Michael Delfs

Is the City Solvable?

2011-02-19T11:27:00.000-08:00

Link to a reply I made recently to an article on the Urban Omnibus site regarding the NYTimes article on Geoffrey West, a physicist who has been exploring statistical methods of analyzing cities.

There's plenty of derision in the community of Urbanists regarding West's work. Much of it is well-deserved, in particular his ludicrous claims to have discovered the laws underlying all cities when what he has really uncovered are statistical correlations between size and various indicators of efficiency.

The more important issue relates to how we seek to understand cities. Fifty years ago, Jane Jacobs wrote about cities as problems of organized complexity, analogous to the problems of understanding complex biological organisms facing the Life Sciences. Unfortunately, most city planners and theorists approach cities as either simple problems of cause and effect (like elementary mechanics with simple mathematical solutions) or as problems of disorganized complexity (like thermodynamics, amenable to statistical analysis). Because they misunderstand the nature of the problem, they end up with wrong solutions. What is needed, posited Jacobs, is to approach the study of cities in a manner similar to how the Life Sciences have approached the study of biological organisms.

Unfortunately, hasn't been much progress. Have a century after Jacobs published "The Life and Death of Great American Cities," the study of cities is still largely dominated by architects and social scientists. Much good work has been done, but "we have hardly made the sort of progress that the life sciences have over the last fifty years in developing a practical and useful understanding of the complex systems that make up urban life."

(For an excerpt from Jane Jacob's writing on organized complexity, go here.)

Egypt's Urban Challenge

2011-02-16T05:56:00.001-08:00

More evidence of the groundswell rising around cities in this NYTimes article about Egypt's urbanization. The only major country in the world to see it's urbanization level decline over the last 30 years (from 44% to 43%, compared to East Asia which increased from 26% to 50% over the same time), Egypt faces the challenge of revitalizing its urban centres. The article argues that this will be a key to getting the Egyptian economy back on track.

Living PlanIT

2011-02-11T03:16:00.000-08:00

Interesting article in Fast Company about Living PlanIT, the technology company trying to create an "urban operating system" and building a city in Portugal to try it out.

They're doing some very interesting stuff - and a lot of the same things we're looking at in India. Their approach to the construction industry is particularly interesting, and potentially transformative. I also agree with Eccles' analysis towards the end that architects and urban planners are missing the boat by not engaging with the business and technology community.

However, as interesting as their ideas are, I think the city as operating system idea goes too far when you start thinking that the technology platform is the raison d'être of the city. People come together in urban agglomerations as a part of much larger and much more fundamental social and economic transformations. There are only a few places in the world today with the sort of growth and change going on to feasibly talk about building new cities -- China, India, a few places in Africa... the list is pretty short and it doesn't include western Europe.

Learning to Live With Climate Change

2011-02-09T03:21:00.000-08:00

Very thought-provoking article from Wired a couple of years ago regarding the futility of trying to stop climate change. Basic idea is that we've already gone too far. The amount of emissions in the air is already so high that climate change is inevitable. Throw in the political inability to make the sort of massive changes in behavior that would be required just to stabilize, let alone reduce our emissions, and we need to start planning for how to cope with the different climate.

Random Post: Yun Jung-Hee

2011-02-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

Loved this article about South Korean actress Yun Jung-Hee in the NYTimes. Gorgeous piece of writing about her newest movie, Poetry, and her career, which spanned 330 films from 1967-1994. This is her first movie since retiring in '94.

She plays a pensioner struggling to learn to write poetry while suffering the onset of dementia.

“To Mi-ja, writing poems is important because she’s discovering the meaning of the world,” Mr. Lee [the director] said. “The paradox of her life is that she’s leaving the world and forgetting the words.”

The Cities Programme at LSE

2010-09-19T07:14:00.000-07:00

Starting the Masters program in City Design and Social Science at LSE on the 27th. What exactly is "City Design and Social Science"? Good question. Here's an interview with the director of the Cities Programme (with an extra "-me" because it's in London), Dr. Fran Tonkiss.

The key takeway:

"There are two ways of understanding our commitment to the concept of city design. Firstly and most simply, our approach differs from an idea of urban design as primarily concerned with the public realm, or with ‘the space between buildings’. While such spaces form part of our focus, our interest is less with specific design interventions than with larger processes of city-making, not only through the practice of design but through policy and planning, the economics of development, and environmental and infrastructure strategies. This links to the second point, which is the defining character of the Cities Programme approach: our central concern with the relationship between the social and the physical production of urban space. For us, cities are always understood as social as well as physical forms. The two parts of the equation are equally important: the focus on city design as an integrated process, and the value of social science – sociology, economics, geography, planning and public policy – in the analysis of how cities are made, and how they can be made better."

3rd Ward

2010-07-03T21:44:00.000-07:00

Very cool article in the NYTimes about an urban artisans collective in Brooklyn called 3rd Ward. Communal design and fabrication facilities, classes, studio space. Amazing for both the creative community it's brought together and also that it's become a successful business model. Would this work in Mumbai??

Paul Romer: Charter Cities

2010-06-30T01:32:00.000-07:00

About Paul Romer's concept of Charter Cities - autonomous regions in developing countries administered by a foreign nation. Roughly analogous to Hong Kong under British rule.

Why We Hate HR

2010-06-30T00:13:00.000-07:00

A sentiment I can generally agree with.

Apple's Secret Sauce

2010-06-29T23:39:00.001-07:00

The ingredients that make Apple the best company in the world (and have everyone trying to imitate them). From Fast Company.

