The Book of Visions

An Encyclopaedia of Social Inventions

Sections

  1. Social Innovations - Past and Present
  2. Children and Education
  3. Relationships
  4. Housing
  5. New Money Systems
  6. Taxation
  7. Unemployment
  8. Economics and Business
  9. Welfare
  10. Crime
  11. Health
  12. Neighbourhood
  13. Environment and Ecology
  14. Quality of Life
  15. Science, Technology and Energy
  16. Transport
  17. Communications
  18. Arts and Leisure
  19. International and Developing World
  20. Peace Schemes
  21. Politics
  22. Spirituality and Cults
  23. Old Age
  24. Death and Dying
  25. Promoting Social Inventions

The full list of ideas is below.

Table of Contents

1. Social Innovations - Past and Present

  1. Ideas Wanted!
  2. The history of social inventions
  3. Who are the social inventors?
  4. A lifetime's work

2. Children and Education

  1. Chanting in pregnancy and childbirth
  2. Prenatal University
  3. Dolphin midwives
  4. Planning for small children
  5. A directory of mothers' rooms
  6. Together time
  7. Magic Circle to enhance children's self-esteem
  8. A cassette for uncomfortable feelings
  9. Co-parents
  10. The British Organisation of Non-Parents
  11. The Parent Network
  12. Toughlove
  13. The Friendship Trust
  14. Bringing hobbies into the school curriculum
  15. Children's courts for school bullies
  16. Children's Ombudsman
  17. A school with its own money, courts and taxation
  18. Schools as model states
  19. UK Youth Parliament
  20. Contract between teenager and parents
  21. Sex education without fuss
  22. Children taking responsibility
  23. Pupil- run businesses at school
  24. Schoolchildren designing own curricula
  25. Pupils pacing themselves
  26. Badge for social responsibility
  27. School pupils earning used bikes
  28. Earning points for adulthood
  29. Forum Theatre - a new way to resolve children's fights
  30. Studying peaceful societies and tribes
  31. Schools social audits
  32. 320 hours per year of community service
  33. Tutoring - of students by students
  34. Homework TV Hotline
  35. 'People They Laughed At' book
  36. School Social Invention Workshops
  37. Innovations Counsellors for teachers and parents
  38. 'O Level' Social Inventions
  39. Voluntary Service Computing
  40. Computerised maths exam centres
  41. The Computer Whizz Kids Club
  42. Computer programming holidays
  43. Unisim
  44. A database of students' best work
  45. Mouth organs for every child
  46. Pathfinder Club
  47. Yoga in schools
  48. Label-challenging games
  49. Student loans repaid by National Insurance contributions
  50. Education on a human scale
  51. Adopt-a-Planet ú1,000 competition
  52. Children's Alliance for Protection of the Environment (CAPE)
  53. Højskole High School
  54. The world does not need successful people

3. Relationships

  1. Relationships - the main research findings
  2. Man-woman brainstorms
  3. The man who found a wife through a large sign outside his house
  4. The Adventure and Romance Agency
  5. Polyfidelity
  6. 88 guidelines for group behaviour
  7. Ending the state's marriage monopoly
  8. The family as a corporate entity
  9. Conversation deepening
  10. Lunch time launchers
  11. Neo-tantric yoga
  12. Bedsits for arguing couples
  13. MDMA - a drug for healing relationships?
  14. Computer Divorce Agreements
  15. Unwedding
  16. Women Welcome Women
  17. Running Sisters
  18. Fostering communities
  19. AIDS - a different view
  20. AIDS treatment self-help
  21. Non-pen friends
  22. Lack of touching leads to violence?
  23. How to introduce a new kitten to an old cat
  24. Practise random kindness and senseless acts of beauty

4. Housing

  1. A social invention that failed
  2. A fund for tenant improvements
  3. Compulsory computerised house selling
  4. Libraries replacing estate agents
  5. Houses for sale with pre-arranged mortgages
  6. Mortgage interest tax relief on second homes
  7. Planning permission for second homes
  8. Sleep in the street before house buying
  9. Women's Building Forum
  10. Pattern Language for community architects
  11. Ten design principles
  12. Crypts and the homeless
  13. Cooperative Land Banks

