Heeeeere’s John! About a year ago, Google announced it’s “10 to the 100th Power” contest to celebrate its 10th anniversary. The intent of the contest was to get ideas from around that would help the most number of people. Google would invest a big pot of cash to help kick-start some of those ideas. The contest was a pretty neat; even I submitted several ideas in the hope of becoming the savior of all humankind.
Semi-finalists were supposed to be announced by January 27th, 2009, but got delayed until March 17th, and then was put on hold again. Apparently the company that handles a bazillion search requests each day got swamped by 150,000 ideas, but I digress. On September 24th the semi-finalists were announced, and the public is invited to vote on their favorites. I’m a little miffed because none of my obviously world-changing ideas were among the chosen, but I’ll just have to get over that small disappointment.
All of the ideas are meritorious, however there are a couple that readers of “Science Cheerleader” might find especially interesting…
- Enhance science and engineering education
- Encourage positive media depictions of engineers and scientists
I’m really not trying to game the vote (well, OK, I am), but I encourage you to let your Google vote be heard. Voting ends on October 8th, 2009.
I voted for “Enhance science and engineering education” but really like the “Encourage positive media depictions of engineers and scientists” ideas too!
Paul – I think that you can vote for multiple ideas, at least I did and the Google Police haven’t come knocking at my door yet. I voted for the two mentioned in the post; additionally I also voted for “Create real-world issue reporting system” because I thought that it was a neat (and possibly game-changing) idea, if it could be implemented correctly.
The main problems that I see with the “issue reporting system” are: 1) How to properly find the right levels of abstraction for the problem (e.g., pot-holes in my street are one thing, hidden genocide is another), and 2) How to filter out the noise from cranks. Luckily, I’m not in charge of implementing this system, but whoever may become in charge, I wish them all the luck of the world.