The Global Ideas Blog

pPod toilet guide

Quirky little piece on the BBC website today: Bringing relief with the pee-pod. A user's guide for iPod owners to the best public toilets.....strange what people's minds turn to.

Needless to say, there are countless toilet ideas on the Global Ideas Bank, including compost toilets, rainwater flushing and so on. My personal favourite is the Hygiene toilet which refuses to let you out until you have answered three hygiene questions. Brutal.

Newspaper subscription idea

Interesting, simple idea submitted to the Global Ideas Bank the other day: Piecemeal newspaper subscriptions. This social invention aims to solve a common problem: the proliferation of supplements in Saturday and Sunday newspapers, making them very bulky and/or very wasteful. So "entropyrider" (Thomas Pynchon fan?) suggests "that newspapers offer custom or a la carte subscriptions, priced by section". This would save them money and save on paper waste.

As an avid reader of papers at the weekend, this idea really appeals to me, although it would necessitate having the paper delivered (I assume), and could well be extraordinarily complicated. But if I could tick the "never send me another travel section again" box, I would.....

Blair, free love and the causes of crime

According to our esteemed PM, it is the 60s which, to quote the BBC on the subject, "spawned a group of young people without parental discipline or a sense of responsibility". Interesting idea...although I will not be the first nor last to point out that the 80s, in which selfish individualism reached its peak, is more likely ot have had an impact. The teenagers and youngsters who, to lapse into Daily-Mail speak, 'show no respect' and have no sense of individual responsibility, were all born in the 80s and early 90s, weren't they?

I write as someone who grew up in the Thatcher years: born in 1977, around the time she became leader....and two years before the 1979 election victory, I spent the whole of my childhood under Tory governments. (Happily, when I was first able to vote, I was able to take part in ending this.) And while I'm all for ambition and enterprise, I don't believe in it to the expense of others...personally, I think Tony's got his dates muddled: say, about 20 years early....

Web ideas to improve the election

Susan Mernit has some great ideas on the way new technology (and particularly blog technology) could be used to make the forthcoming US elections more interactive, worthwhile, vibrant, relevant and generally groovy. I fear this thinking may be rather too far ahead of the game, though....

....also of interest is AdvoKit, a tool for a "new American politics". I don't think the website is necessarily designed for elderly Macs running buggy versions of IE, but, according to Howard Rheingold, AdvoKit:

1) Allows you to model an organizational structure the way you want to. You can model very hierarchical organizations, or very "flat" ones. AdvoKit allow you to grow and morph your organization over time.
2) You can use it with an existing membership of "voter file" database. We have a sophisticated database structure as well as the ability to support data that is peculiar to your organization or situation.
3) You can use it for powerful "Friend-to-Friend" organizing. You can build an organization "on-the-fly" leveraging your social networks.
4) As you recruit volunteers you can easily add them into your organization.
5) You can easily run phone banks and "virtual" phone banks.
6) Each interaction with a voter has an associated "questionnaire" these can be carefully targeted questions. Performance (how many voters have been contacted) as well as results (what did they say) are carefully tracked.
7) A voters individual opinions, concerns, requests for additional information can be finely tracked.
8) AdvoKit is released under the AGPL, a version of the GPL "Free Software" license. You can download it, use it and modify it to your heart’s content. You never need to pay a license fee.

Honour hiding to nothing

Following on from my Auctioning honours post, there is an amusing piece by John O'Farrell in the Guardian today, called Arise, Sir... or would you prefer an iPod. Amongst the general mockery and japing are a few little gems:

- dis-honours: David Beckham KMP (Keeps Missing Penalties), Chris Woodhead TBE (Talks Bollocks about Education...or, perhaps, To Be Exiled)
- offering merchandise in exchange; as O'Farrell puts it: "Instead of a medal we can offer something your wife said you really wanted"....
- renaming existing acronym honours: Order of British Excellence, Completely Bankrolled Election, King of the Big Ears....and so on.

Fused Space

Interesting Dutch-based competition organised by a few different organisations, entitled FusedSpace. FusedSpace is "an international competition for ideas on inspiring applications for new technology in the public domain", and has now been whittled down to 35 or so nominees, which make varied but intriguing reading.

Some that caught my eye:

- Anonymous messaging on trains between commuters....
- An East London project that maps unused public space and allows local voting on ideas
- Interactive street nameplates...
- Open source, democratised surveillance......

