Scales

With my new found mistrust for big business, and my ever present thirst for a new computer project to work on, I have been working on a new idea.

I am concerned that it may be too ambitious, but it also feels like something that should exist. Whenever I feel that way, normally I mull it over so long, that I watch someone else launch it and get famous.. but at least I am satisfied that I thought of it first :)

The idea was born from the website I reported awhile back that gives out free research information on personal care products like toothpaste and deodorant. It tells you every questionable ingredient and what it might do to you. Unfortunately, the website doesn't make it super easy to get to the information, and doesn't provide any easy way to save a personal list of products to refer back to later.

Also, my reading lately has touched on many other areas where the products we buy may be causing various types of strife in the world (environmental, working conditions, etc).

I thought, wouldn't it be so useful if people could set their own preferences for what types of variables were of relative importance to them (e.g. price, safety, environmental impact), and then could rate all of the products in a given category based on their own values. Wow. That could have such an impact.

One thing I have come to believe is that big companies are only beholden to one boss - their customers. It is mainly customers and their demands that cause business to change their behavior. Government regulation and the outcries of activists seem to have had little impact due to the greater impact of political lobbying and giant marketing budgets.

As it is now, customers in a super market have only price and brand awareness to compare products on the shelf. What if they had 5 other ratings marked on the shelves? What if those ratings were automatically averaged out to fit the values of the customer?

I think that both the information and the technology exist to make this possible, and it's only the will to build it and the will to use it that remain to be seen.