Sowing Light

Shai Agassi presents Better Place at this year’s TED conference. The finish - in particular - is quite powerful.

Poltics Unusual, Smart Folks, The Developing Future Better Place, Energy, Oil

These are Marshall McLuhan’s words (circa 1955) about the impact of electronic media on the human psyche and society.  Substitute ‘twitter’ for ‘teeter’ and virtually anything for Eisenhower and you have a compelling picture of the present age. Information moving instantaneously to all parts of the globe, he writes, is explosive. 

We can, and do, have world events pouring through us like electricity.  I can easily become a twitching, twittering nerve cell in a massive identity-robbing global network.

What are the emotional impacts of this for the individual?

Do we have a moral obligation to be present to all of this information - to feel it?

How can I live if I do not put up walls or selectively empathize?

Who do I become if I do put up walls and selectively empathize?

Poltics Unusual, Smart Folks, Social Media, The Developing Future McLuhan, twitter

For the next 10 days or so, the second round of voting is happening at change.org. 90 issues passed the first round, and the top ten vote getters will be presented to the Obama administration on January 16th.

One that gets my attention, but hasn’t yet worked it’s way to the top ten, is Lawrence Lessig’s proposal for publicly funded elections. See his presentation and vote here. It may well be the best idea I’ve ever seen in American politics. Moreso, without this or a similar measure, it’s easy to see America suffering greatly as corruption eats away at the heart of its political system.

The 7 minute presentation is well worth watching, and is, I believe, a cause for hope.

Poltics Unusual, The Developing Future

Lawrence Lessig just won me as a new fan. I feel like I can breath better after listening to this interview (below).
(For those of you reading via syndication, click through to the original post to see the video.)

Topics include Professor Lessig’s relationship with Obama, national emergencies, transitional government, trust, the virtues of amateur creativity, hybrid economies, copyright (the entrenched policy, the dangerous reaction, and a more reasonable reform), remix as fair use, Creative Commons, his shift into focusing on corruption as the core underlying problem, the influence of money on politics, how to break the political dependency on money, and getting congress to put their reform chips on the table.

Favorite Quote:
“These are not the hard things that congress are getting wrong; these are the easy things that congress is getting wrong.”

Update: Here’s the powerful presentation on changing congress that he refers to in the video.

Poltics Unusual, Smart Folks, The Developing Future