2010-04-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

Innovation in emerging economies is the next big business revolution, from The Economist. Also see their special report on the topic.

Long Cycles and the Start of a New Golden Age

2010-03-21T22:07:00.000-07:00

Thought this article by Mark Stahlman in Strategy + Business was fascinating. It says that:

- We're in the middle of a 60-year technology cycle.
- The last 30 years have been all about investment and deployment of technology.
- The current crash is a typical phenomenon that happens mid-cycle when financial speculation runs too hot
- The next phase of the cycle is a "golden age" of technological adoption and maturity

Please read it and let me know what you think.

2010-02-22T21:51:00.000-08:00

Cool article in Newsweek about the emerging field of cultural neuroscience. Researchers are using brainscans to identify the ways people from different cultures process information. Some commonly recognized cultural values are directly reflected in the brain areas people from those cultures use to process different types of information -- recognizing people, concepts of self and group, even doing math.

Hyperlocal Urban Development

2010-02-03T20:44:00.000-08:00

Very cool blog post from Allison Arieff in the NYTimes.com site. Describes urban planners using GIS to identify abandoned, publicly-owned spaces in San Francisco and plan for their re-development.

"Looking through this lens also enables us to think about infrastructure in a new way. The era of massive, expensive, centralized projects like the Big Dig in Boston has passed. “Now, with the ability to model dynamic systems, we can show a much more decentralized collection of resources could provide greater benefit,” de Monchaux says. “If, in the 19th century, it was a biological metaphor that fueled the creation of Central and Golden Gate parks, the idea that a city needs hearts and lungs to grow, there’s now a networked metaphor. The city is a dense network of relationships. The best way to provide infrastructure is to not go in with a meat ax but to practice urban acupuncture, finding thousands of different spots to go into.”"

High End R&D Increasingly Coming to India

2010-01-31T22:43:00.000-08:00

Major multinationals (MNCs) have rapidly increased the scale of their R&D operations in India. See this brief description from Rediff.com Business.

India vs. China - Which is stronger after the recession?

2010-01-31T04:11:00.001-08:00

Yup. I agree with this article in Time Magazine's online edition. Although India's recovery in the last year has been slightly less spectacular then China's, I think the underlying growth here is much more sustainable.

Darwinian Economics

2009-07-13T21:45:00.000-07:00

Cornell Prof. Robert Frank blogs in the NYTimes about the economic lessons in Darwin's theories of evolution. Frank contends that Darwin provides a better framework for understanding competition than Adam Smith's Invisible Hand concept:

Smith’s basic idea was that business owners seeking to lure customers away from rivals have powerful incentives to introduce improved product designs and cost-saving innovations. These moves bolster innovators’ profits in the short term. But rivals respond by adopting the same innovations, and the resulting competition gradually drives down prices and profits. In the end, Smith argued, consumers reap all the gains.
The central theme of Darwin’s narrative was that competition favors traits and behavior according to how they affect the success of individuals, not species or other groups. As in Smith’s account, traits that enhance individual fitness sometimes promote group interests. For example, a mutation for keener eyesight in hawks benefits not only any individual hawk that bears it, but also makes hawks more likely to prosper as a species.
In other cases, however, traits that help individuals are harmful to larger groups. For instance, a mutation for larger antlers served the reproductive interests of an individual male elk, because it helped him prevail in battles with other males for access to mates. But as this mutation spread, it started an arms race that made life more hazardous for male elk over all. The antlers of male elk can now span five feet or more. And despite their utility in battle, they often become a fatal handicap when predators pursue males into dense woods.

(Image from NYTimes.com)

Chimerican Relations

2009-07-02T21:40:00.001-07:00

David Brooks reports on a debate over the relationship between China and America. Niall Ferguson takes a hawkish view about the ambitions of a power-hungry China. James Fallows argues that China's interests are oriented towards internal stability and integration with the global economy -- not world domination.

I agree strongly with Fallows, and the psychology argument that Brooks highlights is the key. China doesn't want to rule the world. It does want respect and security... and it wants to be very, very successful. But given those things, Chinese psychology doesn't call for it to dominate other nations the way German or Japanese psychology did in the 20th century.

Afraid of the Dark

2009-05-21T00:05:00.000-07:00

Cool article in another NYTimes.com blog -- this time by Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert -- discussing the psychological connection between uncertainty and unhappiness. He says the hardest part of the current economic recession is not knowing what's going to happen. Counterintuitively, knowing things will be bad makes us happier than knowing there is a possibility they will be good. In his words:

Why would we prefer to know the worst than to suspect it? Because when we get bad news we weep for a while, and then get busy making the best of it. We change our behavior, we change our attitudes. We raise our consciousness and lower our standards. We find our bootstraps and tug. But we can’t come to terms with circumstances whose terms we don’t yet know. An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait.

This is closely related to something I heard (and believe), about the relationship between psychological stress and control over a situation. Things can be bad, but as long as feel we have control over the situation, we aren't too stressed. Conversely, it's when we feel things are out of our control that we experience stress. A useful application of this principal in my own life is to look at any situation, and try to understand what things you can control and what things you can't... then accept the things you can't control and only worry about the ones you can.

(image by Shoboshobo)

Fascinating: The Underlying Math of Cities

2009-05-19T22:53:00.000-07:00

In a post on Olivia Judson's blog for the NYTimes, Leon Kreitzman discusses the hidden patterns mathematics has identified in the efficiency of cities.

