DailyDirt: You Say You Want A Revolution...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Apr 2nd 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Really big, world-changing ideas are not that easy to come by... but they're even harder to implement. Still, it seems like a good first step is to devise ways to collect good ideas and then try to give funding/resources to help develop them into reality. Crowdsourcing this process is a somewhat recent trend (or fad) that gathers wisdom from a community, and there are more than a few projects that have adopted this method for collecting inspiring ideas. Here are just a couple more challenges that you might contribute to.

The Buckminster Fuller Institute has an annual challenge that will award $100,000 to support strategies that will "make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone." The deadline for submission is April 11th, and the prize will be awarded in November. [url]
Contests/challenges seem to be an effective way to kickstart innovation and maximize resources for investment. A study of thousands of software contests concludes that the scope and uncertainty of a problem should be explicitly addressed when designing a challenge in order to optimize the incentives and performance of any innovation tournament. [url]
The AI XPRIZE is looking for some kind of artificial intelligence that can get a standing ovation for delivering a TED talk. The rules are not set in stone yet, but it looks like the winner will be the best lying bot ever created -- or else it might present an irrefutable criticism of humanity itself. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: buckminster fuller institute, challenges, contests, crowdsourcing, ideas, innovation, innovation tournament, prize, ted talk, xprize

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Anonymous Coward, 2 Apr 2014 @ 6:21pm

If everyone potentially infected got tested for certain testable incurable diseases and steps are taken to prevent their spread. We could potentially wipe out A i d s and hepatitis C. It would require a lot of spontaneous cooperation and honesty. It's affordable, we spend billions on wars we can afford some tests. It may take a few generations to completely wipe out these diseases.

If we spontaneously declared world peace.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Apr 2014 @ 8:22pm

That AI would be fairly useless. I get plenty of irrefutable criticism of humanity itself every day just by reading the news.
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