technology - Yule Heibel on Diigo

07 Jul 09

Canada's innovation gap - The Globe and Mail

Insightful (and often cutting) article on the status of innovation in Canada. Stephen Downes responded in a blog post, http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/07/innovation-in-canada.html, basically agreeing, saying that we need a bit of free market and a bit of government direction as well, and that we (Canadians) need to wean ourselves from our corporate overlords.

In an aside, the G&M journalist (Konrad Yakabuski) notes that Canadians already log more work hours than Americans and are workaholics compared to Europeans - who innovate more and therefore, because they work smarter, don't need to work harder. As it happens, I was just wondering about Canadians and partying/ sociability over the beginning of July (what with Canada Day and Independence Day). Canadians are far less social than Americans, in my experience. For Canadians, sociability and partying means getting drunk - it always has, for as long as I can remember. Americans in this respect are actually the kinder, gentler people. Is it because of work?

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article1203108 - Preview

innovation canada globeandmail productivity technology resources economic_development konrad_yakabuski

Barring an extension of the workweek - Canadians already put in more hours than Americans and are virtual workaholics compared with Europeans - innovation is the only sure way for Canada to be more productive. It is the key to maintaining our standard of living and providing increasingly costly public services for an aging population.
"Canada is not being productive because it's not being innovative," said Robert Brown, chief executive officer of Montreal-based CAE Inc., the world leader in aircraft flight simulators and training. "A lot of innovation occurs at the interface with the customer. But when you look at the make-up of Canada's economy, with so much dependence on resources, there is less contact between [our biggest] companies and end users."
7 more annotations...
- Strong governments in Asia and Finland, on the other hand, have been able to resist the self-interested demands of individual sectors, and have implemented country-wide innovation strategies that, while not without hiccups, ultimately increase the size of a country's economic pie over time.
- The consequences of this global power shift could show up in lower pension benefits, substandard health care and rickety infrastructure for future generations of Canadians. Early signs are already apparent to discriminating eyes, such as those of Mr. Curtis, a former chief economist in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
  
  "We are declining relative to many other parts of the world," he said. "You don't really feel it unless you're cosmopolitan and travel a lot. You now stay at the three-star hotel instead of the four. But our cities - and the country as a whole - are quite clearly relatively less well off than before."
- Where he sees languor in our policy apparatus, CAE's Mr. Brown detects an aversion to interventionist industrial strategy among governments. But as Canada has relied on the free market - auto bailouts notwithstanding - to determine its champions, governments elsewhere are actively nurturing their own winners.
  
  "We seem to believe the free-market system will work, but no one else operates that way," Mr. Brown said. "If you rely only on market forces, you are going to react to what others are doing, rather than anticipating what is going to happen."
- Research will become increasingly important to the competitiveness of Canadian auto plants as a strong loonie and wage concessions south of the border wipe out much of the edge they once held over U.S. facilities. But Washington's promise to provide $25-billion (U.S.) in loans to companies there to help develop more fuel-efficient cars threatens to widen the already gaping research chasm between each country's auto sector.
  
  "Without comparable support in Canada, manufacturing capacity could follow the funding, taking engineering work and suppliers with it," warns the Academies report.
  
  Still, foreign ownership is not the biggest reason for Canadian companies' R&D deficit. Despite a disproportionately large resource sector, compared with other developed countries, Canada has been a laggard when it comes to developing technology used to extract or process resources, or to blunt the environmental impact of such activities. Alberta's vow to plow $2-billion (Canadian) into the development of carbon capture and storage technologies is a start, but hardly a game-changing one.
  
