"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Work Hard to Make it Simple
The facet of social innovation that stuck a chord with me is "Do the hard work needed to find a simple solution." While I believe the author intended this to mean avoid complex solutions (which are often times brittle and expensive) I interpret it slightly differently: simple solutions come from simple problems. The challenge is then to take a seemingly impossible problem and turn it into a series of simple ones. It is a divide and conquer approach to saving the world.
With software, for example, it is easy to create very complex solutions to a complex problem. Complex solutions are bad because they are hard to maintain, hard to administer, and often have unintended behavior when inputs change. There is even a software law to that regard, inspired by the first law of thermodynamics (the equivalent of "energy is neither created nor destroyed, just moved around".):
Complex problems, whether feeding the world or writing certain geometrical algorithms, will remain complex. The hard work is identifying how a problem can be reduced into a series of actions that are simple to solve.
The problem of e-waste is one example. Trying to "solve" global e-waste (20-50 million tons generated every year, predicted to triple in the next 5 years) almost dooms a lone individual to failure. The problem is too complex and requires a solution as equally complex. "Solving" global e-waste requires breaking down the big, scary phenomenon into smaller issues:
A non-profit that I'm involved with, the ElectroRegeneration Society, does this sort of work.
We've found our greatest success is when we focus on solving simple problems (which conversely need simple solutions). We're still figuring out how exactly this works - be it fund-raising, policy making, etc we're still in our "hard work" phase of breaking the big problems into manageble things we can solve. But it is a guiding principal that nearly everyone can get their head around.
With software, for example, it is easy to create very complex solutions to a complex problem. Complex solutions are bad because they are hard to maintain, hard to administer, and often have unintended behavior when inputs change. There is even a software law to that regard, inspired by the first law of thermodynamics (the equivalent of "energy is neither created nor destroyed, just moved around".):
"The underlying complexity of a given problem is constant."
Complex problems, whether feeding the world or writing certain geometrical algorithms, will remain complex. The hard work is identifying how a problem can be reduced into a series of actions that are simple to solve.
The problem of e-waste is one example. Trying to "solve" global e-waste (20-50 million tons generated every year, predicted to triple in the next 5 years) almost dooms a lone individual to failure. The problem is too complex and requires a solution as equally complex. "Solving" global e-waste requires breaking down the big, scary phenomenon into smaller issues:
- global black market shipping networks
- varying national policies and trade discrepancies allowing 3rd world 'dumping'
- state incentives for recycling of electronic devices
- awareness within city governments, educational institutions, and businesses of alternatives
- community programs and collection points
- individual encouragement on what to do with old devices upon a new purchase
A non-profit that I'm involved with, the ElectroRegeneration Society, does this sort of work.
We've found our greatest success is when we focus on solving simple problems (which conversely need simple solutions). We're still figuring out how exactly this works - be it fund-raising, policy making, etc we're still in our "hard work" phase of breaking the big problems into manageble things we can solve. But it is a guiding principal that nearly everyone can get their head around.
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Comment by Linda Holt on March 16, 2010 at 3:29am
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This post hit close to home as I am sitting here with a now outmoded printer and a little Dell tower that I have no idea what to do with. I'm meeting with a local community center regarding a community garden venture next week - but I'm not even sure that they would want it - even if it works. . . I guess I'll find out! Thanks for playing - I look foward to reading your posts!
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