Inspirational News StoriesExcerpts of Key Inspirational News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Could baby poop and fungi work together to tackle landfill waste? That's the idea behind a new product launched by an Austin, Texas-based startup that sells disposable diapers paired with fungi intended to break down the plastic. Each of Hiro Technologies' MycoDigestible Diapers comes with a packet of fungi to be added to the dirty diaper before it is thrown in the trash. After a week or two, the fungi are activated by moisture from feces, urine and the environment to begin the process of biodegradation. An estimated 4 million tons of diapers were disposed of in the United States in 2018, with no significant recycling or composting. Diapers take hundreds of years to naturally break down. That means the very first disposable diaper ever used is still in a landfill somewhere. To tackle this, Hiro Technologies turned to fungi. These organisms - which include mushrooms, molds, yeasts and mildew - derive nutrients from decomposing organic matter. In 2011, Yale University researchers discovered a type of fungus in Ecuador that can feed on polyurethane, a common polymer in plastic products. They figured the fungus, Pestalotiopsis microspora, would be capable of surviving on plastic in environments lacking oxygen, like landfills. Hiro Technologies co-founder Tero Isokauppila, a Finnish entrepreneur who also founded medicinal mushroom company Four Sigmatic, said there are more than 100 species of fungi now known to break down plastics.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on microplastic solutions and healing the Earth.
Hemp is one of the most sustainable materials available to manufacturers because it's cheap to grow, uses little water, doesn't need any toxic pesticides, and can absorb more carbon than trees. Hemp batteries have their own advantages, too. These batteries use lighter and more widely available materials like sulfur, boron, and hemp instead of the heavy metals used in traditional lithium-ion batteries. Some EVs use a device called a supercapacitor, which stores energy through static electricity rather than a chemical reaction, like in conventional batteries. In these batteries, a material called graphene is used. But graphene is expensive. To create ... "cannabis cars," scientists use hemp bark – a waste product created by cannabis plants – and cooked it to make a substance that resembles graphene. Hemp lasts longer than graphene. It also stores more power and is easy to source. Son Nguyen, Bemp Research's founder, told EnergyTech that the company's lithium-sulfur battery can help solve shortages in the EV battery supply chain. "Sulfur is very abundant. Boron is also relatively abundant, with the biggest boron mine being in California," Nguyen said. "Being an American company, our focus right now is to make batteries for American electric vehicles, and we do not see any supply chain problems. Bemp batteries are less reliant on rare earth metals from around the globe and thus will help U.S. national security."
Note: Read about why architects are choosing hemp walls for their superior insulation, resistance to mold and moisture, and environmentally friendly, biodegradable design. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.
An unlikely natural ally in the fight against microplastics has been discovered. Researchers in China have found that invasive water hyacinths are adept at absorbing microplastics without harm to the plant itself. Experiments against a control group showed that plastics were mostly trapped on the outside of the water hyacinth's root systems. The few that get inside the plant are quickly separated before nutrients get to the leaves. Typically, plants exposed to microplastics suffer ill effects. Water hyacinths are native to South America. Two plants were able to produce 1,200 daughter plants in four months, according to one study. Any given population of water hyacinth can double in size in six days. Once dropped into a new foreign habitat, invasive species ... can squeeze out native species, reduce biodiversity, and eliminate vital ecosystem services. Not long ago, Arkansas had to issue a statement on the threat water hyacinths posed to agriculture. On the flip side, microplastics are a scourge. They'll often end up in the fish we catch, and once eaten by humans, they can cause problems with the endocrine, immune, and reproductive systems. Despite their rapid proliferation, it may still be worth strategically deploying water hyacinths. Other studies have shown that water hyacinths can also absorb heavy metals and agricultural runoff. Meanwhile, enterprising individuals have been able to take the excess biomass of the plants and turn it into briquettes and bioplastics.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on microplastic solutions.
