The Giving Prize
Google Giving will announce $100,000 prizes open for everyone. Google Giving Challenge: We go to a University every 2 weeks, outline the problem (literacy, housing, sanitation, bandwidth, etc) and its scale, this will be a presentation just like Google Tech Talks or TED and we announce a prize with very specific goals. I look at money as micro-capital to try out ideas that has a reasonable chance to scale massively. We need millions of people thinking about solutions to these challenges. I love to inspire people. I would love to visit Universities and colleges all around the world and talk to students and ask them to take a shot at doing what they love to do and we will fund ideas. The goal is for these problems to occupy mindshare of a large segment of population.
Note: The prizes do not replace grants. This is an additional program to consider so we can have thousands of great ideas competing for grants! A prize lets thousands of ideas to emergy to tackle a problem. When thousands of good ideas are out there, the marketplace will pick winners. Google grants are to supercharge an idea that can scale massive.
Here are a few that we can consider:
Literacy
-- Android game to learn arithmetic. This would be rated on how rapidly can an illiterate person learn arithmetic. The symbols of arithmetic and their meaning is the same across all cultures. Android because, soon we will see less than $50 smartphones.
-- Game to enable reading - alphabet, word, sentences. Addictive, fun and effective.
Energy
-- Energy neutral house for $10,000 using a shipping container. Shipping container is a standard, we need standards to scale.
-- A solar stove for $100. Biomass and firewood are a million year old energy source, used by three billion. Very toxic and inefficient. Moving people from biomass to cleaner and cheaper energy is highest priority
-- Bio based batteries. Current batteries depend on rare earth metals, constraining humanity in many dimensions.
-- Interesting ways to store energy.
Transportation
-- Covered, segregated, maintenance-free bicycle path at $10,000 per mile.
Social program process engineering
-- Five prizes of $100,000 for process engineering the most successful utilization (>90%) of social programs. Developing countries spend billions of dollars on social programs for these very problems, utilization is less than 10% due to the inefficiencies. Properly utilized, these funds will be enough to solve significant infrastructure spending challenges.
Water
-- Clean drinking water device for $100. This may be possible using rain water harvesting or condensation or both.
Bandwidth
-- Pigeon carrier internet.