He talks about Zipf's Law -- that city size in a nation is inversely proportional to rank (i.e. the biggest city is 2X as large as the 2nd-biggest, and 3X as large as the third biggest) -- and the way cities get more efficient as they get bigger. A topic also covered here, and a trait that is shared not just by cities, but also by mammals.

The similarities between cities and mammals are particularly interesting because they highlight the fact that cities and animals are in some ways both organisms. Mammals are collections of cells and organs organized through evolution to perpetuate life (ignoring for the moment, more lofty potential explanations). Cities are collections of individuals and infrastructure organized through society to enhance productivity and growth. Makes one wonder what the relevant organs correspond to in a city. I've always heard people say City Hall is full of assholes.

(Image above by Lee Jang Sub)

The Virtues of Ex-Patriotism

2009-05-17T23:56:00.000-07:00

Article in The Economist: living abroad makes you more creative.

All tied up

2009-05-17T20:30:00.001-07:00

Very detailed article in the NYTimes yesterday about Tim Geithner and the economic relationship between the U.S. and China. It's a bit on the long side, but worth a read if you're interested in the issue.

Some of the key points that jumped out at me:

Obama officials believe China's recent job losses are more than the 20 million officially estimated. Not terribly surprising, but it suggests the Chinese economy may be weaker than generally recognized.
Good insight about China's aggressive stance towards the U.S. being "more to soothe a domestic audience" than a sign of actual policy. In other words, the Chinese government is are more worried about social unrest than anything else, and if things get really bad for them domestically, they are prepared to blame their economic problems on the U.S.

The Story of Our Lives

2009-05-13T00:10:00.000-07:00

An amazing story in The Atlantic about the Harvard Study of Adult Development (aka the Grant Study). In 1937, researchers identified 268 of the healthiest and most well-adjusted sophomore men at Harvard University (including the future President Kennedy), and they've followed their lives over the last 72 years.

The results breathtakingly illustrate just how complex our lives are. Highly recommend you take the time to read it. It's a pretty unique vantage point onto the human condition.

Changing the Rules of the Game

2009-05-12T23:58:00.000-07:00

Good article from Gladwell in the New Yorker about how disadvantaged competitors win by changing the way the game is played. Takes examples from basketball (the full court press), military history and the biblical story of David & Goliath. The most interesting point isn't that obvious one, i.e. that weaker competitors can still win if they find new ways to compete, it's just how often they win when they adopt this strategy.

Looking at the military history of battles between seriously outmatched opponents, political scientist Ivan Arreguin-Toft found that when the underdogs adopted novel strategies, they increased their likelihood fo winning from 28.5 to 63.6 percent. Not bad considering he defined underdogs as groups whose opponents were at least ten times stronger in terms of armed might and population.

One for the City-Dwellers

2009-04-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

Interesting fact: cities are the most environmentally-friendly form of living. This post from the NYTimes blog discusses recent statistics showing that urban areas have lower per capita carbon emissions than either suburban or rural areas.

It's counterintuitive when you think about all the pollution in cities, but the average city lives in a smaller home, tends to take public transportation and shares services with more of neighbors. Outside of cities, people live in larger homes (which need to be heated and cooled) and use more energy transporting themselves around.

A nice quote from Ed Gleaser at Harvard sums it up: "“If you want to take good care of the environment, stay away from it and live in cities.”

Wanted: New Models in Media

2009-03-22T23:12:00.000-07:00

Follow-up from the Clay Shirky "Newspapers are Done..." piece posted a few days ago: the NYTimes reports today on GlobalPost, a new venture for global journalism utilizing an online "freemium" business model.

Will it work? Who knows. More important than any given venture, this is an example of the multitude of approaches people are experimenting with to separate the useful role of journalism from the increasingly obsolete business of publishing newspapers.

I've been having a lot of discussions recently about way the internet is changing the various media industries -- newspapers, music, film, etc. One thing people seem to have trouble with is understanding the difference between the value of the Content and the value of the Business Model.

In all of these industries, the content is still valuable to people, whether it's a song, a movie or a piece of reporting. In fact, it's probably more valuable than ever before, because more people are accessing it and enjoying it. The problem is that the industries built up around the content have all evolved around a particular Business Model that makes money by solving the distribution problem. And as Clay Shirky pointed out, that problem just ceased to exist.

What needs to happen is for new business models to come into existence so the content creators can make money in the new environment (perhaps this is something like GlobalPost in journalism or Live Nation in the music industry). Unfortunately, there are a lot of people and a lot of capital tied up in the old business models, and transition ing to the new ones means their jobs disappear and institutions they've built need to be taken down. That's a painful change, so the people and companies threatened by it are fighting tooth and nail to preserve the old environment through copyright litigation and other strategies.

Amazing.

2009-03-19T22:24:00.000-07:00

Obama just released a video message to the Iranian people. Here's the story in the NYTimes, and here's a link to the video on the White House website.

Newspapers are done.

2009-03-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

A really nice summation of the problems the press is facing by Clay Shirky. Just like the printing press in its day up-ended the existing power structures and economics of information, the internet today is rendering the business model of print publishing obsolete.

In his words:

"It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem."

Must Watch

2009-02-19T09:54:00.000-08:00

Feel bad that I had to wikipedia "Louis CK." Clearly I've been out of the country too long. But damn funny and a critical reminder of how the world really is around us.

