August 2011
2 posts
douchebags drove the evolution of mobile networks
This is why you’re gonna buy my book:
In particular, it was - to put it frankly, the douchebags of the world - Wall Street Bankers in New York, politicans in Washington, and the entertainment magnates of Hollywood whose incessant, infantile need for constant communication pushed the capacity of analog cellular networks to their limits.
So much for shitty first drafts. :)
Sao Paulo is Bizarro Seoul
Something about Sao Paulo felt so familiar, like I’d been there before. The physical landscape is almost identical to Seoul - 80s/90s/00s high rise and malls interspersed with 60s/70s/80s concrete slab factories, shantytowns and anonymous housing blocks.
But something felt so different - think about it:
they are on opposite sides of the globe, almost 180 degrees of longitude and latitude...
July 2011
2 posts
Top 10 Reasons Why Hoboken is Better Than Brooklyn
There’s a million other things I should be writing right now, but I couldn’t resist the Independece Day inspiration to explain how I declared independence from New York City this year and why I’m glad I did. It was a tough decision to strike out westward from Manhattan into New Jersey, instead of the usual eastward trajectory for over-educated, liberal DInCs like my wife and I, but in the end...
May 2011
1 post
my 1995 homage to leon panetta
during the move i unearthed an Anthony Townsend riding the Rutgers College bus 1995 special.
leon panetta
i want to buy you a drink
i’d like to sit in our suits
your fine suit tailored to your fine job
and mine to mine
yet we’d say the same things
and after 3 or 4 drinks
i’d have you whipped into a frenzy of youthful rebellion
then i’d stop stark and ask you…
where did you lose your...
February 2011
1 post
“Men and women in the prime of their professional lives, who may have been...”
– US defense secretary Gates
January 2011
1 post
“Even as Goldman takes a stake in Facebook, its employees may struggle to view...”
– http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/goldman-invests-in-facebook-at-50-billion-valuation
November 2010
2 posts
Where's the literature of this lost generation?
This caught my eye in the NYT today, because it sounded like a preamble to a review of a a host of books from left-behind, trodden-on, excluded authors:
The United States grew more quickly than Europe in recent decades, but many of the gains flowed to a small slice of the population. Median household income, adjusted for inflation, actually fell from 2000 to 2007 — and has fallen more since the...
1 tag
Cloud Robotics - faster than the human nervous...
Chatting with some robotics experts, asking about the potential for centralizing robotic intelligence. One points out that the r/t time from a robot’s sensor to a data center on the other side of the country is on the order of 100ms. That’s just a tiny bit faster than the time it takes you to react to touching a hot object.
August 2010
1 post
“Almost every second government official in Chisinau will say proudly that...”
– Why is Moldova Poor and Economically Volatile? - Moldova Foundation
July 2010
3 posts
“In Chişinău fleets of BMWs and Mercedes dominate traffic, while fashionably...”
– Chişinău,Moldova-Lonely Planet
“When I go out and give speeches, the title of my speech is “The Case Against...”
– Carl Hiaasen on Human Weirdness | 40th Anniversary | Smithsonian Magazine
“There is no intrinsic contradiction between providing additional fiscal stimulus...”
– Op-Ed Columnist - Myths of Austerity - NYTimes.com
June 2010
1 post
“There was, indeed, an odd orderliness about many of the presentations, not least...”
– Green.view: How to be urban | The Economist
May 2010
3 posts
“Despite the clarity of the ruling, any declaration that gene patents are dead is...”
– Sitting up and taking notice : Nature Biotechnology : Nature Publishing Group
did i predict the recession?
i wrote this in a public study on 28-42 year olds I did for the CEO of The Learning Channel in 2006. The bit in bold, is I think, pretty damn prescient:
Decisions about the material world define another unique set of needs, desires, and concerns for people in this stage of life. In their 20s, lifestyle choices dominated decision- making. As they settle into Slambrosia, and become less highly...
“The US Pavilion, however, honors none of these themes or stories. As many...”
– An Epic Failure of Planning: The World Expo and the US Pavilion | Planetizen
April 2010
3 posts
“In other words, the genetic code is the inevitable consequence of affinities...”