  "The failure of Canada to develop global export leaders in advanced machinery and equipment for the resource sector is one particularly telling indicator of the country's innovation shortcomings," the Academies report concludes.
- The Finnish Miracle is an example of an economy emerging from the pits to overtake those it used to envy. It's hardly the first. In 1982's The Rise and Decline of Nations, economist Mancur Olson advanced the idea that countries whose economic foundations have been suddenly shaken or destroyed subsequently tend to grow and innovate faster than more stable nations. The reason? Such crises break the hold of vested interests on government policy makers; dramatic change becomes a question of national survival.
- Mr. Olson cited the industrial resurgence of Japan and Germany in the postwar period to explain his thesis. While Japan and Germany prospered in 1970s, the economies of other developed countries, such as the U.S. and Britain, became bogged down in interest group politics, resulting in "institutional sclerosis" and slow growth.
  - But Germany and Japan (Germany in particular) also had a huge influx of post-war aid (Marshall Plan), which enabled them (Germany in particular) to rebuild its infrastructure. - on 2009-07-07
  Add Sticky Note
- Economically, we just muddle on

01 Apr 09

YouTube - Did You Know?

The "Did You Know?" video, which has been making its viral rounds through various social networks. Breathless, admittedly amazing facts, prepare to meet a firehose of information. ("What does it in-form?" is another question...)

www.youtube.com/watch - Preview

youtube education technology google internet video

13 Nov 08

"Better Wind Turbines" (MIT Technology Review)

QUOTE
ExRo Technologies, a startup based in Vancouver, BC, has developed a new kind of generator that's well suited to harvesting energy from wind. It could lower the cost of wind turbines while increasing their power output by 50 percent.
UNQUOTE

www.technologyreview.com/...21666 - Preview

turbines wind_power vancouver technology exro_technologies

26 May 08

"The Web and Beyond: Mobility (1) - Adam Greenfield" - The Mobile City » Blog Archive »

Michiel de Lange reports on the CHI conference "The Web and Beyond: Mobility" in Amsterdam on 5/22/08, featuring Adam Greenfield (Everyware); Jyri Engeström (Jaiku); Ben Cerveny (Playground foundation, Flickr); Christian Lindholm (Fjord, Nokia). In this post, he focuses on Greenfield's presentation. A key aspect that struck me was this observation by Greenfield: that ubicom / ubiquitous computing creates a new level of "ambient informatics," and "information processing dissolves into behavior." Greenfield's example is the seemingly choreographed swish of a public transit user who swings her purse in front of the transit card reader, never skipping a beat, but shaped indelibly by the technology into certain movements.

www.themobilecity.nl/...ond-mobility-1-adam-greenfield - Preview

adam_greenfield mobile_city ubiquitous ubicom technology

Networked processors are already showing up in new places, on the level of bodies and on the level of the streets. These become social objects. They help create an “ambient informatics”: delivering information locally upon which you can act. This really becomes ambient when information processing dissolves into behavior. Greenfield gives an example of a woman he saw using her transit card in public transport by swinging her handbag in full speed in front of the reader, almost becoming a choreography.
Architecture and building is becoming increasingly shaped by computation. It changes the city-scape. It changes mobility too. Objects become accessible, scriptable, queryable, and connected. All this changes the way we use cities from browsing to searching. We can now directly look for something and this search can be customized by recombining elements.
- - seems to me that G. leaves out one significant factor: when I look around, I don't see architecture & building "increasingly shaped by computation," I see people who use tools (including mobile phones) who are the ones shaping the city. If anything, the buildings & architecture themselves lag behind user preferences, although it is for sure a two-way street. - on 2008-05-26
Add Sticky Note
1 more annotations...
- Greenfield ends with some “proposals for the real time city” that urban/media designers should leep in mind:
  
  1. Create beautiful seams: read/write access to city
  
  2. Underspecify: do not too much closure to space.
  
  3. Understand changing city life: from flaneur to consumer to user.

23 May 08

Transmaterial 2: To Redefine Our Physical Environment - PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things”

PingMag interview with Blaine Brownell, architect and sustainable materials researcher, whose focus is on green building.

"From repurposed materials that act as surrogates, to recombinant ones that fuse several materials into a hybrid, making them stronger and more effective — Blaine points us to products that might shape our physical environment in the future."

Materials discussed include self-healing polymers inspired by biological systems, which can automatically heal cracks in buildings, for example.

