Our breakdowns are too systemic to be solved by “charity” but the idea of these new millionaires embracing real social entrepreneurship is a good one.

From Open Forum–On Facebook IPO

Manjunath Kiran / AFP/Getty Images
The ‘Facebook’ logo is reflected in a young Indian woman’s sunglasses as she browses on a tablet in Bangalore on May 15, 2012. World’s popular and leading social networking company Facebook Inc., founded in a Harvard dorm room by Mark Zuckerberg whose current value exceeds 100 billion USD, will be making an initial public offering (IPO) which is slated to be Silicon Valley’s biggest-ever. AFP PHOTO/Manjunath KIRANManjunath Kiran/AFP/GettyImages

Facebook is going public on Friday. The company’s market valuation at the end of its first day of trading could top $100 billion. Instantly, scores of Facebook employees will become millionaires.

But what happens the following day? These newly wealthy folks will eventually have to ask themselves an important question: What should I do with this money?

As a couple who was fortunate enough to face that question when we benefited from Juniper Networks’ IPO more than a decade ago, we would urge Facebook’s employees to consider devoting a share of their newfound wealth to philanthropy.

They are well suited to charitable giving, but not just because they have money. They’ve proved that they rapidly can build a successful, innovative organization from scratch – as well as identify needs within a community and then meet them. Skills like these are crucial to solving the difficult social, scientific and political problems plaguing our world today.

The beneficiaries of Facebook’s IPO will soon find themselves with seemingly limitless options for their money. Previously unimaginable lifestyles will be within reach – but so will the ability to help people and causes in life-changing ways. And while it may be tempting to take care of all the friends and family who come calling, an ad hoc approach to charity can grow overwhelming – and lead to well-intentioned but counterproductive giving.

We chose to establish a nonprofit foundation to give our philanthropy a focused mission and structure – and to ensure that our good intentions yielded positive results.

In the same way, Facebookers who choose charity can take the lessons they’ve learned in their professional pursuits and apply them to their philanthropic goals.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides an instructive model. It has a history of thoughtful, targeted and effective philanthropy. Metrics for success are clearly defined, and resources flow where those metrics indicate they can have the greatest impact.

The Gates foundation’s investments in vaccinations and antibiotics have saved millions of lives and generated billions in economic activity in Africa. But it has also admitted disappointing results from investments in small schools – and has worked to figure out why.

Such willingness to try new approaches to solving social problems – and to evaluate candidly whether they’re working – comes directly out of the culture of entrepreneurship embodied by Facebook and other Silicon Valley firms.

This week, many of Facebook’s employees will find themselves with newfound riches. They should enjoy the fruits of their labor.

But the world also needs their smarts – and their resources. Putting some of that money toward philanthropy could change the world – perhaps even more than their company has.

Kerry Olson and Dave Katz are co-founders of the Firelight Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to improve the well-being of children made vulnerable by HIV, AIDS and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

This article appeared on page A – 16 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/16/ED1S1OIUV2.DTL#ixzz1vHIooa7c

Welcome 2012: Occupy Love

Our wish for 2102 is that this year we will recognize the value of our hearts in true connective intelligence, and we will finally, collectively, Occupy Love.

Consider that the heart has its own intrinsic nervous system, a bundle of neurons in the heart that actually qualifies as a brain. Our heart brains communicate information to the brains in our heads—in fact, more information travels from the heart to the head than the other way around, the only organ for which this is true.  But we have to be receptive, in a psychophysiological way, to receive its subtle signals.

I’ve been looking for and have found some subtle signals within the Occupy movement that this could be a movement to promote change through love instead of chaos; that there’s an opportunity to replace old patterns of change based on being AGAINST that are slow and not resilient with ones that transcend based on being FOR.

So for our last post of 2011, I’m including links to those signals within Occupy.  May they get ever brighter.  At the end of the list is a special Vimeo treat created by NextNower Manuel Maqueda, and we echo his wish for us all:

May you flow like a big river, graceful, peaceful, and yet unstoppable in your great power, to bring about the profound changes we need in 2012 for the benefit of all.

