One of the themes this year is “distance”. I spend 90 percent of the year communicating with my family via email, Skype and phone, so I can relate to distance as a social problem. On the family level, distance is a tangible barrier to overcome. Some technologies help shrink this distance, but there is a lot of room for development.

I have already mentioned one distance-shrinking technology: Skype. The service is a revolution. Previously, the main alternative was expensive long distance calls. Skype cuts the cost of communicating with my family to almost nothing (I still occasionally have to make calls on my cell phone). It is much easier to stay in touch.

Moreover, the quality of our communication is better. Before Skype, I spent a lot of time emailing photos back and forth with my family. We now use video chats, so I can just show my mom my new haircut, she can show me what’s growing in the yard and my sister can give me a tour of her new apartment. In effect, the distance between us has shrunk again. I feel like I am almost there.

Of course, Skype chats are not the same as actually being there. For that, I need a long distance flight. Short of flying home (which I do about once a year), there must be many other opportunities for clever technology to make a real impact.

I’m off to study for two more exams, but I’ll be thinking about this problem. I welcome any comments.

Image credit: anyjazz65

That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of socially innovative things to be done.

One thing I’ve been thinking about is a “Clean-Up Day.” It’s something I used to do in Anchorage. When the snow melts each spring, heaps of litter suddenly surfaces and the city looks like a dump. So every spring, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of volunteers scour the streets and parks, packing bright orange garbage bags full of rogue cigarette butts, plastic bottles and occasionally other, more novel rubbish (I once found a 2L bottle of K-Y Jelly in a marsh).

Three things about this idea:

1)  Edinburgh looks like a dump in many areas too, and could certainly benefit from a clean-up.

2)  The event requires little in the way of organisation, infrastructure or funding.

3)  Apparently the founders of Skype organised a similar event for their fellow Estonians, who proceeded to clean the entirety of Estonia in a single day.

I’m not trying to promote a litter removal arms race, but I think we can do better. Let’s clean all of Scotland in an hour. One-handed. Who’s with me?

Image credit: Jason Argo