CNN: Got an idea to help the world? Here's $10 million

The following is the introduction to a CNN article published Wednesday, 24 September 2008:

Got an idea that could change the world, or at least help a lot of people? Google wants to hear from you -- and it will pay as much as $10 million to make your idea a reality.

To help celebrate its 10th birthday, the ambitious Internet giant is launching an initiative to solicit, and bankroll, fresh ideas that it believes could have broad and beneficial impact on people's lives.

Called Project 10^100 (pronounced "10 to the 100th"), Google's initiative will seek input from the public and a panel of judges in choosing up to five winning ideas, to be announced in February ....

For the complete article, go to Got an idea to help the world? Here's $10 million. I did and then I clicked over to Project "10 to the 100th" and submitted my idea. Below is the substance of my proposal. Hyperlinks were not permitted in the submission but I've nonetheless included a few in this blog entry. Also, the numbers 1 through 7 cover identification information, etc., and are not included below.

8. Your idea's name:

Banking on Information Ownership

9. Please select a category that best describes your idea.

[selected] Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?

10. What one sentence best describes your idea?

Empower people with data ownership similar to the trustworthy, granular control they have over depositing and spending their banked money.

11. Describe your idea in more depth.

People are comfortable and familiar with monetary banks. That’s a good thing because without people willingly depositing their money into banks, there would be no banking system as we know it. In order to make profits, banks bargain and pay with money and services for access to people’s money. Without a healthy monetary banking system our economies would be comparatively dysfunctional, and our personal lives would be critically deficient in opportunities.

Imagine the opportunities going unfulfilled because there is no similar information banking system arising in the Cloud. There is no similar integrated system existing for precisely and efficiently delivering our medical records to a new physician, or for providing access to a health history of the specific animal slaughtered for that purchased steak. Nothing out there compares with how the banking system facilitates gasoline purchases. While our monetary banking system granularly processes the exact amount of the checks we write, the tools currently being used by information technology companies would imprecisely and inefficiently ‘pay’ for your $35.62 tank of gas by cleaning out your entire bank account. Got $3,434.99 in your checking account? That’s what would be ‘paid’, and then it would be left up to the gas station to give you change for $3,399.37.

Wells Fargo formed in 1852 in response to the California gold rush. Wells Fargo wasn’t just a monetary bank, it was also an express delivery company of its time for transporting gold, mail and valuables across the Wild West. While we are now accustomed to next morning, overnight delivery between the coasts, Wells Fargo captured the imagination of the nation by connecting San Francisco and the East coast with its Pony Express.

Today’s Web needs information banks that do for the on-going gold rush on information what Wells Fargo did for the Forty-niners.

12. What problem or issue does your idea address?

The monetary banking system exhibits several key characteristics:

• Security: A physically safe place to store money. Also, government regulations insure continuity of deposits when banks go bankrupt.
• Credibility: Banks handle people’s money like they say they will in order to continue maintaining and attracting deposits.
• Compensation: Again, In order to make profits, banks bargain and pay with money and convenient personal and Internet services for access to people’s money.
• Control: Customers granularly deposit their money, withdraw it or transfer it when they choose.
• Integration: Banks provide a critical component to a very complex web of communications involved in our everyday transactions. In the U.S., a strong central banking system, the Federal Reserve System, has been critical in that regard.
• Verification: By regulation and by practice, banks verify that monies deposited with them are legal tender and not counterfeit.

Today’s Web needs information banks that do the same.

13. If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

The old adage that ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law’ well applies to many fields like that of food safety, product tracking along complex supply chains, the tracking of people’s movements or Internet clicks, or the compilation of purchasing habits. But let’s take personal health records as a bell-weather example. Everyone - the hospitals, the doctors, the insurance companies, government agencies, consumer groups - claims to speak for the patients. But who really speaks for the ‘property-less’ patients? America is in the middle of a political stalemate vis-à-vis the efficient collection, storage and sharing of medical records. Ownership begets economic change which begets political voice. A national information banking system that granularly empowers patients with technological portability and control – not just HIPAA confidentiality protections - over their own medical information would provide an opportunity for firing the imagination of patients that brings real change.