Happy New Year 2012

If We Get OWS Right We Get Everything Right:  Ian MacKenzie:  Ultimately, we are protesting not only on behalf of the 99% left behind, but on behalf of the 1% as well. We have no enemies. We want everyone to wake up to the beauty of what we can create.  And within it the short film:  OWS: The Revolution is Love. Occupy4Love:  “Occupy4Love is a beacon for heart-centered individuals, groups, and organizations that are supporting the Love in Occupy”. Facebook page  Occupy Evolution:  “Supporting the Occupy movement in reaching its full evolutionary potential.”  The planned film, Occupy Love: “Occupy Love will be a moving, transformative feature documentary that asks the question: how are the economic and ecological crises we are facing today a great love story?”  Occupy Your Heart: “There is no higher wisdom than a loving heart.”  The 100% for a Peaceful Occupy:  This group was created for the coming together of the people that want to stand up for a peaceful, non-violent Occupy.  From John Steiner:  Compassion is Our New Currency:  “Young activists have spoken to me about the extraordinary richness of their experiences at Occupy, and they call it love.”  From the Daily Kos: Occupy Your Heart:  “They may not understand it on an intellectual level, but they showed me that when they occupy their hearts with love fear falls away.  And now I get it.  It’s not bravery or courage that propels the success of OWS, it is love.  When we occupy our hearts with love, fear flees and cannot stand against the power that emanates from the heart.

Also of interest:  Occupy Your Soul by Michael Meade

Recuerdos de los ríos Amazonas y Ucayali by Manuel Maqueda

THRIVE Movie Premiers 11.11.11

Thanks to NextNowers Vic Desotelle and Bill Daul for circulating to our NextNowNetwork community.  The website is interesting.

“My name is Foster Gamble and I’ve spent nearly a lifetime trying to figure out what happened that could account for the staggering agony and deprivation on this planet.  I set out on a journey seeking to answer questions like, is it even possible for humans to thrive?  I found a code, a pattern in nature, that’s been embedded in arts and icons throughout the centuries.  Truth hidden.”

Gone in 60 Nanoseconds (Repost)

All I can say is *Just In Time* (and I have a new favorite joke).

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: October 6

“We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” says the bartender.A neutrino walks into a bar.

— Joke circulating on the Internet

The world as we know it is on the brink of disintegration, on the verge of dissolution. No, I’m not talking about the collapse of the euro, of international finance, of the Western economies, of the democratic future, of the unipolar moment, of the American dream, of French banks, of Greece as a going concern, of Europe as an idea, of Pax Americana — the sinews of a postwar world that feels today to be unraveling.

I am talking about something far more important. Which is why it made only the back pages of your newspaper, if it made it at all. Scientists at CERN, the European high-energy physics consortium, have announced the discovery of a particle that can travel faster than light.

Neutrinos fired 454 miles from a supercollider outside Geneva to an underground laboratory in Gran Sasso, Italy, took less time (60 nanoseconds less) than light to get there. Or so the physicists think. Or so they measured. Or so they have concluded after checking for every possible artifact and experimental error.

The implications of such a discovery are so mind-boggling, however, that these same scientists immediately requested that other labs around the world try to replicate the experiment. Something must have been wrong — some faulty measurement, some overlooked contaminant — to account for a result that, if we know anything about the universe, is impossible.

And that’s the problem. It has to be impossible because, if not, if that did happen on this Orient Express hurtling between Switzerland and Italy, then everything we know about the universe is wrong.

The fundamental axiom of Einstein’s theory of relativity is the absolute prohibition on speed faster than light. Einstein’s predictions about how time slows and mass increases as one approaches the speed of light have been verified by a mountain of experimental evidence. As velocity increases, mass approaches infinity and time dilates, making it progressively and, ultimately, infinitely difficult to achieve light speed. Which is why nothing does. And nothing ever has.

Until two weeks ago Thursday.

That’s when the results were announced. To oversimplify grossly: If the Gran Sasso scientists had a plate to record the arrival of the neutrinos and a super-powerful telescope to peer (through the Alps!) directly into the lab in Geneva from which they were being fired, the Gran Sasso guys would have “heard” the neutrinos clanging against the plate before they observed the Geneva guys squeeze the trigger on the neutrino gun.

Sixty nanoseconds before, to be precise. Wrap your mind around that one.

It’s as if someone told you that yesterday at drive time Topeka was released from Earth’s gravity. These things don’t happen. Natural laws don’t just expire between shifts at McDonald’s.

Not that there aren’t already mysteries in physics. Neutrinos themselves are ghostly particles that travel through nearly everything unimpeded. (Thousands are traversing your body as you read this.) But that is simplicity itself compared to quantum mechanics, whose random arbitrariness so offended Einstein that he famously objected that God does not play dice with the universe.

Aphorisms don’t trump reality, however. They are but a frail, poignant protest against a universe that often disdains the most cherished human notions of order and elegance, truth and beauty.

