Google is running a project to find which ideas people think would benefit the most people.
It is called the 10 to the 100 project. (This number, 1 followed by a hundred zeroes is called a googol – which is what google was named after.) What google did was ask for ideas to benefit the largest number of people. They received 154,000 suggestions. These have been broken down and reduced to the best 16. You have the opportunity of voting for the one which you think would benefit the most people. They will then donate $10M to the five most popular.
This seems like a worthwhile thing to me. You can vote here. You only have until October 8th to vote.
It will be interesting to see which ideas win and how the money is spent.
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Tags: social change
wow – why didn’t I know about this before? Thanks, Evan! Have cast my vote…
Hi Sarah, I just chanced across it – it’ll be interesting to see which ideas win.
I think I would vote for “Make educational content available for free”.
Love the saying: “Helping helps the helper and the helped alike”.
Many of the ideas are to do with tracking and reporting, like the natural disaster crisis system and the health one, as well as the issue-based one in general.
There are so many ideas about engineering and science!
“Which ideas benefit the most people” makes me think of UTILITIARANISM: the ideas of Jeffrey Bentham and his contemporaries and successors.
I would also love to see what happens with ’socially conscious tax’. What is the difference between socially conscious and socially responsible, and how does this factor into the triple bottom line?
Hi Adelaide, yes lots about monitoring. Utilitarianism has the same problems as this proposal – how to do the calculations: how many childrens lives versus happy adults enjoying great works of art. So I go for health and (like you) ideas about education. I think ’socially conscious’ is a way of weaseling out of saying ’socially responsible’. It certainly will be interesting to see what happens with that idea. Thanks for your comment.