The article includes many other photographs / examples with descriptions of weird and wonderful bioneered and sustainable building materials.

pingmag.jp/...sform-our-physical-environment - Preview

pingmag transmaterial bioneering biomimicry architecture technology blaine_brownell sustainable_materials

I studied architecture and practised in the field for over a decade, and I believe this experience has been essential because of my exposure to the exploding number of innovative building materials. During my early years of practice, I had a chance to research materials for a prominent project and was impressed by the challenges as well as opportunities associated with this task. I immediately saw a need to share this — which typically gets archived when a project is completed — with a larger audience of architects, designers, contractors, etc. I began an electronic journal and database, which quickly became popular with a growing audience of material enthusiasts who have given generous feedback. Over time, I have been able to appreciate the critical trajectories of material development as a result.
Although Europe and Japan are largely ahead of the curve, the United States has struggled with the development of sustainable building practices since the softening of the 1970s oil crisis that initiated much of the initial interest in green architecture in this country. I think the primary challenge to sustainable design is the fact that it has been viewed primarily as a long-term intellectual proposition without immediate economic benefit, and the relatively cheap cost of petroleum has made it nearly impossible to convince industries to consider other alternatives.
6 more annotations...
- Very true! Alex Steffen speaks in his Worldchanging — A User’s Guide to the 21st Century of the world’s natural resources as our ecological capital, saying that the ultimate bankruptcy will not land us in a state-run old people’s home ― it’ll land us in a world of deserts, hunger and freaky weather. Can the employment of sustainable materials and energy conservation methods save us from such a harsh reality?
  
  I believe Alex’s prediction is correct at certain scales.
  - - useful qualification: "at certain scales." - on 2008-05-23
  Add Sticky Note
- we have to face the discouraging truth about accelerating environmental degradation and act quickly to prevent it. Since buildings comprise roughly half of the problem in terms of energy use and emissions, vastly improved materials, construction methods and energy use should help significantly.
- The title is a conflation of the words transformational materiality, and the book is the second volume of materials that have significant potential in shaping the physical environment through design innovation.
- Ultraperforming materials attempt to push conventional performance boundaries; multidimensional materials enhance structural depth in order to maximise resources; repurposed materials are surrogates for more precious, conventional resources; recombinant materials are hybrids in which the sum exhibits superior characteristics to individual components; intelligent materials employ creative structural and formal ideas for enhanced environments; transformational materials undergo change based on environmental stimuli; and interfacial materials explore digital processes and fabrication.
- The term often used is disruptive technologies — a title that suggests radical departures as opposed to incremental developments. One focus is materials whose behaviour conflicts with our traditional understanding — such as bendable concrete, transparent ceramics, or exfoliated graphite nanoplatelets. Another focus considers materials imbued with biomimetic qualities, like self-healing polymers, strong enviroboard, and active protection system. Another focus considers environmentally remediating materials such as Italcementi, Superabsorber, and Reben. Yet another focus relates to digital fabrication innovations, such as the Ombrae system, intaglio composites, and Erwin Hauer Continua.
- You speak of materials and products that have unique phenomenological effects. Explain, please!
  
  What I mean here concerns materials that generate unconventional responses when interacted with — such as the light-bending properties of Sensitile or the colour and pattern-changing qualities of Living Surfaces.

15 May 08

At The Churchill Club: The Top 10 Tech Trends (Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online)

An article by Eric Savitz that sums up the panel presentation by Steve Jurvetson, Vinod Khosla, Josh Kopelman, Roger McNamee, Joe Schoendorf, and Tony Perkins on the top 10 tech trends to be aware of. Lots of buzz around mobile phone technology, mobile computing in the manner of what The Economist called "Nomads at last" (see http://tinyurl.com/643een) "who are defined not by what they carry but by what they leave behind, knowing that the environment will provide it."

Speaking of modeling the new urban connected classes on nomads (and Bedouins), another trend identified by the panel was that water is the next peak oil. See Wired Magazine, Peak Water (http://tinyurl.com/5kzqcv).