5. New Money Systems

  1. Money as a social invention
  2. Abundance without money value
  3. Green Dollar LETSystem
  4. The Electric Pound
  5. Energy Dollars
  6. Interest and inflation free money
  7. Depreciating community- owned currencies
  8. The need for regional currencies
  9. Zoo-Zoo Vouchers
  10. Loans that can only be spent at local stores
  11. The Commodity Pound
  12. Private monetary systems and no Bank of England

6. Taxation

  1. No local tax without a say in the allocation
  2. Acknowledging public benefactors
  3. Returning taxes to the neighbourhood
  4. Unitax
  5. Global strategy on resource taxes
  6. Pollution charges
  7. A tax on transport pollution
  8. Tax perks for the company minibus
  9. A voluntary Green Tax
  10. Transitional Basic Income scheme with an optional 'workfare' element
  11. A labour tax
  12. ú50 less tax per new worker
  13. How best to redistribute wealth between regions

7. Unemployment

  1. Workstart Overseas
  2. Housing for the unwaged
  3. A bell rung for job-winners
  4. 'Create', encouraging enterprise through community projects
  5. The Apprentice Alliance
  6. Job Telegrams
  7. Green employment agency
  8. Business students to help unemployed
  9. The unemployed as language ambassadors
  10. Allotments for the unemployed
  11. Compulsory sabbaticals
  12. Thirteen weeks extra paid holiday a year
  13. Compound National Insurance on overtime

8. Economics and Business

  1. How to tame the stock market
  2. Long-term shares
  3. Zero inflation through credit permits for lenders
  4. Community Economics
  5. The Bigness Complex
  6. Humanising corporations
  7. Pendulum arbitration in monopoly services
  8. The Foundation for Appropriate Economic Solutions
  9. A British Mondragon
  10. Financing urban creativity
  11. Mercury - loans to small alternative businesses
  12. The Network for Social Change
  13. The Business Network
  14. Negotiating the difference for charity
  15. Bets to back jobs
  16. Low level Tenure
  17. OwnBase for home-based workers
  18. Interest on late payment of bills
  19. A work credit system for use in businesses
  20. The Direct Charge Co-op Supermarket
  21. Neal's Yard principles
  22. Dean Clough Mills
  23. Displaying bills to shame overchargers
  24. Portfolio Life

9. Welfare

  1. Brokerage and Direct Payment for those with disabilities
  2. By and for those with disabilities
  3. Creativity for those with mental handicaps
  4. Musical soundbeams for the handicapped
  5. Blind receive Guardian newspaper via home computer
  6. Textured paving stones for the blind
  7. 'Barefoot' Social Skills course
  8. Lambeth Caring Houses Trust
  9. A newspaper sold by the homeless
  10. Giving meal coupons to beggars
  11. Flix Club for young girls
  12. Community Caring Fund
  13. Missing people's photos on taxis and shopping bags
  14. Charrier bags
  15. Bed and breakfast money for Oxfam
  16. Auction of Promises: how to raise 16,000 Pounds in one evening
  17. Mandatory A4 introductory appeals

10. Crime

  1. Terrorists with neutron bombs?
  2. Prison incentives in the 18th century
  3. Prisons as ashrams
  4. The Human Kindness Foundation
  5. Prisoners as firemen
  6. Prisoners training dogs for the disabled
  7. Helping prisoners escape
  8. Prisoners translating books
  9. Delinquents into donors
  10. The Guardian Angels
  11. Tube Guardians given half-price season tickets
  12. No riots in small prisons
  13. Small- scale borstal
  14. Ha-Has round jails
  15. Getting help from police stations
  16. Police in wheelchairs
  17. Cardboard police
  18. Language is as individual as fingerprints
  19. Libel in county courts
  20. Glowing disc to cut car theft
  21. The anti-bike thief box
  22. Legalising trade in marijuana seeds only
  23. Community or Penitence Stamps

