You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a whole system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome. At the ultimate level, your home is a cell in an organism called a planet. All these levels interconnect. What do you know about the dynamics of this larger system around you? Most of us are ignorant of this matrix. But it is the biggest interactive game there is. Hacking it is both fun and vital.

1) Point north.

2) What time is sunset today?

3) Trace the water you drink from rainfall to your tap.

4) When you flush, where do the solids go? What happens to the waste water?

5) How many feet above sea level are you?

6) What spring wildflower is consistently among the first to bloom here?

7) How far do you have to travel before you reach a different watershed? Can you draw the boundaries of yours?

8) Is the soil under your feet, more clay, sand, rock or silt?

9) Before your tribe lived here, what did the previous inhabitants eat and how did they sustain themselves?

10) Name five native edible plants in your neighborhood and the season(s) they are available.

11) From what direction do storms generally come?

12) Where does your garbage go?

13) How many people live in your watershed?

14) Who uses the paper/plastic you recycle from your neighborhood?

15) Point to where the sun sets on the equinox. How about sunrise on the summer solstice?

Claudia Menashe needed pictures of sick people. A project director at the National Health Museum in Washington, DC, Menashe was putting together a series of interactive kiosks devoted to potential pandemics like the avian flu. An exhibition designer had created a plan for the kiosk itself, but now Menashe was looking for images to accompany the text. Rather than hire a photographer to take shots of people suffering from the flu, Menashe decided to use preexisting images – stock photography, as it’s known in the publishing industry.

In October 2004, she ran across a stock photo collection by Mark Harmel, a freelance photographer living in Manhattan Beach, California. Harmel, whose wife is a doctor, specializes in images related to the health care industry. “Claudia wanted people sneezing, getting immunized, that sort of thing,” recalls Harmel, a slight, soft-spoken 52-year-old.

The National Health Museum has grand plans to occupy a spot on the National Mall in Washington by 2012, but for now it’s a fledgling institution with little money. “They were on a tight budget, so I charged them my nonprofit rate,” says Harmel, who works out of a cozy but crowded office in the back of the house he shares with his wife and stepson. He offered the museum a generous discount: $100 to $150 per photograph. “That’s about half of what a corporate client would pay,” he says. Menashe was interested in about four shots, so for Harmel, this could be a sale worth $600.

After several weeks of back-and-forth, Menashe emailed Harmel to say that, regretfully, the deal was off. “I discovered a stock photo site called iStockphoto,” she wrote, “which has images at very affordable prices.” That was an understatement. The same day, Menashe licensed 56 pictures through iStockphoto – for about $1 each.

iStockphoto, which grew out of a free image-sharing exchange used by a group of graphic designers, had undercut Harmel by more than 99 percent. How? By creating a marketplace for the work of amateur photographers – homemakers, students, engineers, dancers. There are now about 22,000 contributors to the site, which charges between $1 and $5 per basic image. (Very large, high-resolution pictures can cost up to $40.) Unlike professionals, iStockers don’t need to clear $130,000 a year from their photos just to break even; an extra $130 does just fine. “I negotiate my rate all the time,” Harmel says. “But how can I compete with a dollar?”

A new crowdsourcing company, called Cambrian House, launched this week. The idea is pretty straightforward – open source software development minus the free labor. It's a little hard to evaluate whether Cambrian House can develop competitive applications in an increasingly crowded market, but I'm impressed with the degree to which they've thought out the model. I also like that they intend to put the crowd to work at three separate tasks: 1) originating the ideas; 2) evaluating the ideas; and 3) developing the code itself. A lot of the discussion in the media and the blogosphere since my original article came out has focused on the last of these functions -- I suppose because it's easiest to get one's head around--when in fact the crowd's ability to distinguish between fodder and folderol is, to my way of thinking anyway, the most fascinating and perhaps useful aspect of the crowdsourcing model (as well as being one of the only areas in which crowdsourcing does in fact overlap with peer production, in that the labor can only be performed by the collective.) It's also hard not to be won over by the egalitarian spirit that seems to animate Cambrian House, even if it's a little eerily reminiscent of the It's-Good-to-be-Good-Especially-if-We-Can-Make-Gobs-of-Cash-in-the-Process zeitgeist of the late '90s. At any rate, I look forward to following Cambrian House's development, and wish them the best of luck. One question guys: Will the source code created by the crowd remain open to the crowd after it's launched, or is that contingent on the client?

