Dx1W: Designing for the first world; the rest saving the west

Dx1W is a competition for designers, artists, scientists, makers and thinkers in developing countries to provide solutions for the first world problems :

We live in a com­plex world, one full of inequities and won­der­ful things. Our fel­lows in the First World have been con­cerned for a while with us hav­ing the major share of the bad­ness, so we thought, why don’t we pay back? After all, their life isn’t problem-free either. And that’s where this com­pe­ti­tion starts.

We’re call­ing artists, design­ers, tin­ker­ers, mak­ers, and thinkers with an idea to par­tic­i­pate. Two con­di­tions only: you were born in and live right now in a Devel­op­ing Coun­try and you are 13 years of age or older.

Devel­op­ing into what, exactly?

What does it mean to be a devel­op­ing coun­try? Among other things it means that the future is to become devel­oped. We are on our way toward devel­op­ment, and we assume that’s a great thing, but let’s stop to con­sider for a minute whether devel­oped coun­tries are some­thing we want to turn into. Are peo­ple in devel­oped coun­tries hap­pier or health­ier? Do they live a bet­ter life? Do they have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of nature and live in a bet­ter equi­lib­rium with the envi­ron­ment? Do they live in peace?

We have been focus­ing our energy and resources on try­ing to solve our Devel­op­ing World prob­lems to become more like the First World. But per­haps it is time that we, the so called Third World minds, focused our energy and cre­ativ­ity on solv­ing some of the First World prob­lems. We will have a brighter future to look for­ward to, and per­haps this can help us rethink and approach our cur­rent prob­lems from a dif­fer­ent perspective.

The competition deadline is 30th May and they are calling the solutions for:

  • Reduc­ing obesity.
  • Address­ing aging pop­u­la­tion and low birth rate.
  • Reduc­ing con­sump­tion rate of mass pro­duced goods.
  • Inte­grat­ing the immigrant population.

For more updates visit their site and follow them on their blog or on twitter

Related posts:

  1. Thirld World : Googling the ‘third world’
  2. The 3rd World : Corruption / Corrupt Childrens
  3. India’s life-saving child singer
  4. Tech Whiz Aims to Boost Third World Care
  5. Business World presents story of jalpaiguri

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