We can create better communities by knowing each other on a personal level—going beyond the facade of names and titles builds empathy. I'm accomplishing this by having people within a defined community record short life stories for their colleagues to select and hear (in this case, my classmates). This initiative aims to imbue our hearts with our common humanity and create a more empathic environment.

I'm taking a cue from one of nature's greatest community builders: the honeybee. Bees can see UV light, which highlights pollen and nectar, giving them an advantage in finding their food. While humans generally don't need help identifying food, what about feeding our desire for human connection?

In the original presentation, I featured a series of flowers, each in a tile. The flower tiles drew people in; each piece had a brief title. A tap to the middle of the flower on a cell phone activated an embedded NFC chip to hear a story from their classmate. The more we know the details of one another, the more we humanize and empathize. We become the pollinators of humanity by using technology to feed our souls in our own mini techno-utopia.