In the fall of 1972, when David Galenson was a senior economics major at Harvard, he took what he describes as a “gut” course in 17th-century Dutch art. On the first day of class, the professor displayed a stunning image of a Renaissance Madonna and child. “Pablo Picasso did this copy of a Raphael drawing when he was 17 years old,” the professor told the students. “What have you people done lately?” It’s a question we all ask ourselves. What have we done lately? It rattles us each birthday. It surfaces whenever an upstart twentysomething pens a game-changing novel or a 30-year-old tech entrepreneur becomes a billionaire. The question nagged at Galenson for years. In graduate school, he watched brash colleagues write dissertations that earned them quick acclaim and instant tenure, while he sat in the library meticulously tabulating 17th- and 18th-century indentured-servitude records. He eventually found a spot on the University of Chicago’s Nobelist-studded economics faculty, but not as a big-name theorist. He was a colonial economic historian – a utility infielder on a team of Hall of Famers.

Now, however, Galenson might have done something at last, something that could provide hope for legions of late bloomers everywhere. Beavering away in his sunny second-floor office on campus, he has scoured the records of art auctions, counted entries in poetry anthologies, tallied images in art history textbooks – and then sliced and diced the numbers with his econometric ginsu knife. Applying the fiercely analytic, quantitative tools of modern economics, he has reverse engineered ingenuity to reveal the source code of the creative mind.

What he has found is that genius – whether in art or architecture or even business – is not the sole province of 17-year-old Picassos and 22-year-old Andreessens. Instead, it comes in two very different forms, embodied by two very different types of people. “Conceptual innovators,” as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there’s a second character type, someone who’s just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group “experimental innovators.” Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality – conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus – is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists.

After a decade of number crunching, Galenson, at the not-so-tender age of 55, has fashioned something audacious and controversial: a unified field theory of creativity. Not bad for a middle-aged guy. What have you done lately?

"Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Choose your
words, for they become actions. Understand your actions, for they become habits. Study your habits, for they will become your character. Develop your character, for it becomes your destiny." --Anonymous

Sun's chief open source officer has told a conference to forget volunteerism and ideals, and think more like Warren Buffett

For open source to prosper, people need to stop thinking of it as "free" and instead think of it as "connected capitalism", delegates at an open source conference in London were told on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Open Source Business Conference, Sun Microsystems' chief open-source officer, Simon Phipps, said that open source had been focused for too long on sharing code instead of what he called "the enrichment of the commons".

The open source community needed to look to the lessons of capitalism and capitalists, said Phipps. And referring to the recent announcement that billionaire Warren Buffet was donating much of his wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Phipps pointed out that "Warren Buffett is driving gold — he is creating wealth".

Expanding on his message, Phipps said that the message of open source was that "creating and maintaining a completely independent code base was ultimately self-defeating".

Instead, the future was in co-operation and in organisations preserving what was ultimately of value to them.

"This is not volunteerism," said Phipps. "It is directed self-interest, synchronised self-interest and there is nothing wrong with self-interest."

This is the start of a new movement, the "Do No Harm!" movement.

We seem to be living in a world that is getting meaner every day. Too many of us are only out for ourselves, and we are either oblivious of the harm we cause or we ignore the harm we cause. Could it be because no one taught us otherwise?

Could it be because no one ever asked us to "Do No Harm"?

If we look at just about any endeavor our species has engaged in, it would seem we are unaware of the harm we do to others, or we intentionally do harm for our own gain, and sadly in some cases for our own pleasure and enjoyment.