Dan Mancina has been a skateboarder since the age of seven, but when he was 13, he was diagnosed with rhinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that rendered him almost completely blind by 22. He hit pause on his skateboarding for a couple of years in his early 20s, but decided to pick it back up again, now using a white cane to shred more confidently. Now almost 38, he's a professional skateboarder, relearning tricks, and even completing the course at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. About seven years ago, he started dreaming of creating the world's first adaptive skatepark right in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Finally, the park is a reality. Called "The Ranch," the 5,000-square-foot skatepark is completely accessible, allowing both seasoned low-vision boarders to take it for a spin and newcomers to the sport to feel welcome. In a recent video, blind content creator Anthony S. Ferraro, who reviews and documents his experiences in accessible environments ... on TikTok, showed off the park's features. Features include rollers, bank ramps, and ledges, with manual pads and platforms, all designed to be easier to navigate for people with vision impairments or in wheelchairs. Auditory cues are also placed throughout the park in the form of beepers, which warn a skater about a dangerous drop or guide them to a particular obstacle. "Thanks for building this park, Dan, [you're] a true pioneer." Next up, he plans to host workshops and camps for other visually impaired skaters who want to learn how to skate with a white cane. "It's been so inspiring to watch this come to reality. I've never had a place where I can skate with full confidence," Ferraro ends his video.
Note: Watch a deeply inspiring video about how Dan Mancina learned how to skateboard after losing his sight. Explore more positive stories like this on inspiring disabled persons.
California has introduced a first-in-the-nation online public platform to help bridge silos. The platform, called Engaged California (EC), enables and encourages the direct engagement of citizens with government and with each other. Engaged California is not glorified polling and is more than a town hall gathering. It is a three-way tool that enables policymakers and administrators to listen at scale to average citizens outside of election cycles and be responsive; it invites citizens to directly voice their concerns and proposals on an ongoing basis; and it is a platform for Californians from all walks of life to interact with each other to find common ground. Audrey Tang ... helped craft California's program ... modeled on the pioneering online deliberative platform she created as Taiwan's first digital minister. Tang's vTaiwan platform engages thousands of citizens at a time to weigh in on social issues or policy propositions. In essence, as each participant formulates a position on an issue, others chime in with their own versions. Extreme positions fall to the margins with minimal support, and more consensus views aggregate in the middle. In turn, legislators, parties and administrators can formulate policies in full knowledge of where the public stands. Housed in the state's Office of Data and Innovation, Engaged California is meant to become a permanent feature of governance going forward that will be used for the public to deliberate a range of concerns and proposals
Note: Read more about how vTaiwan is changing the game. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and technology for good.
Rajabai Sawant used to pick and sort waste on the streets of Pune with a sack on her back. The plastic she collected from a public waste site would be sold for some money that saved her children from begging. Today, dressed in a dark green jacket monogrammed with the acronym Swach (solid waste collection and handling) over a colourful sari, the 53-year-old is one among an organised group of waste collectors and climate educators who teach residents in urban Pune how to segregate and manage waste, based on a PPPP – a pro-poor private public partnership. Swach was set up in 2005 by a trade union of waste pickers, Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP), which was ... envisioned a scheme that enhanced waste collectors' work instead of displacing them. These [PPPP] partnerships are contracts between the state or local authority and a group of private individuals that aim to provide a public service while simultaneously alleviating poverty. Of the waste generated by the city, Swach sorts and recycles about 227 tonnes a day (82,891 tonnes a year) that is diverted away from landfills. It saves the city Ł10m that would have been needed for processing, transportation and human resources. Today, Swach has more than 3,850 self-reliant waste picker members, who provide daily doorstep waste collection services to citizens of Pune who pay a small monthly fee. Under the PPPP, each member is a shareholder and earns about 16,000 rupees (Ł140) a month.
Note: Explore more positive stories on reimagining the economy.
For 4.4 billion people, the only water available is unsafe to drink. In the early 1990s, I was working as a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ("Berkeley Lab") when I heard about a devastating cholera outbreak in my home country. I started to study waterborne pathogens with the aim to develop a new way to make water drinkable that would be affordable and effective in rural areas of low income countries. In a short few years, and later on with funding support from the Energy Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, I came up with an invention – the UV Waterworks – that met all my goals. It was inexpensive, efficient, portable and effective. Roughly the size of a microwave, the device sanitizes water using UV light to kill harmful bacteria, viruses and molds. It can purify approximately four gallons of water per minute and provide a year's worth of potable drinking water for just seven cents per person. The University of California, which runs the lab, filed the initial patent. I helped found WaterHealth International, which exclusively licensed the UV Waterworks technology from the university in 1996. In the time since, the invention has benefited tens of million people across India and Africa. Roughly 80% of our customers live below the poverty line in their home countries.
