be the change you want to see in the world

One blogs for many reasons, some narcissistic, others desperate. But there are also really good reasons for blogging, and there are historically important reasons why blogs have emerged as a major force in our global mediaplex. Put simply, blogs now take up the slack left by the shrinking news media. Done right, blogs form the underpinnings of a rebirth of the fourth estate in spite of the downsizing, syndication and general abdication of the historical role of news media as a pillar of civil society. Read more

When someone is accused of murder, they normally go to trial. It is a very serious process. In many cases, there is a jury. At the very least, everyone has the right to a jury. Jurors have to take time out of their lives to pay attention to the case. They are often sequestered, and sit for hours, days and weeks on end to listen to the judge and the lawyers and witnesses. The future of the accused is treated with solemn regard and accorded the attention and detailed scrutiny deserved by each and every one of us. Then they vote. Why doesn’t the judgement about our collective future warrant the same level of serious scrutiny?

Why do we ignore the issues that affect our future for 4-5 years and then vote based on TV commercials, or worse, party affiliation? Perhaps it is because our representative democracy is pretty sick. Perhaps most people adhere to the dictum, “don’t vote, it only encourages them.” 60 percent of eligible voters do vote, but not many get involved or even care in between. Why? maybe its because the political system is run by special interest money, lobbyists and insiders, and it won’t change while that is still the case.

I don’t know how to fix the political party system, or general elections, but perhaps citizens should be required to do voter duty in the time in between in the same manner as they are required to do jury duty. Perhaps the debates of the legislature should be waged by the politicians, but voted on by citizens who are present for voter duty. Imagine how that might change the political culture itself?

When we burn fossil fuels, we burn solar energy that has been converted and stored in plant matter, which in turn, over time, has coverted into oil and natural gas. The Sun delivers 10,000 times more energy than we require. Why then are we digging up old energy, burning it at a central location, and then trying to efficiently distribute it over long distances? We don’t have to do this, but we continue to do so because power monopolies need to continue to sell power in the centralised manner they do now. This can change.

How do we do this? I think we can do it using that same decentralized power concept I’ve written about before. Instead of constantly plugging everything in to a central power grid, why aren’t we generating our own power from available sources? The Sun is everywhere. Wind is everywhere. Tides operate near most human populations. Geothermal sources are right below our feet, and never run out. Read more

A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. The Matsushita Electric Company (Panasonic) is working on a technology that wil leverage existing electrical wiring for Internet. This isn’t new in conceptual terms - the power companies have been doing it for decades - but Matsushita now has a chip it can embed in its consumer devices to enable the process for anything plugged in to the wall socket. Read more

Why go to space? Well, that’s a question we’ll leave aside for now, but it may be that getting there will be a lot easier in our lifetimes. There is a contest coming online shortly much like the X Prize, which saw private inventors vying to be the first to get to space. The new contest is for a working prototype of a space elevator. A space elevator is a stationary orbital platform or satellite with a long cable dangling from it at least part way back to Earth. Doing this seemed impossible because of the likelihood of the cable breaking under its own weight, or the weight of objects that tried to climb it. Read more