New social boundaries

2009-02-09T18:35:00.000-08:00

Another TED presentation, this one from Seth Godin, talking about how new social groups and movements spring up from commonly held values and leaders who can tap into them. The idea of "tribes" is particularly interesting as traditional social demarcations fade away -- nationality, religion, ethnicity... not as important. In a global, connected world we get to find our own tribes. Lots of freedom, and a lot of upheaval along with it.

In case you were wondering, this is the future of computers

2009-02-09T18:29:00.000-08:00

Twenty years from now, artificial intelligence will consist of machines constructed to imitate the flexibility and learning capabilities of the human mind. This synopsis of a TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conference presentation last week describes how researchers from IBM and elsewhere are beginning to engineer computers based on the architecture of the brain.

Why India is in good shape for the future

2009-01-12T20:44:00.000-08:00

Dan Pepper passed on this article in Newsweek highlighting the underlying strength of India's economy.

"Be nice to countries that lend you money"

2009-01-06T05:38:00.000-08:00

Great perspective on America from the banker who runs the $200 billion China Investment Corporation in The Atlantic. He loves us, but thinks our perspectives on the world are totally wacked. In the interview, he gives a pretty unvarnished perspective on the financial crisis (a fundamental change), derivatives ("bullshit... crap... they serve to cheat people"), American pragmatism (the best part of our culture) and -- most importantly -- China's attitude towards it's U.S. dollar reserves ("We’d love to support you guys—if it’s sustainable").

But the comment that struck me the most was what he had to say about Wall Street compensation and salary disparities in China and the U.S..

"When I graduated from Duke [in 1986], as a first-year lawyer, I got $60,000. I thought it was astronomical! I was making somewhere a bit more than $80,000 when I came back to China in 1988. And that first month’s salary I got in China, on a little slip of paper, was 59 yuan [$8.63]. A few dollars! With a few yuan deducted for my rent and my water bill. I laughed when I saw it: 59 yuan! The thing is, we are working as hard as, if not harder than, those people. And we’re not stupid. Today those people fresh out of law school would get $130,000, or $150,000. It doesn’t sound right."

As someone who's worked in China and India, that hits home. People in these countries ARE pretty smart and they're working damn hard. But because of the historical differences in economic development between our country and theirs, they get paid a tiny fraction for doing the same work.

He's right: it doesn't sound right. And it probably won't last.

India and China in The Economist

2008-12-20T01:54:00.000-08:00

Last week's issue of The Economist had a survey with eight articles covering the range of issues facing India and an interesting piece about the different ways the current economic outlook threatens India and China. If you're interested in either of these topics, check it out.

The China/India comparison is fascinating. I'm more than a little concerned about social unrest in China over the next few years. Their economic growth has been massively dependent on exports to consumers in the West. And two months ago those consumers buying. As factories in China close, a lot of people are going to be out on the streets and angry. And historically, China has been vulnerable to social unrest. Look for whether their businesses are able to respond to the new environment and how successful the government is in quelling public demonstrations.

For all its inefficiency and corruption, India's democracy at least provides a pressure valve for its society's discontents.

In case you haven't had your fill...

2008-12-20T01:38:00.000-08:00

...of articles about the election, here's a really great piece in Newsweek about the three major campaigns for president and how they were run. Newsweek's reporters were given inside access to the Obama, Clinton and McCain campaigns . In return they agreed not to publish the story until after the election. The result is an in depth profile of all three candidates and the way their teams managed their campaigns. Says a lot about the quality of the candidates.

Really...?

2008-12-20T01:30:00.000-08:00

See this piece by Joe Nocera in the NYTimes about how India avoided getting sucked into the financial crisis. Sounds great. Not sure how much I believe it.

My impression is that many of India's strengths in the current economic environment came from a failure to liberalize the economy. But perhaps there was more forethought in that then I was aware of. I just hope we don't hear that the government has avoided investing in physical infrastructure and reforming labor laws because that might have led to an unhealthy dependence on manufacturing exports.

Let's try this again...

2008-12-20T01:12:00.000-08:00

Stop blogging for a few months and the whole world goes to pot.

So, I got a bit distracted with things over the last couple of months and the blog fell through the cracks (also, there's a new firewall at work, which prevents me from procrastinating in this particular venue). But now, with all the crises going on around the world I find I'm emailing a lot of interesting articles to friends. Then I remembered, "Hey, didn't I used to have a blog... and can't you use blogs to post you read so others can read them too..." Yup.

So let's give this blogging thing another shot...

2008-08-09T02:21:00.000-07:00

Just watching the Olympics opening ceremony and learned this fascinating nugget of information: Omar Bongo, the president for life of Gabon, has offered any Gabonese gold medalist "A dream house and untold riches."

Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't trust central-african dictators-for-life, but isn't "dream house and untold riches" awfully ambiguous? Before winning the gold, you might want to see that house and be told just what sort of riches he has in mind. Then again, maybe its better not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Cleaning out the backlog of camera photos...

2008-07-23T11:09:00.000-07:00

... if by "Way to Fashion" you mean cheap t-shirts and shameless plagiarism.

Some airlines want to project trustworthiness...

2008-07-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

... others want to project South Park.

And we're back!

2008-07-23T10:44:00.000-07:00

So this blog address was inexplicably shut down last month. No idea why. Maybe inactivity -- the last post I made was apparently in June. Sorry about that. The main reason is that my firewall at work now blocks blogs, thus eliminating my primary posting time. On the upside, productivity has increased. Life has it's tradeoffs.

I'll try to be more diligent in the coming months about posting regularly. Lots of interesting reading about Architecture, India, Technology, Society, etc. to share with you. So I hope you check back in!

