Carrying about additional instruction for the students, teachers being undertrained, teachers been afraid of the technology you oftentimes hear nothing sufficient budget to provide any kind of the i. T. Maintenance. Heres another context with the technology we devised worked very well but did not have much impact a larger rollout. Similarly we had another project where we try to provide a kind of kiosk for women to live in bangalore to search for jobs whether employed as domestic laborers in private households. And we set a basically a terminal in which the system was designed to be without any tax so the women monitored could still navigate. And Research Pilot we were able to show the women could navigate, find jobs and so forth but we eventually found that actually getting the employers decide on this particular system and then providing the training that many of the women needed to qualify for those jobs was much, much bigger task. Here again we had working technology that addressed a particular kind of problem but it didnt handle the into and issues again. Weve Done Technology may be stalled at most 10 of the larger issues. A little over five years i worked on 50 or more projects in india, all of which were about applying some kind of visual technology to the problems of health care, government, education, microcredit, agriculture and so forth. And very, very often the situation was exactly like i described, where we would design a solution but as soon as we tried to take it to larger scale, the technology failed to have an impact because of either institutional deficiencies and capacity or because individual are unable to make use of that technology on their own. Im a scientist by training and so i wanted to find out why this was the case, why was it the things we have spent a lot of time trying to design well and were research showed there were some positive impact did not have, in fact, a larger scale. The ultimate conclusion i came to was a very simple premise which is that technology in and of itself only amplifies underlying human forces. What that means is wherever the human forces are positive and capable, you can use technology and things get better. But with this human forces are possibly corrupt or fundamentally unable to take advantage of those technologies, then no amount of Technology Turns things around. This goes in direct contradiction to some of the earlier quote i mentioned what people believed technology in and of itself causes the social change we are looking for. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Former new York City Police officer Steve Osborne is next on booktv. He talks about some of the experiences he had throughout his career. How are you doing . [laughter] my name is Steve Osborne and to use the a nuke city cop for 20 years and just the accent is real. [laughter] [applause] but the funny thing is i didnt even know had in accent until i came to savannah. I was a cop for 20 years and then i became a writer. People ask me how do you go from being a cop to a writer . I dont like telling the story special at a book festival with other writers because they want to strangle me. It happened by accident. After retiring from the Police Department, my life with from the fast lane to the slow lane. Alall of a sudden i had all of i this time on my hands. When youre a cop come like a real cop and youre living the life you have no life. A im working around the clock, working nights, weekends, holidays. Im never home. Then all of a sudden im retired and a Center Industry at the walls. First thing i did was move the sofa from their to there. Fro and my wife says to me, she goes come what are you doing . She goes, you havent been home in 10 years. Put the sofa back where it was. So i did. So now im sitting there and im kind of bored and i dont know why. I guess everybody has a little voice in the back of the head the kind of whispers in the year what did you get is that same voice to get me saved all thosea years like watch out for thisl and watch out for that guy. It was that same little voice that was whispering in my ear to write pics i grabbed a pad and again and i wrote a story from a short story, about 12 pages about just something that happened to me on the job. So after i wrote this thing im looking at it like all right, what now . What do i do with this now . So i handed it to some family and friends. Im like, i just wrote this. The mind reading it and tell me what you think . So they read and they were like we didnt know you could write. [laughter] we didnt know you were that smart. But they loved it. And i was kind of surprise, kind of taken back. So wrote another one. I handed it out and everybody read and they loved it. So wrote another one. And the first one had been crying to us ago and had them laughing. Abouabout a third one and i have been crying again. So had the stories and i was doing it to get done. I didnt know what to do now. What do i do now . W am i wasting my time . It felt good to write. Its hard to explain but the actual act of writing and w putting those stories and my thoughts and my feelings on paper, it stirred something in my soul. It was the same way like at 3 a. M. I would be out on patrol. This was where i was supposed to be there i was not supposed to be home in bed sleeping, watching a movie with the wife. I was supposed to be out on patrol at 3 a. M. Chasing bad guys. It stirred something in my soul. So i had these stories and everybody was telling it like it, but being a cop you are cynical, skeptical. They were family and friends so i figured they were telling me what i wanted to. Was lucky enough i had a friend who was a writer, like a real writer. She wrote a bestseller, a television show, movie. So she knew what she was talkini about. I called her up and i said to me there, just rea read the stuff o if its any good or not. If its no good also the computer out the window and start a garden or something, i dont know what. So she ranted, she gets back to me and she goes, this is pretty good. A little rough around the edges but its got to be polished up but she said this is pretty good. So i kept writing. G. Wrote another story. About a year later she called me up out of the blue. She told issues during the show called the moth. Is anybody heard of the story called the moth . What a great organization. For those who dont