While not on the Death Star in this scene from "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980), Darth Vader would no doubt support a petition to build such a planet-obliterating weapon. (AP)

The Obama administration just tried to pull an Obi-Wan Kenobi on the American people.

“This is not the petition response you’re looking for,” writes Paul Shawcross of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Shawcross, who heads the Science and Space branch of OMB, gave a digital wave of his hand to a petition that the government begin construction of a Death Star by 2016. The petition, signed by more than 34,000 supporters, was rejected for three key reasons, according to Shawcross: The estimated cost would be in the neighborhood of $850 quadrillion dollars; the Obama administration is against blowing up planets; and the construction of a planet-obliterating weapon with a fundamental flaw — it “can be exploited by a one-man starship,” after all — isn’t something officials would want to “spend countless taxpayer dollars on.”

Let’s take on each of these reasons, shall we?

Cover of the Economist for the week of Jan. 12, 2013. (The Economist)

This piece has been updated.

The cover story for this week’s Economist is on one of our favorite topics: the debate over the state of innovation — whether its slowing down, speeding up and what it means for economic growth.

In the grand tradition of the magazine, the authors are anonymous, but there are two pieces on the debate over whether innovation has slowed. The shorter of the two asserts that we have yet to develop “an invention half as useful as” the toilet, going on to state that “the biggest danger” to the fast-flowing juices of innovation in the 21st century is government. The second, longer piece is a tour of the current debate over whether innovation and new technology have stopped fueling growth. The conclusion: take claims that innovation and new technology are no longer fueling economic growth with a grain of salt. The innovation engine continues to churn, just not in the way it once did.

A patron of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum views the plaques of inducted members during induction weekend on July 24, 2010 in Cooperstown, New York. (Jim McIsaac - GETTY IMAGES)

If you buy into Ray Kurzweil's vision of the Singularity, then the future is a marvelous place where we’re all physically- and mentally-enhanced and living longer than ever. Technology and biology will have merged in a way that makes us all somehow more than human, freeing us from our physical limitations and transforming our brains into incredibly powerful computing machines. The only problem with that narrative is that there are certain forms of “human enhancement” that society may never accept.

This film image released by Columbia Pictures shows a scene from "Zero Dark Thirty," directed by Kathryn Bigelow. (AP)

We may never know, in perfect detail, what happened during the hunt for and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden, as film director Kathryn Bigelow confessed during the Washington, D.C., premiere of “Zero Dark Thirty” on Tuesday night. There is still information that, at least for the foreseeable future, will remain hidden from view, always behind a whispering veil of secrecy.

But in the age of the Internet, that whisper sounds a little different – a little louder, perhaps — than it might have sounded in the past. Today, we are used to having information available at our fingertips on just about everything. Rarely can the word “data” be said without the word “big” directly in front of it. Even the former director of the CIA learned the hard way that it is all but impossible to keep anything online secret for very long.

Watching the Academy Award-nominated film, directed by Bigelow of “Hurt Locker” fame and based on the screenplay by investigative reporter Mark Boal, it occurred to me that this transformation in our outlook on access to information has probably altered the nature of mythology.

A screenshot of Betterific featuring a new look the team expects to deploy by the end of the day Wednesday. The site, which is still in beta, prompts users to complete the phrase "Wouldn't it be better if..." with their own ideas. (Screenshot)

It’s the question that rolls of your tongue whenever you encounter a situation where inefficiency, poor design or mere lack of foresight gets between you and what you want to accomplish.

“Wouldn’t it be better if ... ” you mumble to yourself. Customer feedback forms are where these ideas usually go — often to die. That’s assuming they make it to the form at all. More often than not, we figuratively and sometimes literally roll over. We accept that a product or system is less than perfect, adjusting or accommodating for the imperfection.

But what if there were a central repository for those ideas — a constructive outlet for the frustrated whisper to ourselves or off-handed thoughts shared with friends? And what if that repository was home to a community that could recommend some ideas over others? In other words, wouldn’t it be better if your ideas for innovations (could this be more up our alley?) — whether they be simple or complex — had a place not only to live but, perhaps, to thrive?

A new platform called Betterific seeks to provide just this type of home. Users can join via Facebook, Twitter or e-mail and enter their ideas, submitting them to the community for a Reddit-style up-or-down vote. The site was started by Micha Weinblatt and co-founders Brad Cater and Jonathan Schilit. Weinblatt and I, in the interest of full disclosure, are both members of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers community.