This is a wonderful, and inspiring, TED talk by a brilliant young man and the work he and his colleagues at Planet.com have done to make miniature satellites that will provide daily imaging of the entire Earth. This will be an unprecedented wealth of information about planet Earth. Changes in urban landscapes, war zones, forests, oceans, ice caps, etc. will be available every day in nearly real time - amazing!
Most impressively, Will Marshall and his youthful partners have followed their idealism by making their data open and free to anybody who wants it in the hope that it will lead to solutions for many of the problems and challenges we face today and in the future.
Imagine a world in which every citizen really understands our natural world and what is happening in it. Would we cast away our ancient superstitions? Would we recognize real problems being caused by human activity and be moved to do something about them, even if it had unfavorable short-term economic implications? In short, if we were better informed would we be better citizens, or would we remain passive and indifferent?
Monte