boundary="============_-1257835533==_ma============"
Sender: owner-extropians@extropy.com
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: extropians@extropy.com
--============_-1257835533==_ma============
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
At 12:59 AM -0800 3/22/00, d.brin wrote:
>ABSTRACT: What daring 21st century concepts or projects would you most
>like to see pursued, if money were no object?
What to do with a billion dollars?
Make the first Global Biocensus.
If we ever find life on another planet, the first thing we would do is to
sysematically survey all the life on that planet. That's something we have
never done for our own home planet.
This idea was sparked by listening to a money manager talk about his work.
This guy only accepts clients with a minimum of US$1 billion to invest.
Obviously, these people have problems we could only wish for. But rather
than a joke, this manager convinced me that handling a billion dollars was
actually a difficult problem. Even giving away a billion dollars, he said,
was extremely difficult -- the main problem being that you couldn't give it
away responsibly fast enough not to have the remainder keep piling up. If
you give it away too slowly (at less than 10% of capital per year), the
principals accumalates gains faster than you spend it. On the other hand
to give it all away at once would require buying such an elaborate
infrastructure to handle it that most of the money would go towards the
infrastructure and not the problem. The question we posed was, if you had
to give a billion dollars away fast and effectively, what would you do?
I was reminded of Ted Turners gift of a billion dollars to the UN. Ted
obviously thought about this problem. His solution was to use the existing
infrastructure of the UN. My laymans' view of the UN is as one of the
world's larger bureaucracies. Efficiency is not what you associate with
it. While the agenda of the UN is wholesome, was this really the best way
to leverage $1 billion? How much of that money will be spent on the UN
infrastructure? Probably most of it. The UN does good work, but safe,
conventional, and needed work. Part of Turner's point was that this should
be funded by governments and not philanthropy.
I wanted to spend my billion dollar gift differently.
I was looking for a project that could be scaled up rapidly, that would get
the money into places where the money would make a huge difference, that
would acomplish a GOOD THING, and that would spin out and enable all kinds
of new wealth from its completion.
My idea is to take a billion dollars to make a bio census of the world. Use
the money to fund the training of bright third world students and
aboriginals to make a taxonomic survey of all creatures. You could train
people to scientifically collect and classify species in very specific
areas in probably two years. You could develop a portable training
program and kit to ship around the world in three years. You could use the
internet to funnel the data. It would be in the public domain. At third
world wages, there milght be enough to fund 3 years of collecting and
identifying (or simply collecting and freezing for indentification later --
this is Greg
Bear's idea).
Does this global biocensus include the microbes? It might cost another
couple of billion to do a complete microbial survey. This is the most
commercially powerful aspect of the survey, so I don't think this part
needs non-commercial funding. But the rest is best done with philanthropic
money.
Here's what we'd get out of it:
The first global census of life on earth. Now.
Real cash trickling into the far corners of the earth.
Tens of thousands of people with a real job, at least temporarily.
Tens of thousands of people with a new familiarity with science.
Terabytes of data in the public domain, waiting to be built upon.
Hundreds of immediate, amazing auxillary discoveries, from lost ruins to
"extinct" animals discovered.
A global training network that could be continued for this or other tasks.
Thousands of companies, producing hundreds of million of dollars of value,
dervived from the information collected.
Other surprises, gauranteed.
Most likely the billion dollars would generate a billion dollars of
unexpected new value, in addition to the other social value it produces.
For instance the tools created to make the survey possible could be used to
survey other global questions.
In general, we have no answers to most global questions. We should count
everything alive on earth. In talking to biologists it turns out that such
a global biocensus has never dared been tried. How
long will we live here before we find out who's here.
That's my fantasy. Many other fantasies are possible.
So here are the rules. You have a billion dollars in cash and you have to
spend it all in five years. You want maximum good. What do you do?
--kk
_______________________________________________________________________________
Kevin Kelly kevin@wired.com Editor-At-Large, Wired magazine
149 Amapola Ave, Pacifica, CA 94044 USA www.well.com/user/kk
+1-415-276-5211 vox +1-650-355-3660 home +1-650-359-9701 fax
My book NEW RULES FOR THE NEW ECONOMY is available from
Amazon.com. The full text of my first book OUT OF CONTROL
can be found at http://www.well.com/user/kk/OutOfControl/
--============_-1257835533==_ma============
Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="us-ascii"
At 12:59 AM -0800 3/22/00, d.brin wrote:
<excerpt>ABSTRACT: What daring 21st century concepts or projects would
you most like to see pursued, if money were no object?
