Just a passing thought...

As some may have noticed (though I haven't been getting many visits), I have slowed down a tad on the posting here, for a few reasons.  One of which is, I kind of ran out of steam on the train of thought I was pursuing with my first couple posts - how modern life and society is, in many ways, insane, and, in my opinion, in need of some serious fixes.  But I realized that pointing out that things are broken doesn't fix the issue, while simultaneously making for a somewhat depressing read... besides, I have a pretty good feeling that those most receptive to the message already know intuitively that there's something wrong; inversely, I suspect that those who don't get it may never understand.

So, instead of dwelling on problems, I'm going to make posts about interesting ideas I've had, things I'm curious about, and just kind of general musings on life.  I'll be honest here - I haven't the foggiest idea of where I'm going right now, but that's the best way to go through life.

So, to start off, I want to share a bit of an idea I had a while back and expand on it.  Let me start by saying that in the 21st century, a lot of the important work done in technical fields is really an exercise in creative problem solving.  Yet in most places, we continue to practice this under a 20th century framework.  A while ago I came across this TED talk which explains why this is a problem: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation

You see, in 20th century business, most work was straightforward - you went to the factory and did stuff with your hands for so many hours, or made so many sales pitches, etc.  Here work is measurable, and well motivated by carrots and sticks.

However, creative work is actually hindered by carrots and sticks.  What's more, a lot of it isn't easily measurable.  I can attest to this as a software developer - a short, complex bit of code can take much longer to write than a long, but fairly simple, chunk of it.  Yet to management with a 20th century mindset, the person writing the complex code seems to be doing less work.  And to make matters worse, they'll often try to "encourage" the person doing the difficult job with carrots and sticks - adding extra stress and baggage to an already strenuous task.

Bringing this together, I had an idea for a sort of nonprofit organization.  Essentially, on one end you have people doing creative problem solving work, such as game programming.  These people are essentially given free reign over what they do (within reason), so long as they produce something that generates revenue.  Part of the revenue should go to the workers and toward growing the organization, then the rest should go toward charity or other humanitarian causes.  I really think if this takes off, the money should be put toward "angel" investments, or research in humanitarian projects.

The real beauty of this is, such an organization could work with barely any management at all - the most you'd need is project leads, and someone to manage the paperwork and accounting.  Because of this, the organization could easily run rings around companies that are tied up in their own internal red tape.

The trouble with all of this is, of course, finding the starting funds for such a thing.  But then, with the success of things like Kickstarter, it might just be doable.