Last week TED announced their much-anticipated “City 2.0” project, the recipient of the 2012 TED Prize. City 2.0, The Atlantic states, is “a kind of global Wikipedia connecting citizens, political leaders, urban experts, companies, and organizations, with the goal of improving the 21st century city using up-to-the-minute crowdsourcing techniques.” Sounds pretty cool! But wait –Read… Read more »
Here is the talk I gave at TEDxBigApple a few weeks ago, The Disruptive Future of Cities. I had a great time giving this talk. Would love to do more like this one. Give it a watch and let me know what you think. Tweet Original post
I know there are all sorts of noteworthy IPOs making the news this week, but the OTHER news item that’s filling the papers, and the one I felt like blogging about here, is the news about DRONES. Drones are everywhere suddenly: first, one drops out of the sky in Iran, then one does the sameRead… Read more »
If your business revolves around charging people money to deliver their messages by hand over a period of days, how do you survive in a world where anyone can send anyone else a message for free instantaneously? That’s the question the U.S. Postal Service has been worriedly asking itself as it gazes into the mirrorRead… Read more »
There’s a fantastic article in Wired this month about The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin. It’s a great read and a well-written article, but reading it one gets the sense that Bitcoin failed, and all of the P2P currency experiment has failed with it. Paul Krugman dismisses it, a consultant calls it a pyramid scheme,Read… Read more »
Last week (or was it the week before?) I blogged about what I see as a big problem with the issue of global warming: contextualizing it as something “global” instead of local. When you frame something as global, it becomes nobody’s problem. When you frame it as local, it becomes everyone’s problem. I suggested weRead… Read more »
Question: why don’t people talk more about climate change? It seems to me like something that should be a constant topic of conversation these days, especially given that 2010 was the biggest year ever for global CO2 output, exceeding the worst scenarios scientists had concocted. Yet whenever I bring it up – on Twitter, withRead… Read more »
“3d printing is even more disruptive than you’re giving it credit for.” So says Kevin Kwok of Yale University, in a comment on Wednesday’s post about MakerBot and 3D printing. Kevin is totally right, which is why I had to write a follow-up post. In Wednesday’s post I was focusing on how 3D printing mayRead… Read more »
I don’t think many people are looking at MarkerBot right now and thinking “Oh my God, that is an insanely disruptive company.” But they should be. MakerBot is the Brooklyn-based startup that makes open source 3D printers. 3D printers are “printers” that you can print physical, three-dimensional objects with. Objects like plastic busts of people’sRead… Read more »
Those of us who like to think about city-scale innovation also like to think that it is somehow going to lead us away from our carbon-abusing ways towards a new world of sustainability. Well I’ve got some bad news: it’s not. Sorry to say it. Civic innovation and “smart city” technology is going to doRead… Read more »