Note: Read about the ecologist who used sunlight, plants, and pond life to turn toxic sewage into clean drinking water–proving that nature can heal what industry has broken. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.
Within sight of northern Germany's windswept beaches, specialized clearance teams have been trawling the seafloor for the kind of catch that fishermen in these parts usually avoid–discarded naval mines, torpedoes, stacks of artillery shells, and heavy aerial bombs, all of which have been rusting away for nearly 80 years. For much of September and October 2024, underwater vehicles, fitted with cameras, powerful lights, and sensors, have been hunting for World War II–era explosives purposefully sunk in this region of the Baltic Sea. Tons upon tons of German munitions were hastily dumped at sea under orders from the Allied powers at the end of World War II, who sought to dispose of the Nazis' arsenal. The clearance work last year was part of a first-of-its-kind project to explore ways to clear up this toxic legacy of war. "Conventional munitions are carcinogenic, and the chemical munitions are mutagenic, and also they disrupt enzymes and whatnot–so they are definitely affecting organisms," says Jacek BeĹ‚dowski, a leading expert on underwater munitions dumps. The next stage of the pilot project, also now underway, is building a floating munitions-disposal facility that could incinerate the aging explosives near the dump sites. That would eliminate the need to bring the ordnance above water ... and ship it overland. Longer term, the dream is to have unmanned underwater vehicles map, scan, and magnetically image the seabed to get a sense of what lies where.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine and technology for good.
What if your heating and cooling worked during power outages, and you could count on it becoming more efficient and climate-friendly over time? That's the promise of district heating and cooling or district energy, where entire communities share a heating and cooling system. That allows them to tap into many low-carbon energy sources they couldn't before, more efficiently than any individual building could. As governments look to tackle carbon emissions from buildings – the third largest source in Canada behind the oil and gas industry and transportation – it's an idea that more of them are considering and implementing. Peter Ronson is chief operating officer for Markham District Energy (MDE), a network in a Toronto suburb that heats and cools 14 million square feet in more than 200 buildings, including condo buildings up to 44 storeys tall, a hospital, data centres, hotels and two schools. Some, like the data centres, produce a lot of heat, while others may use lots of hot water. "We got all sorts of stuff on the system," Ronson said. "When [some are] throwing away energy, I can recover and give it to somebody else." That kind of heat-sharing is efficient. Excess heat in the system can also be stored (underground in water or rock, for example) ... and much more cheaply than electricity. All that means converting buildings that burn fossil fuels to district energy can potentially put less strain on the grid than electrifying individual buildings using heat pumps or baseboard heating.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.
A team of researchers searching for safe, sustainable, and biodegradable alternatives to plastics presented a new type of transparent material at the American Chemical Society (ACS) spring meeting. Unlike previous transparent "wood" designs that sacrifice some biodegradability for strength by including certain types of plastics, the team said its eco-friendly see-through material is made with all natural components. Potential applications for the plastic alternative include electronic device screens, wearable sensors, coatings on solar cells, and transparent wood windows. Bharat Baruah, a professor of chemistry ... said his woodworking hobby led him to research efforts to create transparent wood. He quickly discovered that successfully created transparent wood materials were enhanced with epoxy, a type of plastic, to increase its strength, sacrificing some biodegradability. The professor decided he should see if there were better alternatives. After enlisting Ridham Raval, a Kenneshaw State undergraduate student, to help, the duo used a vacuum chamber, sodium sulfite, sodium hydroxide, and bleach to remove lignin and hemicellulose, two of wood's three components, from a sample of balsa wood. What remained was a paper-like layer of cellulose filled with tiny pores. Instead of refilling the pores with epoxy, the team soaked the cellulose layer in a mixture of egg whites and rice extract. They were "left with semi-transparent slices of wood that were durable and flexible."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.