But if quantum mechanics was a challenge to human sensibilities, this pesky Swiss-Italian neutrino is their undoing. It means that Einstein’s relativity — a theory of uncommon beauty upon which all of physics has been built for 100 years — is wrong. Not just inaccurate. Not just flawed. But deeply, fundamentally, indescribably wrong.

It means that the “standard model” of subatomic particles that stands at the center of all modern physics is wrong.

Nor does it stop there. This will not just overthrow physics. Astronomy and cosmology measure time and distance in the universe on the assumption of light speed as the cosmic limit. Their foundations will shake as well.

It cannot be. Yet, this is not a couple of guys in a garage peddling cold fusion. This is no crank wheeling a perpetual motion machine into the patent office. These are the best researchers in the world using the finest measuring instruments, having subjected their data to the highest levels of scrutiny, including six months of cross-checking by 160 scientists from 11 countries.

But there must be some error. Because otherwise everything changes. We shall need a new physics. A new cosmology. New understandings of past and future, of cause and effect. Then shortly and surely, new theologies.

Why? Because we can’t have neutrinos getting kicked out of taverns they have not yet entered.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Inaugural BlueMind Summit

From NextNower Manuel Maqueda of Trash Island and Plastic Pollution Coalition, and whose organization BlooSee is a sponsor of the BlueMind Summit:

How does the ocean affect our brain?

Why does the sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste of the ocean set our souls at ease?

How does our “brain on ocean” behave?

These questions and much more are the subject of the BlueMind Summit, an unprecedented gathering that will bring together neuroscientists, ocean scientists, experts in technology forecasting, photographers, explorers, yogis, writers, artists, ocean advocates…

It will take place June 2, 2011 at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco

The BlueMind Summit is the brainchild of Dr. Wallace J. Nichols, a noted sea turtle biologist, an ocean advocate, and a Research Associate at the California Academy of Sciences.

You can watch the BlueMind Summit live June 2, 2011, 8:30 am – 5:00 pm PST (GMT-8) at http://justin.tv/calacademy

More information: http://bit.ly/Blue_Mind

U.S. Peace Index makes TIME, USA Today

NextNow Collab met Steve Killelea in 2007 while preparing the Fifth International Symposium for Digital Earth.  Steve couldn’t make it to present at the conference but thanks to our ISDE5 team member Tim Foreman we caught up with him between flights at the San Francisco International Airport where he introduced The Peace Index.  We’ve been waiting all these years and it’s amazing to see the Peace Index of the United States completed and launched earlier this month.  Now, it’s making the news.

From their website and other sources:

Just two weeks ago, the Institute for Economics and Peace launched the first-ever United States Peace Index (USPI) and we have already seen a tremendous response.  Nearly 200 news stories have featured the report, with the USPI as a must-read story on USA Today and featured in TIME, the Huffington Post, The Washington Times and The Guardian, amongst many others.  We were overwhelmed not only by the level of the response but also by its positive tone.

The USPI ranks the 50 U.S. states according to their levels of peacefulness, identifies the environments associated with peace, and estimates the cost savings and additional economic activity of increased peace.  Click here to watch a short video about the findings.

The report finds that in the U.S., reductions in violent crime and incarceration to levels equal to Canada would yield an estimated $361 billion in direct savings and additional economic activity, and potentially create 2.7 million jobs.  It also shows that peace is linked to health, education, and opportunity but not related to political affiliation.

This research aims to further understand the types of environments that are associated with peace and to help quantify the economic benefits that could result from increases in peace, leading to a more informed discussion around these opportunities. The Index is now being used as a resource for policy discussions, with an op-ed on the report published by a U.S. Congressman and as a tool for advocacy.  Download the full report:

More on the index:

The inaugural United States Peace Index, created by the international think tank, Institute for Economics and Peace is the first-ever ranking of the fifty U.S. states based on their levels of peace. The U.S. Peace Index (USPI) shows Maine is the most peaceful U.S. state, while Louisiana is ranked the least peaceful.

The USPI report reveals that peace in the United States has improved since 1995 primarily driven by a substantial decrease in homicide and violent crime.

KEY FINDINGS

• First-ever ranking of peace in the U.S. shows the nation has become more peaceful since 1995

• Reductions in violence and crime to levels equal to Canada would yield an estimated $89 billion in direct savings, $272 billion in additional economic activity, and potentially create 2.7 million jobs.

