Posts Tagged ‘reddit’

The Spark Project

Sunday, November 11th, 2012

In early 2013 a tool by The Spark Project will help concentrate people power into a force so powerful that it can counterbalance giant institutions like corporations and bad governments, even rivalling the biggest scourge of the earth – the military industrial complex.

The Spark Project was started 1 year ago by a group of Redditors who were inspired by the site’s amazing ability to filter through nonsense while bringing the best and brightest ideas to the top. They thought, ‘why not take this effective formula of crowdsourcing and use it to foster a true democracy?’. And so they did.

While still looking for funds and volunteers, the team have made tremendous headway and will likely release their tools early in 2013. Read more about the project at thespark.org.

It is tools like these which, once refined and widely adapted, can truly reshape the world. By channelling the voices of millions (and billions) of people into practical political clout, we’ll finally be able to enact real changes to the global establishment. We can finally make our world what we want it to be.

No more gross inequality where billionaires can hoard more for themselves while billions of people are left to starve. No more rampant exploitation of weaker nations by the more powerful in what is no less that modern-day slavery. No more politically or corporately organized armed conflict, meaning world peace will finally be upon us.

All this, and more, can and will be ours once we truly start working together as one people. Awesome!

Beautiful Reddit Charity Frenzy

Monday, December 5th, 2011

 

(Stay classy!)

It started with a single post to one of the Internet’s potentially life-sucking web-pages, where a member pledged one dollar to Doctors Without Borders for every ‘upvote’ received. The tinderbox-lighting member – Redditor zestyping – also offered an additional ten dollars for every similar donation in a 24-hour period.

The post went viral, others members kept upping the stakes, and if didn’t take long until some pretty audacious wagers were made. When all was said and done, over $150,000 was received by the international humanitarian organization.

This isn’t the first time individuals from the popular forum acted in unison to create something beautiful. In the past, Redditors raised over $600,000 for DonorsChoose.org, exchanged close to $150,000 in Secret Santa gifts, and the free pizza program has never been more popular.

What is happening within the Reddit community is like a microcosm for what new communication tools are doing to our entire world. Community building plus immediacy of information exchange, consensus of opinion combined with instant collaboration and mobilization – these forces, when wielded by tens of millions of people, stand to rock the very foundations of our establishment.

What this means is, thanks in part to a free internet, humankind will continue to build a more just global civilization. The end result of which will be a system that caters more to the vast majority of people instead of just the wealthy elite.