Jurvetson talked about how "evolution trumps design," which seemed to me like he is channeling Janine Benyus and Lynn Margulis. Microbes are drivers of evolutionary biomass viability on Planet Gaia; we're part of that game; and we will figure out how to engineer matter at the nano level of microbial life to "hack" evolution's code and make those organisms work for us. Dangerous, but inevitable. (As Margulis and Dorian Sagan point out, however, if Gaia is a living thing and if living things are defined by having the ability to reproduce, then our role on earth may well be to help Gaia reproduce: i.e., create viable biospheres that can be sent away from Earth into space. What better place to fulfil that mandate than to tinker with microbes and evolution?)

blogs.barrons.com/...ll-club-the-top-10-tech-trends - Preview

trends technology futurismo

Services online will exceed market for goods online.
The mobile phone will be a mainstream personal computer.
- Yup. Again, see "Nomads at last" in The Economist. - on 2008-05-15
Add Sticky Note
7 more annotations...
- Trend is that big wave will come to companies that are able to novel and new ways to deliver information by crossing these silos, with implicit data on the Internet. Use social networking data to improve search. Conversion of data exhaust will create value in new and interesting ways. All of the panelists seem to agree that this is a key trend. McNamee says he hopes Kopelman is not right, given the privacy concerns that are involved. The issue is providing implied consent to follow the bread crumbs, McNamee says. Schoendorf says this is an under 25 issue. McNamee notes that the trouble is that not only does Facebook know what I’m doing, but the Chinese government also knows. Khosla says it is an opportunity, not a problem. “Privacy is a red herring,” Khosla says. “There are rules and laws and ways to address the privacy issue.” Data reduction is an important need, Khosla says. He has a secretary to do it. Khosla says it is a critical need and huge opportunity.
- Water tech will replace global warming as a global priority.
- In 25-30 years, will be rarer commodity than oil, and more valuable. Khosla says he is invested in two water companies, and looking for more. Schoendorf notes that T. Boone Pickens is selling oil companies and buying water companies.
- 6. Jurvetson: Evolution trumps design. Many interesting unsolved problems in computer science, nanotech, and synthetic biology require construction of complex systems. Evolutionary algorithms are a powerful alternative to traditional design, blossoming first in neural networks and now in microbial engineering. Near-term trend: year or two, components of microbial engineering products will involve some form of evolution. Design for evolution. Has been used in neural networks. In microbial work, cripple a microbe, so it can do the one thing it does better and better. To make industrial chemicals. Applied to analog circuit design.
- 7. Khosla: Fossilizing fossil energy. Oil and coal will have trouble competing with biofuels. 99% of discussion on the topic is completely irrelevant to the topic. In 4-5 years will have production proof that can sell biofuel at well below $2 a gallon at today’s tax structure and no subsidy. Can’t imagine how big oil can stay in business if that is an alternative. Zero land needed to replace 100% of our gasoline.
- 9. McNamee: Within 5 years, everything that matters to you will be available to you on a device that fits on your belt or in your purse. Massive shift in Internet traffic from PCs to smaller devices. You should all get a Kindle, and study this thing, Roger says. Apple has it in the long run, wrong. Won’t be about watching created content, it will be about creating content. Within 10 years, more Internet traffic from your person than all other locations put together.
- 10. Schoendorf: 80% of the world population will carry mobile Internet devices within 5-10 years. Dial-tone is going to be gone. By next year, people will put micro cells in your house. China Mobile has 500 million billable lines. Within 5-10 years will hit 5 billion global wireless phones. Jurvetson thinks 80% is simply too high; he noes that a quarter of the world’s population has no electricity. They will concentrate in the richest nations, Jurvetson says.

"Gandhi on Ubicomp," by Nat Torkington - O'Reilly Radar

In one paragraph, Tarkington uses Austin Williams's critique of "technology-driven products" that don't solve "more urgent urban problems ...such as the loss of social connections between city dwellers" as an example of criticism missing the point (or perhaps putting the cart in front of the horse?). Can't say I disagree, although Williams (who is technical editor of the Architects' Journal and director of a forum called Future Cities that "critically explores city issues") has a point if he is in part reacting to the hype that usually accompanies new technologies.