11. Health

  1. Health Quotients
  2. Consumer audits in the NHS
  3. Improving casualty departments
  4. A model hospital
  5. Hospital earplugs not sleeping pills
  6. Life-saving videos
  7. The four main cot death risks
  8. Self- directed health education for kids
  9. A Currie scale for health warnings
  10. Personal logbooks for patients
  11. Patient's advance request for full information
  12. Art in the doctor's surgery
  13. Promoting Self-Esteem
  14. Aluminium Precaution Notice
  15. Treatment tips
  16. Medical advice by phone
  17. Exercising against backache
  18. First Aider stickers
  19. Black triangles for new medicines
  20. Nurses responsible for individual patients
  21. Wildlife areas around hospitals
  22. Sensorium
  23. Stroke Language
  24. Mirror Image Therapy
  25. Schizophrenic helped by 'flow' happiness theory
  26. Vegetarian diet eases arthritis
  27. Ibogaine as a possible cure for drug addiction?
  28. Concession-rate therapy
  29. Counsellors not GPs
  30. Complementary medicine on the NHS
  31. The Neal's Yard Agency for Personal Development
  32. Stress Addiction
  33. Humour Therapy
  34. The 'Wellness' show
  35. A Mood- Menstrual Diary
  36. A Pre-Menstrual Tension Centre
  37. Birth trauma and social dynamics

12. Neighbourhood

  1. The only real wealth is cultural wealth
  2. Local Distinctiveness
  3. Creating urban parishes
  4. Semi-autonomous parish zones
  5. Community audits
  6. Tackling conflicts within communities
  7. Fighting the council with DTP posters
  8. Neighbourhood corporations
  9. Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation
  10. Neighbourhood Innovations Programme
  11. One thousand pound awards for 'local heroes'
  12. Auctioning honours to community benefactors
  13. Parish secondments
  14. Compulsory community service
  15. Neighbourhood Aid
  16. Neighbourhood wardens
  17. Street wardens for local policing
  18. Elected neighbourhood representatives
  19. Community dreams
  20. The Village Alive Campaign in Finland
  21. Village tool share
  22. Buy a village green
  23. Sholver Rangers
  24. Neighbourly eating
  25. The Unofficial Community Cafe
  26. Cohousing
  27. Sunday Salon
  28. Post- industrial villages around schools
  29. Portobello Road Treasure Hunt
  30. Animated trails
  31. Pavement furniture recycling
  32. Dog's mess bags
  33. Compulsory dog insurance

13. Environment and Ecology

  1. The Council for Posterity
  2. The Rights of Nature
  3. A Declaration of the Rights of Nature
  4. The Natural Step - A National Plan for sustainability
  5. A Global Strategy for Sustainability
  6. A National Trust for the future, run by Third Agers
  7. Software for saving the planet
  8. Act as if you were going to live to be five billion years old
  9. The Laws of Vested Interest
  10. A sunshine limit to growth
  11. Property rights in air and water
  12. From Consumers' to Users' Association
  13. New Consumer
  14. Shopping for a Better World
  15. Postcards to ungreen companies
  16. The Valdez Principles, a Green code of conduct for companies
  17. Wanted: Enemies of the Earth and Greenwar International
  18. Ecology Begins At Home
  19. How Green are YOU?
  20. Avoiding Armageddon by redirecting space debris
  21. Meteor stream key to earth's climate
  22. Satellite-verified incentives to help save the rainforests
  23. The Forest Peoples' Fund
  24. Show Brazilians value of forest
  25. A Botanical Peace Corps
  26. School seeds study for Kew database
  27. Buy an acre of tropical forest
  28. The erosion of civilisations
  29. Saving the planet with gravel dust
  30. The planet fertile for 10,000 years every 100,000 years?
  31. 52 million trees = 1 factory
  32. Free trees from Tree Bank
  33. Mulching better than fertiliser for tree planting
  34. Trees and hippopotami
  35. An Agroforestry vision
  36. The Forest Garden
  37. Non- poisonous slug control
  38. Garlic-absorbing trees for protection from rabbits
  39. Giving gardens to the needy
  40. Six pounds a week to save woodland
  41. Rights for Swedish animals
  42. Getting free range chickens to go outside
  43. A new order of knighthood, the Knights of Gaia
  44. Parishes competing to be ecological guinea pigs
  45. Ecological Village Association
  46. Tuggelite, a Swedish eco- village
  47. Welsh solar village
  48. The Green town of Davis
  49. A Green town for 12,000
  50. Against a free market in agriculture
  51. State support for Organic Agriculture (outside UK)
  52. A charter for agriculture
  53. The Land Heritage Trust
  54. Vetiver grass - a new Green Revolution?
  55. Phosphates will mean the end of cities
  56. Otters to test river purity
  57. Solving the slurry problem
  58. Need for a dual sewage system
  59. Sewage marshes as nature sanctuaries
  60. Converting human sewage into quality fertiliser
  61. The Eco Lavatory
  62. Sweet-smelling food for pigs
  63. Hawthorn hedges on estates
  64. Quiet Zones
  65. Deposits on newspapers
  66. Cow to eat 4.5kg of newsprint daily
  67. Hemp - 'a plant to save the world'?
  68. All containers recycled by law
  69. Recycling with worms
  70. Curitiba - reycling as a popular and heroic activity
  71. Extra waste bins for recyclables for Sheffield households
  72. Mandatory deposits on containers
  73. Incentives to reduce rubbish
  74. Underground street litter containers
  75. Sponsored recyclers
  76. Deposit on car batteries
  77. Energy used to clean old bottles 15 time more than for new
  78. Recycled paper means less trees
  79. Imaginative environmental events
  80. Global ecological alliance
  81. Environmental Legislation Ideas Bank
  82. Save the World Club
  83. A Calendar with 28 day months
  84. Changing the clocks for more daylight

