Right now, I am in Basel, Switzerland, keynoting the Swiss Innovation Forum, so I have witnessed firsthand the European reaction to Obama’s victory. The European response has been ecstatic. People spontaneously organized many election parties to watch the election returns as they came in. Time and again, people have expressed warm feelings and affection for America, and hope that a new era of cooperation and friendship will begin across the Atlantic.
But personally, I know that rough days are ahead for Obama, since the huge black hole in the economy will suck up so much needed money that Obama’s options will be limited for the first few years. But eventually, I hope that we can make progress in several areas, such as attacking global warming, funding stem cell research, funding alternative energy sources, etc. For too long, science has been held hostage to ideology. Science is the engine of prosperity, but often science has suffered at the hands of people who wished to promote an agenda based on ideology.
We asked the contributors here at How You Can Save The World to weigh in on President-elect Barack Obama’s victory. Continue reading to find out how they responded.
dr kaku--dont you want the usa to stop the ufo,cover up? you never push for it on the a
Barack Obama’s election is the single most historic moment I have personally lived through. It’s not just a historic American moment — it seems like most of the planet is cheering at America now. Seeing how much of a personal stake so many people around the world on every continent feel that they have in our presidential election, and hearing the cheers echo around every time zone, the election will perhaps be looked back upon as the single moment of the start of the real 21st century in which we find that, as we face so many global-scale and networked problems, we truly are all in it together.
We asked the contributors here at How You Can Save The World to weigh in on President-elect Barack Obama’s victory. Continue reading to find out how they responded.
The election is upon us, and we all look forward to it being over. Both presidential candidates have stated their positions with regard to science, e.g., in response to Science Debate 2008, not always with equal clarity.
Many thoughtful individuals and organizations have offered their advice to the incoming president and posted specific proposals for early action, including the immediate appointment of the President’s Science Advisor (naming him or her Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, thus reporting directly to the President). Indeed there is urgency in making this appointment, since the Science Advisor will be critically important in helping the President select and recruit a large number of presidential appointments as agency heads and for other vital roles. But, the list of things that need to be done right away is long, most of them the result of failed policies of the outgoing administration.
The new president will be under enormous pressure to focus his time, energy and political chits on the immediate crises and “put on hold” serious attention to important strategic issues that will affect the country decades into the future.
After almost twenty years of doctrinaire almost anti-scientific fact appointments, it a
How can you save the world? Play more games.
Not just any game will work. You’ll need to focus your gameplay efforts carefully, on games like Left 4 Dead, Rock Band, World of Warcraft, Little Big Planet, SF0, Halo 3, Groundcrew and my current game — Superstruct. All of these games are masterfully designed to provoke intense coordination, collaboration, and cooperation - and that’s why they’re all slowly teaching us how game players can one day save the world together. In fact, I’m convinced that either a game developer or a community of online gamers will be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize by the year 2032.
Why am I so confident that gamers can save the world? It all boils down to this: Online gamers — even the most competitive gamers — are the most collaborative and cooperative people on Earth.
I keep meaning to play superstruct but then I just do my dailies on WoW. I guess if 50
Conventional wisdom says that foreign policy does not determine the winner in US Presidential elections. Particularly not when domestic economic anxieties are high — and that kind of anxiety has probably never been higher in several generations.
Still — could it be different this time? Should it be? Remember, when we get to the ‘other side’ of the acute phase of the crisis, the US will be facing a world with foreign policy challenges that go way beyond insolvent banks.
Both candidates have spoken in the debates and in their stump speeches as if foreign policy issues matter a great deal in this campaign. Each argues for a significant change in the nature of America’s presence in the world. Of course McCain and Obama have distinctly different visions of the right direction for that change, and equally different theories of foreign policy leadership. But we fear that neither will state openly just how hard it will be for their leadership propositions to attract followers among the other nations that make up world politics.
Hi, nice post. I have been thinking about this topic,so thanks for writing. I'll certai