Torkington's riposte, on the other hand, is really worth noting: "I think Williams is wrong because he fails to allow for the rate that technology matures." But then of course, some of the people who hype the technology also focus way too much on its present state and don't take its rate of development (change) into account. This is why Torkington focuses on what he calls "the explorers," who one hopes are hype-resistant.

radar.oreilly.com/...gandhi-on-ubicomp.html - Preview

ubicom ubiquitous cities technology

For as long as I've known the term, ubiquitous computing has been largely ignored, written off as a scifi pipedream from the people who promised you AI and cars that would run on water. That's beginning to change, as hardware such as the Arduino and programmable mobile phone handsets enabling artists, researchers, and makers like Eric Paulos, Elizabeth Goodman, and Julian Bleecker to join the digital and physical worlds in new and interesting ways.
The explorers I named would be the first to tell you they're not buliding products, things for wide deployment that are meant to be consumer-ready, shelf-demonstrable, and poised for their 30s spot after Leno's monologue.
1 more annotations...
- But in the legions of developers, hackers, hobbyists, alphageeks, and tinkerers who look at their work there will be some who see a product to build—the homesteaders who build cottages, shops, factories.

Nomads at last | Economist.com

Published on the same date as "The new oases" (http://tinyurl.com/6nhzvy), I missed this story the first time around. Saw it now via Wendy Waters's blog, "All About Cities." Like "The new oases," it's all about mobile computing, and its effects on our social worlds/ lived lives.

It's odd this topic should pop up for me today, as the other article (bookmarked last month, "The new oases") seemed very appropriate to a discussion around video commenting, which was taking place on Fred Wilson's blog. Disqus & Seesmic have joined forces, enabling users to leave video recorded comments (vs. text scribblings) on blogs. Somehow, when I read about this on Dave Winer's blog and Wilson's (and I left a comment on Wilson's blog, too, albeit straight text, no video), I immediately thought of "The new oases" and its points regarding isolation. You have to wonder whether the technology can ever *produce* or *recreate* "nest warmth," that sense of communal belonging, or whether each instance of technologicall mediation isn't just another way of giving us yet another perspective view on our own selves.

It's not the case that "communal belonging" or what the Germans call "Nestwaerme" (nest warmth) is a good thing, or whether getting a perspective is a good thing. They're both good things in their appropriate times and places. It's more a question of not confusing one for the other. On Wilson's blog there's much discussion of whether or not the Disqus-Seesmic joint venture (video blog comments) will produce better comments/ comments streams/ understanding. I don't think it will. It will just refract whatever understanding exists or is able to be seen into yet more facets. That's all.