Since we haven't been taught otherwise we see no harm in doing harm. We cause harm and shrug it off. We cause harm and laugh about it. We cause harm and brag about it.

Worse, our children bear witness to our actions and never learn to do no harm. Above all else we must teach our children, by example and instruction, this simple philosophy of life.

If we are to become a more evolved species we must begin to make better choices and treat each other with more respect, and that includes the other creatures who share this planet and this planet we call home.

We believe that the first and most basic moral law is, "Do no harm!" Why? Because we can feel pain and suffering, we can imagine the pain and suffering of others. Because we can imagine the pain and suffering of others, we can act accordingly.

What does "Do no harm" mean? For some it means arbitrary restrictions of action (not to strike or kill), speech (not to lie or insult), and thought. But what it ultimately means is thoughtful consideration. Do no harm simply means to consider how our actions may affect the world we all share, to be compassionate in our dealings with all creatures, and not to despoil our planet.

Doctors are asked to first do no harm, why not lawyers, businessmen, religious leaders and politicians? Why not us? Why not now?

If we cannot do good and leave this world a better place for being here, the very least we can do is to attempt to do no harm, and leave it no worse than as we found it.

It sounds like a simple idea, because it is a simple idea, but it just may be effective over the long run. Will "Do No Harm" solve all the problems in our world? Perhaps not, but this is an effort to decrease the nastiness in the world and to increase the kindness.

We hope that "Do No Harm" becomes that little voice that guides our actions.

And we hope you will join the movement and pass on the message "Do No Harm." Place it on your web site or use it to sign your e-mails in place of "Yours" or "Regards."

It is not necessary to link to this web page or even to mention the source of the message. This is surely a case where the message is far more important than the messengers. All we ask is that you practice do no harm and take every opportunity to pass the words "Do No Harm" on to others.

If you wish to include this essay, or the link to the "Do No Harm" web page, that's fine, or if you wish to change the wording or write your own, that's equally fine. But if this movement is to succeed, and if we are ever to change our world for the better, we simply must pass the "Do No Harm" message on.

If you wish to send us your own thoughts or comments, with your permission, we will add them to this web page.


Sometimes, all you really need to do is ask:

Do No Harm!

c.c.keiser & clyde grossman

June 1, 2006

The inventor of the geodesic dome—a structure light enough to be lifted by a helicopter yet strong enough to withstand hurricanes—achieved his eventual acclaim by never breaking a bargain he made with himself in 1927 as he teetered at the edge of suicide. A series of business failures, compounded with lingering grief over the death of his daughter five years earlier, had made Fuller increasingly despondent. Then he was fired from his job as president of a construction company he had founded with his father-in-law, and a second daughter was born. Overwhelmed by a sense of failure, he felt he must get himself out of the way, ensuring that relatives would take care of his wife and their baby.

He went to Lake Michigan, intending to swim out to his death. Then he was struck by what he called a vision, in which he saw that he didn’t have the right to do away with himself. “You do not belong to you, you belong to the universe,” he was later to explain; for all his mistakes, he was the custodian of a unique package of experiences that just might have some utility for mankind. He would trust the “anticipatory intellectual wisdom which we may call God” and allow himself to live, and he would never forget that he was a “throwaway.”

Thus began the fifty-six-year experiment of “guinea pig B”—for Bucky—in which “an average healthy human being” resolved to become a problem solver “on behalf of all humanity.” One can only imagine the reactions of family and friends when the thirty-twoyear-old Fuller announced this. He further determined to dispense forever with the idea of “earning a living,” which to him meant advantaging oneself at the expense of others; if he concentrated on doing what needed to be done, funding would take care of itself. He decided to devote himself, broadly, to the technology of “livingry,” as opposed to weaponry.

Fuller moved his wife, Anne, and infant daughter, Allegra, to a one-room apartment in a Chicago slum, withdrew completely from all friends and social contact, and vowed not to speak again until he really knew what he thought. And then he began to think. His virtual silence lasted for almost two years and was the beginning of what he one day called “a blind date with principle.”