Humans are a hunting and gathering species that took to settled agriculture . I believe that actually nothing ever leaves our DNA . We remain hunting and gathering , add settled agriculture and unlimited wars between Nomads and Settlers take place , while many other keep Gathering the spoils ! Now these are all earth based . Next happens Homo Toolitis . Tools . To make life easier . The word Technology as connected to automatic tool solutions only happens in late 19th century . So now we are hunting, gathering, growing and technology species . But there is one most important character left. Our spirit our ability to create symbols that feed our soul, heart and imagination beyond the instrumentalism and the survival . The true surplus of life . That is for another post . Old English tol instrument, implement used by a craftsman or laborer, weapon, from Proto-Germanic *to(w)lam implement (cognates: Old Norse tol) technology (n.) 1610s, a discourse or treatise on an art or the arts, from Greek tekhnologia systematic treatment of an art, craft, or technique, originally referring to grammar, from tekhno- (see techno-) + -logy. The meaning study of mechanical and industrial arts (Century Dictionary, 1902, gives examples of spinning, metal-working, or brewing) is first recorded 1859. High technology attested from 1964; short form high-tech is from 1972. XPRIZE is a non-profit organization that designs and manages public competitions intended to encourage technological development that could benefit mankind. Their Board of Trustees include Elon Musk, James Cameron, Larry Page, Arianna Huffington, Ratan Tata among others. The foundation believes that competition and the right incentivization is essential for technological solutions to emerge. XPRIZES are monetary rewards to incentivize three primary goals: Attract investment from outside the sector that takes new approaches to difficult problems. Create significant results that are real and meaningful. Competitions have measurable goals, and are created to promote adoption of the innovation. Cross national and disciplinary boundaries to encourage teams around the world to invest the intellectual and financial capital required to solve difficult challenges. They consider the Orteig Prize which was a $25,000 reward ($340,067 as of 2014 value) offered on May 19, 1919, by New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig to the first allied aviator(s) to fly non-stop from New York City to Paris or vice-versa. Several famous aviators made unsuccessful attempts at the New York–Paris flight before relatively unknown American Charles Lindbergh won the prize in 1927 in his aircraft Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh chose to fly solo, although this was not a requirement of the prize and required him to be at the controls for more than 30 hours. Lindbergh was the first American ever to cross the Atlantic non-stop in a heavier-than air aircraft (rather than an airship), and he promptly became a national hero. His flight was followed by the Lindbergh boom, as public interest in air travel bloomed and aviation stocks skyrocketed.In total, nine teams spent $400,000 in pursuit of the Orteig Prize. In 1996, entrepreneur Peter Diamandis offered a $10 million prize to the first privately financed team that could build and fly a three-passenger vehicle 100 kilometers into space twice within two weeks. The contest, later titled the Ansari XPRIZE for Suborbital Spaceflight, motivated 26 teams from seven nations to invest more than $100 million in pursuit of the $10 million purse. On October 4, 2004, the Ansari XPRIZE was won by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, who successfully completed the contest in their spacecraft SpaceShipOne. The goal of the Progressive Insurance Automotive XPRIZE was to design, build and race super-efficient vehicles that achieve 100 MPGe (2.35 liter/100 kilometer) efficiency, produce less than 200 grams/mile well-to-wheel CO2 equivalent emissions, and could be manufactured for the mass market.The winners of the competition were announced on September 16, 2010.Team Edison2 won the $5 million Mainstream competition with its four-passenger Very Light Car, obtaining 102.5 MPGe running on E85 fuel. The Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XCHALLENGE was introduced on July 29, 2010. The $1 million prize had a goal to inspire a new generation of innovative solutions that will speed the pace of cleaning up seawater surface oil resulting from spillage from ocean platforms, tankers, and other sources. The team of Elastec/American Marine won the challenge by developing a device that skims oil off of water three times faster than previously existing technology. The Global Learning XPRIZE, launched in September, 2014, is a crowdfunded $15 million prize for open source teams to create free Android apps to spread reading, writing, and arithmetic skills, and prove their effectiveness over an 18 month period in African pilot communities. The apps will encourage self-learning by users in the 2-5 year old age range. XPRIZE has partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a prize for a better tuberculosis diagnostic tool. Other potential prize ideas include preserving biodiversity, mapping the oceans, developing clean aviation fuels, energy storage, sustainable housing and carbon sequestration. XPRIZE is an innovation engine. A facilitator of exponential change. A catalyst for the benefit of humanity. We believe that you get what you incentivize. And that without a target, you will miss it every time. Rather than throw money at a problem, we incentivize the solution and challenge the world to solve it. We believe that challenges must be audacious, but achievable, tied to objective, measurable goals. And understandable by all. We believe that solutions can come from anyone, anywhere and that some of the greatest minds of our time remain untapped, ready to be engaged by a world that is in desperate need of help. Solutions. Change. And radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. For me personally as they say the Devil is in the Details and they are many times human and their set of relationships . That is the most difficult solution ! I call it the Relational Sutradhar Entrepreneur . He is the one that builds the community and brings the multiple human temperaments and aspirations in synergy . Without that nothing moves . Whatever tools and technology we may have . Ultimately its by humans for the humans . xprize.org/about/who-we-are en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orteig_Prize en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Prize_Foundation
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 03:35:33 +0000
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