</excerpt>
What to do with a billion dollars?
Make the first Global Biocensus.
If we ever find life on another planet, the first thing we would do is
to
sysematically survey all the life on that planet. That's something we
have
never done for our own home planet.
This idea was sparked by listening to a money manager talk about his
work.
This guy only accepts clients with a minimum of US$1 billion to
invest.
Obviously, these people have problems we could only wish for. But
rather
than a joke, this manager convinced me that handling a billion dollars
was
actually a difficult problem. Even giving away a billion dollars, he
said,
was extremely difficult -- the main problem being that you couldn't
give it
away responsibly fast enough not to have the remainder keep piling up.
If
you give it away too slowly (at less than 10% of capital per year),
the
principals accumalates gains faster than you spend it. On the other
hand
to give it all away at once would require buying such an elaborate
infrastructure to handle it that most of the money would go towards
the
infrastructure and not the problem. The question we posed was, if you
had
to give a billion dollars away fast and effectively, what would you
do?
I was reminded of Ted Turners gift of a billion dollars to the UN. Ted
obviously thought about this problem. His solution was to use the
existing
infrastructure of the UN. My laymans' view of the UN is as one of the
world's larger bureaucracies. Efficiency is not what you associate
with
it. While the agenda of the UN is wholesome, was this really the best
way
to leverage $1 billion? How much of that money will be spent on the
UN
infrastructure? Probably most of it. The UN does good work, but safe,
conventional, and needed work. Part of Turner's point was that this
should
be funded by governments and not philanthropy.
I wanted to spend my billion dollar gift differently.
I was looking for a project that could be scaled up rapidly, that would
get
the money into places where the money would make a huge difference,
that
would acomplish a GOOD THING, and that would spin out and enable all
kinds
of new wealth from its completion.
My idea is to take a billion dollars to make a bio census of the world.
Use
the money to fund the training of bright third world students and
aboriginals to make a taxonomic survey of all creatures. You could
train
people to scientifically collect and classify species in very specific
areas in probably two years. You could develop a portable training
program and kit to ship around the world in three years. You could use
the
internet to funnel the data. It would be in the public domain. At
third
world wages, there milght be enough to fund 3 years of collecting and
identifying (or simply collecting and freezing for indentification
later --
this is Greg
Bear's idea).
Does this global biocensus include the microbes? It might cost another
couple of billion to do a complete microbial survey. This is the most
commercially powerful aspect of the survey, so I don't think this part
needs non-commercial funding. But the rest is best done with
philanthropic
money.
Here's what we'd get out of it:
The first global census of life on earth. Now.
Real cash trickling into the far corners of the earth.
Tens of thousands of people with a real job, at least temporarily.
Tens of thousands of people with a new familiarity with science.
Terabytes of data in the public domain, waiting to be built upon.
Hundreds of immediate, amazing auxillary discoveries, from lost ruins
to
"extinct" animals discovered.
A global training network that could be continued for this or other
tasks.
Thousands of companies, producing hundreds of million of dollars of
value,
dervived from the information collected.
Other surprises, gauranteed.
Most likely the billion dollars would generate a billion dollars of
unexpected new value, in addition to the other social value it
produces.
For instance the tools created to make the survey possible could be
used to
survey other global questions.
In general, we have no answers to most global questions. We should
count everything alive on earth. In talking to biologists it turns out
that such a global biocensus has never dared been tried. How
long will we live here before we find out who's here.
That's my fantasy. Many other fantasies are possible.
So here are the rules. You have a billion dollars in cash and you have
to
spend it all in five years. You want maximum good. What do you do?
--kk
_______________________________________________________________________________
Kevin Kelly kevin@wired.com Editor-At-Large, Wired magazine
149 Amapola Ave, Pacifica, CA 94044 USA www.well.com/user/kk
+1-415-276-5211 vox +1-650-355-3660 home +1-650-359-9701 fax
My book NEW RULES FOR THE NEW ECONOMY is available from
Amazon.com. The full text of my first book OUT OF CONTROL
can be found at http://www.well.com/user/kk/OutOfControl/
--============_-1257835533==_ma============--
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:06:41 MDT