www.economist.com/...displaystory.cfm - Preview

the_economist nomadism mobile_technology mobile_city technology

AT THE Nomad Café in Oakland, California, Tia Katrina Canlas, a law student at the nearby university in Berkeley, places her double Americano next to her mobile phone and iPod, opens her MacBook laptop computer and logs on to the café's wireless internet connection to study for her class on the legal treatment of sexual orientation. She is a regular here but doesn't usually bring cash, so her credit-card statement reads “Nomad, Nomad, Nomad, Nomad”. That says it all, she thinks. Permanently connected, she communicates by text, photo, video or voice throughout the day with her friends and family, and does her “work stuff” at the same time. She roams around town, but often alights at oases that cater to nomads.
The proper metaphor for somebody who carries portable but unwieldy and cumbersome infrastructure is that of an astronaut rather than a nomad, says Paul Saffo, a trend-watcher in Silicon Valley. Astronauts must bring what they need, including oxygen, because they cannot rely on their environment to provide it. They are both defined and limited by their gear and supplies.
9 more annotations...
- Around the turn of the century, as some astronauts, typically executive road warriors, got smarter about packing light, says Mr Saffo, they graduated to an intermediate stage, becoming hermit crabs. These are crustaceans that survive by dragging around a cast-off mollusc shell for protection and shelter. In the metaphorical sense, the shell might be a “carry-on” bag on wheels, stuffed full of cables, discs, dongles, batteries, plugs and paper documents (just in case of disc failure). These hermit crabs strike fear into the hearts of seated airline passengers whenever they board, because their shells invariably bang into innocent shins all the way to their seat. They carry less than astronauts—and are thus more mobile—but are still quite heavily laden with gear, mostly as a safeguard against disasters.
- Urban nomads have started appearing only in the past few years. Like their antecedents in the desert, they are defined not by what they carry but by what they leave behind, knowing that the environment will provide it. Thus, Bedouins do not carry their own water, because they know where the oases are. Modern nomads carry almost no paper because they access their documents on their laptop computers, mobile phones or online. Increasingly, they don't even bring laptops. Many engineers at Google, the leading internet company and a magnet for nomads, travel with only a BlackBerry, iPhone or other “smart phone”. If ever the need arises for a large keyboard and some earnest typing, they sit down in front of the nearest available computer anywhere in the world, open its web browser and access all their documents online.
- Another big misunderstanding of previous decades was to confuse nomadism with migration or travel.
- how far he moves is completely irrelevant. Even if an urban nomad confines himself to a small perimeter, he nonetheless has a new and surprisingly different relationship to time, to place and to other people. “Permanent connectivity, not motion, is the critical thing,” says Manuel Castells, a sociologist at the Annenberg School for Communication, a part of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
- Nomadism, most believe, tends to bring people who are already close, such as family members, even closer. But it may do so at the expense of their attentiveness towards strangers encountered physically (rather than virtually) in daily life. That has implications for society at large.
- Architects, property developers and urban planners are changing their thinking about buildings and cities to accommodate the new habits of the nomads that dwell in them.
  - Yep. - on 2008-05-15
  Add Sticky Note
- Regulators have grasped that the airwaves are now among society's most important assets. America, for instance, has just auctioned off a chunk of spectrum with new rules that require the owner to allow any kind of device and software to run on the resulting network.
- Now the mobile phone is on course to replace the PC as the primary device for getting online.
  - Pay attention, Canada! - on 2008-05-15
  Add Sticky Note
- The most wonderful thing about mobile technology today is that consumers can increasingly forget about how it works and simply take advantage of it. As Ms Canlas sips her Americano and dives into her e-mail in-box at the Nomad Café, she gives no thought to the specifications and standards that make her connection possible. It is the human connections that now take over.

18 Feb 08

We are not 'the next Silicon Valley' by Margaret Pugh O'Mara (Crosscut Seattle)

Really interesting article from the historian's perspective on what it takes to "be" Silicon Valley (hint: certain historical confluences helped) and why it's unlikely that another place will "be" just like that. On the other hand, great places can build on their core strengths, and there are lessons to be learned in this. As O'Mara writes: "In this worldwide network, the most vital innovation centers are those that know their own strengths, provide exciting and dynamic environments for people and firms, and have the resources and institutions that provide a home for new and exciting ideas." I added a comment to this article, particularly as it jives with something Richard Florida also posted today.

