Emerging Ideas Roundup

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Surfing for a Cause

Social networking software on the Internet helps the lovelorn find their soul mates, allows those with the most arcane of obsessions to find a friend, and now helps progressives connect with causes worth fighting for. Online startups like Care2.com and GoodStorm.com are using matchmaking technology to fight global warming, media consolidation, arctic drilling, and other ills. GoodStorm provides services for progressive organizations to make and sell T-shirts, returning 70 percent of the profit to the groups, and to share information among nonprofit organizers. Care2, with 5.5 million members, features many of the same features found on sites like MySpace, giving users a place to post photos of their pets, search for romance, or swap recipes. But the emphasis is on connecting users who want to spread the word about social causes and support one another in action.

Bang! Bang! You're Informed

The ancient stories tell of the elfin high priestess Tyrande Whisperwind and her triumph over the demon invaders of the forests of Ashenvale. Now Whisperwind and thousands of other characters from the online role-playing game World of Warcraft have a new enemy to vanquish: Internet censorship. In one of the more creative end runs around Google's notorious 'China syndrome,' members of FreeCulture.org are hatching a plot to pass live information among the anonymous online players of the game.

Google launched a version of its search engine for China in January, minus any information that riled government censors. In response, a number of groups are using technology to move data into less-than-free cultures like China's, according to This Magazine (May/June 2006). The World of Warcraft plan would allow players, anonymous but for their characters' names, to pass around censored information secretly within the game environment. Other plans include the distribution of software applications that allow users to foil snooping government spooks.

Bargain Basement Brains

If you wanted to learn about the latest research in, say, neuroscience, you could subscribe to Brain Research, a prestigious, peer-reviewed journal that contains frontline reports from the world's leading researchers. But you'd have to pony up $23,617 (that includes postage) for the subscription. Prices like these dam the free flow of information, says Nobel Prize winner Harold Varmus, so the cancer doc is promoting 'open-access' science as an antidote, reports Wired (June 2006). In the three years since he and other like-minded scientists introduced a set of free online journals, their reputations have soared and they've been cross-referenced at a higher rate than pricey print competitors.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print