A Facebook group called Upgrade Democracy (http://www.facebook.com/groups/upgradedemocracy) is collecting a list of

teams/organizations working on technology-powered solutions to the systemic problems of governance/group decision-making.

They want help in expanding the list but

Please don’t add projects that simply use technology to slightly enhance our current political system (e.g. electronic petitions). We’re upgrading the democratic operating system, not tweaking the interface. 😉

http://www.facebook.com/groups…

Teams / Organizations Working to Upgrade Democracy

By Frank Grove, Ben Woosley and 5 others in Upgrade Democracy Community

Circle Voting http://www.circlevoting.com

CodeForAmerica http://codeforamerica.org/

Deliberative Democracy (Stanford) http://cdd.stanford.edu/

DemDash http://demdash.us/

DemocracyLab http://democracylab.org/

Dynamic Democracy (US) http://upgradedemocracy.org

HackDemocracy http://hackdemocracy.org

Hypothes.is http://hypothes.is/

LayerVote http://layervote.com/

Open Assembly http://openassembly.org

Personal Democracy Forum http://personaldemocracy.com/

Participant Labs http://participantlabs.com/

ReFrameIt http://reframeit.com/

Seasteading Institute http://seasteading.org

TwoSides http://www.twosides.co/

Village Votes http://villagevotes.com/wiki/V…

VoteReports http://votereports.org/

VoteSF http://votesf.com/

Wecision http://wecision.com/

Straw Centrifuge Pump

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

A lot of modern junk – plastic bottles, cups, refills, rubber slippers, pens etc can be reused in many creative ways to make joyous learning aids.  Children could make more than a dozen delightful pumps using all kinds of odd stuff.  For instance, push two film cans on the ends of a 15 cm piece of old bicycle tube to make an air pump.  The opening/closing valves are made using bits of sticky tape.  This high quality pump can easily inflate a balloon!  Or else make a scintillating sprinkler within a minute.  Poke a broom stick in the middle of a plastic straw.  Make two half cuts 2 cm away from the centre.  Bend the arms and secure them in place with some tape to make a triangle.  Twirl this triangle in water to make a most delightful centrifuge or sprinkler.

Arvind Gupta has been building science teaching toys from trash materials since 1978 and for the Children’s Science Centre at Inter-University Centre for  Astronomy & Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune University, Pune 411007 Maharashtra India since October 2003.

On his website

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com

you can find hundreds of toys children can make for themselves with easily available materials

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com…

He even has video demonstrations of many designs

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com…

“The best thing a child can do with a toy is break it !”

“And somewhere there are engineers

Helping others fly faster than sound.

But, where are the engineers

Helping those who must live on the ground?”

Coalition Movement Camp II: Connecting the Dots

November 14, 2010, 2.00pm to 6pm EDT: http://movementcamp.org

The Coalition Movement Camp series brings new players and possibilities into view and allows us to connect the dots between them. Our goal is to consolidate our collective powers and prepare for a collaborative web development project unlike anything the world has seen.

The inaugural Coalition Movement Camp took place on October 10, 2010. Participants included representatives of Appropedia, OpenKollab, Metacurrency, 350, Dadamac, CoopAgora, JAK Bank, GreenTribe, and Gaia10. For eight hours, we brainstormed ideas towards a new generation of internet platforms and collaborative strategies for the climate crisis. Details of the 10/10/10 Coalition Movement Camp can be found on the Coalition blog ( http://cotw.me/invite101010, http://cotw.me/camp101010 ).

On November 14, 2010, the conversation continues.