– Self-starter: Life got going all on its own - life - 21 April 2010 - New Scientist
“There is evidence that in periods of economic expansion people smoke and drink...”
– The real reason Swedes live longer - Features, Health & Families - The Independent
“This week’s disruption of international air traffic, because of volcanic...”
– HP, Cisco step up their rivalry with recent acquisitions - San Jose Mercury News
January 2010
1 post
“The fish farmers who serve the $45-million-a-year industry here were already...”
– Freeze Threatens Florida’s Tropical Fish
October 2009
1 post
“Last weekend was a reminder that, tough as it may be to meet the tight schedule...”
– http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1931162,00.html
September 2009
7 posts
Aha! Time to Crash!
on the same day the hearings on safety of texting while driving start in DC, this app launches “Unique “65MPH” interface provides key information that can be reviewed at-a-glance (with large, consistent touch areas, much like car radio preset buttons)” http://www.ahamobile.com/
“Virtual reality is primarily a horse power problem; ubiquitous computing is a...”
– Marc Weiser and John Seely Brown
train stations should have offices and factories...
train stations should have offices and factories in them. the Paris (RATP) is looking at putting hot desk offices into the Metro. should we also have small-scale 3-d printing factories there? (see http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/jamais-cascio/open-future/material-issue)
there could be positive economic development and reduced carbon footprint to centralizing telework and micro-manufacturing
a little more on blended design
For instance, this field might draw upon Kevin Lynch’s concepts of urban “imageability” as well as Weiser’s “calm computing” to frame design directions for ubicomp wayfinding applications that are more subtle and nuanced than the crude augmented reality overlays of maps on a viewfinder in contemporary prototypes.
“Instead of working to build a great company or discover a new invention, too...”
– Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=afUc9qZbB5m8
why One Web Day matters
we’re here in the park for breakout listening to some speakers talk about cool web projects in the middle of a park. One Web Day is happening everywhere, but the reason it really matters is because its all about taking the web back for the people, and not letting the planning of the web and its infrastructure be dominated by corporations, governments and others. we’re trying to make...
"therapeutic cities" - a framework for linking...
just a wee fragment of an idea - “therapeutic cities” as a framework for places that heal their residents and the larger ecosytems they are a part of.
———-
Health will become a factor in nearly every decision made by megacity inhabitants of the future. As responses to global warming become more widespread, individuals will merge the two concerns, linking decisions...
August 2009
4 posts
Breakout beta session report
today we had the third “beta” Breakout session, where our team and friends are trying out this concept of working in public in NYC.
we planned on using the new street plaza at Madison Squar, but early rain scared us off to the cafe at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. note to self: when using this location in the future, bring a sweatshirt, cause its ICE COLD.
we tested out the...
“Back in May, Britain’s national weather service, the Met Office, got...”
– http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2009/08/the-laughing-gas-menace-and-other-science-news.html
WSJ and NYT disagree on future of corporate R&D
So do I place bigger bets on fewer internal ideas, or source more outside ideas so I have more projects to pursue internally?
NYT, on HP as a model:
Though hardly alone, Hewlett-Packard has aggressively adopted that approach in the last two years, after Prith Banerjee became the senior vice president for research. Under Mr. Banerjee, former dean of engineering at the University of Illinois at...
future of education
“We’re still in a brick-and-mortar, 30-students-to-1-teacher paradigm,” Mr. Habermehl said, “but we need to get out of that framework to having 200 or 300 kids taking courses online, at night, 24/7, whenever they want.”
NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/education/09textbook.html
July 2009
1 post
Cancelling Boingo cause they wont disclose...
Grrr Boingo. overseas roaming charges - you can see your session location and duration in “View Usage” and the total roaming charge per day in an “Invoice View” but not the actual roaming charges per session per location like a cell phone provider. Sorry, but I’m not guessing at roaming rates. Bye Boingo.
June 2009
4 posts
location sharing will get a lot more complicated...
Reading Eric Laurier’s “Why people say where they are during mobile phone calls” and thinking about FourSquare, and realizing that as people become more mobile in general, and positioning tools become more accurate, and route planning tools more sophisticated, location-sharing will actually get MORE complicated, not LESS.
