Geolocation data platform SimpleGeo released its own iOS app this morning to the app store (iTunes link). It clearly points to a future where all the data that's available online about the real-world locations we find ourselves will be available in our hands with the click of a button.
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Right now, the app lets you quickly view the boundaries of geographic areas you're in (neighborhood, postal code, congressional district) and it lets you view other layers on top of your map like Wikipedia entries, Flickr photos and Project Noah wildlife sightings. Users with a SimpleGeo Storage account can log-in on the app and then view their own data layers placed on top of the map. That's pretty awesome. Now if only we could share and view each others' layers easily!
We dolphins are not too thrilled about this idea. Humans have not evolved very far from their Neanderthal roots, and the idea of human hoards invading and polluting the seas is scary to those of us for whom sustainability and resilience comes naturally. Requires further study.
PayPal-founder Peter Thiel was so inspired by Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand's novel about free-market capitalism – that he's trying to make its title a reality.
The Silicon Valley billionaire has funnelled $1.25 million to the Seasteading Institute, an organization that aspires to launch a floating colony into international waters, freeing them and like-minded thinkers to live by Libertarian ideals.
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Mr Thiel recently told Details magazine that: ‘The United States Constitution had things you could do at the beginning that you couldn't do later. So the question is, can you go back to the beginning of things? How do you start over?'
The floating sovereign nations that Thiel imagines would be built on oil-rig-like platforms anchored in areas free of regulation, laws, and moral conventions.
The Seasteading Institute says it will ‘give people the freedom to choose the government they want instead of being stuck with the government they get.'
Phi Beta Iota: The idea of seasteading in some form of idealic libertarian island of paradise is fairly distant from reality. Accepting that the libertarians will be armed and alert, this concept fails to account for a) the outlaw sea; and b) the dead sea. There is no solution for any group of humanity that is sustainable absent its embracing all humanity.
LOGAN — Imagine being able to put your fingers on the pulse of America's biosphere — keeping real-time track of weather, water/soil temperature, animal populations and much more. Armed with this information, scientists would be able to detect sudden shifts in climate, perhaps even predict them, allowing the nation to prepare for potential disasters.
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The National Science Foundation has given the financial go-ahead to begin construction of the nation's first coast-to-coast network of observatories, including one in Utah, to measure real-time climate changes.
The National Ecological Observatory Network, or NEON, is designed to gather vast amounts of data, every second, from around the country using satellites, observation towers, aircraft sensors, mobile motorized sensors and field work by scientists. From insect samples to weather data, the information will be fed into a central lab to build a picture of the nation's ecological health.
What scientists will keep an eye out for are “threshold events,” or sudden changes in climates, that can lead to droughts, floods, even the spread of diseases, said James MacMahon, dean of Utah State University's College of Science and chairman of NEON's board of directors.
Phi Beta Iota: The most righteous thing the White House has done in our view, starting under Clinton-Gore and continued by Bush-Cheney, has been the Earth Science information-sharing initiative. The above article neglects the importance of the same initiative being carried out across the oceans, 75% of the Earth's surface. This particular initiative would do well to adopt the four fundamental opens: Open Source Software, Open Data Access, Open Spectrum, and Open Source Intelligence.
As anticipated, we're on the brink of a global economic depression (again).
There's a strong possibility that a long running global depression will lead to a reshuffling of the global economic and political landscape. IF that happens, many of the fiat currencies we currently use will simply evaporate.
Given this backdrop, here's today's big question:
If the dollar and euro implode…
…will the next global currency be gold or networked virtual currencies (like bitcoin)?
Until the new currency platform emerges, the safest hedge for the future is building, buying, or trading for anything that can produce food, energy, water, and products locally.
Phi Beta Iota: George Soros has dumped gold and is largely off the stock market. John Robb is one of the best observers of chaos versus resilience–his advice above coincides with William Greider's finding in Come Home America, to wit, financial offerings are fraud, asset investments (at the local level) are real. What all of this leads up to is that we should all stop investing in old systems, and instead do the right thing: invest in bottom-up localized resilience that yields sustainable benefits for all–real assets for real people.
There is a very talented author, journalist, and speaker, Mike Southon, who publishes in the Financial Times. One of his articles, “Perfect Pitch,” 7 March 2009 was instrumental in crafting the below one-page “pitch.” Mike's four web sites:
The state of Minnesota is home to the largest population of Somalis in North America. Like any Diaspora, the estimated 25,000 Somalis who live there ar closely linked to family members back home. They make thousands of phone calls every week to numerous different locations across Somalia. So why not make the Somali Diaspora a key partner in the humanitarian response taking place half-way across the world?
In Haiti, Mission 4636 was launched to crowdsource micro needs assessments from the disaster affected population via SMS. The project could not have happened without hundreds of volunteers from the Haitian Diaspora who translated and geo-referenced the incoming text messages. There’s no doubt that Diasporas can play a pivotal role in humanitarian response but they are typically ignored by large humanitarian organizations. This is why I’m excited to be part of an initiative that plans to partner with key members of the Diaspora to create a live crisis map of Somalia.
Phi Beta Iota: The interactive edition is well worth going through. Below are highlights from our own review.
Six Risks Stand Out: Fiscal crisis, Geopolitical Conflict, Climate Change, Extreme Energy Price Volatility, Economic Disparity, Global Governance Failure.
Risk Interconnectivity Map: Central to the map are Economic Disparity and Global Governance Failures. Three clusters add depth to the potential sustained crisis: Fiscal-Energy Volatility; Crime, Corruption, and Failed States; and Water-Food Security.
Overall this is one of the most extraordinary points of reference in existence.
The Global Risks Report 2011 from the World Economic Forum highlights two primary megatrends with the potential to inject significant disruption into global systems. From the report:
Two risks are especially significant given their high degrees of impact and interconnectedness. Economic disparity and global governance failures both influence the evolution of many other global risks and inhibit our capacity to respond effectively to them.
In this way, the global risk context in 2011 is defined by a 21st century paradox: as the world grows together, it is also growing apart.
It is worth noting how inter-related these two megatrends are as wealth consolidation into an elite class enables them to further deconstruct global governance mechanisms. This has been a feedback loop for at least the past 40 years, if not longer, as western growth fueled the rise of non-state economic bodies & super-empowered individuals who then lobbied against regulatory measures that would aim to keep their rise in check and mitigate the risk of disparity. Elites consolidate more money & power, further driving disparity and eroding governance. What results is an interstitial vacuum where corporate intervention fails to see any profit motive and where state intervention lacks the funds or will to govern effectively.
In effect, the combination of super-empowered non-state actors, failures of state governance, and widespread economic disparity undermines the Rule of Law by releasing elites from accountability and driving the underclass deeper into criminality.
iPhone App From SimpleGeo Discovers the History, Politics & Wildlife Around You
