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

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.