Two of my favorite subjects pop up today, at a time when I wonder whether my periodic rants about the failings of social networking technology are getting stale and overworked. But when two separate articles show up simultaneously with high visibility in the New York Times and the Boston Globe, I sense this subject is far from ready to be retired. The themes of the two articles looked dissimilar at first glance, but both touched on a subject that has concerned me and about which I have written on numerous occasions. Is the huge traffic in text messaging among so-called… Read More
Continue ReadingWould You Ever Ask Your Dentist to Drill, Baby, Drill?
Most of the news about the blowout in the Gulf has turned to finger pointing. It’s taken only a few days to turn a technological and natural disaster into political fodder. Drilling for oil about a mile below the ocean’s surface is a technical tour de force and an accident waiting to happen at the same time. Although there have been many accidents associated with deep ocean drilling, blowouts this this one are very rare. The last one occurred in 1969 in the Santa Barbara channel. Most new wells are reaching deeper and deeper because the shallow reserves are largely… Read More
Continue ReadingBlow, Baby, Blow
My friends and foes alike tell me I don’t offer enough practical solutions to the problems of unsustainability. Maybe I have the causes right, they say, but your ways to bring about the cultural change needed to get off the unsustainable and on to the sustainability trajectory are too little and maybe too late. The dilemma I see is lies in the choice we must make between quick, invariably technological fixes and slower cultural shifts. Global warming demands that we choose to do something rather than dithering along doing nothing. Geo-engineering, tinkering with the planetary system on a grand scale,… Read More
Continue ReadingSocial Media and Sustainability
With Earth Day rapidly fading from view, I can get back to my routine carping. SustainAbility, the consultancy founded by John Elkington, periodically posts what are usually columns worth reading. The latest one tells of how companies are using the internet and social media to start and maintain a conversation with stakeholders. The opening paragraph sets the tone of the article. “Open is good, closed is bad.” Not exactly what you expect to hear from a former top Shell executive, but when Bj�rn Edlund took the stage at the first Just Means conference on social media and stakeholder engagement he… Read More
Continue ReadingWhere Have All the Flowers Gone
Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing Where have all the flowers gone? Long time ago Where have all the flowers gone? Girls have picked them every one When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn? I usually wait until later in the day to tend to my blog, but today, being Earth day, I began first thing. I start triggering my thoughts by scanning the web for stories, and today the first instance came off of the front page of the NYTimes home page. I’ll comment about this in a moment, but, first, why this… Read More
Continue ReadingI Wasn’t Kidding about Good Deeds
Thanks to Environmental New Bits for this [tidbit](http://lib.wmrc.uiuc.edu/enb/2010/04/21/twittearth-day/) to chew on. > Thursday, April 22nd is the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day! To raise awareness about protecting the planet, Earthjustice has created the Twittearth Day page where people can check out what everyone is doing for Earth Day and twitter their own good deed for the day. Twitter is going to help promote Earth Day by tweeting to its more than 3 million followers! Help make this a big Twittearth Day success by letting your readers/members know about Twittearth Day and linking to http://twittearthday.com. And don’t forget the hash tag… Read More
Continue ReadingErev Earth Day
Jewish holidays start in the evening prior to the calendar day. And the day before, Erev whatever is celebrated by preparing. Erev Shabbat involves, for the observant, cooking and cleaning so the next day is free for rest and contemplation. Today, then, is Erev Earth Day, a time to prepare for the contemplation and commitments to be made tomorrow. Forty years after the first celebration of this special day, the Planet is arguably in much worse shape, in spite of grand efforts to curb the excesses of the affluent nations. With so many people, businesses, and governments becoming green, the… Read More
Continue ReadingMore Synchronicity and the Bottom of the Pyramid
The synchronicity starts with grading final papers for my two classes at Marlboro College all weekend. The quality of the student’s offerings has made this norma chore a satisfying experience. Two of the students chose to write about Stuart Hart and C. K. Prahalad’s concept of the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP). In this strategic model for generally large multinational corporations, the four billion people living at low income levels are seen as a virtually untapped new market for corporations, especially those in the business of offering consumer products. The assets of each individual may be very small, but the… Read More
Continue ReadingEarth Day Puts the Focus on the Wrong Subject
It’s only a couple of days to Earth Day, 2010. There’s little reason to celebrate this year. More people than ever question the reality of global climate change or the need to do anything serious about it. But at the same time, people are more positive about the state of the environment, but don’t act to maintain its quality. Pretty confusing statistics–all from the Gallup organization that has been tracking theses trends for a long time. The uptick in feelings comes with the Obama election. I wonder if this is an artifact reflecting a general change in confidence that came… Read More
Continue ReadingAn Ell-uva Difference
I am still mulling over the sufficiency conversation I was into this last weekend. I don’t know quite why it happened, but I got this vision of two words: being and bling. No two distinctions could be much farther apart in conveying a sense of what we humans have available to us as possibilities, but the only thing that distinguishes them in print is the letter “L,” instead of “E.” I found this definition of bling via a web search. It would be hard to find another pair of words where the substitution of a single letter would make such… Read More
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