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Trebor et al,<br><br>
This is my first post here, but this latest thread has me curious about
successes at leveraging the web for collective problem solving. Of course
many sites facilitate group communication, collaboration, and sometimes
actual action (beyond one-click politicking), but I'm curious if there
are some that you feel stand out for their tangible results. <br><br>
The outcome of applying "open source" or collaborative
approaches to software development and information aggregation are widely
discussed, but what about other types of problem solving? This might be a
naive a question in the context of previous conversations on this list,
but which sites have successfully applied grid-computing approaches like
SETI@Home to <i>human</i> cycles for addressing regional/global
problems?<br><br>
A few examples: <br><br>
- The World Urban Forum's
<a href="http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004575.html"><i>Habitat</a>
<a href="http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/004575.html">Jam</a></i>
facilitated a conversation of 40,000 people from 150 countries to address
the issue of urban sustainability, and the outcome was analyzed by the
Canadian Government and the International Centre for Sustainable Cities.
You can see the results in the resultant
<a href="http://www.wuf3-fum3.ca/newsletter/actionable_ideas_workbook_en.pdf">
70 Actionable Ideas</a> document.<br><br>
- A different approach is the
<a href="http://www.opensourceenergy.org">Open Source Energy Network</a>,
which encourages inventors to post and ideas about, experiments with, and
critique of different power generation systems. <br><br>
Matthew's mention of the US Partnership and the other sites brings up the
issue of how the web can best be leveraged for addressing the really big
issues. I'm currently working with the Buckminster Fuller Institute to
organize a regional version of their
<a href="http://www.designsciencelab.org">Design Science Lab</a>, which
is focused on applying Fuller's <a href="http://bfi.org/dsmethod">design
science</a> methodology to goals set forth by the
<a href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/">UN Millennium Development
Goals</a>. Last year's Lab yielded some very interesting and surprisingly
simple and very implementable strategies for reducing world hunger
(<a href="http://designsciencelab.org/report.php">PDF available
here</a>), but this involved 40 self-motivated individuals reviewing
comprehensive world datasets and developing strategies for a pretty
intense week in the same physical location. Fuller was strong proponent
of comprehensive thinking and anticipatory action, so I'd like to find
models that have applied distributed creativity for this type of
approach.<br><br>
So, what examples do you think have successfully facilitated
collaborative strategic problem solving in networked space?<br><br>
Thanks,<br>
david<br><br>
BTW, an interesting direct application of massively distributed grid
computing is
<a href="http://climateprediction.net" eudora="autourl">
http://climateprediction.net</a>, designed to develop climatic
models...<br><br>
--------------------------<br>
<a href="http://www.elumenati.com" eudora="autourl">
http://www.elumenati.com<br><br>
</a>At 02:16 PM 6/24/2006, Matthew Waxman wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Trebor, a stroll in the park is
a great way to surf real-world space.<br>
<br>
Consider the simple ability of the internet as a communication tool. I'm
currently communicating with youth organizers on a project and the folks
I'm communicating with (online and conference calls) are attracted to the
internet as a departure point for making contact with organizing people
across the nation. This perspective on the internet is widely
taken. Of course, the social networking element observed in sites
like MySpace is also becoming increasingly appealing (since so many youth
have attached themselves to these social networks already). So whether or
not giving every child a computer is the best approach, I imagine it is
an attractive idea to many because it suggests expanding access to
currently populated, large networks.<br><br>
Some sites relevant to world-changing networking:<br><br>
<a href="http://www.takingITglobal.org" eudora="autourl">
http://www.takingITglobal.org</a> -- with Taking IT Global, network with
activists and organizers and organizations globally. This canadian based
networking website boasts participants from around the world. While the
site can't compete with sites such as MySpace in terms of number of
users, it's also true that sometimes quality over quantity is meaningful
when it comes to organizing. Browse the users by country and get a taste
of the different kinds of people involved in the network.<br><br>
<a href="http://www.uspartnership.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.uspartnership.org/</a> -- the US Partnership for the United
Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. I did some work
with the Youth Sector Team last year, great folks. They are connecting
with an impressively large amount of organizations and networks around
the US in a variety of categories. They use conference calls for a
lot of the communication, and email listserves are also used a
lot.<br><br>
<a href="http://www.chattheplanet.com/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.chattheplanet.com/</a> -- Chat the Planet seems to be video
blogging/web-cam activism.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://freechild.org/SIYI/Webliography.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://freechild.org/SIYI/Webliography.htm</a> -- a nice list of
organizations around the world (this one is specific to youth movements),
each org has a website, of course. There are a truly vast amount of
community organizations with websites. It seems many see the internet as
a great networking tool.<br><br>
best,<br>
-Matt<br>
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