XPRIZE's Jono Bacon On the Next Great Challenge 20
itwbennett writes: After just under 8 years at Canonical where he was Community Manager of Ubuntu, Jono Bacon left in search of a new challenge. Now, a year and a half into his tenure at the XPRIZE Foundation as Senior Director of Community, Bacon reflects on the changing nature of community and how he is working to bring the 'anybody can play a role in a bigger picture' aspect of open source to "solve the grand challenges facing humanity." Update: 09/17 00:20 GMT by T : Jono wants everyone to know that he's certainly not leaving the world of open source software, either; headline has been updated to reflect that.
ANYbody can play a role in a bigger picture? (Score:2)
solve the grand challenges facing humanity? (Score:1)
Oh, that's easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy! Just change man's nature. Problem solved. No applause, just send money, thankyouverymuch...
the dude's a "community manager" (Score:2)
As a community manager, he's one third marketing, one third support and one third PR, and at the bottom of all those totem poles in terms of influence. If he's changing anything, its the diapers of his bosses' kids after he picks them up from daycare.
Bacon (Score:2)
The grand challenges facing humanity? (Score:2)
In no particular order, the grand challenges are:
Some of these may be rooted in human nature, so getting rid of them will not happen unless or until we evolve past that hurdle.
Re: (Score:3)
In no particular order, the grand challenges are:
Disease
War
Famine
Poverty
Disease? Not really. The majority of deaths occur because of non-communicable diseases like cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and kidney failure that we're getting better at treating. We might have a problem if we run out of functional antibiotics but right now we're in a very comfortable spot compared to all of human history.
War? Iraq/Syria puts us back at 1990s levels but we're nowhere near Korea and Vietnam, nevermind World Wars I and II in terms of deaths as a percent of the human population. Th
Re: (Score:2)
In no particular order, the grand challenges are:
Disease
War
Famine
Poverty
Some of these may be rooted in human nature,
Yeah, I'd say the grand challenges are ego, greed, and anger.
the X Prize Foundation .. (Score:2)
Jono (Score:2)
I miss that podcast.
Expand the Hutter Prize (Score:2)
Expand the Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge [hutter1.net] to include the entire edit history of Wikipedia as well as the entirety of Wikipedia's current contents.
Why?
Because it solves the artificial intelligence problem and does so in a way that optimally enables natural language communication of the accumulated knowledge of humanity.
What I mean by "optimally enables natural language communication" is what every professional writer uses as the first rule of composition:
Write to your audience.
In ot