GOOD has spent this month posting selections from their first ever GOOD 100 (or so) issue, publishing a new entry every day from their laboriously handpicked collection of the most inspirational ideas, projects, people, and movements making the world better. All projects have now been posted online, including everything from organizations working to integrate solar power into everyday life, to the DIY home-sanitation-system-hacking movement, to social empowerment and civil rights initiatives.
Below are excerpts from five of the collection’s standout projects:
Jordan Seiler’s Public Ad Campaign
Jordan Seiler began covering public advertisements with simple patterns or blank, soothing images in 2000 out of a belief that ads impair our ability to communicate with each other. As Seiler sees it, ads in public spaces turn public interactions into transactions, which is a problem in areas that are supposed to be free and open. The website for his aesthetic civil-disobedience project, dubbed the Public Ad Campaign, boldly and unapologetically lists all of his “unauthorized public installs” by date and address, and Seiler sees the illicit action as vital to maintaining city health.
Numenta Artificial Intelligence Project
Jeff Hawkins built his career (and his fortune) as the inventor of the Palm Pilot and the Treo. In 2005, he co-founded the company Numenta to pursue his lifelong goal: understanding and modeling the human brain, so as to make artificial intelligence smarter. Hawkins believes that the essence of human intelligence is recognizing regular patterns—in sounds, or images, or ideas—and using them to predict the future. This understanding of the brain as a pattern-recognition machine means Numenta’s technology could be used to make sense of other astoundingly complex data sets.
Big Belly’s Solar Powered, Texting Trashcans
Each BigBelly is a bin and compactor in one. By compacting trash on the street, the 32-gallon BigBelly can hold 150 to 200 gallons of trash. The BigBellys are powered by solar panels—they’re entirely off the grid—and send text messages to the city when they’re full, so collection trips are only made when they need to be, instead of requiring a daily drive.
The Allan Telescope Array
The scientists behind the Allen Telescope Array (Microsoft co-founder and alien enthusiast Paul Allen is backing the venture) are fairly confident that by 2025 they will have found definitive proof of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. If they don’t, it certainly won’t be for lack of trying. They’re positioning 350 20-foot dish antennas—mass-produced using off-the-shelf components—at the Hat Creek Observatory in California, and linking them to work in unison.
The Teacher Salary Project
Built on the success of the book Teachers Have It Easy by the teacher and journalist Daniel Moulthrop, 826 National’s CEO Nínive Calegari, and the writer Dave Eggers, the Teacher Salary Project is a multipronged media and advocacy effort to remind a forgetful America how important, overworked, and underpaid our public-school teachers are.
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