• New York, California and Texas record highest increases in peace since 1991, while North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana see largest declines

• Peace is significantly correlated with factors related to  economic opportunity, education and health

• Peace is politically neutral – neither Republican nor Democratic states have an advantage

Economic Impact – potential to create 2.7 million jobs

The Institute for Economics and Peace estimates that at a time when states and lawmakers in Washington are struggling to balance budgets, the USPI shows reductions in violence, crime and incarcerations to the same levels as Canada would result in $361 billion in savings and additional economic activity. This additional economic activity has the potential to create 2.7 million jobs, which would significantly reduce unemployment.

Education and health outcomes correlate strongly with peace

The USPI also finds that a state’s ranking is strongly correlated with various socio-economic factors including the high school graduation rate, access to health insurance and the rate of infant mortality. Significant economic correlants included the degree of income inequality and the rate of participation in the labor force. Meanwhile, factors such as median income and a state’s political affiliation had no discernable impact on a state’s level of peace.

WATCH THE VIDEO:

Happy Earth Day. Now Text TREE.

This is what Times Square will look like between 10am-1pm tomorrow for Green World Campaign’s launch of “ReGreen the World” and TEXT TREE initiative. When you make a donation of $5 to plant 5 trees, the “treemometer” will go up turning Times Square into an urban forest. TEXT TREE to 85944. Follow @texttree on twitter and facebook at facebook.com/greenworldcampaign. From NextNowCollab partner Marc Ian Barasch and Green World Campaign.  Text TREE and show your support for the planet. On Friday, April 22, from the heart of Times Square, the Green World Campaign will launch a year-long initiative to “ReGreen the World.”  Supported by Earth Day New York, the GWC’s dazzling animated graphics will swirl across jumbo screens day and night, inviting spectators—and people across the country– to Text TREE to 85944 and ReGreen the World. It will be spectacular, with more than 10 jumbo screens involved—including the building-sized NASDAQ and American Eagle—turning Times Square into a virtual forest at regular intervals. Go to vimeo.com/greenworld/texttree to see the video. We’ll be using the same technology—text2give–deployed by the Red Cross for disaster relief. Here’s the basic way it works: When the word “tree” is texted to the number 85944 by anyone from anywhere in the U.S., a $5 donation will automatically be charged to their cellphone bill. The Green World Campaign will use this to plant 5 trees on degraded land from Kenya to Mexico, from India to the Philippines. Trees help restore biodiversity, reduce atmospheric CO2, revitalize soil and support economic self-sufficiency in struggling indigenous communities. A $5 donation can be made right now–and repeated up to 5 times. And here’s a cool feature: Contributions texted on Earth Day, April 22, between the hours 10 a.m and 1 p.m. EDT, will show up in real-time on a giant Toshiba display in Times Square. So, we’re asking people to donate starting now, but especially to donate on the 22nd to visibly demonstrate how global citizens can work together to really “move the needle” for people and the planet. Anyone, anywhere in the U.S., at any time, can Text TREE to 85944 and $5 will go on the cell phone bill to plant trees to restore the ecology and economy of the world’s poorest places. And they will be able to go to the GWC to check our collective progress. It will be like a national positive feedback loop of what we’re achieving together, what global citizens can do to tangibly change the world now and for generations to come (with a technology that has mostly been used until now for temporary relief efforts).  This is going to roll out in many other forms after Earth Day in the public domain. PHOTO: This is our Green World Campaign-produced screen content for our Times Square “ReGreen the World” text TREE Earth Day initiative. It will be on 10 jumbo screens in Times Square this Friday, April 22, 2011 (including the building-sized NASDAQ and American Eagle screens) as part of Earth Day New York 2011, turning the urban environment into a virtual forest at regular intervals. This work supports the United Nations Year of Forests 2011. PSA designed and donated by leading ad agency David & Goliath (L.A., Frankfurt, London) and Stockholm-based FilmTecknarna. Production was funded by a grant from the U.K.-based CBD Charitable Trust. Technical coordination of this complex project will be overseen by Tal Yarden, a leading New York video designer and multimedia programmer. An interactive “treemometer” created by leading game designer Greg Roach will display real-time updates of contributors, creating a unique “positive feedback loop” in public space. Project partners include EarthWays Foundation, CauseCast, the One Spirit Learning Alliance, Culture Shock Marketing, the Streaming Museum, Iva Kaufmann & Associates, Greg Roach & Spirit Quest World and Imagination, Inc.

Cultural Creatives 1.0 – The (R)Evolution

This is a rendering of what 80 million points of light on a map of the United States might look like.  Those Points of Light are the Cultural Creatives.

