Hi Everyone,
Mac here with another production update on our upcoming documentary, Can ODR Change the World? The Story and Promise of Online Dispute Resolution.
When it comes to online dispute resolution (ODR), do you have to be a technologist or hold a computer science degree to impact how technology can help resolve disputes? No! If we only talk about algorithms, software, and the massive scale of platforms like eBay or the internet courts of China, we miss the most important element of justice: the people. Technology alone doesn't resolve conflict—people do.
Following my recent conversations with non-technologist mediation teachers Professor Janet Rifkin and Dr. Barbara Manousso, I walked away with this realization: what matters most in ODR is a genuine heart for helping people resolve conflicts, and a willingness to adapt to change, including technological change. These two women have impacted ODR by seizing opportunities to do conflict resolution in new ways.
In the early 2000s, Janet Rifkin teamed up with Ethan Katsh to co-author what’s considered the first major work on the subject of ODR, Online Dispute Resolution: Resolving Conflicts in Cyberspace. While Ethan saw the internet's legal frontier, Janet brought her vast experience as a conflict resolver and ombudsperson to ensure the "Fourth Party" (the technology) actually supported humans. But pioneering wasn't easy. In our talk, Professor Rifkin shared an incredible story of how she was practically chased off a mediator conference stage in Madison, Wisconsin after she raised the possibility of resolving conflicts using a new medium called "email."
Similarly, Dr. Barbara Manousso has spent over three decades training thousands of peacemakers. She understands the "boots on the ground" reality of helping people in crisis. Long before Zoom became a household name, Dr. Manousso shared how she was already tinkering with Skype to connect disputing parties residing as far apart as Hungary and Hawaii. In 2020, just prior to the start of the pandemic's lockdowns, Dr. Manousso advised on and wrote the foreword to my e-book How to Mediate Online. I remain forever grateful for that contribution.
(For those interested, we recently uploaded that e-book to the LMI Network archive! You can read the English version here and the Spanish version here. It’s a bit dated now, but it was a helpful guide for those entering the Zoom mediation space when the covid lockdowns began).
One of the most surprising revelations from putting this documentary together is just how geographically concentrated the birth of the ODR movement was. This concentration spanned from the first internet service provider in the world launching in 1989 near Boston (called “The World”) to the melting pot of conflict resolution innovation happening simultaneously in New England. In the late 80s, 90s, and early 2000s Ethan Katsh, Janet Rifkin, and current NCTDRDirector Leah Wing worked at UMass Amherst, Colin Rule was finishing at Harvard, and Dr. Manousso was at nearby Brown in Rhode Island. It’s a unique collision of academia, law, and early internet culture in one spot that forever changed how we handle disputes. It’s exciting to tell the ODR story by documenting these hidden interconnections.
Learn more about the Can ODR Change the World documentary on LMIPodcast.com/film.
Best regards,
Mac Pierre-Louis
Host, Lawyers & Mediators International
Producer, "Can ODR Change the World?"
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