Solar Power, Global Issues, Helping others
Mayer Media: Why Solar Power Isn’t Everywhere – The Real Reason at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRbb1hbnTEE
It is relatively easy to report why things fail, but much harder to find, propose and promote sustainable solutions. If you look at global media, I have never once seen any report “news” that was not bad, or “gee whiz”. Effective solutions take a long time and continual effort. A few people can change a whole industry, there are lots of billionaires to prove that. But their methods are not sustainable. So many people (about 5 billion) see things that need to be done, or are needed, and tens of thousands of groups might respond. It is hard, but not impossible to solve all the current global issues. But the scale is larger, a thousand fold, than most people are willing to invest. For one topic, like solar energy, a small group, using AI assistance, can cover the entire topic for all countries, all cities, all organizations, and all individuals. But it has to remain neutral and not fall into “making money” or “gathering fame”. I looked at about 15,000 topics that are global now, in the last 25 years. Things like “global climate change”, “education for all”, “malnutrition”, “homelessness”, “pollution”, “city management”, “managing nations”, “managing corporations”, “solar system colonization”, “atomic fuels”, “hypersonic flight”, “fusion energy”, “re-engineering the power system”. Like I said, at least 15,000 such things. They start with tens of thousands of individuals and groups all working independently, for their own purposes. If it is a good thing, in a human species survival sense, then over decades or centuries it will evolve to new structures and systems and methods that all humans use. But mostly innovation wastes human time, and creates monopolies that stiff new developments. It enriches a few, and takes from the poor to give to the rich. You cannot be thin-skinned and try to study such things. But it is not all bad. It is just slow. When covid started I traced out why it only enriched some human systems at the expense of others. And I found that research is so slow because the whole depends on human memories, paper methods and hoarding knowledge by a few for their own benefit. The counter to that is open, accessible, “for everyone” knowledge. But groups find they have to pay their own bills, and if they become more efficient, or smarter, or faster, or better – always fall into using that to extort fees, gather riches to themselves.
If you want to be a media company, that will lead to following what others do and are usually better at. If you really want to help the world and stand our, pick some really hard problems and spend the rest of your life finding the people who are working on that, and try to help them be more efficient, more capable, more caring, most giving, most sharing.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
