BBC’s 60-Second Ideas to Improve the World

From BBC World Service comes 60 Second Idea to Improve the World — a wonderful podcast inviting global thought leaders to propose simple, radical ideas for the betterment of humanity, followed by a short discussion in a forum of equally esteemed guests.

Part microincubator for innovation, part peek inside the minds of mavericks, the series is a lovely reminder that big ideas can indeed come in small packages.

From Clay Shirky‘s call for nudity as an environmental measure to philosopher Roman Frigg‘s push for a national Break The Routine day, the 60-second ideas burst onto your mental space as cheeky pranksters, only to peel away the layers and reveal the thoughtfulness of post-modern pragmatist-philosophers.

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PICKED: TurningArt, Netflix for Art

We’ve previously featured a few great places to buy affordable art. But now there may be an even better way to get quality art into your home and your life. Enter TurningArt — a revolutionary new platform for discovering and falling in love with art by first “sampling” prints of it for a period of time.

The subscription service works like this: You browse the meticulously curated library of original artwork and add items to your queue, Netflix-style, choose a frame for each work (frames are included in your subscription), and you’ll soon get a framed print of the first piece in your queue. Depending on the type of subscription, you can exchange that print for the next in your queue every two or three months, or anytime you like.

But here’s the best part: Each print rental gets you credits towards purchasing original artwork from the site. As nice an aesthetic touch as prints are, there’s nothing quite like owning a piece of art that someone belabored with all their heart and soul.

TurningArt is the brainchild of entrepreneur Jason Gracilieri who, inspried by his painter and ex-gallerist wife Julie’s passion for art, set out to create a model that connects talented emerging artists with people who previously found art inaccessible.

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PICKED: IDEO Imagines The Future of Books

PICKED is a new series of short-form interestingness we’re adding to our usual one-item-daily menu — every day, in addition to the main Brain Pickings article, we’ll also curate a couple of quick, often self-explanatory tidbits of noteworthiness from around the web. Think of it as the takeout to Brain Pickings’ full-service fine dining — same curatorial yardstick and quality of content, served to go.

We’ve previously looked at the evolution of magazines. Now, design and innovation powerhouse IDEO is reimaging the book as an interactive, non-linear storytelling experience.

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Seaswarm: MIT’s Fleet of Oil Spill Cleaning Robots

Geeks for the Gulf, or what paper towels have to do with nanotechnology.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is easily the biggest environmental disaster of our time, bespeaking not only our capacity to do harm but also our inability to intercept the very harm we’ve inflicted. Since April 20, close to 200 million barrels of crude oil gushed into the Gulf, devastating the region’s ecosystem and economy. The world’s leading scientists, engineers and innovators failed to respond efficiently, offering no fix for nearly three months. Even though the leak was finally stopped on July 15, only 3% of the spill has been removed from the ocean and the remainder poses serious ecological risks, with no viable cleanup solution to date.

Enter seaswarm — a potentially gamechanging fleet of low-cost oil absorbing robots from MIT’s SENSEable City Lab.

The small, inexpensive, self-organizing skimmer operates autonomously and rolls out over the surface of the ocean, much like a paper towel soaking up the spill. It uses a breakthrough nanotechnology developed at MIT to separate the oil from the water and process it on-site. The nanofabric can be reused, enabling a constant cleanup process as the fleet of robots communicate and propel themselves across the ocean collecting oil.

The units are powered by solar cells and use a touch of biomimicry to mimic swarm behavior via GPS, ensuring even distribution across the spill site.

According to MIT, 5000* seaswarm robots operating continuously for a month will be enough to clean up the Deepwater Horizon spill. And as far as we’re concerned, a promise of this magnitude coming from the world’s most reputable innovation hub should be sending governments and philanthropists alike running for their checkbooks to make this happen, stat.

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*UPDATE: The article originally stated 500, not 5000. We’ve fixed the typo thanks to commenter Helio Centric below, who kindly (!) pointed it out.

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