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Am confined to home today by another marvellous London tube strike...but will resist the wish to vent fury at the parties involved, and instead follow the mantra of the Global Ideas Bank: don't dwell on the problems, focus on the solutions.
So here's a load of Transport Ideas to get your teeth into.
Good idea posted on the Global Ideas Bank today, which should appeal to all of those who have a great idea in the middle of the night, but don't know what to do with it. Now we have the answer:
An emergency centre for those in creative crisis. As Kathleen Willer, who sent in the idea to the Utne Reader Great Ideas contest, sets out:
"It would be a 24-hour ‘hospital’ for people suffering from severe cases of inspiration, who have no means at the time of the ‘attack’ with which to implement their ideas. It would provide immediate relief for the person awaking at 4am with a whole vision for a film, play or dance piece; or for the person who may have had weeks of sleepless nights from an idea aching to metastasise, leaving them in a state of constant anxiety and frustration. "
Ideas are the new currency according to this BBC piece, which is essentially a press release for a new East of England initiative promoting the region as a Space For Ideas....they've commissioned six essays by leading thinkers, namely,
Edward de Bono (lateral thinking)
Robert Heller (Management Today / innovation)
Susan Greenfield (brain scientist)
Jonathon Porritt (sustainability / green futures)
Richard Wiseman (luck factor man)
Peter Owen Jones (ad man turned vicar)
each of whom has contributed an essay on creativity and ideas...or, as the blurb on the site puts it: "Six original works have been commissioned from thought leaders Dr. Edward de Bono, Robert Heller, Baroness Susan Greenfield, Jonathon Porritt, Professor Richard Wiseman and Reverend Peter Owen Jones to help businesses and individuals generate new ideas and thinking."
The essays are worth a read, but even better, arguably, is the Thinking Tools section, which is essentially a list of tips on innovation and creativity from the six wise men and women.
Here's some new ideas submitted this past week to the Global Ideas Bank.....
• Speed-meeting job interviews
• Triple the life of highways with staggered build
• Stay-awake sensor system for lorry drivers
• Banning junk food in schools to calm pupils
and my personal favourite from recent weeks: Porn blinkers: a way to focus the web-enabled workforce. Enjoy.
As reported in yesterday's Guardian, France launches radical green tax on bigger cars....which will work like this:
"Under the scheme, all new cars sold in France will be divided into five classes, from the least polluting to the most.
Most mid-sized family cars, such as the Renault Scenic, will fall into middle "neutral" band, category C, and be liable for neither a surcharge or a rebate, the spokesman said.
But smaller runabouts that emit less than 140g per kilometre of carbon monoxide, the main greenhouse effect gas, will benefit from a rebate ranging from €200 to €700, as will diesel cars fitted with filters to remove harmful fine particles from their exhaust.
And at the other end of the scale, drivers who opt for a large luxury saloon with a powerful engine emitting more than 180g of CO2, or for an outsized, diesel-driven four-by-four not fitted with a particle filter, will face a surcharge ranging from €1,500 to €3,500."
The French estimate that, of the two million cars sold every year, about half will fall into the central 'neutral' category, with the little eco-friendly car drivers rebate being directly subsidised by the tax on the big unfriendly car drivers. The system, which will come into force on January 1st 2005, is particularly aimed at the drivers of SUVs, which one French official called "a caricature of a car". Its ultimate objective is, of course, to reduce atmospheric pollution, which is blamed for 30,000 deaths each year in France.
As my French teacher might have said, "A mon avis, c'est une trés bonne idée".
Now this truly is a great idea, recently submitted to the Global Ideas Bank: The Fat Cat Index: identifying the CEOs who take most. The concept being, as its inventor Andrew Hobbs puts it, to "identify quickly and clearly which company executives take the most from their organisations". The index would be calculated by the following:
"Define a measure for each company calculated as the total remuneration package of the top paid executive, divided by the average number of employees working for that organisation during the financial year."