know, the moth is a group we get up on stage at regular people tell a real story about their life. So they had this show and the night before i had a cop who was scheduled to appear and he had to bail out so now they are stuck. That asked my friend, do you know anybody who can fill in, a cop maybe . Sure enough she calls me. The universe works in mysterious ways. So she calls me up and tells me about this. So i called them, pitched the start of the phone. Next night i met the players club. I thought this was going to be like in the basement of the church got a couple sittingn around, you know . Going like this for applause. [laughter] and i show up at the place, theres like 300 people. I was never so scared in my s whole life. And that was invoked over the years involved like thousands of arrests. This was the scariest thing i ever had to do. I wanted to writ run out the do. I told the producer, unlike i would rather be chasing a guy down a dark alley with a gun. Didnt get up on that stage. But i got up, and not for f nothing, blew the roof off the joint everybody liked it. I was a little nervous because the theme of the show was crimes and misdemeanors, and the speakers before me all had these stories. One guy says he did 20 years for murder he didnt commit. Another guy was a defense attorney talking about a screwed up the criminal Justice System was. And then my friend gets up and tells about how she got arrested at the Republican National convention by some less than friendly riot cops and i could use a bologna sandwich as a pillow in central booking. I figured i was dead meat. So i get up there, told theot story and they loved it. I thought that was the end of it. Two weeks later they called me. And said records on condition what you and want to bring you. The next thing i know im in l. A. At ucla in front of 2400 in people. Thats what i said last night im not doing that. But i did. Then we went to seattle, san francisco, denver and the kind of encourage me to keep writing so wrote some more stories. And then they put me on npr, the radio hour and goes out like over 200 radio stations if one day i get a call from an editor and he says i just saw all your stuff. I think its imperative the right of the. I says, i think youre right. [laughter]ig so before i got up and until these stores i would write them out. It helped me flesh this story got in my head pics i told them, maybe i have a one of like first draft stuff. He says send it to me. Access its first draft stuff. I would still cant, id never anything before. W i didnt know it was really worthy. I sent it to him and three days later he called me up when he goes out you got an agent . It just so happened that i did. And agent had heard on npr radio a couple weeks before and itnt does come out like to represent you. What i told him i like writingan stored sure is. I enjoyed the. A cops life is a series of short stories. When you go out on patrol i may handle 10, 15, 20 jobs in a night and every job is a story. It has a beginning, a middle, and and, different characters, different dialogue, different consequences. A cops like virtually a series of short stories and thats what i felt comfortable writing. But my agent told me that short stories not the way to go. People dont really go for that. He wanted me to write a memoir. I thought about it and im like, same thing, a little voice, it wasnt working. It did not want to do that. Some agent and i didnt talk for a couple of months. Then all of a sudden the editor from doubleday calls me up, offers me a contractor i called my agent and i like check your email. Weve got a contract. The then i had to finish the book, which wasnt that tough. I kept writing and writing, and i finished a book. It wasnt as hard. I wouldnt say it was there be but i did enjoy it. Every cop out there, not just become every cop out there has great stories. Its finish the job every night you were involved in peoples lives. You are involved in peoples crisis. Ringng after doing that for 20 years come youve got a million stories. On not everybody can write it and put on paper. So i wrote the book, and as i was writing it, through some of the stories i was afraid im like, nobody is going to believe this. Theyre going to think im making this stuff up. I wrote one story about a busy night that they had in a four i hour period, really in a fourero hour period i had a 17 yearold kid shot. I had two women stabbed in a family dispute that went crazy, and i had a 24 yearold kid fall out a fourth floor window at a party. And right before he hit the ground he clipped the back of his head on a fire hydrant. I was on my hands and knees and i talked to him while he died. And after that i look at the watch and im like, all that happened in four hours. Nobody is going to believe this. But its true, and thats aa cops life. The next it was probably a quiet night, nothing memorable but every night when you go to work, you do not know whats going to happen from one minute to the next. Ute to as i got towards the end of the book, there was one story thatat had to be written. I didnt want to write about it. I didnt feel the need to write about it. I felt very conscious writing about it but it was a 9 11. And if i did not write about i think there would have been a big hole in the book. And when i started writing it, about account it was like the first couple of days i dont remember much. Its all kind of a blur to me. Even when i hook up with guys that were with me at the time, they say the same thing. Like every member something very vividly, i have no recollection. I remember something very vividly, they can remember. If all of us those first couple of days, its kind of a blur. And after that i was working 12 hours on 12 hours off for the next two months. And my unit was in the Detective Bureau so we got assigned to the morgue. Our job was to identify the remains coming in it and they couldnt write about what i saw and what we did. Those are peoples family, family members. I couldnt write about it. But i think i wrote about my feelings and how i dealt with it and i think you get a pretty good picture about what happened. F what you might find it hard to believe that there was one funny story about 9 11. Ny you might find it hard to believe, but i was assigned to the morgue and my friends 80 year old mother calls my house. Nobody had seen or