XPRIZE's Jono Bacon On the Next Great Challenge

itwbennett writes: After just under 8 years at Canonical where he was Community Manager of Ubuntu, Jono Bacon left in search of a new challenge. Now, a year and a half into his tenure at the XPRIZE Foundation as Senior Director of Community, Bacon reflects on the changing nature of community and how he is working to bring the 'anybody can play a role in a bigger picture' aspect of open source to "solve the grand challenges facing humanity." Update: 09/17 00:20 GMT by T : Jono wants everyone to know that he's certainly not leaving the world of open source software, either; headline has been updated to reflect that.

Comments

ANYbody can play a role in a bigger picture?

[turkeydance]

ok. Donald Trump FTW.

solve the grand challenges facing humanity?

[fustakrakich]

Oh, that's easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy! Just change man's nature. Problem solved. No applause, just send money, thankyouverymuch...

the dude's a "community manager"

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

As a community manager, he's one third marketing, one third support and one third PR, and at the bottom of all those totem poles in terms of influence. If he's changing anything, its the diapers of his bosses' kids after he picks them up from daycare.

Bacon

[frovingslosh]

mmmmm, Bacon!

The grand challenges facing humanity?

[mark-t]

In no particular order, the grand challenges are:

• Disease
• War
• Famine
• Poverty

Some of these may be rooted in human nature, so getting rid of them will not happen unless or until we evolve past that hurdle.

Re:The grand challenges facing humanity?

[Kjella]

In no particular order, the grand challenges are:

Disease
War
Famine
Poverty

Disease? Not really. The majority of deaths occur because of non-communicable diseases like cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and kidney failure that we're getting better at treating. We might have a problem if we run out of functional antibiotics but right now we're in a very comfortable spot compared to all of human history.

War? Iraq/Syria puts us back at 1990s levels but we're nowhere near Korea and Vietnam, nevermind World Wars I and II in terms of deaths as a percent of the human population. The world will progress even though the Middle East continues to be a shithole.

Famine? While they claim a billion people are under-/malnourished, actual starvation is extremely rare and usually only happens in war zones.

Poverty? We've pulled over 25% of the human population out of extreme poverty since 1990, with China and India making huge strides. Even the pessimistic estimates suggest we'll be below 10% in 2030, some believe as low as 3%.

If I were to suggest major threats to human prosperity it would be:
The wrecking of the environment with related nurishment, migration and resource conflicts
A significant portion of a religion of 1.6 billion people joining forces with the nutcases in Daesh
China showing that prosperity doesn't require democracy, free speech or free press
The global treaties and megacorporations hollowing out market regulations and consumer rights
Global electronic surveillance of everyone, all the time taking away freedom and privacy

That said, I think there's a lot of positive trends too, it's not like the past has been flowers and sunshine either.

Re:The grand challenges facing humanity?

[drinkypoo]

In no particular order, the grand challenges are:

        Disease
        War
        Famine
        Poverty

Some of these may be rooted in human nature,

Yeah, I'd say the grand challenges are ego, greed, and anger.

the X Prize Foundation ..

[nickweller]

"XPRIZE is a non-profit organization that designs and manages public competitions intended to encourage technological development that could benefit mankind. Their Board of Trustees include Elon Musk, James Cameron, Larry Page, Arianna Huffington, Ratan Tata among others." ref

Jono

[ThatsNotPudding]

"Communitizing the Community thru Communitization tools."

I miss that podcast.

Expand the Hutter Prize

[Baldrson]

Expand the Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledge to include the entire edit history of Wikipedia as well as the entirety of Wikipedia's current contents.

Why?

Because it solves the artificial intelligence problem and does so in a way that optimally enables natural language communication of the accumulated knowledge of humanity.

What I mean by "optimally enables natural language communication" is what every professional writer uses as the first rule of composition:

Write to your audience.

In other words, let's say you are attempting to write an article about quantum mechanics and your audience is a 12 year old from New Jersey, raised without a father in an impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhood. This is a very different composition task than communicating quantum mechanics to a college educated liberal arts graduate from Iowa who is considering a career in accounting. Indeed, it is the essence of pedagogy -- universalized.

By including the entire edit history of Wikipedia, the worldviews, perspectives, biases and agendas of a large number of editors will provide insight into the cognitive as well as social structure of a wide array of humans.

Moreover, while Google and companies like it are increasingly casting their role as "publishers" with the "right" to "editorialize" their search results, the Hutter Prize has a mathematical objective function that is simply not subject to editorialization: Kolmogorov Complexity. KC is a rigorous definition of Ockham's Razor that is mathematically sound and provably an optimal measure of mastery of knowledge.