Left, right. In, out. Greed, altruism. Us, them. These are the defaults and they are broken. We are the alternative model. We are the reasonable people who give a damn. No dogma. No party lines. No borders. We care about what works--what is sustainable, prosperous, productive, creative, and just--for all of us and each of us. This isn’t easy, but we are not afraid to fail. We’ll figure it out as we go.
Good is a collection of people, businesses, moms, kids, artists, organizations, policymakers, students, teachers, and engineers. Everyone is participating in one simple idea that each is elevated by being connected to others.
Open Source Ecology has created the Global Village Construction Set. In technical terms, it's an "open source, low-cost, high performance technological platform that allows for the easy, do-it-yourself assembling of 50 different industrial machines." The organization suggests you think of it as a life size set of legos that can create economies anywhere in the world.
Farmers, engineers and supporters are the brain power behind Open Source Ecology:
So far, they've prototyped 8 of the 50 Machines -- the tractor, drill press, soil pulverizer, torch table, hydraulic power unit, compressed earth brick press, walk-behind tractor, and 150-ton hole puncher. Along the way, they've been publishing the designs and instructions on their wiki. They've been financially supported by the crowd. A growing base of more than 400 "true fans" pays a small amount every month, and their recently successful Kickstarter campaign will help to build a 5k sq. ft. fabrication training facility at OSE's rural Missouri headquarters.
The main goal is to make farming, building, and manufacturing less of an obstacle financially. The Global Village Construction Set costs 8 times less the equipment from big industrial producers. 3-D designs, schematics, and instructional video are all available on Wiki.
Open Source Ecology's goal for 2012 is to build the next 8 prototypes of the Global Village Construction Set.
A 20 dollar investment in a container garden can yield 25 pounds of food. This is one idea Dr. Job Ebenezer implements as he works to find ways to address food security among the poor. Feed bags, wooden pallets, and discarded tires are also handy containers for gardening in tight urban spaces. Inspired by the ingenuity of George Washington Carver, Ebenezer founded his nonprofit, Technology for the Poor.
"With inexpensive containers and suitable soil mix, you can create an urban garden virtually anywhere - on roof tops, vacant city lots, brown fields, and unused portion of parking lots." --Dr. Job Ebenezer
The Ohio-based organization isn't limited to the U.S. or food scarcity issues. Technology for the Poor is spreading sustainable technologies all over the world. Bicycles and simple windmills can be used for energy production. Low-cost home construction includes ideas from the early American pioneering efforts when straw served as a critical material in building efforts.
The snooze button on your phone alarm could do a lot more good than letting you catch some extra Z-z-z's. Snooze for iPhone allows you to pledge a 25 cent donation to a nonprofit every time you press for more sleep.
The LetGive company processes the donation at the end of each month, and you have the prerogative of deciding to give more or less. LetGive is a for-profit venture. Their mission includes finding easy ways for charities to fundraise with technology.
"TechSoup.org has a catalog of more than 450 products generously donated by a growing roster of 44 technology corporations, including industry leaders such as Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, Intuit, and Symantec. To date, these partners have made more than U.S. $2 billion in product donations available to the nonprofit sector."
Since 1987 (orginally founded as CompuMentor), TechSoup has supported those nonprofits and NGOs working as facilitators of positive social change.
Former Hedge Fund analyst Sal Khan put homework help in math on YouTube for his cousins, and a funny thing happened. Students around the world started responding that they appreciated the explanations, they understood. The virtue of video help in Math is that kids can rewind to review. There's no feeling bad for not understanding the first time. Students advance at their own pace.
What started out as help for family has grown into a library of 2,100 videos and 100 self-paced exercises ranging from basic math to vector analysis, physics, chemistry, finance, and history. The website is Khan Academy.
Astrium, Europe's largest space company, wants anyone to have the opportunity to see space. The company is working on a vehicle similar to a jet that takes off from a runaway then relies on a rocket boost to climb above the atmosphere. Ten million euros will be spent on the program in 2011.
Ahead of the civilian race to space is the U.K.'s Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic project. VG's plans include a rocket plane called Enterprise which made in America. Paying passengers will have the chance to leave the confines of gravity.
Enterprise is currently being tested and expected to make demonstration flights in 2011.
