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I would recommend The Truth Machine by James L Halperin for starters.

http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Machine-James-Halperin-ebook/dp/B000FC1KR0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404345345&sr=8-1&keywords=the+truth+machine

It reads like a blueprint to create software to change the world. It spans a lot of creative thought and careful planning. It is pretty inspiring as well.

"What would the world be like if scientists developed the perfect lie detector? How would it change our criminal justice system? Psychiatric practice? International diplomacy? In his first novel, Halperin argues that such an invention could lead humanity into an era of unequaled prosperity, one in which crime is virtually unknown and true democracy is possible. A professional numismatist and a member of the World Future Society, Halperin is a relatively unskilled novelist. His prose is at best workmanlike, and his plotting and character development tend toward the simplistic. Nearly all of his major characters, from millionaire-genius protagonist Pete Armstrong on down, seem to be either the smartest, the richest, the most respected or the most influential people in the world. The traditional qualities of fiction are apparently of only secondary interest to the author, however. As a futurist, Halperin seems primarily concerned with suggesting innovations and then working out their implications over half a century. Heavily didactic, but supporting positions across the political spectrum, the book argues in favor of mandatory capital punishment for certain crimes, the privatization of schools, strict limits on insurance settlements, the elimination of the FAA, the legalization of assisted suicide, parental licensing and the establishment of a world government. Although crude from a literary point of view, Halperin's novel is not without strengths. His speculations about the next 50 years are fascinating, and the consequences of the truth machine are well worked out. In the final analysis, it's hard to believe that Halperin's near-utopian future could be so easily attained, but it would be nice to live there"

I don't agree with all the ideas here, some of them are presented as cautionary tales, but the point is to get thinking in the right direction. It is truly visionary and speculative work.

I don't think simply having open source info out there would be enough, I agree with you there.

I'm thinking more along the lines of utilizing a new tool or method of organizing ourselves to be able to meet the challenges that our species faces.

Imagine that you created a tool, something which maps out the Earth and within it you can toggle different overlays, such as all of our infrastructure, the sources of carbon emission, ecology data, etc. With this you can contextualize what you are doing as a great game, and the game is to, for example, transition all of our energy infrastructure to cleaner sources within the next few decades all over the planet.

You can use the tool to model infrastructure changes, etc. And then put these new models up to different sources of funding, (crowd funding, government assistance, philanthropic contribution, etc. could all contribute).

Here you'd have a system to help coordinate action, and get people thinking more about the complexities and challenges of transitioning our infrastructure.

A B. Fuller quote again:

>If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.

The game would help bring about a global bottom-up effort to transition human societies infrastructure in the next decades.

This is one application of this thinking. Let's look more at what you mentioned though, poverty.

There's different levels of poverty, of course, and everywhere is different. In the 3rd world it can be access to basic resources which is the problem. Maybe here some assistance with things like water collection, etc. could help the situation there. There are also books, f.e., about combating dire poverty in the world, it's a complex situation and you need the best approaches. But imagine a world game for attempting to meet that issue. There are different types of poverty in the first world, and there are different approaches to meeting it, and that can be worked at too.

It's not just making info available on some corner of the internet, to me it's about creating a context for action outside of the existing structures of our society, and unlocking what the best solutions are, and attempting to work on them and share what the best solutions are within a larger shared context.

I'm also a fan of the list Steele shares about the top 10 threats to humanity 1, and especially the order that they are in (first is poverty, then infectious disease, then environmental degradation, etc.) To me this is a good list with a good order of priorities. I really think he's got an excellent point about meeting "national security" threats in a preventative way by attempting to help empower the world's poor, while also working to curtail environmental destruction as an aspect of the same priorities.

Ultimately, when it comes down to it, you find the US government spends some $ 598 billion per year on the military. And look what kind of outcomes that gets towards our top 10 greatest threats. It would take massive political will, but the ideal in my mind is that eventually a huge end goal to work towards would be to divert a significant chunk of that away from the military and into something that attempts to meet these challenges in a preventative way that makes people around the world more secure/resilient/well off.

We have a 20th century Cold War operating system for our national defense, when we need an update to a 21st century operating system that is geared towards the main challenges that we are facing, and geared towards them effectively. A part of that may include military defense, but more of it includes trying to prop people around the world up and make them resilient in their own way. And that is a lot of what Steele is talking towards with his work.

Ultimately, my own opinion is that humanity legitimately does need a new form of intelligence if we are to survive and persist on this planet into the future. How can we do this? It would have to be something which could bring together data from environmental systems, as well as human systems, and something through which we could meaningfully organize ourselves to make key changes.

In reading an excellent thesis on Mind Uploading (https://www.amazon.com/Taxonomy-Metaphysics-Mind-Uploading-Keith-Wiley/dp/0692279849/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1501597553&sr=1-1&keywords=mind+uploading), there was an attempt to streamline arguments for and against the possibilities of mind uploading and full brain emulation. The concept that stuck out to me, and that creates a solid counterargument to the one presented in this article, is the idea of a future procedure wherein nanobots are deployed your brain, and bit by bit, replace the original biological structure with a synthetic structure immune to breakdown/degeneration. This cuts out the need for two brains to be existing at the same time/one after the other.