Carnegie Mellon Hosting Tech For Peace Conference

Carnegie Mellon University has announced the Future of Interactive Technology for Peace Conference, to run April 2nd and 3rd, a conference intended to provide “a forum for discussing the impact and the potential that interactive technology holds for peace and peacemaking.” Featured speakers include Lucas Welch, president and founder of Soliya, a non-profit organization that uses new media technologies to help college students with discussions of cultural and social differences; Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon faculty member and former creative director of Disney's Virtual Reality Studio; and Eric Brown and Asi Burak, creators of the video game PeaceMaker, where players act as the Israeli prime minister or Palestinian president and try to establish a stable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conference, sponsored by the Richard Lounsbery Foundation is to also include other speakers who will explore applying interactive technology to conflict resolution and international affairs. A full list of workshops and speakers is available at http://www.etc.cmu.edu/peace2008/. "Our hope is that this will be the first of many conferences which explore the application of technology to pressing social issues," said Brenda Harger, co-chair of the conference and an Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center faculty member.