Since the last post, I've gotten to see what the mystery of Bhutan is all about, catch up with some good friends from around the world, and figure out a little bit more of what I want to do with myself. Life moves quickly. You can't stand in the window watching for too long (but if you do, it helps to have a good friend with you).

Building the Cities of the Future

2008-06-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

Great article in the NYTimes Magazine about the creation of new megacities that is going on in places like China and the Middle East. In the last 20-30 years metropolises like Shenzhen have gone from being unremarkable villages to having 8 or 10 million inhabitant. As you can imagine, this throws a bit of a monkey wrench into existing theories of architecture and urban development.

'Cities like these, built on a colossal scale, seem to absorb any urban model, no matter how unique, virtually unnoticed. A project that could have a significant impact on the character of, say, New York — like the development plans for ground zero — can seem a mere blip in Beijing, which has embarked on dozens of similarly sized endeavors in the last decade alone. “The irony is that we still don’t know if postmodernism was the end of Modernism or just an interruption,” Koolhaas told me recently. “Was it a brief hiatus, and now we are returning to something that has been going on for a long time, or is it something radically different? We are in a condition we don’t understand yet.”'

However the theory works out, these cities aren't waiting. They'll be built in whatever way they can manage because the economic growth in the region demands it. I wonder how we will look back at them in 50 years -- as collossal mistakes or remnants of a tremendously creative era?

Architects Without Borders?

2008-05-03T23:48:00.000-07:00

Why isn't there more international movement among architects. There's such a lot of building going on in places like Shanghai, Mumbai and Dubai. But much of the design is crap. At the same time, places like New York seem to be overflowing with talented designers struggling to get work. Why not go abroad and do projects here?

Of course, the Rem Koolhaas' and Zaha Hadids of the world have figured this out. Their biggest projects these days are coming in places like Beijing and the UAE. But there must be room at the next level down -- the not-quite-starchitects and just-out-of-school designers... Go east young designers.

What sparked this? Interesting article in the times about a Chinese developer who's brought in 100 up-and-coming young architects to each design a house in his residential development in inner mongolia. Sounds like a complete clusterfuck.

Jean Nouvel

2008-04-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

Nice article in the Times about Jean Nouvel, who just won the Pritzker Prize (sort of the Nobel for Architecture). I like a lot of his buildings. And of course, everyone should be able to have their museum designed by someone who looks like a Bond villian.

Some of his other works:

So you want to live forever...

2008-04-18T10:49:00.000-07:00

This article in Wired talks about Ray Kurzweil's quest to prolong his life until technology takes over to the point that no one has to die. I read his book, "The Age of Spiritual Machines," and loved it. He's got a very cool take on technological progress and artificial intelligence. Basically he says that the rate at which technology is advancing isn't linear; it's exponential, so it keeps accelerating (as in the graph here). That means all kind of cool things, like artificial intelligence, are pretty much bound to happen.

"But the crucial thing that Kurzweil did was to make the end of the human era seem actionable: He argues that while artificial intelligence will render biological humans obsolete, it will not make human consciousness irrelevant. The first AIs will be created, he says, as add-ons to human intelligence, modeled on our actual brains and used to extend our human reach. AIs will help us see and hear better. They will give us better memories and help us fight disease. Eventually, AIs will allow us to conquer death itself. The singularity won't destroy us, Kurzweil says. Instead, it will immortalize us."

If you're interested in technology and where things like AI are going, I highly recommend picking up a copy of The Age of Spiritual Machines. Very easy read. The only issue I've got with him is that I think a lot of the immortality business he talks about is motivated by a serious fear of death. Impending immortality or not, everybody's got to come to terms with the possibility of death. Preferably in a graceful way... Other than that, Kurzweil's a great thinker.He lives a couple blocks away from where I grew up. I also used to carpool with his son, Ethan.

The Difference Between Paris and Mumbai

2008-04-08T18:56:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, the Times ran this article from their Paris Bureau Chief giving 8 Pieces of Advice about living in Paris. It ran with the picture above, and included the choice tidbit "Make friends with a good butcher," along with a charming description of Monsieur Yvon.

My butcher in Mumbai is named Tyrone. He has eight fingers, a cleaver that looks like it was forged over a campfire, and a shirt that says "For Good Luck, Rub My Belly." I snapped this as he was mauling a contraband tenderloin for me. Other than that, it's just like Paris.

There's got to be a way to prosecute this...

2008-03-30T19:48:00.000-07:00

"Hackers Assault Epilepsy Patients Via Computer," from Wired. I mean, crashing someone's hard drive is a huge pain in the ass, but if you're actually physically hurting people... I mean, that's got to demand assault charges, right?

Andreessen on Obama

2008-03-29T23:58:00.000-07:00

Mark Andreessen is one of the founders of Netscape and a prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Last year, before the election moved into full-steam and back when Barack Obama was still just a long shot freshman senator from Illinois, Andreessen had the chance to sit down with a couple friends and meet Barack Obama for an hour and a half. You can read his full description in his blog.

