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The Best of 2019: Superstruct Honors and Awards are Announced!

Who won? What did the celebrity gamemasters say? Find out now!
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On November 17, 2008 the Institute for the Future announced the winners of the Superstruct Awards in a live webcast. Each winner received a personal fan letter from one of the honorary game masters, including Bruce Sterling, Warren Ellis, Tara Hunt, and Tim O'Reilly.

You can watch the complete one-hour recording of the Superstruct Celebration on Ustream, or scroll down to read the results.

Congratulations to all of the honored Super-Empowered Human Individuals!

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Our first Superstruct honor was created and awarded by Tim Kring, the creator of the NBC TV series HEROES.

Fittingly, this is the Most Heroic Award--for the superstructure that best reveals our hidden potential to save the world.

The most heroic award goes to the members of Lifeliners, a superstructure for embedded tech-savvy humanitarians, who would go to countries where the social safety net usually provided by governments has broken down and bootstrap high-tech solutions.

Dear FREELANCE GENERALIST and allies,

This is a remarkably strong Idea with practical applications that could benefit the world immediately. The only problem I can see is the availability of the resources needed to provide to the refugees, prisoners or poverty stricken in the most remote locale.  I applaud this concept and hope that this one day it is a reality the world over.

Your fan,

Tim Kring

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Our next Superstruct honor was created and awarded by Jimmy Wales, founder of WIKIPEDIA and WIKIA.

It’s the Most Collaborative Award--for the superstructure that invents the best new way of working together.

The most collaborative award goes to the members of TRUSTNET, a superstructure that would empower people to trust strangers by creating a bottom-up RFID-based system for vastly extending your trusted social network.

Dear Antisocial Hermit and allies,

I loved this idea and the way you fleshed it out!

What I particularly like about it i that you have proposed a structure for finding solutions, rather than proposing the solutions directly.

Once I have my trustnet tag, and once my friends have theirs, we might end up using them in all kinds of innovative ways that none of us can think of today.

Right now we already have unique identifiers (names, well, they aren't perfectly unique but are suitable enough) and various levels of certification of trust - a Harvard degree, a LinkedIn endorsement, etc.

But these are limited and nonstandard.

By moving that kind of thing in the direction of RFID tags, requiring real-world contact to get started, you push things in an interesting new direction.

I have a lot of doubts and questions... and I feel like jumping in to discuss.  But... that's at the heart of what collaboration is about, and you've therefore won the prize for Most Collaborative!

Your fan,

Jimmy Wales

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Our next Superstruct honor was created and awarded by Tara Hunt, co-founder of CITIZEN AGENCY and author of THE WHUFFIE FACTOR.

It’s The Most Whuffie Award--for the superstructure that encourages the most positive

Tara has selected three superstructures to receive a Most Whuffie honor.

First up, the bronze most whuffie award goes to the members of Educycle, a superstructure that open sources education by helping anyone, anywhere “freecycle” what they know.

Dear MUDMAMA and allies,

I've been a longtime fan of Freecycle and Educycle is a wonderfully innovative way to make this model into something else meaningful. I believe this ties nicely into the idea of gift economies creating community connection through the exchange of a very valuable favor: the gift of education. What a great way to encourage the spread of social capital and knowledge! The only thing I would push back on is the use of Yahoo!Groups...mainly because, to me, that has been the most challenging part of the Freecycle structure. Otherwise, awesome and incredible Whuffie making!

Your fan,

Tara Hunt

The silver most whuffie award goes to the members of Community Currency, a superstructure that would redefine the global economy by encouraging both macro and micro economies to develop and trade in alternative and locally relevant currencies.

Dear PAMELA CASH and allies,

Redefining currency is what Whuffie is all about - bringing to light the value of social capital and other less 'tangible' forms of currency. I've been a long supporter of the idea of the GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) replacing the GDP (Gross Domestic Product). What you measure matters In My Opinion. And I think you are bang on here. Much of the direction the world is currently moving in is our focus on money as the only true currency. Bravo to this group for taking to task the worldwide examination of currency, credit and economies. Loads of Whuffie points to you!

Your fan,

Tara Hunt

And finally, the gold most whuffie award goes to the members of THE EXCHANGE, a superstructure that creates new gift economies through social networking.

Dear PlatonicJensen and allies,

What I heart most about this idea is that it taps into the oldest and most essential economy, the gift economy. I agree with the authors that it has been forgotten and buried beneath the everyday. I also give a gold star to the authors for really thinking out this issue: including the oft desire to game these systems. The exchange of favors and the basic needs of people is an incredible way to unite community and ensure collaboration towards a better future. Great use, also, of geo-tagging and mesh networks. HUGE Whuffie points to you!

