Attention spans are increasingly shorter as a result of the accelerated technologies, market-driven economics, and multi-tasking common in our current civilization. Statements like win this election, sell this merchandise, or finish by this date are focused on the “now,” which is relegated to days, years and at most decades. A group of forward looking technologists - including Chris Anderson, Brian Eno, and Kevin Kelly - created The Long Now Foundation in response to the emphasis on near-term goals.
Rather than planning for “now” or “nowadays,” the foundation seeds thought processes for a span of 20,000 years labeled as “The Long Now.” The Long Now currently hosts a series of seminars aimed toward making long-term thinking automatic. Other projects include collecting linguistic data, ensuring conversion and protection of data formats, and also a clock monument dedicated to long term thinking.
Posted on May 29th, 2008 in General | Comments Off
SocialVibe, a site designed to enable interaction between people, the brands they love and the causes they are passionate about has established a cause called Disaster Relief that will enable SocialVibe to quickly mobilize fundraising efforts when a global or regional disaster strikes.
SocialVibe recognizes your influence within social networks and allows you to get sponsored by your favorite brands in a way that is entertaining and rewarding. In return for being sponsored, brands reward you with the goods you want and by supporting the causes that matter to you.
Futurist David Holmgren recently released an e-book entitled “Future Scenarios: Mapping the cultural implications of peak oil and climate change.” Aside from discussing the challenges posed by Peak Oil and Climate Change, Holmgren also uses an interesting micro-format for his project. Unfortunately, comments are centralized and not allowed on individual sections like other micro-formats such as CommentPress.
A large portion of the composition focuses on possible scenarios of oil decline and climate change over the next 10-30 years. The four “Descent Scenarios” include:
Brown Tech (slow oil decline, fast climate change)
Green Tech (slow oil decline, slow climate change)
Holmgren’s work is another warning of problems caused by “Business As Usual” mentality in our consumptive lifestyles. Although somewhat depressing, writings like this can provide an idea playground for the entrepreneurial mind.
Posted on May 27th, 2008 in Education | Comments Off
Look in any history book - social norms shifting with generations is common. Children rebel against their parents, create a conflict, and eventually transform cultural norms. However, the societal shift for children in developing countries, like India and China, is different than the experience of youth in the Western world.
Specifically, the newly industrialized population of India is comprised of over 35% children under the age of 15. Through the Web, these children are connected to an unfathomable amount of information and opportunity compared to previous generations. The increased opportunities, however, also produce an influx of online traps (see Wikipedia as an example of this idea: the more value, the more clutter). Child pornography, gambling, identity theft, etc inevitably leech to the valuable assets of the Web.
As a response, Google’s Indian headquarter launched “Be NetSmart” to educate parents, teachers, and students on how to safely incorporate the Web into daily life. Google India and the Mumbai police initiated the campaign with an interactive presentation on topics such as downloading content, posting pictures, chatting, and web identity. Lets hope this has better success than the DARE campaign in the United States.
An industry in decline is often well positioned for innovation. With the well-publicized crumbling of traditional media, journalists worldwide have an opportunity to use the web to redefine the practice of creating news. Here are a few recent examples of the bubbling entrepreneurial community in journalism.
Spot.us is a new project from journalist David Cohn - a veteran of numerous NewAssignment experiments. Aimed to fuel local investigative reporting, Spot.us is an example of crowdfunding. Similar to crowdsourcing, this methodology allows a large group of donors to collectively raise money through micro-payments. Independent journalists propose stories to Spot.us and rely upon a community to fund the investigation. The platform offers both an alternative revenue model for journalism and also pre-validation for topics.
Another new tool for the journalism industry is Help A Reporter from entrepreneur Peter Shankman. As a self-proclaimed connector, Shankman wanted to streamline the introduction process between journalists and reliable sources. Questions submitted from journalists are collected into several daily email blasts to a growing list of Shankman qualified experts. Good will can go a long way.
A recent move by many universities is to have open courses and to make them available via the web. Two of the early adapters of this were UC Berkeley and MIT among others. This further expands the public access to these great universities intellectual riches which is the function of public universities.
These tools provide a great environment in which students and lifelong learners alike can discover, watch and share education.
Some of the more noted online courses are those of UC Berkley’s Professor Marian Diamond.
Chicago based company The Point is dedicated to organizing people to solve a problem. The Point is not unique in using the web to rally around activism or fundraising, but the company’s campaigns are differentiated by their reliance on the “tipping point” model. As popularized by author Malcolm Gladwell, the “tipping point” refers to the “levels at which momentum for change becomes unstoppable.” Apply this notion to The Point and members of campaigns are not required to take action until a critical mass of supporters is reached.
Crowdsourcing, a term coined by Jeff Howe in a June 2006 issue of Wired magazine, is a model of labor that has been fully embraced on the Internet over the past couple of years. Crowdsourcing takes tasks traditionally done by a single person or small groups of people, and farms them out to a global workforce. The large-scale committee approach is powerful because it leans on the concept of the “wisdom of crowds” (to a certain extent) which says basically that the more input, the better the output.
The term has become popular with business authors and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals. However, both the term and its underlying business models have attracted controversy and criticism.
Here is a look at some of the tools used to help you crowdsource.
The League of Technical Voters is a nonprofit 501(c)3, nonpartisan organization dedicated to motivating and assisting technical experts to improve lawmaking and governmental process.
Their goal is to involve more technical people in the political process, especially in relation to the use of technology by government.
We are in a position to provide a priceless resource to our country by helping to improve governmental policies and use of technical resources. We believe that many of the current problems have more to do with a lack of education than with partisan issues.
“How would you mashup the Network for Good donation processing service with other services to make it easier for nonprofits to raise money online? We’re working with Network for Good, the Case Foundation, and the NetSquared community to enhance the online donation process.
There are two categories to enter:
Build a mashup using Network for Good’s donation API, with a particular focus on enhancing the donor experience.
Build a mashup using Network for Good’s donation API,with a particular focus on improving or revolutionizing a nonprofit organization’s ability to fundraise.
Winners in the each category will be awarded a $10,000 prize by a panel of judges present at the N2Y3 Conference.
In addition, each winner will be granted a one-year license for the Network for Good API to be donated to an organization of their choice (if the winner is an organization, it can choose to donate the API to itself).”
Attention spans are increasingly shorter as a result of the accelerated technologies, market-driven economics, and multi-tasking common in our current civilization. Statements like win this election, sell this merchandise, or finish by this date are focused on the “now,” which is relegated to days, years and at most decades. A group of forward looking technologists - including Chris Anderson, Brian Eno, and Kevin Kelly - created The Long Now Foundation in response to the emphasis on near-term goals.
As a response, Google’s Indian headquarter launched “Be NetSmart” to educate parents, teachers, and students on how to safely incorporate the Web into daily life. Google India and the Mumbai police initiated the campaign with an interactive presentation on topics such as downloading content, posting pictures, chatting, and web identity. Lets hope this has better success than the DARE campaign in the United States.
Chicago based company The Point is dedicated to organizing people to solve a problem. The Point is not unique in using the web to rally around activism or fundraising, but the company’s campaigns are differentiated by their reliance on the “tipping point” model. As popularized by author 
“How would you mashup the Network for Good donation processing service with other services to make it easier for nonprofits to raise money online? We’re working with Network for Good, the Case Foundation, and the NetSquared community to enhance the online donation process.