From the website and other sources:

Cultural Creatives 1.0 – THE REVOLUTION is a documentary made by Frygis Fogel, an Hungarian independent filmmaker, on the topic of the Cultural Creatives, people who are taking an interest in improving the quality of life and making it sustainable for future generations. It is NOT a global organization or any kind of political movement, yet there are an increasing number of people showing an enormous change in consciousness, providing examples through their own initiatives, and giving humanity an opportunity to find solutions to the issues of the 21st century. The Cultural Creatives comprise over one third of the adult populations of the US, Europe, Japan, and many major cosmopolitan cities worldwide, all with a similar mindset. In the midst of many world crises, they are anticipating the future as an abundant opportunity.

Featuring many key figures from Europe and the U.S., this is the first documentary film to look with scientific thoroughness at the world of Cultural Creatives. It shows that a great mass of people think differently from the way propagated by the media and promoted by the establishment. By the end of the film it becomes evident that this huge mass, were it to become aware of its power, could change the world. Because Cultural Creatives are unstoppable and their number is continuously rising, the values they champion could soon become core values for human civilization generally.

Cultural Creatives are emerging without anybody organizing their presence, without anyone seeking to create political power from their existence, and without any group having any interest in them. They are emerging simply because in real historical development the growth of human consciousness can not be stopped, no matter how much today’s establishments and intellectual elites try to ignore and even hide their appearance.

So they are all here, among and around us: 80 million Cultural Creatives in the United States and 120 million in Europe, all with a similar mindset – the citizens of a new world. They are the ones who are really preparing the future and its new social structures for us, and are doing so right now. They are the ones who anticipate the future as an astonishing opportunity never before available to mankind throughout the whole course of its history here on earth. Their message: The time is ripe to take the shaping of social life into our own hands.

The principle researcher for the Cultural Creatives is Dr. Paul Ray of the Institute for the Emerging Wisdom Culture at Wisdom University, a partner with NextNow Collaboratory on various State of the World Forum initiatives.

100-Year Starship Study Blasts Off 1/11/11

NextNower Claudia Welss attended the inaugural meeting of the DARPA/NASA 100-Year Starship Study held January 11th and 12th at Cavallo Point in Sausalito, CA.  She joined a fascinating mixture of space-savvy individuals grappling with the technological and socio-political Whys, Whats and Hows of an ambitious yet achievable goal:  developing the business case for an enduring organization designed to incentivize breakthrough technologies over generations, enabling long-distance manned spaceflight within 100 years.  Follow early developments at http://100yearstarshipstudy.com/

DARPA/NASA SEEK TO INSPIRE MULTIGENERATIONAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

October 28, 2010 – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Throughout history technical challenges have inspired generations to achieve scientific breakthroughs of lasting impact. Several decades ago, for instance, the race to the moon sparked a global excitement surrounding space exploration that persists to this day. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the NASA Ames Research Center have teamed together to take the first step in the next era of space exploration—a journey between the stars.

The 100-Year Starship study will examine the business model needed to develop and mature a technology portfolio enabling long-distance manned space flight a century from now. This goal will require sustained investments of intellectual and financial capital from a variety of sources. The year-long study aims to develop a construct that will incentivize and facilitate private co-investment to ensure continuity of the lengthy technological time horizon needed.

“The 100-Year Starship study is about more than building a spacecraft or any one specific technology,” said Paul Eremenko, DARPA coordinator for the study. “We endeavor to excite several generations to commit to the research and development of breakthrough technologies and cross-cutting innovations across a myriad of disciplines such as physics, mathematics, biology, economics, and psychological, social, political and cultural sciences, as well as the full range of engineering disciplines to advance the goal of long-distance space travel, but also to benefit mankind.”

DARPA also anticipates that the advancements achieved by such technologies will have substantial relevance to Department of Defense (DoD) mission areas including propulsion, energy storage, biology/life support, computing, structures, navigation, and others. Beyond the DoD and NASA, these investments will reinvigorate private entrepreneurs, the engineering and scientific community, and the world’s youth in a bold quest for the stars.

The 100-Year Starship study looks to develop the business case for an enduring organization designed to incentivize breakthrough technologies enabling future spaceflight.

Media with inquiries, contact DARPA Public Affairs, DARPAPublicAffairsOffice@darpa.mil

Happy Holidays from N e x t N o w Collab

Every year we choose our favorite holiday greeting to share.  This one comes from AlianzaClimate in Panama, a new NGO alliance building bridges to link business, government and the UN in climate leadership.

Happy Holidays