heard from in weeks. I was down there every day. So my friends 80 year old mother called my wife and says how a stephen doing . She goes, steven is in the morgue. [laughter] and she was a little hard of hearing, but she got that much. Shes like, im so sorry. My wife is like no come its okay. A lot of lives dont know whether husbands are. Re t [laughter] at least i know where he is. [laughter]he from there the story gets a little toward the we dont know how it spread, but it spread. And there was this one bar down the jersey shore i used to hang out and then you all the guys there. And they heard that i was in the morgue. Now, none of them knew my wife and nobody felt comfortable calling my house to find out what with the arrangements were going to be. Ra they figured they would just about it sooner or later. So this goes on. Finally after like two but i get a couple of days off and im like, i need a beer. I walk into the front door of the bar [laughter] and it was like they saw a ghost. But i just, i was never, before doing this i never wrote anything. I hated writing. G. In the Police Department to use duct write reports. I hated writing the. I kept having to a minimum. W of other guys used to really dress their reports out. A lot of big words. I kept my very basic, simple. I just didnt like it. And even when i was a kid i wasnt a good student at school. I was a solid c. Student. On my best day. I dont know if anybody ever went to catholic school, but such a catholic used to be to the crap out of me on a regularn basis and remindin remind me tht wasnt going to amount to nothing. I wish she could see me now. [laughter] so writing was never on my radar. And when i was writing i found it funny, like i kind of enjoyed looking at some of the stupid things i did, like the dumb things you do as a rookie, like chasing a guy down the subway tunnel just a robbery. Why i didnt think a train might keep coming. At the time the adrenaline isg n pumping and i dont know, i didnt think of the likely event that a train was going to come. But im still there to talk about it. When i was a kid my father was a guy. Her i guess was a cop. I saw it through him. Gh him and he worked in a precinct not too far from our house and sometimes my mother would make him to bring this up to your father unlike a moment day dayso i traveled there and bringing dinner and they wouldnt leave. I would stay in the station house. I would be sitting on the desk with a desk sergeant it a desk sergeant before becoming and theyre telling their sad stories enter some 12 year old kid sitting behind a facade tosi listen to every word, and then thinking like this is the life for me. This is what i really want to do. When his buddies would come around the house, to me they were the coolest guys in the world. They were real men and i wanted to be just like them. So i guess from a kid, i knew that i never wanted to be a doctor. I never wanted to be a lawyer or an astronaut. Tron i wanted to be the guy standing over the dead guy in the middle of the street trying to figure out who killed him. So i really had no choice. So writing kind of took me by surprise. And 20 years of police work, itt gives you plenty to write about. Sometimes writers get mad at me like, this whole writing thing happened by accident, but i paid my dues. 20 is out industry in new york city you pay your dues, and thats where, i did note at the time but thats where i was doing my research. In the back of my head i was recording all these things that i saw at all these things that i did. It gave me plenty of stuff to write about. I guess i feel lucky. I feel lucky because when you write like that, like i said, it stirs something in your soul. It gives you, once you leave the Police Department, my life was kind of empty, and writing kind of filled that void. And it was good to think aboutut because you forget all the things that you did. Like i worked in a lot of busy places and i remember being a desk sergeant in this busy precinct. The neighborhood was insane, and my first night there im sitting on the desk and am looking around, and the building was a dump. Wa it was falling down come the ninth precinct, they were s cracked walls and peeling paint. And im sitting there and all of a sudden the front door flies open and this guy comes running through the blunt through the front door covered in blood and another guy chasing them with a pipe. Pim, im jumping over the desk. Unwisdom of the cop in the wrestling, fighting, trying to get a pipe often. Turned out to be a was to homeless guys from across the street and on guy they chipped in for a bigger one guy took a bigger set than the other one. Two hours later im just sitting there looking at this big piece of peeling paint waiting for it to fall down come the front doors are still open again. And some guy with bagpipes come0 bursting, 3 00 in the morning with bagpipes comes bursting into the front door of the station house, does a couple of laps. He plays some song like out of braveheart. Im looking at him. All of a sudden he marches out of the door, down the block, you hear the bagpipes fading away,wa and im like i love this job. [laughter] i really do. I love this job. This is like the greatest job in the world. Now, im sure a lot of people have questions, and if you want i could take a few questions from you. Can you come up to the microphone . If you dont do that come nobody on the television will hear you. I was wondering, well, a few questions. Im from new york. Wheres the ninth precinct . A lower east side. From houston to 14th street to broadway to the east river. And i was there during the 80s and the 90s when new york city was the wild west. Ld i go there now, i dont even recognize the place. I have three questions. Keep going. How did the neighborhood change while youre there . Thats one question. And then if you could tell us if the writing was therapeutic for you, if any one of these stories, visceral helping me work through one thing that happened one time . And then the funniest one. New yorker changed like you cant imagine it like the lower east side. What i was down for it with the wild west. Straight that he used to walk down with a gun in my head inside my coat pocket because it was so dangerous, now theres little cafes out of there. People are sipping their lot days, you know . St moms are going into the parks, t