Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times recently wrote this about the rise of social entrepreneurship:

In the ’60s, perhaps the most remarkable Americans were the civil rights workers and antiwar protesters who started movements that transformed the country. In the 1980s, the most fascinating people were entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who started companies and ended up revolutionizing the way we use technology.

Today the most remarkable young people are the social entrepreneurs, those who see a problem in society and roll up their sleeves to address it in new ways.

Full text of the op-ed here.

Clearly, we at Globalhood have known this all along.

After a bleak morning spent reading a recent Mother Jones article about China’s economic boom and its ecological impact (here), I decided to soothe my pre-millenial freak out by watching videos of people who are significantly smarter than me. Fortunately, there are a lot of these people out there (even on the internet). To wit, TED has a huge video archive of lectures from great minds of all fields (oh, and David Pogue). I just cruised EO Wilson and Jane Goodall talks, but there’re tons more. Here you go.

So, I’m wont to nerd-out while waiting in the dentist’s office and perusing Road & Track. My not-so-secret car fetish makes me one of the few people I know who would admit to wanting an Audi A8, and that puts me in  funny position vis-a-vis my environmentalist leanings (nb. I have a car which I drive about once every three weeks). In the midst of the current economic climate (cloudy with a chance of meatballs?) I was struck when Mitt Romney, at a debate last week in Michigan, stated that he would seek to stimulate the abysmally mismanaged American automotive industry by undoing recent bipartisan legislation to increase milage standards. I’m unclear when exactly innovation (even when forced by legislation) became so economically problematic. Mr. Romney might be better off promising to incentivize progress toward lower or zero emissions cars, rather than making a nonsense promise which flies in the face of every possible type of logic. It’s like saying, “I’ll give you cash to keep making the same cars that nobody is buying in the first place.”  Anyway, I digress, but I did so to prove to you that I’m advocating for monstrosities (on every level) like the Hummer H2. I like cars, but the fact is that I’m most excited about the prospect of novel automotive technologies as a potential area for reinvigorating American tech and manufacturing sectors as well as reducing our impact on the environment. To wit, Wired has a really good automotive blog which I’ve recently started reading semi-religiously. Maybe you should too.

Globalhood is now registered with Good Search. Here’s how it works:(1) Go to www.goodsearch.com and enter Globalhood into the “who do you search for?” box.(2) Search as you normally would–Good Search uses Yahoo! so you’ll get good results.(3) Repeat. All the time.Every time you use Goodsearch, Globalhood gets a tiny chunk of change. Compounded over the hundreds searches we all do every week, this could add up to a great help for GH!

Globalhood isn’t genealogically related to Global Kids but there’s clearly a spiritual connection. We’re both based in beautiful New York City for one thing, but more importantly, we here at Globalhood thing the folks at Global Kids are doing fantastic work.Technology based enrichment programs can work wonders when the technology is used as a tool to connect and to re-imagine and expand social environments.  Global Kids has this down pat. Keep up the good work!

I’ve been working on an article about the upcoming Beijing Olympics and the political and technological reshaping of Asian Olympic host cities. The article should be online in a month or so, and I’ll provide a link whenever it finally rolls out, but until then, here are two awesome resources which have helped me a great deal. 
 First: Image Theif is a Beijing based blogger who writes about about all sorts of things, but has a lot of interesting insight into social, environmental and political goings on in China.
Second: http:Danwei is a clearinghouse for info about Chinese media, and urban life.
Cool.

Welcome to the first full week of 2008! Let’s talk stuff. I saw this movie over the weekend. It’s called “The Story of Stuff” and it covers cycles of production and waste. There’s something slightly odd about this film, and i think it’s the juxtaposition of the overly ebullient presenter and cutesy animation with grim statistics. I’m also not sure I agree with the pronoun usage in the film as it applies to cycles of production and consumption; the old us/them dichotomy is a little tired, and I’m pretty sure complicity is a two way street. That having been said, it is both relevant and frightening, and the website features a lot of good links and source material. If you’re looking for a more sober and thoroughgoing take on production/design/waste/etc. try the brilliant Cradle to Cradle, but if you find yourself with 20 minutes to spare, check out The Story of Stuff.Oh, Happy New Year!