Your #1 fan,

Tara Hunt 

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Our next Superstruct honor was created and awarded by Bruce Sterling, science fiction author and founder of the VIRIDIAN MOVEMENT for sustainable design.

It’s The Viridian Design Award--for the superstructure that creates the most irresistible demand for sustainable, or "green", design.

Mr. Sterling has decided to honor three superstructures in this category, with a gold, a silver, and a bronze Viridian award. He has written a fan letter to the founders of each.

THE BRONZE VIRIDIAN DESIGN AWARD GOES TO the members of Valuing the Environment, an economic plan that would require countries to back their monetary currencies with environmental assets.

Dear XauriEL,

This idea would have been insane eight months ago and now seems like a headspinning breath of pure oxygen. A sci-fi writer's fave.  Write me after you make your first world-saving billion.  I know some African cellphone bankers who would love to talk to you.

Your fan,

Bruce Sterling

THE SILVER VIRIDIAN DESIGN AWARD GOES TO the members of the Open Fab Initiative, a project that would help struggling local economies switch to a system of open source fabrication.

Dear Captain Hazard,

My heart is with you. I would join this fabbing craftsman's guild in a hot second.  I'm keen to kick in some cogent manufacturing ideas from Torino, Italia. When it comes to beating rising seas and black skies into submission, however, fabbing is a somewhat indirect approach.

Your fan,

Bruce Sterling

AND THE GOLD VIRIDIAN DESIGN AWARD GOES TO the members of Terra Perma, a proposal for a massive virtual world that would tracks real-time weather, climate and species data, in order to empower players to coordinate global sustainable food economies.

Dear the99th,

Among a crowd of "grow your own food" notions, this is the scheme that is both the most visionary and the most practical.  Forget the ancient "think global, act local:" Terra Perma is the digital-native glo-cal initiative.  Redeem the planet by becoming inherently planetary. Map the change you want to see.  Way to go, Terra Perma.  I love your name, too.

Your #1 fan, Bruce Sterling

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Our next Superstruct honor was created and awarded by Warren Ellis, the acclaimed comic book writer and author of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN.

It’s the STRANGESTRUCT AWARD, for the superstructure that takes the most off-the-wall, unexpected, and left-field approach.

The award goes to the members of Insects4Food, a superstructure that would help solve the "peak protein" dilemma by mass manufacturing insect protein for food.

Dear AZAMPAGNA and allies,

Insects4food is the most blatantly obvious and yet completely mental idea I've seen in Superstruct.  Yet another industrialised process runs counter to... pretty much everything on the general green futurist agenda, if not the current track of production economics in specific.

On the other hand, if these factories are going to be laying empty anyway, we don't want a bunch of hippies turning them into gardens or sex boxes or something.  Why shouldn't they be making healthy food out of bugs that would ordinarily be crawling into toilets or babies' cribs in the crumbling inner cities of our doomed future? If this had been around twenty years ago, I probably wouldn't have Creutzfeld-Jakob today.

In any case, any process that helps to stop food from becoming a conflict flashpoint is a good thing. I'm writing this on a day when the United Nations is telling Zimbabwe that it's essentially run out of food to help keep four million of its citizens alive.  I imagine you see where I'm going there.

Just don't tell people it's made from soy and lentils.  That doesn't always end well.

Also, cockroaches are crunchy.

Your fan,Warren Ellis

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Our next Superstruct honor was created and awarded by Chris DiBona, Open Source program manager for GOOGLE.

It’s The Pandora Award--for the superstructure that is such a brilliant idea, once you hear about it, you can't NOT do it.

Mr. DiBona has selected three superstructures to receive Pandora Honors.

The Bronze Pandora Award goes to the members of The Society for Creative Breaking of Shit, a superstructure designed to harness the talents of griefers and hackers for good.

Dear infrarad and allies,

It is likely that the chaos that will visit the world of 2019's will lead to remarkable innovation. Unfortunately that innovation could be self interested to the point of despotic villainy. One counter would be roving bands of chaoticians which disrupt the actions of the evil.

The trick is, of course, deciding who is to be the target of the well meaning mob? The line between good and evil isn't clear when we're talking about directed griefer mobs …

Your fan,

Chris DiBona

The Silver Pandora Award goes to the members of Farm Golf and More, a superstructure designed to invent sustainable sports and create food-producing athletic grounds.

Dear Empiricus, Phil Jones, and allies

Since in the world of 2019 true golf courses will be in severely short supply, those that will remain may lie fallow and tend to return to native flora. To hasten this or to convert these prepared fields to productive use, a golf club. For those pools that were chlorinated pools of summer fun, now abandoned due to the issues surrounding global health, they would make fantastic raceways for populations of fish. With the chorine removed, and protected from predatory birds with netting or the enclosed nature of many such pools, they would be ideal resources for replenishing demolished aquacultures while the worlds oceans recover.</