Nov 21, 09
Straight Talk for the Planetary Era: A Trio of Book Reviews
by Edward Wolf Bikes, boats, and bodies align to spell “350” at events in 181 countries, sounding a worldwide call for climate stability. Congress takes halting steps toward passing a law to limit U.S. carbon emissions and advance clean energy. Diplomats from 193 countries prepare to hammer out a global climate treaty in Copenhagen. But few expect this year’s activism, politics, or diplomacy to change the game. The 21st century to-do list keeps growing. What will it take to...
Can Science Save the World?
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is celebrating their 10th anniversary with an 11 day science festival called Quantum2Cosmos: Ideas for the Future. Speakers from around the world will be converging on Waterloo, Canada to talk about string theory, quantum computation, dark matter—and a few bright green themes. Two WorldChanging Canada writers, Karl Schroeder, and Mark Tovey, are among them. Karl Schroeder was a panellist on the 'Are We Bound for Space' panel on Tuesday at...
Towards Hackable Architecture
My presentation at Applied Brilliance today was a quick version of my Innovation from Constraint talk, a talk that makes the argument that some of the best design ideas come from facing the constraints provided by material circumstance. Using a whole mess of examples stolen from Afrigadget, the talk argues that we hack technologies once they become familiar – from charcoal to bicycles to mobile phones. I ended with a couple of examples of innovative uses of social network technology,...
Next on the Auction Block: One Year of Membership to Long Now
Bid now on this special Yearlong Membership to Long Now, which includes complimentary entry into all seminars and events about Long-term Thinking and other special Long Now events. In addition, you will receive an invite to join an after-Seminar dinner for two. The dinner is generally with the speaker from the evening's seminar, plus Long Now board members and sponsors. The Long Now Foundation hopes to foster long-term thinking and responsibility through a series of ambitious physical and...
Place Your Bids: Worldchanging Ideas Auction
UPDATE: Bidding closes starting at 8:30 a.m. PDT on the Burtynsky prints, and closes altogether shortly after 10:00 a.m. Click here to go directly to the auction. In particular, these Ed Burtynsky signed, limited edition original prints, from his famous ship wrecking series, are steals, selling for about a third of their gallery value: Ed Burtynsky - Shipyard #13, Qili Port, Zhejiang Province and Ed Burtynsky - Shipyard #18, Qili Port, Zhejiang Province. Bidding closes for both in the...
Stewart Brand is Rethinking Nuclear
By Lisa Chacón Monday night Stewart Brand spoke at UC Berkeley on “Rethinking Green.” He went through the requisite slides on climate, population and energy – but with a few twists. He was involved in the Pentagon-sponsored Abrupt Climate Change report in 2003, “we’re still learning about how weird it can get and how fast it can get weird,” he said as he showed a global minefield of positive feedback loops that could rapidly increase CO2 in the atmosphere. “At what point...
The Last Viridian Note
By Bruce Sterling Recent events have clearly established that the character of the times has changed. The Viridian Design Movement was founded in distant 1999. After the years transpiring – various disasters, wars, financial collapses and a major change in political tone – the world has become a different place. It remains only to close the Viridian episode gracefully, and to conclude with a few meditative suggestions. As I explained in the first Viridian speech, any design...
To The Next U.S. President: 100 Words for 100 Days
The eyes of the world are riveted on the U.S. election. That's understandable: this may well be the most important election in the history of the world's most powerful nation. But while the last days of this campaign leading up to the election are important, what comes after the election will be even more important. The next U.S. president will face a nation in economic chaos, a people suffering from deepening political divisions, and a planet in desperate need of leadership on a whole host...
Using Philanthropy to Fuel Innovation
This article was written by Alex Steffen in June 2007. We're republishing it here as part of our month-long editorial retrospective. Last week, I had some great conversations, sitting in the sun on a hillside deck on Vancouver Island, talking about how we might better fund the changing of the world. I was there to speak to the annual meeting of the Canadian Environmental Grantmakers' Network. They'd asked me to come share some thoughts about how we might better use philanthropy to fuel...
Whole Earth in Hindsight
It's no secret that Whole Earth, both the catalogs and the magazine, were huge influences on Worldchanging. Indeed, Stewart Brand has been one of our heroes. Plenty has a sort of oral history of the WEC up on its site. I contributed a few quotes, but the real pay-offs are the lines from some of the early adopters: Kevin Kelly: The catalog’s voice was a breakthrough. There wasn’t a style sheet; they left in most of the spelling and grammar errors. The WEC also had a gossip section. It...
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