Grounding Research: ...not so beautiful interactions

On the flipside, heres a few things that annoy me:

• wires! the extensive network of copper that connects just about everything on this earth. Tesla was a genius well before his time...
• you are on hold! the all pervasiveness (and patronising tone) of the first half hour of any call to any government agency, telephone company and pizza shop. iinet have the simple solution... if the estimated wait time is more than one minute you can press a button to request a callback ... other telco's please take note!
• traffic jams and urban sprawl - check the visionary work of Jan Gehl in planning for people in public spaces, and his many simple suggestions for the improvement of quality of life in the shared urban space.

It is such a shame sometimes that the most elegant solutions can be overturned or shadowed by cost-cutting, greed, or the necessity to appeal to a wide consumer audience.  The patent scheme, and the desire to restrict certain information from others has led to a stagnant and under-developed society in many facets, and will ultimately destroy the common pool of knowledge for the wealth of a select few.

enough rant though, come on people this is a call to arms for the people... take the knowledge that is rightfully ours, assimilate it, expand it and re-format it, re-purpose it, re-contextualise it; just (in the interests of all humanity) please don't re-SELL IT!!!

LONG LIVE THE PUBLIC DOMAIN! 

-&c