I've excerpted his conclusion here because it encapsulates much of my own impression of Obama, including a lot of what I think gets passed over in the mainstream focus of popular campaigning:

What's the picture that emerges from these four impressions?
Smart, normal, curious, not radical, and post-Boomer.
If you were asking me to write a capsule description of what I would look for in the next President of the United States, that would be it.
Having met him and then having watched him for the last 12 months run one of the best-executed and cleanest major presidential campaigns in recent memory, I have no doubt that Senator Obama has the judgment, bearing, intellect, and high ethical standards to be an outstanding president -- completely aside from the movement that has formed around him, and in complete contradition to the silly assertions by both the Clinton and McCain campaigns that he's somehow not ready.
Before I close, let me share two specific things he said at the time -- early 2007 -- on the topic of whether he's ready.
We asked him directly, how concerned should we be that you haven't had meaningful experience as an executive -- as a manager and leader of people?
He said, watch how I run my campaign -- you'll see my leadership skills in action.
At the time, I wasn't sure what to make of his answer -- political campaigns are often very messy and chaotic, with a lot of turnover and flux; what conclusions could we possibly draw from one of those?
Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been one of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama's opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win -- and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.
This speaks well to the Senator's ability to run a campaign, but speaks even more to his ability to recruit and manage a top-notch group of campaign professionals and volunteers -- another key leadership characteristic. When you compare this to the awe-inspiring discord, infighting, and staff turnover within both the Clinton and McCain campaigns up to this point -- well, let's just say it's a very interesting data point.
We then asked, well, what about foreign policy -- should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?
He said, directly, two things.
First, he said, I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts on foreign policy -- and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.
Being a fan of blunt answers, I liked that one.
But then he made what I think is the really good point.
He said -- and I'm going to paraphrase a little here: think about who I am -- my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it's going to mean in many parts of the world -- parts of the world that we really care about -- when I show up as the President of the United States. I'll be fundamentally changing the world's perception of what the United States is all about.
He's got my vote.

Thanks to Cardiff for the link to this post.

Why Cities Are Our Future...

2008-03-16T09:20:00.000-07:00

This article on CNN.com discusses the growth of cities and urban populations around the world.

The Numbers:

- "UN-Habitat says that a staggering 95 percent of the expected global population growth we will see over the next 2 decades will be absorbed by cities in the developing world... What that means is by 2030 another 2 billion people from the developing world will be living in cities (only 100 million from the developed world meanwhile will be doing the same). Currently 75 percent of world's poorest people -- 1 billion -- live in cities."

- "Already, 75 percent of the world's 21 mega-cities are based in the developing world, and by some estimates, 27 of the 33 mega-cities expected to exist by 2015 will be in developing countries."

- "Cities have always traditionally been the centers of the world's wealth, and the World Bank says that as much as 80 percent of the future economic growth of the developing world will come from its cities."

- "In the next 30 years, China alone will have around 752 million urbanites, all needing to get around town. Currently, less than 1 percent of Chinese own a car... If each of those 752 million city dwellers copied the transportation habits of your average resident of San Francisco in 1990, the actions of that one country would result in 1 billion additional tons of carbon emissions a year -- the same amount that was released worldwide by all road transport in 1998."

The Other Side Of The Story

2008-03-13T10:07:00.000-07:00

Usually, the bureaucracy of the Indian government is something to laugh about, or -- if youare unfortunate enough to need something from them -- to cry about. This article in the Economist actually made me feel sorry for the bureaucrats who make up the Indian Administrative Service. The IAS is probably a cushy job for most of its officers. They've got power, prestige and plenty of chances to squirrel away money from whoever needs a favor. But if you really wanted to do your job well, I couldn't think of a worse place to work than the Indian government.

I'm sure this sympathetic feeling will last until the next time I have to go to the Foreigners Regional Registration Office for an extension of my visa... and not one second longer.

An Oldie, But A Goodie

2008-03-13T01:00:00.000-07:00

Loved this article when I read it way back in 'aught one. Describes Cecil Balmond, engineer of choice to starchitects from Rem Koolhaas to Philip Johnson as he blurs the line between structural engineering and design. Very cool read, particularly if you tend to think (as I do) that the beauty of architecture is in the melding of structural science and artistic creativity.

This Is Pretty Funny...

2008-03-13T00:53:00.000-07:00

"When your main campaign theme is foreign policy experience, and that experience is persuasively refuted by a comedian, it's time to find a new theme."

For anyone who doubts the massive experience imbued on Hillary Clinton during her time as First Lady, here's an entertaining piece of evidence that she wasn't exactly in the trenches.

In Dubai, This Sort of Thing Is Completely Normal

2008-03-05T22:15:00.000-08:00

NYTimes.com article about Rem Koolhaas' plan to build a slice of lower manhattan on a man made island off the Dubai coast. Amazing. 1.5 BILLION square feet of development. A 44-story spherical tower... and it's not even remotely the most ambitious development in the city. Seriously, I woke up this morning in a house built on a frond of the world's biggest palm tree. On the way in form the airport, we passed the world's tallest building. And I'm shooting for the skiing trifecta of water, snow and sand before the weekend is over. I have no idea how I feel about all this yet.

A. Garrett Lisi Fanclub

2008-02-28T00:28:00.000-08:00

So this is pretty cool: Guy gets his PhD in Physics. Guy likes to surf. So guy takes odd jobs after finishing his PhD, lives in Maui where he can surf, and works on Physics on his own. Guy publishes new theory of how the universe works on a wiki. Now guy is the keynote speaker at the TED Conference in Monterey.

I wish I'd gotten good enough at physics and math to understand what the hell a Lie Group really is, and maybe offer an opinion on what he's talking about. As it is, I'm passingly familiar with the vocabulary and I've read about E8 before (see below). But even if the theory turns out to be complete bunk, I think this guy is the big winner.

