"The Googlesday Book" -- A Universal Census of the Families of Man in 2009 AD?

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The Great Survey of 1086 AD for William the Conqueror --> The Domesday Book or The Doomsday Book

Every tweet a haiku ? --- Or ? --> "The Tweets, like Dust" ?

Are there Limits to Google's Granularity ? Or Grainularity ? [sic]

A Billion Points of Light on Google Earth ?

"But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows." -- [ Luke 12:7 ]


A main concern about Carbon Micro Credits (CMCs) is validation of the micro offsets created by 10s or 100s of thousands of unknown families in Strange Lands in the distant Developing World. Who are all these people? What are their names? Where exactly do they live? Do they really even exist?

In order to determine assessment of taxes and conscription of labor, in the years 1085 - 1086 AD, William the Conqueror of Normandy ordered an inventory of the assets of his newly conquered territory -- all England -- as well as a census of the entire population. Books from the time commented, translated into Modern English, that not a single square yard of land nor a single beehive escaped this universal survey of every physical possession and this census of every human being throughout all the Land.

Reference: http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/domesday-book.htm

Now, almost 1,000 years later, what is the capability of Mankind to duplicate this ancient and remarkable feat ? Has technology kept pace with the growth of human populations and their physical possessions, such that a Modern Domesday Book could be written ? Could every Human Being on Earth be numbered and accounted for, and not one missed?

Sadly, no.

The closest approach Man might make today to the Domesday Book is to first apply the surveying and indexing power of Google to numbering and tallying the Families of Mankind, to write, perhaps, a Googlesday Book ?

But what are the limits to the granularity of Google ? Apparently a googol -->> 10 to the 100th power, or more atoms than present in the visible Universe. Recently, for example, Google has started indexing the tweets of Twitter.com. Hard to believe, but true.

Twitter.com is a web site for broadcasting short one-line thoughts ("tweets" of 140 characters or less) to all Humanity -- in sum, an electronic dumpster of instant-messaging nervous ticks, haiku hairballs, trashy SMS confetti, popcorn logorrhea, pseudo-intellectual crumbs, ADHD ramblings, analretentive scratchings in a kitty-litter-box diary, and verbal vacuous vacuity.

In public squares and on broad avenues, Roman emperors ordered the carving of seminal Words in marble that over 60 generations of Man have read, but this generation of children spray-paints alphanumeric flatulence on the Alleyways of Time with electrons that ultimately may prove as durable. But will your great great grandchildren and their endless progeny in the distant future read your randomly puked tweets and be ashamed of your boffo banality? Once it's indexed on Google, you can't erase it, so think deeply before you tweet.

So how could Google begin to index the Families of Man ? Especially in the Developing World where the task is the hardest ? Easy -- Home is where the Hearth is. Or, the Family that cooks together, stays together. In short, the same family unit that claims cell-phone-based Carbon Micro Credits (CMCs) by reducing their cooking emissions could be the basic counting unit for a new Census of Humanity. And for the dozens of reasons documented in this blog, indeed, every family in the Developing World should be a participant in a Carbon Micro Credit program.

In the Developing World, then, what would be the unique identifier or census account number for this nuclear-family cooking unit? One option ? -- a password-protected account number based on the unique serial number of their low-carbon-emitting stove or solar cooker. Plus the GPS coordinates of the cell phone used to claim their daily, weekly or monthly Carbon Micro Credits. GPS transponders are now built into many cell phones.

With this information, then, the family unit could be plotted as a point of Light on the appropriate map on Google Earth. Fiat lux times 1 billion ? May Carbon Manna make Google Earth twinkle like the Milky Way.

So why not include the cell phone number too in the unique identifier? Because Carbon Micro Credits (CMCs) may be claimed via any cell phone. And many families in poorer areas may be using the same cell phone to claim their CMCs. And why the unique cooker serial number and not another number ? Because in the Developing World, the cook stove is the foundation of the home, the source of all sustenance and Life. No other possession of the Poor is more important. Not to mention it being a valuable profit center -- the source of their Carbon Micro Credits too. So what family or woman or man or daughter would lose their stove or forget its serial number?

The password-protected account would also be the Family's on-line bank account, their access to the Developing World's equivalent of an ATM network (e.g., Safaricom's M-PESA cell-phone-based banking system in Kenya), and their depository for not only Carbon Micro Credits earned from low-CO2 cooking, but also from any other green-house-gas offset projects the Family unit might undertake in the future such as installing a small solar panel on their roof to charge a battery to run a light bulb at night so their children could study.

Moreover, the same account number could be used to access a simple record of the family -- the number of members in the household, their genders, their ages, their names, and so on. Small incentives of cell phone minutes or micro-cash could be offered to families that regularly update their census information via text-based SMS messages, which can cost as little as 4 cents/message in Kenya.

Is such a Universal Census of Humanity beginning in the Developing World beyond the capability of Google? If Google can index the limitless tweets of millions of under-employed and over-fed twits in America and Europe, then assuredly Google could count and number the grains of rice in all the billions of bowls of the Poor in the Developing World. And likewise all the human beings holding those bowls -- bowls partially filled with the Carbon Manna of Carbon Micro Credits.

So which is a more noble cause? And a better use of limitless computing power? Indexing tweets? Or counting human beings?

Finally, a Googlesday Book would also facilitate administration and auditing of Carbon Micro Credit (CMC) programs, accelerate adoption of the CMC system worldwide, and ensure the better feeding of The Families of Man.

"Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; and yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they?" -- [ Matthew 6:26 ]

Very unquantifiably yours,

David A. Palella
Chief Carbon Numerologist
CARBON MANNA UNLIMITED

San Diego, CA
tel: 858-793-0741
email: dpalella@san.rr.com

http://community.keithferrazzi.com/profile/DavidPalella

http://carbonmanna.blogspot.com

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