The Global Ideas Blog

Advertising and advertising

I am currently swamped by a massive glut of ideas, as a result of being featured on the BBC's Click Online programme this weekend. Which was nice...and is nice: always keen for a bit of free advertising....

Which seems a better idea than auctioning your forehead as advertising space. Each to their own......

Open source journalism?

Lots being mentioned todayabout how Robert Greenwald has released the raw material of his interviews that form his controversial film Outfoxed. He's basically offering them up for other people to use for their own journalistic purposes (downloadable here on archive.org), under the ubiquitous Creative Commons license. [btw, Creative Commons also released a Developing Nations License today]

Some are calling this an instance of "open source journalism", as Greenwald is, in some sense, making the 'source code' of his films available for others to use. Whether this serves to further publicise his film, spread his message, or result in some masterpieces of film editing remains to be seen, but it's certainly an interesting experiment, to place alongside other Open Source Journalism projects. Personally, I'd like to see an 'Open Source Evaluation Unit' that measures whether these projects actually result in anything tangible or usable (or that improve on the original in some way)...and I'm prepared to release the idea, unlicensed, into the ether....

[via Smart Mobs, Lessig Blog and lots of others ;0) ]

Global debating society

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.

Big Brother for grown-ups

As the latest UK Big Brother (no. 5) descends into drunken brawling, my attention turned to an idea submitted some time ago which would, in effect, try to create a Big Brother for adults....a reality TV show that stimulated thought and interest. Sounds dull, I know, but bear with me. The idea (here: Big Brother - 12 different religious or academic participants), by "G" from Oz, is as follows:

My suggestion is to change the selection criteria for the householders I have two different suggestions:

1 - twelve religious leaders (e.g. Catholic priest, Buddhist Monk, Prebyterian minister, Jehova's witness, hindu, muslim, pagan etc) and give them ethical or spiritual quandaries to solve as well as physical tasks. I think this would be terribly interesting although not very saucy for your average trogladite.

2 - My second idea is similar to the first however instead of religious leaders you put academics in: A counsellor, A genetic engineer (or some such), a historian, a sociologist, a lawyer, a medical doctor, a psychologist, bioethicist, a theologian etc) and give them similar quandaries to solve as well as physical tasks.

I think it would be a very interesting concept, not only to see what manner of ethical and spiritual leaps and bounds can be made from group discussion but also to see how representatives from different membership groups can act together to accomplish physical goals through team work.

Who knows if it would work, but even if the quandaries proved dull, they might still slag each other off behind their back.....

BBC archive online for the commons

Word on the street, well, the Demos Blog and others, is that the BBC will be putting its archive online. And they will do so with a Creative Commons licence, which is pretty revolutionary stuff from Auntie....if it happens.

On that note, the Creative Commons crew recently had a big launch in Brazil, led by the Minister of Culture (and general cultural king)......Gilberto Gil. See various reports on the CC website. I've long been considering some sort of CC licence for ideas on the Global Ideas Bank but it doesn't seem to quite fit. People increasingly want to share their ideas, but not necessarily give them away.....at present, all we can provide is the say-so that their idea was submitted on this date at this time, giving some sort of a priori protection, possibly.......