14. What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?

The initial steps are already being made. Patents are being globally secured. The first information bank is operating in North Dakota for the members of the CalfAID USDA PVP program. This is a member-trusted program that keeps verifiable pedigree information connected with animals as they make their way through a complex food supply chain that is highly dysfunctional when it comes to information sharing. The director of CalfAID recognizes that there are now two products being produced along agricultural supply chains (1) the traditional product, in this case an animal, and (2) an informational product. The bottom line: build to the Cloud from trusted institutions and groups. TRUST COMES FIRST, THEN COMES TECHNOLOGY BUILT FOR PRESERVING AND EMPOWERING THAT TRUST. Then, imagine further that the families of the members of the CalfAID program would have interest in using the same trusted technology for porting their personal health records.

15. Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

There would be several measuring sticks. For instance, measure the economic impact upon family farms who will now for the first time be compensated not just for their traditional farm products but also for their informational products. For instance, measure the political impact upon people’s lives when they finally are empowered with the choice of technological control over their information properties as they have long experienced over their monetary properties. For instance, measure the impact upon the emerging Semantic Web that without an adjacent informational banking infrastructure will have virtually no opportunity to bargain for access to information that people consider to be their identity, that participants to complex supply chains consider to be confidential and that governments classify as secret. Without such a new infrastructure, such trustworthy information will forever remain missing or incomplete.

16. [skipped]

17. [skipped]

18. If you'd like to recommend a specific organization, or the ideal type of organization, to execute your plan, please do so here.

Again, build to the Cloud from trusted institutions and groups.

[end]

That concludes my submission. If you are interested in more details, see also the April, 2007 Pardalis white paper entitled Banking on Granular Information Ownership. See also, Laying the First Plank of a Supply Chain Ownership Web in North Dakota.

Update on Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 10:33AM by Steve Holcombe

See also another similar submission at KPCB launches $100M iFund.

Update on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 1:49PM by Steve Holcombe

Voting has been pushed back to March 17, 2009 because of over 100K submissions. See Project 10 to the 100th for more information.

Comments

[Dennis Davis]

Steve,

I'm absolutely sure your "Banking on Data Ownership" idea will be carefully evaluated and considered. It has been my pleasure in knowing you, having been exposed and having represented [as a field representative for Pardalis] an inevitable demand for a solution to share data granularly.

Last night (Oct 7th 2008) I watched the 2nd debate between Senator Obama and Senator McCain. I was surprised (but then again I wasn't) to hear the need for sharing data granularly in the healthcare industry from the two candidates. Take a look at the following [dialogue]:

QUESTION: Senator, selling health care coverage in America as the marketable commodity has become a very profitable industry. Do you believe health care should be treated as a commodity?

OBAMA: Well, you know, as I travel around the country, this is one of the single most frequently asked issues that I get, is the issue of health care. It is breaking family budgets. I can't tell you how many people I meet who don't have health insurance. If you've got health insurance, most of you have seen your premiums double over the last eight years. And your co-payments and deductibles have gone up 30 percent just in the last year alone. If you're a small business, it's a crushing burden. So one of the things that I have said from the start of this campaign is that we have a moral commitment as well as an economic imperative to do something about the health care crisis that so many families are facing. So here's what I would do. If you've got health care already, and probably the majority of you do, then you can keep your plan if you are satisfied with it. You can keep your choice of doctor. We're going to work with your employer to lower the cost of your premiums by up to $2,500 a year. And we're going to do it by investing in prevention. We're going to do it by making sure that we use information technology so that medical records are actually on computers instead of you filling forms out in triplicate when you go to the hospital. That will reduce medical errors and reduce costs.

BROKAW: Senator McCain?

MCCAIN: Well, thank you for the question. You really identified one of the really major challenges that America faces. Co-payments go up, costs go up, skyrocketing costs, which make people less and less able to afford health insurance in America.
And we need to do all of the things that are necessary to make it more efficient. Let's put health records online, that will reduce medical errors, as they call them.

credits:http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2008c.html

[Editor's Note: Thanks, Dennis!]