MeeGo on wheels

With few exceptions, the product talk around the upcoming MeeGo mobile operating system has highly-focused on netbooks and cell phones, and understandably so.  Intel’s legacy contribution to the joint effort, Moblin, was designed for the former while Nokia’s equivalent, Maemo, has been the foundation for the latter.

Less discussed is the opportunity in automobiles… but it’s definitely part of the picture.

The Great microSociety, part 1

In the 1960s former US President Lyndon Johnson signed off on laws to create what he called “The Great Society“, his follow-up to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  There are mixed analyses to this day over the effects, some pro and some con, but his ostensible goal was “the elimination of poverty and racial injustice.”  Most of this change attempt was orchestrated through legislative means.

We’re not there yet, and perhaps never quite will be, but the ideal itself is certainly worth pursuing.  Opponent criticisms are tempered, I think, by the fact that the following two administrations (Nixon and Ford) extended the programs further.  Now current US President Barack Obama is touting yet another stage to this social progression, although couched in necessary contextual terms such as recovery and the ambiguously-useless change.

It is with that foundation in mind that I began wondering what a “great society” should look like presently given our opportunities and advancements, especially in medicine, agriculture and high technology.