What is Leap Frog Problem Solving?

What is Leap Frog Problem Solving?

Leap frog problem solving is when I think of a piece of a solution and I tell you, and you add to my piece to get a little closer and you tell someone else, and that person adds a piece, etc. until we reach a solution by leap frogging our way there.

The internet is allowing humans to connect and leap frog faster than ever before. Here's how:

1. The internet allows people to communicate, through writing, images, videos, speaking, all over the world. You don't have to be near someone to communicate. That has been true since we had the telephone, but the key difference with the internet is:

2. People can find each other. There may be only two people in the world who are interested in jewerly made from dried peanut butter carvings, but thanks to the internet, those two people can find each other. The fact that they can then exchange ideas, tips and tricks about carved-dried-peanut-butter earrings will lead them to new ideas and solutions at a rate much more than twice as fast as each working alone, in isolation. The sum is greater than the parts.

Before the internet, if the two peanut butter enthusiasts had found each other, they could have talked on the phone or written letters. But they would never have found each other. Now, with the internet and its awesome searching power, they have a hope of connecting.

Most people have heard about Johannes Gutenberg inventing the printing press. That was around 1450. But according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book), "the Chinese inventor Pi Sheng made movable type of earthenware circa 1045."

If they'd had the internet, the printing press would have been invented 400 years earlier. That would have allowed the spread of information through printed books to occur much sooner, and who knows, perhaps the internet would have been invented 400 years earlier as well.

Of course that's just silly, but my point is that the internet is allowing us to solve problems way faster than ever, and it is my hope and belief that we will be able to solve problems once thought to have no solution at all.

Instead of being solved by a super-computer, we'll solve our problems with a super-brain: all of our brains linked together by the webby pipes.

All problems great and small are fair game.

Here are some problems I'm interested in participating in solving:

- Global Warming
- Extinction of Species and reduction of natural habitat
- War
- Poverty
- Violence
- Depression
- Overcoming Procrastination
- Ideas for incorporating more vegetables into one's diet
- How to open those bubble plastic packages that lots of products are sold in and you feel like you're going end up going to the hospital with a big gash
- Brain freeze

I'd love to hear problems, pieces of solutions, ideas, input, from any and all who care to participate.