Researchers at ETH Zurich have designed a sustainable method to extract gold from electronic waste using a byproduct of cheese production. Electronic devices, from smartphones to laptops, contain small amounts of gold due to its excellent conductivity and resistance to corrosion. With the rapid turnover of electronic gadgets, e-waste has become the fastest-growing waste stream globally, reaching 62 million tonnes in 2022, and only 22.3 percent of this was formally collected and recycled, leaving vast amounts of valuable materials unused. Professor Raffaele Mezzenga and scientist Mohammad Peydayesh led the ETH Zurich team in developing a method that utilizes "whey", the liquid byproduct of cheese-making. By processing whey proteins into amyloid fibrils, they created a sponge-like aerogel capable of selectively absorbing gold ions from acidic solutions derived from e-waste. Professor Mezzenga stated, "The fact I love the most is that we're using a food industry byproduct to obtain gold from electronic waste. You can't get much more sustainable than that!" In laboratory tests, this aerogel successfully extracted gold from dissolved computer motherboards. The sponge drew out gold that was about 90.8 percent pure, yielding a 22-carat nugget weighing approximately 450 milligrams. The research team is also exploring the use of other food industry byproducts, like pea protein and fish collagen, to diversify the sources of the aerogel. The process is economically viable, with operational costs significantly lower than the market value of the recovered gold, unlike traditional gold extraction techniques that rely on toxic chemicals like cyanide.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.
It is surprisingly quiet inside the construction site of a high school extension in Sickla, a former industrial area in south Stockholm that is set to become part of the "largest mass timber project in the world." "It's a fantastic working environment – no concrete dust, no silica dust issues. It's clean and quiet," said Niklas Häggström, the project area manager at Atrium Ljungberg, and responsible for the realisation of the entire Wood City project, when we walk around the site. In total, 25 neighbourhoods will cover 25 hectares. The first buildings are scheduled for completion in 2025, with the next phase – including 2,000 homes – planned for 2027. It is an enormous project, but with timber Atrium Ljungberg can build 1,000 sq metres a week. In 2022 Atrium Ljungberg set an ambitious goal to become climate neutral by 2030. Just by choosing timber as the structural material, the company has said it reduces its climate impact by about 40%, a claim backed up by researchers at Linköping University. If other companies were to follow suit, one study found that building with wood instead of concrete and steel in 80% of new buildings would help offset half of Europe's construction industry emissions. Another study found that wooden buildings continue to be climate friendly – a four-storey wooden building results in a net uptake of 150 tonnes of carbon dioxide. The hope is that the city will also improve the wellbeing of the people inside the buildings.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in on healing the Earth.
When Rodolfo "Rudy" Reyes went diving in the Cayman Islands in 2015, the experience changed his life. The highly decorated veteran had logged thousands of dives as a Special Ops Force Recon Marine in 18 years of service. But, as Reyes recalls, "As combat divers we operate at night, pushing 200 pounds of equipment, carrying massive weapons. It's very stressful and we focus on the mission – taking on the enemy." In the Caribbean, Reyes dove for the first time during daytime at his own pace, guided by his friend Jim Ritterhoff, who worked with the Central Caribbean Marine Institute. At the time, Reyes was struggling with depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse. "I had a really hard drug habit after all these intense combat tours," he admits, but diving in the Caymans, surrounded by vibrant marine life, reignited a sense of wonder. "It brought me back to life. It inspired the same kind of protective spirit and willingness to go fight in the battlefield that I used in the Marine Corps, but now I wanted to use that passion to fight for ocean conservation." In 2016, Reyes, Ritterhoff and Keith Sahm co-founded Force Blue, a nonprofit that recruits veterans – especially Navy SEALs and Special Operations divers with military dive training – to channel their skills into marine conservation. "We're learning to transfer combat diving expertise into protecting and providing refuge for this incredible aquatic environment," Reyes explains.
Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and stories on healing the Earth.
Rappler, founded by a group of journalists in 2012, has evolved over time to become one of the leading, most trusted news outlets in the Philippines. In December, the organization launched Rappler Communities, a trailblazing mobile app which it had built and connected directly to their news feed. Built on the open source, secure, decentralized Matrix protocol, the app has the potential to become a global independent news distribution outlet, and promises to pave the way for a "shared reality" – a call [founder and Nobel laureate Maria] Ressa has been making to counter "the cascading failures of a corrupted public information ecosystem." "At this moment, if news journalism doesn't come together with communities and civil society that cares about a shared reality, democracy cannot survive," [said Ressa]. "Most important, is that we really have a shared reality. Once our community is set at the matrix protocol chat app, it can then work with other news organizations and become a trusted news distributor. So we will own our distribution, and we could strengthen our communities. Before the end of the year, we aim to have four other new sites, in different parts of the world, federated on this protocol. The matrix protocol is end-to-end encrypted; it is decentralized, similar to the Internet Governance Forum – like having a co-op, it isn't individually owned, or profit-driven. It's, literally, a place where we have a shared reality."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on people-powered alternative systems.