[via Demos Greenhouse Blog]

Auctioning honours

Much in the UK papers at the moment about the honours system, and whether we should be according people the title of "Order of the British Empire"....particularly when the work of said Empire was not always something to be proud of (although there is a counter-movement to Empire-bashing emerging, which concentrates, correctly, on some of the more moralistic and beneficent work it carried out)....

A quick search of the Global Ideas Bank for honours reveals this idea, which makes open the relationship between money and receiving an OBE, MBE or knighthood: Auctioning honours to community benefactors. It suggests auctioning off "a particular lifetime honour, such as a new type of knighthood, one per rural or urban parish, to the highest bid over a reserve amount - the winning bidder would then have to put the money into a neighbourhood fund". This would, so the idea goes, provide funds for local regeneration, provide an association between the benefactor and the community (arise Sir Bernard of Tower Hamlets), and add a directly philanthropic string to the system's bow.....

Politics in "actually working" shocker

Having been exploring the depths of TheyWorkForYou.com, I have discovered a myriad of interesting things. One is that my MP Sarah Teather, living up (or down) to her billing as "the youngest MP", was recently reprimanded for the following:

"Ms Teather raised her right thumb to her nose, extended her tongue and wiggled her fingers, then raised her left thumb to her nose and extended her tongue, similarly wiggling her fingers - and then, in a Wildean coup de grace, placed both her thumbs in her ears, extended her tongue and again wiggled her fingers."

Which I rather admire, personally. In her defence, though, and much more importantly, I also used the FaxYourMP.com function which is incorporated into the site to ask her to sign up to an early day motion on disability rights for web access. A letter was swiftly returned, confirming this had been done. [And you can check this via TheyWorkForYou as well]. And all from the confines of this non-ergonomic office in the depths of North London....

Sunday Times Think Tank

Just when you thought all was lost, and there were no good ideas anymore (unless you've been reading the Global Ideas Bank, of course)....here comes the Sunday Times to save us with its Brainstorm to rescue Britain. To quote from the article:

"New ideas. Fresh thinking. Action. That's what Britain needs but traditional politicians seem unable to deliver. So what do people who actually run the country - the leaders in business, arts, science and other fields - suggest? To find out The Sunday Times has put together a panel of top achievers, unfettered by party politics, to examine how to improve Britain"

I'm all in favour of this: new ideas, fresh thinking...all sounds good to me. And some of the suggestions from their first survey of the panel seem eminently sensible, and refreshingly robust. They also cover, amongst the 250 of them, a wide-range of fields in business, the arts, the public sector and so on.

This weekend, though, I was also reading the book Ideas Are Free by Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder. It is primarily concerned with how ideas can liberate organisations, but they also make some important, if obvious points about the world we live in today. Namely that the old idea that managers 'think' and employees 'do' is dated and irrelevant in today's world. Many of the best ideas, the most radical thinking, comes from those on the shop floor who experience the problems (or see the opportunities) day-to-day.

So why should it be any different when it comes to politics? Why, when creating a think-tank as a counter to politicians, is it dominated by "the people who actually run the country"? Why do chairmen and chief executives have fresher thinking and new ideas than the people who work for them, or the people they provide a service to? Whilst these high achievers clearly do have expertise and knowledge, could the Sunday Times not also have a think-tank alongside made up of 250 people from the organisations that are represented on the panel? The security guard from the British Museum as well as the Deputy Director; a student from the University of Essex as well as the Vice Chancellor; a mobile phone salesmen as well as John Caudwell; a fireman as well as Andy Gilchrist....and so on. These are the people who actually run the country, and they may have a much clearer idea of the problems than any number of high-flyers.

Utopian World Championship

A strangely competitive title for a project aiming at Utopia, but anyway....here's what the UWC is all about, and how you can get involved in helping select the winner.....

Who are the visionaries who are working for a better world and what are their ideas? Go to www.soc.nu/utopian to find out. Right now 24 utopians from 4 continents are competing in the finals of the Utopian World Championship 2004 and all proposals are published on the web site. The prize sum is €1000 Euro and the winner will get his'/hers essay printed and spread to heads of state, NGO's and other institutions and individuals all over the world.

Now you have the chance to participate in the selection of the winner in this extraordinary contest! We are looking for dedicated people from all countries, cultural fields and professions who want to be a part of the selection process. Just reply to this email with your e-mail address, name, city and country of residence and we will contact you with further information. You can also use the special form at www.soc.nu/utopian

The Utopian World Championship is a worldwide competition in visionary thinking open for everyone. The Stockholm-based artist-run organisation SOC.Stockholm arranges the championship that now runs for the second time.

Thomas More would be proud