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via lostateminor.com

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1. Challenges are issued calling for innovative ideas and solutions to tackle a social issue.
2. You submit your best idea, plan or design.
3. The GOOD community votes on which idea has the most potential for positive impact.
4. The best idea wins, and the winner receives funding and support to bring their project to life.

Check out some of their first challenges at maker.good.is.

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Stop whatever you're doing (I mean whatever). And read this article Infinite Stupidity published on the amazing Edge.org.

By Mark Pagel (pictured), professor in evolutionary biology, it explores the notion and consequences of social learning and human evolution.

In short, there's good news and bad news.

The good news is that social learning has allowed us to take gigantic evolutionary leaps (beyond all other species). The bad news is that as we get more and more connected (Facebook and Google anyone?), we can afford to rely on our ability to copy people more than ever, meaning we no longer need to pay the costs of innovation. Which I don't have to tell you is not great news.

Pagel also explores the notion - and presents a compelling argument - that instead of us really being intelligent and shrewd beings, our ideas evolution that has driven our brilliant progress might all be based on random idea generation and selection. He literally suggests that Einstein might actually have been more lucky than bright!

Some choice quotes:

"...social evolution may have sculpted us not to be innovators and creators as much as to be copiers, because this extremely efficient process that social learning allows us to do, of sifting among a range of alternatives, means that most of us can get by drawing on the inventions of other"

.....

"... as the Internet connects us and wires us all up, we can see that the long-term consequences of this is that humanity is moving in a direction where we need fewer and fewer and fewer innovative people, because now an innovation that you have somewhere on one corner of the earth can instantly travel to another corner of the earth."

.....

"...our brains might be whirring around at a subconscious level, creating ideas over and over and over again, and part of our subconscious mind is testing those ideas. And the ones that leak into our consciousness might feel like they're well-formed, but they might have sorted through literally a random array of ideas before they got to our consciousness."

.....

"...these ideas, I think, are received with incredulity, because humans like to think of themselves as highly shrewd and intelligent and innovative people. But I think what we have to realize is that it's even possible that, as I say, the generative mechanisms we have for coming up with new ideas are no better than random."

.....

The most frightening provocation of the article is when Paget links the growth in social technologies with these possibilities. He writes, "we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we're being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet."

It sent chills down my spine to think that these tools might be domesticating us. It brings to mind Marshall McLuhan's famous quote, "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us."

Pagel us not a lonely contrarian in his reflections. But by no means is he in the techno-phobe, 'world is falling in' band of neo-luddites. (This would be missing the basis of his argument).

There is the (slightly scary) phenomenon of 'filter bubbles', beautifully articulated at TED by Eli Pariser, that explore how technology makes decisions about what and who we see or read based on relevancy rather than value. There's another TED talk (that I can't find) about the herd mentality of social networking in which the presenter presents a vivid analogy about ants that get into the habit of following the ant in front of them, and literally if they happen to form into a circle, they will march around and around until they die.

As for Paget's ideas, I don't know how they reconcile with the many, varied and beautiful benefits of social technology that helps us feel more connected and closer to the people we care about. 

And there's significance and relevance to the whole field of social recommendations and whether they could potentially be doing us as much harm as good.

On a personal note, of late I have been getting vague hints and fleeting suspicions that Facebook (and especially the trend towards frictionless sharing) sometimes makes me think I like my friends less!

Regardless, it's the most thought-provoking piece of writing I've read in a long time, and you should do yourself a favour and read it... now:

Edge.org: Mark Paget on Infinite Stupidity

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Get comfortable and check out his top 50 photos of 2011.

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" The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more."

– Christopher HItchens in The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer, 2007

You can find a fitting and rollicking eulogy over at the New Yorker.

Update

Actually I've just come across another quote which seems to sum up his spirit as well as anything. A mixture of inspiring, defiant devotion to individual expresssionism and the utmost contempt for correct society:

"My own opinion is enough for me. And I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, anytime. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass."

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We believe that traditional recruitment processes and tools like CVs and job descriptions are outdated, generic and often ineffective.

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To find out more about what we're doing visit blog.SomewhereHQ.com.

And follow along on Twitter @SomewhereHQ.

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via streetartutopia.com

Over 100 awesome pictures so click through!

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The brand new story telling platform Cowbird has just launched publicly. It's been made by the ever-amazing Jonathan Harris who's been a personal inspiration of mine for many years.

Hey there, you beautiful birds.

After 2+ years of work, 145,000+ lines of code, one Icelandic grass hut, one night in jail, one serving of jellied ram's testicles with fermented shark meat, and countless pieces of toast with orange marmalade, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to Cowbird, a labor of love, and hopefully something that will have a long and meaningful life.

Cowbird is a community of storytellers, focused on deeper, longer-lasting, more personal storytelling than you're likely to find anywhere else on the Web.

Cowbird allows you to keep a beautiful audio-visual diary of your life (here's mine), and to collaborate with others in documenting the overarching "sagas" that shape our world today (starting with the Occupy Wall Street movement).

Our short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Our long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience -- kind of like a Wikipedia for real life (but much more beautiful).

Here is an overview of the project:

http://cowbird.com/about

Here are some good Cowbird stories:

http://cowbird.com/author/jonathan/#/2278

http://cowbird.com/author/scottthrift/#/608

http://cowbird.com/author/annie/#/2509

Here is the story of me getting arrested a few weeks ago at Occupy Oakland :)

http://cowbird.com/saga/occupy/story/2312

Our community is still very small. We are looking for excellent storytellers -- photographers, writers, filmmakers, journalists, etc. If you would like to become a Cowbird storyteller, please request an invitation (we're trying to grow slowly).

If you know other folks who would be a natural fit for Cowbird, please send them our way.

Please spread the word about this project. Tweet it. Facebook it. Tumble it. Email it. Talk about it. Shout it from the rooftops, where those silly pigeons are roosting and pooping. Tell those dirty birds to move over, and make a little room for a different kind of bird.

Beautiful things lie ahead.

Jonathan

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