The earthDECKS breakthrough came by realizing that we must start, not with problems, but with STORIES that bring problems to life,
STORIES that offer diverse perspectives on overlapping issues which can drive a story–project feedback loop.

Through the iterative cycles of this story-project feedback loop, we can Power Our World, harnessing human computation, hybrid AI, and collaborative intelligence to engage both human pattern recognition and machine learning in an evolving ecosystem that can scale, learn, and improve its performance.

Turning “proposition theater” on its head

Half a century ago, before the public internet, “proposition theater” engaged its audiences to put forward propositions on which the troupe would improvise. Turning that great idea on its head, THE CELLO puts forward “clue•story” propositions for creative improv from an online activist network.

As shown in the image below, POW! [Power Our World] aims to amplify project-based “learning in action” so that making a difference feels like flying – like a rewarding adventure.

Our objectives are to

1) Grow a new paradigm in impact film-making

Powerful films can raise awareness and motivate a global audience to action, galvanized by youth leaders like Greta Thunberg.

2) Teach critical thinking

Films about profound social justice and environmental challenges can catalyze debate and serve as vehicles to teach critical thinking. During the Trump era, and extending to the COVID lockdown, we’ve seen the need to teach critical thinking and capacity to hear and assess multiple points of view, as a foundation learning skill. UC Berkeley’s Saul Perlmutter has voiced the need to teach critical thinking.

3) “Make media actionable” through game-like engagement

Show how a media story, coupled with the POW! Impact platform, offers a way to track impact toward addressing specific problems in the domain of the media story.

4) Prove the business case

Design the POW! Impact Platform to engage a range of organizational partners and their constituents, starting with learning institutions, later including business leaders and technology innovators.

5) Grow a Social Action Network

The POW! Impact Platform is a social action network where members can discover like-minded colleagues, new insights, share their thoughts with a social action network, and track the impact of actions performed by members of the network, both online and in the community. Gamification/ rewards can drive engagement and support impact tracking.

To launch this Impact Network, we’ll

• work with universities and other institutions, innovation leaders and business visionaries.

• add value to existing media resources to enhance their use for learning and to build a growing community, exchanging stories and ideas.

• focus on growing a social action network of media viewers committed to address the challenges presented in the media.

Objectives

• Drive the next wave in learning through doing.

• Demonstrate the power of “collaborative intelligence” in problem-solving.

• Develop new ways to raise awareness, learn, and act with impact.

We’ll customize templates for different groups of resource providers, focusing on how to tackle problems to achieve a collectively optimal solution. These templates can be re-used or adapted for a range of problems introduced in the media.

To “make media actionable” we’ll gamify the POW! [Power Our World] app so that students can earn points for

• bringing other students into the network;

• watching content;

• rating, tagging content;

• contributing content;

• constructive actions inspired by media content that are performed in the real world and reported back.

Points enable teacher grading and offer a means for impact tracking.

The POW! [Power Our World] app amplifies the power of high impact media by extending its use as a learning resource.

The size of the media market shows its potential to have a positive global impact.

Zann Gill wrote the screenplays for feature films listed below. Their stories are designed to “make media actionable.” These completed screenplays are not yet produced as films. In the meantime, we aim to launch a new paradigm in film-making to “make media actionable” using existing films, such as Mobolaji Olambiwonnu’s film FERGUSON RISES, which premiered at TRIBECA from June 15 – June 23, 2021, later showing at Sundance and on PBS.

Potential to “make media actionable” inspired by ALTON will grow the program started with FERGUSON RISES.

Saving our Ocean Lifeline

A genetic engineering breakthrough makes it possible to clone a human. Thomas More, author of the best-selling hoax, Utopia, is selected to clone five hundred years later as Tom Evermore. Evermore deceives the public via fake news about an alien conspiracy, code named SQUID [Security Questions: Unidentified Intrusions and Disappearances] using techno-wizardry to steal secrets from our ocean. Like his twin, Thomas More, it’s deceit for a good cause.

Thomas More’s fake news showed that people are moved more by stories than by facts.

Climate Change & White Supremacy

THE CELLO Logline. The table is set for a luxury dinner party as fires ramp up nearby and pandemic spreads. Before Charyn’s guests show, the power is shut off to millions of homes. What we IMAGINE becomes reality as a white supremacist touts his Great Wall of Amerika in the context of climate change, pandemic, and fear.

Objectives

Tell a story that motivates action re

• our challenge to preserve our democracy, which is under threat from Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, some of whom still believe that Trump won the election;

• coping with effects of climate change, from wildfires spreading to previously unthreatened ecosystems to bio-threats to environmental degradation;

• the disparities between the 1% and the 99% and the fact that, when the power goes out, this reality strikes everyone;

• pandemic economics of COVID-19, from police brutality to social stress.

THE CELLO is an acronym for an associated “making media actionable” campaign for California Recovery from the fires and pandemic.

Gender Equity

This screenplay for a feature film tells the story of Margaret Fuller, great aunt of Buckminster Fuller, whom the screenwriter worked for while she was a graduate student at Harvard. She learned then about his great aunt and was inspired by her struggle to enable women to live more creative lives.

Margaret Fuller left a promising career as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s co-Editor of the Dial Literary Magazine to become the world’s first woman foreign war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, covering the Revolution of 1848. In Rome, impassioned love and the ultimate test transformed her life.

 YELLO WORLD rock opera

The first episode of this rock opera has been produced as an experimental film directed by Zann Gill, who wrote the libretto. The film has won twelve awards in nine countries.

LOGLINE. In YELLO WORLD, Theseus believes his mission is to slay a Monster. In the end, he realizes that the Minotaur is our guardian angel — a wake-up call to save our Earth and Ocean heritage.

SYNOPSIS. Eight mythic archetypes, including Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur, meet in Silicon Valley to face the end of the world. The Minotaur turns out not to be the monster we so feared.

We’ve called the Minotaur a monster because we are afraid of her warning, which forces us to look at ourselves. Our mindsets trap us in a labyrinth of perverse consumption (sex & money) and the military-industrial complex (engineers & puppeteers). Only by “changing our minds” can we escape.

Tapping and engaging the huge audience for media that matters can Power Our World!