...
netbook dropbox hack: sync your downloads folder
get Dropbox
create a “Netbook Downloads” folder in it
change where your browser dumps its downloads to
voila, everything you download while on the netbook will be there on your other machines. no more sneakernet
“So here is the principle that now guides my fish-eating: I graze at the middle...”
– Taras Grescoe - http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/the-seafood-eaters-latest-conundrum/
working on today...
article for Science on future of research parks • piece for Blue Economy on defining the “oceanspace” industry (& outlining possible Lulu book) • jury duty
May 2009
16 posts
first impressions of the Dell 10v netbook
ubuntu launches with a 6 step time zone/keyboard selection etc that is not documented in either Inspiron setup guide or the Ubuntu Quick Start guide
either i have a stuck ‘9’ key or the keyboard driver is screwy cause i get random 9s a lot except for a little bit after i press 9
was able to get on my airport wlan about 2 minutes after opening the box (not including the time puzzling...
can we bring batch processing queues for PCs?
why dont we have good GUIs for batch queues on our PCs? i often like to do thinkgs like import pictures from the web to my iphoto library that are CPU-intensive and can mean a 20-30 second interruption of my workflow. i would love to just be able to queue the requests which would then get executed as a batch, say when i go to the bathroom or stop work for lunch.
“And even if it’s true, isn’t saying that private investment (in...”
– my colleague, ranting (in regards to http://www.heritage.org/Research/InternetandTechnology/images/bg1361cht3.gif)
“As the continuing financial doldrums temper the appetite of traditional private...”
– Nature Biotechnology 27, 403 - 404 (2009). Corporate venture funds chase early-stage deals, Peter Mitchell
great example of the NYT's incompetent reporting
NYT echoing credit card companies spin - that they need to raise fees on people who pay their bills on time, cause they are getting a free ride the companies cant afford anymore.
BULLSHIT! people who pay off their credit card bills on time provide lots of revenues to credit card companies - every time they swipe the card, the issuing bank charges the merchant a nice little processing fee.
NYT...
living in the cloud
in preparation for my new Dell 10v netbook (shipping in a week or so), i’ve been accelerating the virtualization of almost everything on my laptop. here’s how it works
email - Apple Mail IMAP sync to Gmail
business data (address book, calendar, etc.) - sync to Google contacts/cal using BusySync
project files & folders - everything lives in a single “Current...
Dell customer service complete fail
all i want to do is change the OS on the netbook i ordered 2 days ago, which doesnt have a ship date for over a month (brand new model)
first i try the web, no ability to change/cancel
then i try email - 3 emails to tech support over 3 days ends in “you have to call the sales department monday, after 8am CDT)” cmon… central time?
5 minutes i get to someone who says “you...
well ahead on writing the future of tech-based...
after 4 days of furious writing, i’m nearly done with the introduction and trends. tomorrow i’ll hit the Jelly at World Financial Center to shake up my routine a little and dive into the scenarios, and polish up the trends. feel like i have a great foundation of future trends, signals from today’s world of those futures and impacts on research parks and regional development. the...
long walk to 34th st and back to clear my head. get back and see that a version of my research parks forecast is already coming true - a business incubator in Cambridge, Mass. is evolving itself by opening a co-working space inside itself, which is potentially becoming a hub for itinerant angel investors. (Thanks @smallbizlabs for the...
biology is not I.T.
understanding, for the first time and fully, just how fundamentally differently the whole bio-industrial complex is going to develop vs. the I.T. industry. culturally, financially, technologically and spatially they are as different as night and day.
interrupting my own radio silence to report that...
“we serve the long tail for research and devleopment space - the 1 and 2 person companies exploiting lightweight scientific tools: cloud computing, desktop genomics, and rapid prototyping”
remembering solomillo
the first morning after i arrived in Valencia, i slept in after a kind night of re-engaging with Spanish tapas culture, and woke up shortly before noon. i had to be somewhere at 2 so i quickly found a place to eat and it turned out to be perfect. daily menu (and i love the idea of restaurants only having one or two things on their “menu del dia”, cause you know that means they’ll...