Genius. I would hope there would also be some sort of visual representation in the forms of various portly felines, proportional in size to their place in the index. Can someone do this please?! Until then, I offer you the 2003 Fat Cat Awards and, more amusingly, Tubcat.com, where you can see this cat:
A novel idea here: Free beer if you register to vote....but a slightly concerning one. Is this what it has come to: luring apathetic voters in with the promise of alcohol...I suppose there's little wrong with it, as long as the alcohol is passed over AFTER the person has voted, but still.
On the other hand, maybe we need to be that radical. If compulsory voting (btw, interesting letter in the Times today, explaining exactly what this means in Australia: 'Compulsory' voting) is off the agenda, then maybe it will take something along these lines? How about a lottery ticket for every person who votes? A tax break? Redeemable discount vouchers? Fines for those who don't bother? etc.....
Countless more on the Global Ideas Bank. needless to say. How about:
- Registering a 'lifetime' vote in elections
- Allowing the homeless to vote in elections
- Drive through voting
- Truly universal suffrage...including children
Maverick....
A common discussion in the UK around the time of elections is whether we should follow the lead of the US and have debates between leading candidates on television. This has always been resisted, usually on the grounds that debate is done in the House of Commons, and that is televised anyway (see Blair resists EU debate from April this year)...
But above and beyond domestic politics, what about international televised debates between country's leaders, something which emerged before the start of the (second) Gulf War, when Saddam challenged Bush to a TV debate. That was always unlikely to happen, but what about a conversation between France and Britain or France and the US? Or between the US president and the leader of the Arab League? And so on......this idea was suggested to the Global Ideas Bank this week: Televised debates between national leaders which hopes that this could "be one small measure to help dissolve the childish black and white thinking that leads to predjudice, hostility and violence".
One would hope so. And it might bring "global" politics alive in countries where the domestic dominates....as well as using the mass media of the world in a much more direct and effective way.
...or Bush, of course ;0) IT's a neat idea: everyone is affected by US policies, so everyone across the world should have the right to vote in some shape or form for who it is. It could be on a sliding scale (obviously an American vote should count more) but it would help the US have a more global outlook, and take notice of the effect of their policies on other countries.
This idea was originally suggested by Tracy Bee as part of the Utne Reader Great Ideas Contest, and then featured in the GIB's annual compendium, Setting the World Alight. Read and vote on it here: Allow the world to vote for the US president
And why do I mention this today? Because someone else has had the same idea, and has set up a website to allow people to "virtually" vote in whichever country they are. This news comes via Smart Mobs via Near Near Future:
"We are conscious of both the power of the U.S. President, and of our lack of power in front of this man" says Enrick Boisdur, a young French entrepreneur who has launched a website to allow people from all over the world to elect virtually the next president of the United States.
For the time being, only the French version is available, but versions in 13 other languages will follow.
The website is www.igoest.com which is an intriguing name: an anagram of egoist? an archaic version of I'm leaving? Anyway, as it says, "Citoyens du monde: Exprimez-vous!"
There have been countless recent articles about the death of e-mail, how RSS is taking over, the merits of syndication (avoidance of spam) etc. There's an interesting piece on how RSS might develop on Doc Searls' blog, called remail, which includes some interesting snippets:
Obviously, RSS isn't e-mail. But what might it bring to email that isn't there now? In a word, relationship. Unwelcome e-mail doesn't relate to the recipient. Welcome e-mail relates, and not just because it's present on a white list or absent from a black list; or whether anybody has opted into anything. A mail of any kind is welcomed either because the reader knows the writer, or because both share a social millieu within which greetings between two people who don't know each other are permitted or even encouraged."
And so it goes on, wondering if an RSE is possible (a best of both push and pull worlds).....a point which is followed up by Ross Mayfield on the Many-to-Many Corante Blog, which has some interesting points on feedback and the relationship between sender and receiver.
