Lisa Schirch 25 Spheres of Digital Peacebuilding and PeaceTech 3 cohesion. Peacebuilding grew out of pragmatic attempts to prevent and reduce violent conflict by universities working with a few dozen small and local community organisations in the 1980s, practicing what was then called conflict management, resolution, or transformation in places like the Philippines, Colombia, Kenya, and Northern Ireland. The technology-funded Hewlett Foundation provided USD $165 million of seed funding to the field in the 1990s. 2 The field of peacebuilding has evolved to include dozens of universities with graduate programmes, a global infrastructure of thousands of local civil society organisations and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), and teams of researchers and practitioners working with the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture. Today, graduate-level degrees in peacebuilding teach interdisciplinary frameworks for integrated programming design to support participatory democracy, civic engagement, social justice, and social cohesion, and a wide range of conflict transformation skills such as dialogue, negotiation and mediation.3 A Brief History: Generations of Peacebuilding and Technology Technology evolves quickly. Generations of new mobile phones or computers shift every few years. Human interactions with and perceptions of technology also change rapidly. The field of peacebuilding’s evolving approach to technology divides into roughly five generations. The evolution centres on both the development of new technologies as well as how people are using these tools for both violence and peace. In general, the evolution has moved from mostly techno-optimistic approaches to the rise of techno-pessimism, as the list of technology's negative impacts grows.4 First Generation: Basic Information and Communication First-generation enthusiasm for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the early 1990s focused on the basics of internet technology. Basic ICTs like email, websites, networking portals, and platforms like Skype improved peacebuilding networking and coordination by enabling people to find each other and work collaboratively across distances to support peacebuilding efforts. These technology tools are still staple tools for peacebuilding organisations today. New virtual meeting software such as Zoom and Circles have become essential for working during the COVID 19 pandemic. In the early 1990s, the University of Maryland created a digital platform called the International Communication and Negotiation Simulation Project (ICONS) that enables students to learn negotiation skills and practice diplomacy with the use of advanced, real- David Kovick. The Hewlett Foundation’s Conflict Resolution Program Twenty Years of Field-Building 19842004. May 2005. 3 Mark Rogers, Aaron Chassy and Tom Bamat. Integrating Peacebuilding into Humanitarian and Development Programming: Practical guidance on designing effective, holistic peacebuilding projects. Baltimore, Maryland: Catholic Relief Services, 2010. 4 See forthcoming book Social Media Impacts on Conflict Dynamics: The Techtonic Shift. Edited by Lisa Schirch. Routledge Press, 2020. 2