Skin Care

Albert Einstein once said “Problems can not be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.”

Earlier this week, Cisco and NASA announced an initiative that embodies this idea: Planetary Skin. (press release; San Jose Mercury News article; project web site; introductory video).

Quoting from the site: “Planetary Skin is a massive global-monitoring system of environmental conditions that will enable effective decision making in the private and public sectors and in communities, with data that is collected from myriad sources including space, airborne, maritime, terrestrial and people-based sensor networks, analyzed, verified and reported over an open standards based Web 2.0….”

There’s a video which is well worth your time on the site, with more information there already, and it appears more to come soon.

The thing that struck me about this effort is the application of the “new level of thinking” that the Web 2.0 principle of distribution has brought about.

Information that enters this decision network comes from everywhere at every level (literally – from sea to land to air to space), which makes it possible to put it together in anyway that’s needed to identify and address problems as they arise.

Even more so is the accessibility of this information and the distribution (or, maybe, collective nature) of the decision-making to put it at the level and in the location where solutions can most effectively be implemented.

There are few if any problems we face as big as climate change. And, while I am admittedly biased, I’m excited to see how this new level of collaborative, distributed thinking will help us all develop new, innovative and practical solutions.

Of course, I’ll keep you posted here also.

Posted by Jeff Weinberger at 11:28AM PST

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Jeff Weinberger
WebEx Green Initiative
WebEx Corporate Social Responsibility
Cisco WebEx