A networked economy within the context of capitalism has driven a scenario where our online lives are increasingly a commodity to be tracked and mined, bought and sold, leveraged and re-leveraged, frequently without our explicit knowledge, consent or understanding of what this can mean to us in the future.

According to estimates by the Flow Rate Technical Group, the team advising the government on the giant leak in the Gulf of Mexico, some 45-130 million gallons of oil have been spilled as of this July 4 weekend; projected to reach 60-200 million gallons by mid-August. And that's...

Back in 1995, I asked people at a party to provide their predictions for the next 30 years. My co-founder at an Internet service provider and a visionary thinker himself contributed one I never forgot: "...in 30 years, the age of self-replicating machines will be upon us and Capitalism will...

Last week the Obama administration announced a reversal of its oft-stated campaign position on offshore oil drilling. Immediately framed by the media as a transparent strategy to win over Republicans in an effort to lay the groundwork to get cap and trade legislation passed, he managed to outrage people who...

Being under the weather the last two weeks got me thinking about health care reform in the United States and what passes for informed public dialogue these days around the subject. In this (still for a while at least) richest country in the world, we are the only industrialized nation...

Earlier this month, Vancouver's Olympic luge competitor Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia was killed on a course that was the steepest, fastest and ultimately most dangerous ever built. Olympic organizers, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the luge and bobsled federations declared the death an accident, claiming the athlete "failed to control...

The National Nurses Union has nearly 12,000 volunteer nurses trying to get to Haiti to assist the doctors already there. Frustratingly, although they have valid travel documents, they are being denied entry due to a mess of bureaucratic red tape both in the U.S. and Haiti. In the meantime, the...

Imagine a world in which all people, institutions, governments and corporations engaged in enlightened, rational behavior that served all life on earth. Imagine if the reward system of our global economy that provided a true economic incentive for us all to thrive collectively toward an ideal vision of life on...