The final quote pulls together a lot of the way I think life should be lived:

"Surfing and snowboarding are what I do for fun -- to get out and play in nature. We live in a beautiful universe, and I wish to enjoy it and understand it as best I can. And I try to live a balanced life. Surfing is simply the most fun I know how to have on this planet. And physics, and science in general, is the best way of understanding how everything works. So this is what I spend my time doing. I do what I love, and follow my interests. Shouldn't everyone?"

Yup.

P.S. What is E8? It's a 248 point mathematical structure that looks something like this

Not So Lite After All

2008-02-26T20:32:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Cardiff for pointing out this very good article in The New Republic on the ideological background to Obama's policy tendencies. I had a shot at summarizing the article, but it got a bit involved. Highly recommend you read it yourself. The key takeaway seems to be that despite the sweeping, idealistic note Obama has sounded on the campaign trail, most of his policy positions are in fact strongly pragmatic.

Ship-Rescuing Awesomeness

2008-02-26T00:25:00.000-08:00

Another article in Wired. This one about the guys from Titan Salvage who fly around the world rescuing sinking ships. Just a beautiful, interesting, bad-ass example of good journalism.

Why Everything On The Internet Will Be Free

2008-02-25T21:13:00.000-08:00

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail, lays out the case for why everything on the web will ultimately be offered for free. In a nutshell, he says the costs of computing, storage and bandwidth are dropping to the point of being negligible, which makes the incremental cost of any product or service offered online effectively zero. This, combined with the 3-way transaction model exemplified by paid advertising, will give consumers the ultimate five finger discount.

Sounds nice. And the economic case is compelling. But in my mind the most important point comes in this passage:

"From the consumer's perspective, though, there is a huge difference between cheap and free. Give a product away and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you're in an entirely different business, one of clawing and scratching for every customer. The psychology of "free" is powerful indeed, as any marketer will tell you."

This marketing issue seems like a more important factor than dropping costs. Sometimes price is determined by cost of production plus a margin, but just as often it's determined by what the consumer is willing to pay. So even if your costs are zero, you'll still charge if someone is willing to pay for what you're selling. The big difference with free is that people don't need to think about it as a value proposition at all. So as a seller you need to do very little convincing.

The big bonus of free that Anderson doesn't talk about is elimination of the need for a payment mechanism. Despite all the internet's advances in the last few years, buying something online is still a huge pain in the ass. But as soon as you can get something to somebody online for free, the hassle of credit cards and paypals and whatever else goes away.

But Most of The Time...

2008-02-22T07:24:00.000-08:00

... I'm not sorry I live on the other side of the world. Anyway, T-minus 3 hrs til the big 28. Time to get changed.

Sick New MoMA Exhibit

2008-02-22T03:24:00.000-08:00

Damn. Sometimes I regret living on the other side of the world. Like when the MoMA comes out with something like this. Can someone check it out and tell me how it is?

The Guardian, The Idealist and The Artisan...

2008-02-21T00:26:00.000-08:00

.
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See what Myers-Briggs personality Type Indicators reveal about Hillary, Obama and McCain. These tests are really interesting. Lots of companies use them to classify their employees (I know McKinsey uses it). I took one in college years ago and the diagnosis began with a passage from my favorite book. I think I was an ENTP then, but just took it again and apparently I'm an ENTJ... I wonder what changes these traits?

Take a free online version of the test yourself here.

Against Waterboarding

2008-02-17T21:22:00.000-08:00

The former special prosecutor for Guantanamo Bay argues the case against waterboarding. Powerful stuff coming from someone who might have been seen as working for the bad guys on this issue. Fortunately, he resigned his commission in 2007 in an effort to fight the legal use of torture. Best quote comes in the lede:

"TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, in the final days of the Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A.’s Tehran station chief, Tom Ahern, faced his principal interrogator for the last time. The interrogator said the abuse Mr. Ahern had suffered was inconsistent with his own personal values and with the values of Islam and, as if to wipe the slate clean, he offered Mr. Ahern a chance to abuse him just as he had abused the hostages. Mr. Ahern looked the interrogator in the eyes and said, “We don’t do stuff like that.”"

Here's a description of what waterboarding actually is for anyone who's curious.

Of Booms and Busts

2008-02-17T06:05:00.000-08:00

An article in the New Yorker describes how Wall Street tends to contribute to destabilizing boom and bust cycles. The theory was put forward by Hyman P. Minsky in the late '80s. It calls for more regulation on Wall Street to prevent things like the sub-prime mortgage crisis from happening. In a nutshell:

"There are basically five stages in Minsky’s model of the credit cycle: displacement, boom, euphoria, profit taking, and panic. A displacement occurs when investors get excited about something—an invention, such as the Internet, or a war, or an abrupt change of economic policy. The current cycle began in 2003, with the Fed chief Alan Greenspan’s decision to reduce short-term interest rates to one per cent, and an unexpected influx of foreign money, particularly Chinese money, into U.S. Treasury bonds. With the cost of borrowing—mortgage rates, in particular—at historic lows, a speculative real-estate boom quickly developed that was much bigger, in terms of over-all valuation, than the previous bubble in technology stocks.

As a boom leads to euphoria, Minsky said, banks and other commercial lenders extend credit to ever more dubious borrowers, often creating new financial instruments to do the job. During the nineteen-eighties, junk bonds played that role. More recently, it was the securitization of mortgages, which enabled banks to provide home loans without worrying if they would ever be repaid. (Investors who bought the newfangled securities would be left to deal with any defaults.) Then, at the top of the market (in this case, mid-2006), some smart traders start to cash in their profits.

