The main tank, brimful with ideas. Enjoy them, discuss them, take them. - Of course, this is also the #1 place for new submissions!
By Allen D Leftwich
#137
I would like to introduce an idea that I have had for an application for the internet to be used for. There are several different terms for this idea from internet brain storming to collective creating to global reasoning. The general idea is to use the internet to bring up a host of ideas about any type of engineering problem that has confounded the experts and may need an outsiders perspective to solve the problem (thinking out of the box). The goal would be to introduce specific problems to the forum and then anyone with internet access could read the problem and put their input into fixing it or improving upon an existing design. Their are several distributed computing projects that involve human input to make them work. This would be another. It might take a company or corporation to organize the forum and give credit and royalties to those that come up with the best innovations. These companies would also need a staff of engineers to look through the ideas to make sure that they would work and be cost effective to implement, but it would be worth it.

We now use computers for parallel processing to solve problems but computers lack imagination to come up with ideas because they can only calculate not think in the abstract. I know that most people think that only the experts are expert enough to solve perplexing design problems but an idea can come from anyone. New discoveries can also be turned over to the public to find applications for them to improve our quality of life. The different areas that this type of thinktanking could help is electrical, mechanical, chemical, industrial, and civil engineering. This type of imagination power could be extremely powerful and virtually limitless. The internet is a tool that could make geniuses out of us all instead of just having a few around to improve the quality of life for us all. Solutions to problems would have to be sent by e-mail so that unscroupulous individuals or companies couldn't just take the info for their own use without including something for the innovator. I would like to accomplish this myself but know that it would take the resources of a big company to incorporate it.

Reward: Membership on the board of this proposed company.
By Allen D Leftwich
#389
An example problem would be how can we make high rise buildings more energy efficient? People could come back with thing such as make all none window outer surface areas with solar cells and since windy conditions exist outside the buildings build vertical wind turbines at the corners of the buildings to generate some electricity to be used and stored in batteries for later use. The building will most likely not be electrically self sustaining but would supplement its own external power supply. This is one such idea that could be presented in the way that I have presented it or the problems and limitations could be elaborated on to draw better responses from the cyber community.
By umakant
#390
hi!

I think you are talking about a tool for thinking togather logically, so that we have a brain farm globally. In that case we would be having people coming in and contributing. I am already working on such a tool , but the problem is that how to keep the content in check and making sure that it converges to a solution rather than diverging to a chaos.
If you want to collaborate..feel free to mail me at umakant_soni@yahoo.com.
By ADALEL
#391
Not exactly what I had in mind people should get both credit and compensation for their ideas. A mega corporation would have more resources to devote to getting it started, maintaining it, and any funding or legalities that might crop up. It would have to be structured and guide the forum toward solutions. Lots of people would have to sift through possible mountains of ideas most of which wouldn't work or be economically unfesable to try. Some solutions would require engineers to determine the viability of some ideas. This would require the efforts of a large well to do company.
By will
#392
its been done... its called the internet lol. just go into a forum about engineering, theres plenty. google.com. and for the whole thing about being successful, just get more opinions from the forum.
By ADALEL
#393
Your right the internet is good for talking about ideas but not for protecting intellectual rights. People should be compensated for their useable ideas and given credit for proposing them. I haven't seen this done yet.
By ADALEL
#657
Thanks Ali I am in the process of using your suggestion on the web address that you listed. The idea i'm submitting there is how to use regular walking to generate electricity via the floor itself. :-)
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By Michael D. Grissom
#2241
Thanks Ali for that URL. I too have been looking for such a site. There's bound to be lots of them out there... just need to find one with links to the others.
By Bluecube
#2719
I am an architect, and I often go to trade forums to help me solve specific problems. There are places where roofing contractors, carpenters, plumbers, etc. post questions about strange, and unexpected conditions, unfamiliar materials etc.

I think the creativity forums are a great idea. I think that they are there already on a smaller scale.
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