14. Quality of Life

  1. Best ways of measuring quality of life
  2. Assess your own personal quality of life
  3. The Psychology of Happiness
  4. Eccentrics are healthier
  5. Sixty nine non-material needs
  6. JILIAD for measuring happiness
  7. Grading experiences
  8. Prescribing happiness
  9. Family well-being
  10. Neighbourhood quality of life
  11. Quality of life in cities
  12. An Index of Oppression
  13. Quality of life - its underlying philosophy
  14. The International Index of Social Progress
  15. International Human Suffering Index

15. Science, Technology and Energy

  1. True conservatism
  2. Machines on a moral spectrum
  3. Hippocratic Oath for Scientists
  4. UN Declaration of Scientific Responsibility in Relation to Nuclear Weaponry
  5. Reward the invention, not the feasibility study
  6. Necessity not the mother of invention
  7. Psychedelics caused evolution from apes?
  8. A twentieth century Mendel?
  9. Ecotechnology Research
  10. Rebates to customers reducing electricity consumption
  11. Energy loans
  12. Fluorescent lamps changed free of charge
  13. Less towel washing in hotels
  14. Muscle power into electricity
  15. Science Fiction - can it work?
  16. Can life survive the end of the universe?

16. Transport

  1. Smart Cars, a proposal for a radically new transport system
  2. Fuel from water
  3. Solving London's traffic problems
  4. Bar codes on sides of cars
  5. Compulsory travel passes for university students
  6. Paying drivers to car- pool
  7. Car Sharers' Credit Card Club
  8. Auctioning the right to have cars
  9. Speeding up the Piccadilly line to Heathrow
  10. Faster tube platforms
  11. Improving trains for babies and children
  12. Cars piggybacked onto juggernauts
  13. Insurance sold with petrol
  14. Oil company buys up old cars to clear smog
  15. Auctioning unsold airline tickets
  16. Better express coach network
  17. Roof roads
  18. Services under pavements not roads
  19. Neighbourhood car rental (Berlin)
  20. Town-Welcome Lay-bys
  21. Compass bearings on signs
  22. Car-free cycling
  23. Non-impotence- causing bike seats
  24. Bike with wheelchair on front
  25. Hitch-hiker safety postcards
  26. Hitch-hikers' raffle tickets
  27. Tips from California
  28. Eye signs on the road
  29. Pedestrians crossing roads on sleeping policemen

17. Communications

  1. Diffusion of social inventions
  2. Innovation Diffusion Game
  3. The Encyclopedia of 13,167 World Problems
  4. Reinventing your metaphoric habitat
  5. Problem maps like star maps
  6. How are the Institute's forecasts for the nineties getting on?
  7. New Paradigms Newsletter
  8. Social forecasts
  9. Better World Society
  10. Greensat
  11. Fifteen hours of quality ITV per week
  12. Advertising checklist - Social Desirability Ratings (SDR)
  13. A tax to discourage unapproved ads
  14. Microfiche Publishing
  15. Translation by phone in 140 la