...The theory calls for increased regulation on Wall Street to decrease their contribution to the swings of the cycle.

The Greatest Wine Ever

2008-02-15T01:51:00.000-08:00

Even if you're not into wine, this article in Slate describing the story and experience of drinking a '47 Cheval Blanc is a great read. Basically a fucked up wine from a freak year that should have been undrinkable, but instead it's faults came together to create the best cup of grape juice ever bottled. There's an interesting metaphor for other types of genius in this passage:

"The '47s signature flaws—the residual sugar and volatile acidity—were readily apparent, but it was just as Lurton had said: In this wine, the flaws inexplicably became virtues... I realized that it was silly even to try to place the '47 in the context of other wines; it defied comparison, a point underscored when I tasted another legend, the 1945 Château Latour, later that night (yeah, it was a nice evening). The Latour was stunning—probably the second-best wine I've ever had—but it at least fell within my frame of reference: It was a classically proportioned Bordeaux that just happened to be achingly good. The '47 Cheval, by contrast, was an otherworldly wine—a claret from another planet. And it was amazing."

It's Complicated...

2008-02-13T03:46:00.000-08:00

Very cool article from Wired describing Complexity Theory -- the emerging theory of evolution that deals with communities rather than individual organisms. Basic idea is that single organisms evolve linearly, but communities can make evolutionary leaps that arise from the interactions of many organisms.

Bill Baker of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

2008-02-12T10:43:00.000-08:00

This is the guy who figures out how to build things like the Burj Dubai. If you're interested in architecture or structural engineering, it's a very cool read. Money passage comes at the end:

"The initial scheme was for a building of about 1,800 feet, 317 feet taller than the Petronas Towers. Yet the clients made a request: Overengineer the foundation, just in case we change our minds. Which the clients did. Repeatedly. On trip after trip to Dubai — even after a hole was dug and giant caissons were set 150 feet into the sand, even after the building began to rise, a floor every three days, into the desert haze — the SOM team kept getting the same request: Can you make it taller?...

The final height of the Burj will remain secret until its completion in 2009. SOM's managing partner George Efstathiou brags that it'll be as high as the Sears Tower and the Hancock Center stacked on top of each other (about 2,600 feet). Others say it could be taller — more than 3,000 feet. Baker thrills at the growing reality of it, but every once in a while he raps his knuckles on the table. "Quite frankly, I often urged the client to, you know — We can stop here, right?'" Baker says with a chuckle. "But they kept on pushing for taller and taller, and they were looking at me to see when I turned pale — so they'd know where to stop.""

3 Facts For Those Of Us Born In A Leap Year...

2008-02-12T09:26:00.000-08:00

1) A leap year is any year evenly divisible by four — except for century years, which have to be divisible by 400. It's not a perfect system: The Gregorian year is 27 seconds longer than the astronomical year. By 12008, we'll be three days off.

2) October 5-14, 1582, never happened in Catholic lands. Brits (and their American subjects) born September 3 to 13 had no birthday in 1752. Those days were dropped when the Western world switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar.

3) International Atomic Time — kept by ultraprecise clocks — is gradually out-pacing astronomical time, which is determined by our planet's rotation. (Earth's spin is slowing — what a drag.) So in 1972, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service began adding occasional leap seconds. They've done it 23 times, most recently adding an extra "one-Mississippi" on December 31, 2005.

How The iPhone Blew Up The Wireless Industry

2008-02-12T03:09:00.000-08:00

Great article in this month's Wired about the process of bringing the iPhone into existence. More than just a cool phone, Apple's deal with AT&T changes the dynamics of the entire industry, making device manufacturers more equal partners of network operators. It's alse a very cool glimpse of the design and development process inside Apple.

A Little-Mentioned Motivation For Peace...

2008-02-11T22:38:00.000-08:00

One of the most frustrating things about the current state of the world is that some amazing places are now off-limits for travel. See this article in CNN about the desert city of Yazd in Iran. Backpacking around the Middle East is a dream I've had for a while. Unfortunately, it will probably be many years before parts of it are safe enough. I hope we'll see a traveller-friendly Iraq in our lifetimes...

Body Language Does The Talking

2008-02-11T21:15:00.000-08:00

Article in the NYTimes about people responding positively to subtle mimicry of their body language. Studies show you're more likely to empathize with someone, buy a product from them, etc... when they copy your behavior.

One Cloud to Rule Them All

2008-02-10T23:51:00.000-08:00

Fake Steve weighs in on the Microsoft-Yahoo merger, putting it in the context of Google's vision for the future.

Profile of Defense Secretary Bob Gates

2008-02-10T19:42:00.000-08:00

Good article from the NYTimes. They've run a couple of these in depth pieces -- I think the last one was on Hank Paulson. The new crop of people in the administration is such a marked improvement over the original batch. I wonder what (or who) drove this change... and what might have happened if they'd been there seven years ago.

When's the last time you were excited about something in American politics?

2008-02-10T09:23:00.000-08:00

... Now would be an ideal time to donate to Obama's campaign. You can do it here.

Think Global, Teach Local?

2008-02-09T21:54:00.000-08:00

NYTimes on American universities opening up campuses abroad. I love this idea in the context of global business and development. After all, American universities are basically big, complicated companies, albeit with a much broader set of goals. What does it mean for the universities to truly go global, and what will this do for students around the world?

* Another follow-up article in the Times on Education City in Qatar.