Saving the world one latte at a time One of the great inequities of the global economy is that corporations based in wealthy nations can often dictate the terms of trade with producers in poorer nations, maximizing profits from the arrangement at the expense of living wages for the producers. Nowhere is this inequity worse than in agricultural production of commodities—things like coffee, tea and chocolate. As an example, the average coffee farmer receives just 2 cents from the price charged for... [Read more...]

Sometimes the most fun is not knowing what you’re going to see next With so many modern Web sites hyperactively focused on being portals or providing access to media of all varieties, it’s easy to forget that the Internet was invented to make it easier for people to share information. Now, sometimes, information is the hardest thing to find. You could search for something using Google or some other search engine, or you could look for something in long established indexes like Yahoo!.... [Read more...]

Sometimes it’s really hard to figure out what is going on in the world. It’s not just that there’s so much news available or that the issues are complex but also that some news just doesn’t make sense once it passes through the multiple filters of reporters and editors who are often removed from that news by geography culture. That’s where the Web site Global Voices Online comes in. Located at http://globalvoicesonline.org, the site is an assemblage of hundreds of weblogs from around the... [Read more...]

Commercial spaceflight promises to open space to everyone. On October 4, 2004, Spaceshipone became the first privately built vehicle in history to achieve the altitude of 62 miles twice in two weeks, winning the $10 million Ansari X-Prize for Spaceflight. With this flight, Burt Ratan and his company Scaled Composites broke the monopoly held by governments over reaching space. Scaled Composite’s success almost immediately bred more success when Sir Richard Branson of the Virgin companies partnered... [Read more...]

Commentary Sub: What can’t robots do? Robots have been the stuff of movies and science fiction for a long time, but, as you read this, they are also starting to become the stuff of our everyday lives. For some time now, there have been robots that build and package things. Now, there are robots that can mow our lawns, sweep our floors and clean our pools. Military robots find bad guys and disable explosive devices. The next generation of robots about to come onto the market may well cook your... [Read more...]

Embedded electronics will make everything more advanced Imagine a few years from now you are walking to your car after a day at work. You check the latest text on your mobile device to discover a message telling you to buy milk, dog food, and dryer sheets. Was that a message from your wife? No, it was from your refrigerator, cabinet, and dryer. Embedded electronics is the idea of including an array of sensors, electronics and communications systems in every kind of device one can imagine. In the... [Read more...]