Changes For Good

I would love to see an “Instruction Book for Saving the Planet” wiki where visitors could share ideas, tips, concerns, etc. on the wiki in a structured sort of way.

Somebody should (The Google Foundation perhaps?) commission some of the smartest minds to seed the wiki with some initial content, because it is very hard to build a vibrant wiki when nobody has posted anything yet. You need that critical mass. Nobody likes being first at a party.

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You have probably seen fundraising campaigns like “Race for the Cure” or similar, and the cure is for a cure to cancer or AIDS or any number of diseases.

I think bloggers would be a great group of people for a charity to target. And there’s no marathon to run, just fingers to move on the keyboard! Bloggers get readers to “sponsor” them, then the sponsors donate based on how many posts the blogger made over a certain period of time (like a particular month). Likely sponsors would be blog readers who already enjoy their blog and would love to see the blogger post more often to their blog. In a way, it’s sorta similar to World Vision’s 30-hour famine, where kids would walk around the neighborhood, get sponsors and, if they did the famine where they went without food for 30 hours, they could collect that sponsorship money from their sponsors and turn it in to World Vision to help the poor.

Blogcritics organized what they called a “blog for a cure” to diabetes, which was just an call for bloggers to post about diabetes during the month of November to raise general awareness about the disease. That’s a start, but I’m wanting something that directly raises money that can be used to fund disease research. That’s a lot more practical result than just a thousand more posts about a disease floating around in cyberspace that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.

Thoughts?

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Not long ago I read the book The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson. It really got me thinking about the future of profound changes we are going to see in our lifetime through impending advances in nanotechnology.

The virtual world of Second Life is hugely popular with gamers. It would be interesting to create a virtual world where nanotechnology were already prevalent. So, if you hadn’t read The Diamond Age, you would still get a sense for what a different world we are going to live in in 20 years. It could get people thinking about the impact of nanotechnology, “grey goo” and ethical issues and regulatory issues and so forth, before the problems really rear their ugly heads. Most people aren’t aware of these issues. Maybe a Second Life virtual world where you are immersed in the nanotech world 20 years in the future could get people thinking about this?
 

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