Heads-down and absurdly focused, I spent a three hours last night pixel-pushing, creating a Flash animation for one last homework assignment of the quarter.

The Product Design program's rule of thumb is that student projects should always be breadbox-size or smaller. But how can a piece of molded plastic, a widget, a gadget, a heffalump, make the world any better? Sure, computer games involving the campus revolt of black squirrels are fun, and funny, and somebody randomly asked me about it last night at dinner actually, but... sometimes, with the constant output pipe of projects and deliverables, I feel like I signed up for to vocational school.

Dev Patnaik, who teaches ME216a: Needfinding, told a story in class a couple of weeks ago. The key is to find the right pixels, the right straws on the camels' backs, that will tip the balance in favor of larger improvements in the way people live their lives.

Nonviolent protests have driven many social and political changes, from end of the Peloponnesian War (ha, ha) to India's independence to local issues such as labor rights and maintenance subcontracting at Stanford. I've had limited experience with them, mostly as a dabbler in the March SF protests—I was part of a Stanford/Palo Alto group that blocked one of a couple dozen intersections, the police were notified far beforehand, everything was incredibly orderly and polite from their part, and I stepped back to the sidewalks with about 50% of the group when the police announced that anyone remaining in the intersection after 5 minutes would be arrested—, but what fascinated me there were the very specific, deliberate methodology and group constructions that nonviolent protesters use. (If you are interested, see Sanderson Beck's Nonviolent Action Handbook for a more structured introduction.)

You may argue with me on the direct efficacy of protest as social change, or sometimes about the issues being protested. But I'm fairly certain you'll agree with this:

Big groups of anything are scary. People, en masse, become dehumanized. Police, in preparation for a known protest, come fully decked in riot gear: face masks, sticks. Faced with an huge, immobile mass of people, they often use pepper spray as an incentive for dispersion. In return, protesters start coming with face masks themselves. Not only are they now behind some android-like black rubber contraption, they are bound by their pact of nonviolence to not resist when police unfasten a few buckles and then move on to the pepper.

Protesters have tried to reach out in human ways: offering donuts to people stuck in traffic from a blocked intersection, smiling at police offers, getting involved in 1x1 conversations with bystanders.

But when dehumanization and violence start to self-propogate in an escalating cycle, those tactics don't work as well. A few years ago, one of the PD masters' students was involved with the Seattle WTO protests. He saw this problem and found a solution. Not only did he design a very complicated rig that would take about 15 minutes to put on and take off, he put a GIANT SMILEY FACE on the front. It's pretty hard to be indifferent to a huge grin, and police officers encountering this new gas mask would do a double take and reassess exactly who and what they were dealing with. Goofy, simple, brilliant.

So anyway, I'm still looking for straws, but feeling a little better about it.