our upcoming Fall 2021 Fund Drive during the month of November. As we celebra

  It's all over the news that Frances Haugen, a whistleblower with revelations about Facebook, has pointed out that postings on Facebook are selected and prioritized to achieve maximum "engagement" and thus maximize advertising revenues.  As she reports it, maximum engagement for Facebook involves selecting and prioritizing postings that promote disinformation, injure people, have a huge effect on public opinion and worse yet exacerbate the divisions in our country, and that this has had a negative effect on our society and our democracy. It all lies in the powerful black box AI algorithm that Facebook uses to determine this selection and prioritization of postings, and it will very difficult for Congress to obtain, examine and understand the algorithm and the values written into it and develop effective legislation or regulation within the First Amendment to ameliorate this problem.  But one way or the other, given the damage that is being done, we do need to find a solu