Ask HN: would an overview of state of the world help you make decisions?
I'm building a website[1] that will basically sum up all the most important information about current world problems and display it as an explorable overview (think command and control centers from sci-fi / computer games and sci-fi movies, Google Earth, or something similar to Fate of The World[2]). The idea is for following questions to be answered by just taking a glance and/or exploring the site for few seconds.
- What needs to be fixed? What's the progress?
Especially how many things are broken - do we have ten big problems problem, or ten dozens of them? And then not just a list of problems, but a) how close are we to effectively solving given problem, and b) 1'st derivative - is it getting better or worse, and how fast?
- Who's fixing it?
What solutions are targeting those problems? Which NGO's are working on them? Just a curated list (think GiveWell) and contact info for those, who would like to join the efforts.
- How can you help?
What skills are needed where - for those who want to steer their development into the area. Who's fixing it - for those who want to help organizations.
Do you, as hackers and/or enterpreneurs, think such tool could be useful in making decisions about what to build, who to help, or just to have a better understanding of the world?
[1] - a brief description is posted right now on http://planetstatus.org (in pl_PL; sorry guys, it's mostly parts of my original idea document uploaded because of TEDxKraków Award workshops I attended to develop this idea further.
[2] - http://fateoftheworld.net/. A great game, but it could use a better interface and visualisations for statistics.