Dec 2, 08
500
This is our 500th post, and we'd like to ask your advice. Over the last six months we've been gratified and amazed by the response we've gotten to worldchanging. We never expected, when we set out, to meet so many cool, smart, committed, and, well, worldchanging people. You guys have made this fun, exciting and deeply rewarding. Thank you. Now we'd like to take things to the next level. We started this site with the premise that the tools, models and ideas for creating a sustainable,...
Housekeeping
Let's give a WorldChanging welcome to our two new contributors: Emily Gertz and Andrew Zolli! Emily is a writer, photographer, and web designer in New York. Her Secret Museum website and blog focus on the intersection of art, culture, the environment, and life in the Big Apple, as well as linking to some of her photos. Andrew is a forecaster, design strategist, and author, founder of the Z+Partners forecasting, ideation, and design think tank, Futurist-in-Residence at Popular Science...
Technology Benefiting Humanity
Bruce steers us towards Technology Benefiting Humanity, an essay by Jim Fruchterman of Benetech on how to develop (and fund) more technologies which will serve social needs: "Current market failures come in two varieties. The first is the decision to go after only consumers at the top of the economic pyramid. Intellectual property-based technology companies calculate their economic returns on the basis of pricing decisions, essentially on what prices they deem the market will bear. A given...
The World Votes; U.N. and the Internet
Live outside the US? Ever think that, given the sway of the American Empire, you too ought to have a vote in how we yanks choose our president? Well, you're apparently not alone - in fact, The World Votes is here to help you. Of course, your ballot won't count, but until we have an actual world federation with some meaningful power, it's probably the best we can do. Speaking of world government, an editorial over at CNet argues against giving the UN authority over the Internet: "It is true...
Laptops and Tyrants
The New Republic is increasingly irrelevant, and their latest cover story -- Dictatorship.com: Why the Internet Won't Topple Tyranny is an excellent illustration why. But rather than do my own heavy lifting here, I'll just turn it over to Jeff Jarvis, who pretty much nails it when he calls the piece "a load of naysaying, stick-in-the-sludge, cynical, behind-the-times, underreported, snotty crap. TNR foreign editor Joshua Kurlantzick argues that because the Internet has not yet toppled a...
Post-Apocalyptic Photography
This is some strange cultural trend, perhaps an offshoot of terriblisma: art based on the collapse of industrial systems. Here are photos of dead machinery, photos taken on motorcycle rides through the dead zones of Chernobyl, or of course, Lowell Boileau's classic Ruins of Detroit.
Deténte, Bollywood-Style
In recent years, a relatively-popular sub-genre of Bollywood movies emerged focusing on the tensions between India and Pakistan. Whether based on history or fantasy, the films depict heroic Indians and perfidous Pakistanis locked in mortal combat -- and it's very clear who you are supposed to be rooting for. But according to an article in Sunday's Indian Express, the changing relationship between India and Pakistan is now starting to affect how Bollywood filmmakers portray their country's...
newsmap
If you're an info-junkie like me, one of the top bookmarks on your browser is Google News. Collecting and collating stories from newssites around the world, Google News is a useful way of keeping one's finger on the pulse of what's going on in the world. Structurally, though, it's a set of headlines broken up into a handful of broad categories, hardly an example of good information design. Fortunately, now there's newsmap. Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly...
Transparent Democracy
Running a political campaign costs money -- lots of it. But where does that cash come from? Many people may presume that the money is the result of backroom deals and the like, or big donations from big organizations. While some of that is undoubtedlly true, a very large part of a candidates funding comes from individual small donations. For the office of president, an individual may donate no more than $2,000 total to a single candidate. But who's giving that money? Fundrace tells you....
TREES and Green Futurism
The T.R.E.E.S. project is a few years old, and therefore hardly the state of the art, but that shouldn't stop you from checking out Tree People's vision for a sustainable L.A., complete with working proposals for the redesign of single- and multi-family homes, industrial and commercial sites, even schools. It's interesting, site-specific innovation. And disturbingly rare. We suffer from a shortage of realistic, working visions for a sustainable future which take into account both the nature...
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