You Hoped this Day Was Coming
Eventually, someone was going to step up and actually start doing something about the tate of the world. You might have thought it would be a president--a senator, maybe-- who would stand, point out at the future, and raise the alarm. Instead, it is business, and more specifically a certain strain of imaginative, entrepreneurial business, that has found the upside in addressing global malfunction. Whether old-line, established companies or tiny startups, they're tweaking old technologies and inventing startling new ones, tackling everything from pandemics to ancient scourges like hunger. Are they doing all this because they want to save the world, or because they can turn a profit?
Yes. And not a moment too soon. To that end, our sixth annual global readers challenge features 50 portraits from the future: people and businesses writing the history of the next 10 years.
And one note for the literal-minded: This is a list, not a ranking. In this gallery of imagination, No. 1 gets no more laurels than No. 50.
43 Everyone Counts, Inc.
Business builds a better ballot
Voting scandals are the failing of American democracy, from hanging chads and "lost" votes in Florida to recounts that never seem to agree. Lori J. Steele, CEO of Everyone Counts in San Diego, California, has found a better way: Her company's software encryption can store votes electronically as it protects voters' identities, makes the results auditable as well as accurate, and allows for telephone and Internet voting. Everyone Counts is now a finalist in the bidding for a contract to roll out this technology in the UK. If all goes well, it will be adopted for London's city elections in 2008 and Europe's national elections in 2009. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress has given the Pentagon until May to come up with a plan for e-voting for troops abroad, and the Democratic National Committee is looking to add Internet voting to increase primary turnout. Steele aspires to make Everyone Counts the voting standard everywhere. "Congress," she says, "needs to open this up to entrepreneurial people who are passionate about fixing problems."
--Alan Deutschman
“COME ON. WE’RE FROM CALIFORNIA. WE’VE ALWAYS BEEN NUMBER ONE. LET’S SHOW THE REST OF THE WORLD THAT WE CAN COMEUP WITH THE BEST IDEAS. LET’S KICK SOME BUTT HERE.”
- ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, Governor of California