In the final bay of an old, mustard-colored mechanic's garage in the middle of the Hoopa Valley Reservation's main settlement is the headquarters of Acorn Wireless. This small, relatively young Internet service provider is owned and operated by the tribe's public utilities department–an unusual arrangement in the United States, where Internet service is more often the purview of predatory corporations like AT&T and Verizon, whose regional monopolies enable them to charge exorbitant rates for uneven service. Before the launch of Acorn, residents had to choose between a HughesNet satellite connection (more than $100 per month), a bare-bones Starlink kit ($600), unreliable wireless hot spots–or, as was often the case, nothing. Download speeds are nearly 75 percent slower in tribal areas, yet the lowest price for basic Internet service is, on average, 11 percent higher. Acorn's operation is based on the idea that local, democratic ownership can help address the coverage disparity by eliminating the profit motive. Because it is owned by the tribe and administered by the tribe's public utilities department, Acorn can focus on equity instead of revenue. Its premium service package is set at $75 a month, [but] most Acorn customers can get service at no personal cost. Hoopa's experiment in public broadband remains a work in progress, embodying hopes (and facing hurdles) that are shared on tribal lands all over the country.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on people-powered alternative systems.
In many parts of the world, building a house or farming a field means taking out loans. But in Kenya, a time-tested system of mutual aid ... has long been the foundation of local economies. Now, Grassroots Economics Foundation is bringing this age-old practice into the digital age. At the helm of this transformation is Njambi Njoroge, Operations Director at Grassroots Economics. Grassroots Economics is built on a concept called "commitment pooling," inspired by indigenous economic systems. Traditionally, in Kenyan villages, neighbours would come together to build houses, farm land, or provide childcare, repaying each other in labor rather than money. These informal debts balanced themselves over time, ensuring that no one was left behind. "We're not inventing anything new," Njoroge says. "We're automating what has always existed." Using blockchain, Grassroots Economics formalizes these commitments into digital vouchers–secure, trackable tokens that represent labor, goods, or services. The blockchain-powered system functions as a local exchange, where people contribute their skills and pull from a shared pool of community resources. The technology ensures that every commitment has a unique digital signature, preventing fraud and allowing real-time tracking of transactions. "On our platform, Sarafu.network, you can see all the transactions happening in a village–how many houses were built, how many farms were tilled, how much labor was exchanged," Njoroge explains. With blockchain, communities can see tangible data showing how much work they've accomplished together.
Note: Grassroots Economics won the 2019 Newsweek Blockchain Impact award for its innovative use of blockchain. Watch our 13 minute video on the promise of blockchain technology. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and technology for good.
Thessy Mehrain founded the Women in Blockchain community in 2016. One of Mehrain's most consistent messages is that gender equity in blockchain–and tech in general–isn't a women's issue. "Men become allies once they understand the benefits," she says. "Most companies, especially in the early blockchain days, were run by men." ETHDenver ... hosted a session featuring Njambi Njoroge, Operations Director of Grassroots Economics Foundation in Kenya. The organization has been pioneering community-driven economies by digitizing traditional mutual-aid systems with blockchain. "Njambi talked about how collaboration has always been at the core of Kenyan communities," Mehrain explains. "For centuries, people have come together to build houses, till land, and share resources. Now, with blockchain, they can track these commitments and scale them beyond their immediate community. In the West, our economies are increasingly relying on central authorities–where â€trusted middlemen' own everyone's data and hold the power. But in many places, economies are rooted in collaboration. One of the features of technologies like blockchain is to add a trust infrastructure that allows to remove central entities, and create cooperative economies." "It's not about gender–it's about mindset," she explains. "The masculine principle is about domination–the winner is who gets there first at any price. The feminine principle is about collaboration–winning is defined by getting there first as well but accounts also for the impact on others. You only win together.
