Actually, you don't get the money, it's to fund development of the idea. It's basically free venture capital.
I totally agree that this would be a nice killer project for all the big-mouth 'brains" here. And Uncle Al very definitely should be "team leader" because
- He's a walking compendium of all facts in the universe.
- He's called everyone a "moron" [including me] and deserves a chance to show us what he can do.
- He is the self-appointed judge of all new ideas on USENET.
First let's think a bit about this contest.
- It supposed to be ideas to make a "better world", so in spite of population problems let's agree that ideas for better ways to kill people will be out.
- Ideas that have already been thought of and tried in the past [like say using wind power to pump water for cows] are out.
- Pure science (like snake model of the nucleus) which may eventually prove to have great applications, should be out unless it can be shown that those applications actually exist now. We want something ready for the venture capital development stage, not money for basic research like building a Hadron Collider.
- Vague crap from "idea men" are out. For example: Saying "It's a self-starter for a car! You turn the key and the car starts" is NOT an "idea". You'd have to say, "Lets build a car self-starter using an electric motor to turn the engine powered from a storage battery that is charged while the engine runs."
- Great ideas with no science to back them up are also out. No "ideas" of the form: "It's a free-energy unit for a home. It's a cube
- Should be an idea with as large an impact on the world as possible, but doesn't have to be complex. The internet has had a huge impact, but then so has the xerox machine both in the area of information dissemination. Even something very simple like Velcro can be said to have a large impact. Thus the idea should solve some kind of universal problem of mankind.
- Solutions to imaginary politically-driven problems are out as well. Thus, ideas with a political side to them, such as a better way to reduce the "carbon footprint" of this or that, don't count because CO2 doesn't cause global warming. OR a better way to implement "gun control" since there is no established relationship between the private ownership of firearms and crime rates. Political assertions don't count.
So, Uncle AL, what does that leave us? We need to think about large serious universal problems of humanity as a whole. Clearly the fact that eventually Oil and even other fossil fuels will run out is a problem facing us all. What kind of solution could benefit from 10 meg of development there? OR what about the massive problems developing over pollution. No, not "carbon footprints", but REAL pollution like all the Poo washed down to sea from billions of people or all the nasty crap from burning coal to make electricity. And I'm sure there are more problems.
So lets start by thinking about a list of PROBLEMS facing mankind now and then we can use that to pick one that seems like it has a doable solution. And then kick it around from there.
So Uncle Al, waddaya think?