Data Acquisition vs. Data Overload
Written on 03/25 at 12:52 PM by Andy Posner
0 comments
Filed under:
philosophy
It used to be that the greatest obstacle to doing research, be it scientific, literary, or any other kind, for that matter, was actually acquiring the requisite data. Many public libraries were underfunded, or closed when the data was needed, or otherwise inaccessible to those that sought the information contained within their walls. Academic research was-and often still is-published in exclusive academic journals, whose high cost prevented the wider dissemination of the research. The list of barriers is nearly endless.
A New Paradigm Now, with the tremendous proliferation of low-cost bandwidth and cheap data storage and computing power, many of those barriers have come down. Any time, day or night, anyone in the world can access much of the knowledge previously stored in libraries in journals, simply by doing a Google search. Even scholarly magazines are beginning to offer their findings in an "open-source format" online. Harvard has its Open-Collections Program, which provides "online access to historical resources from Harvard's renowned libraries, archives, and museums," and MIT offers Open Courseware, which enables anyone with a computer and internet access to 'take' a course at MIT. The list goes on, but this time it is a far more extensive list, one that comprises millions of blogs and wikis, corporate web sites, universities, encyclopedias, dictionaries, medical web sites, and so on.
The Two-Way Street of Development
Written on 12/01 at 10:06 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments
Filed under:
philosophy
Viewing sustainable development as a two-way street is an important way to foster a true global village, one in which people are able to maintain their cultural identities while partaking in global flows of information, trade, finance and ideas. The problem, however, is how to get people onto this two-way street. In other words, what are the on-ramps, especially for those that are currently poor?I think an important on-ramp to the two way street is green job creation. This is something that Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland has pointed out numerous times. Things Must Get Better Before They Get Better? America certainly has its poor, and they can't care about polar ice caps, deforestation and slums in Cairo until they have met their lower-order needs of job/fiscal security, safety and so on. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenback, in their provocative book "From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility," point out that the traditional environmentalist view is that things will have to get a lot worse before they get better-in other words, once environmental problems become so visible as to be impossible to ignore, the rational response will be for people to take action. They argue, however, that things with have to get a lot better before they get better. Why? Because only then can people contemplate the larger picture of how their actions correspond to global issues such as poverty and climate change.
Welcome. I call this the ideas blog. That’s because this is where I explore new ideas, discuss new inventions, and chronicle how they are being implemented in the real world. I call these the three I’s: Invest. Invest. Implement. Here I will look at everything that’s going on in the world of information technology, open-source software, renewable energy, energy efficiency, micro-credit/poverty alleviation, social justice, politics and literature. If that sounds overly broad, keep in mind that many of the world’s most intractable issues--poverty, hunger, injustice, environmental degradation--are profoundly intertwined. Solving them requires big ideas, and that’s what this blog is all about.
- San Diego Personal Injury Lawyers in Winning a Grant, and Other Exciting News:
Thanks for the great article, do you have any additional resources…
- Arjun in Executive Summary of the Capital Good Fund Business Plan:
2009 just may the year of payday loans, or at least the dawn of…
- eim model in Executive Summary of the Capital Good Fund Business Plan:
I am very impressed with the knowledge you are posting here. Thanks…
- July 2011
- May 2011
- December 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- August 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- Complete Archives
- Category Archives
- Thought of the Day
- My New Favorite Quote
- Thoughts on a Book: “Where Good Ideas Come From”
- Visiting a Village--Part 1
- A Story on Super Bowl Sunday
- First Experiences With Bangladesh and Grameen
- First Blog Post From Bangladesh--Actually, From the Bahrain Airport
- Reducing “The High Cost of Being Poor”
- Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States
- The Commencement Speech That Never Was
Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States
Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!
My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…
A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?
Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development. To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…
Tonight, the Oneness of Things
It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come. I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…