Note: Watch our 13 minute video on the promise of blockchain technology. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and technology for good.
On July 7, 2022, days after Chad LaVia was freed from a year of incarceration at the jail in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, the county sent him a bill for $14,320 in "room and board" fees – $40 for each of the 358 days he'd spent inside. The invoice also reminded LaVia that he owed another $2,751.46 in fees from previous jail stints there, which brought his total debt to just over $17,000. LaVia had only two months to pay off the debt, the invoice warned, until it would be turned over to a collection agency. In September, Dauphin County's commissioners voted to forgive the nearly $66 million in pay-to-stay debt looming over formerly incarcerated people and their families. The move, championed by a commissioner who won in 2023 after running on jail reform, followed a 2022 decision by the commission that ended pay-to-stay fees but had not erased people's previous debts for jail stays. LaVia Jones said the decision to finally forgive the outstanding jail debt will help her son move on with his life, calling it "a huge relief." "The longer you sat in jail, the more debt you incurred, the more debt your family incurred. People sit there pretrial for one year, two years. It's so wrong," she said. "So this really helps him to move on with his life." Local groups ... argued for years that the pay-to-stay scheme worked against efforts at successful re-entry for people released from jail, who are typically poor and who are almost always more concerned with basic survival and staying free than with settling debts.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.
Emerging in the 1950s, preppers were animated by a variety of often overlapping fears: some were troubled by the increasingly networked, and therefore fragile, nature of contemporary life. Early adopters ... went off-grid; hoarded provisions, firearms and ammunition, and sometimes constructed hidden bunkers. They championed individual fortitude over collective welfare. Not all of them are conservatives. Liberals make up about 15% of the prepping scene, according to one estimate, and their numbers appear to be growing. Some ... [are] steeped in the mutual aid framework of the anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin: a rejection of individualism and an emphasis on community building and mutual aid. The question is less whether we survive than how we maintain our humanity in the face of calamity, how we cope with loss, and how we use the time we have. Elizabeth Doerr, co-host of the Cramming for the Apocalypse podcast, agreed: "Researchers talk a lot about how your ability to survive a disaster or thrive post-disaster is contingent on really knowing your neighbors – because when they don't see you, they're gonna come check on you." Rather than an effort to defend ... against a nightmare future, it's a part of a commitment to living meaningfully in the present. Genuine prepping requires not only "outer resilience", as [community organizer David] Baum puts it, but an inner kind as well. "Survival is not the goal," he told me afterward. "The relationship and the wisdom and the love that one discovers by approaching nature with respect – that's the goal."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on climate change and healing social division.
There is one thing that practically everyone can agree on: politics has become bitterly divided. Yet what if it doesn't need to be this way? For the last five years, Taiwan has been blending technology with politics to create a new way of making decisions. And with certain limits, it has found consensus where none seemed to exist. Taiwan's burgeoning scene of civic hackers ... were invited to join the government. Their creation was called vTaiwan - with the "v" standing for virtual - a platform where experts and other interested parties can deliberate contentious issues. It works by first seeking to crowdsource objective facts from those involved. Then users communicate with each other via a dedicated social media network called Pol.is, which lets them draft statements about how a matter should be solved, and respond to others' suggestions by either agreeing or disagreeing with them. Once a "rough consensus" has been reached, livestreamed or face-to-face meetings are organised so that participants can write out specific recommendations. Pol.is lifted everyone out of their echo chambers. It churned through the many axes of agreements and disagreements and drew a map to show everyone exactly where they were in the debate. There was no reply button, so people couldn't troll each other's posts. And rather than showing the messages that divided each of the four groups, Pol.is simply made them invisible. It gave oxygen instead to statements that found support across different groups as well as within them. "Change the information structure," Colin Megill, one of its founders, told me, "and you can tweak power". Rather than encourage grandstanding or the trading of insults, it gamified finding consensus. "People compete to bring up the most nuanced statements that can win most people across," Tang told me. "Invariably, within three weeks or four ... we always find a shape where most people agree on most of the statements, most of the time."
Note: Dozens of laws have been passed from this process. For more along these lines, read our inspiring summaries of news articles on tech for good.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.