www.crosscut.com/...+%27the+next+Silicon+Valley%27 - Preview

business creatives crosscut margaret_o'mara seattle silicon_valley technology

Seattle should build on its local strengths while remaining a key part of the global network of technology industries
Silicon Valley resulted from a combination of powerful local institutions, savvy real estate development choices, immense capital investment by the Cold War military-industrial complex, and the simple good fortune of being on the right side of national economic and demographic trends. The repeated failures of other places to replicate that success – much less seize Silicon Valley's high-tech mantle – attest to the trickiness of getting this formula right.
The lessons of the tech industry's Cold War-era infancy still hold true today.
8 more annotations...
- You need lots of money that can be spent (somewhat) recklessly. Military grants and contracts provided the capital needed for Valley pioneers like Hewlett-Packard to survive in their earliest, leanest years and created a demand for sophisticated technologies before there was a sizeable commercial market. As military contracts declined in the late 1960s, private venture capitalists and angel investors rose to take their place, giving smart but untested people repeated opportunities to innovate and develop new products.
- Like the Bay Area and other gold- and silver-rush cities of the American West, it has a long tradition of supporting innovators and iconoclasts. But it is only very recently that the local venture pool has reached critical mass – thanks in large part to the individuals who benefitted from the boom days of Seattle's first tech wave in the 1990s.
- Stanford University was not solely responsible for building Silicon Valley, but it had a great deal to do with it. But the mere presence of a big university is not enough – and this is one crucial fact that so many would-be Silicon Valleys have gotten wrong. A university or other research institution has to have strong programs in the disciplines that matter to high tech. It needs to have the budget and willingness to engage in things like university-industry partnerships and to encourage technology transfer rather than hobbling it. And strength is in numbers: It's important for a region to have one of these institutions, and it's even better for a place to have many of them.
- You need to be a place that attracts talented people and retains the ones you've already got. Silicon Valley grew because it was a place with qualities that attracted people who had the education, economic resources, and social advantages to live anywhere they chose. It was located in an economically booming state in a prosperous nation, within commuting distance of a major city, but with open land available to build suburban houses, research parks, and highways. It has been able to create an environment that allows white-collar high-tech workers to live, work, and network in something of a self-contained bubble.
- Retention of talent also matters. Cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore have some of the top-ranked research universities in the world, but the alumni of schools like Penn and Johns Hopkins often hop the first Amtrak out of town after graduation.
- Seattle has excelled at attracting talented people; its high proportion of college-educated residents attests to this. It hasn't done as well at producing them. The people who went to college here make up a relatively small part of the tech workforce. In Silicon Valley, Stanford and Berkeley pulled talented students to the Bay Area from across the country and the world. Many of the builders of the Valley, from Hewlett and Packard to Google, are products of local universities. A region's students are essential to its future economic success.
- You need to build on existing strengths, not follow the next big thing. This is another one that many Silicon Valley wannabes get wrong. As the eminent urban scholar John Friedmann puts it in his book The Wealth of Cities, "cities are not containers." The perpetual pursuit for outside capital – and transplanted ideas and innovations – is a far less productive strategy than building on core competencies. Thirty and 40 years ago, regions around the world were trying to emulate Silicon Valley by building semiconductors; today, nearly as many places are fixated on becoming the next biotech hub or the next capital of nanotechnology. Simple rules of economics dictate that few of these aspirants will meet their goals.
- Silicon Valley succeeded not because of the "silicon" but because it was doing something that complemented existing regional strengths. The area had been a hotbed of amateur tinkering with radio technology since the 1910s; faculty and students at Stanford had been working on transistor technology for a generation. Similarly, Seattle was launched onto the global economic map by technologies and companies that built on things local people and firms already did well. Nordstrom injected a new level of customer service to selling shoes; Starbucks did the same thing years later in selling a cup of coffee.
  - Ha, no kidding with the tinkerer aspect: think of Doc Searls and his "IT Garage"... - on 2008-02-18
  Add Sticky Note

Place Wars - Seattle vs. Silicon Valley (Richard Florida and The Creative Class Exchange)

Florida points to two techologists, one SV-based (Michael Arrington), the other now once again Seattle-based (Glenn Kelman), having a bit of a dust-up over whether one region/ city is better than the other. Robert Scoble also weighs in, as do several others. Of particular interest is that Crosscut today also published Margaret Pugh O'Mara's article on the Seattle - Silicon Valley comparison. I commented here (and in Crosscut).

creativeclass.typepad.com/...place-wars---se.html - Preview

business creatives richard_florida seattle silicon_valley technology

12 Feb 08

The Lawyers Weekly: From A to Z: new developments in Canadian technology law

A fascinating A-Z compendium of new developments in Canadian technology law, by Michael Geist. Examples: "J is for the Jewish New Year cards Prime Minister Stephen Harper sent to thousands of Canadians. The cards raised uncomfortable privacy questions about the collection and use of personal information by Canada’s political parties." Or: "Q is for QuebecTorrent, the Quebec-based “torrent tracker” that was sued by a group of cultural groups on the grounds that the site facilitates copyright infringement." And: "S is for shaping, the controversial ISP practice that limits the bandwidth allocated to certain applications. The growing use of traffic shaping by Canadian ISPs led to mounting calls for net neutrality legislation."

www.lawyersweekly.ca/index.php - Preview

canada copyfight law michael_geist net_neutrality technology

23 Jan 08

The Mobile City - TV glasses - watching video in private

Mobile City asks all the right questions (in this case, about video glasses, a visual sort of iPod or Walkman device). Eg.: "...it’s another addition to the array of media to shield off private media consumption in public places. Just like the Walkman/iPod earbuds privatized personal music listening, these glasses may do something similar for watching video/TV. The same ol’ question arises again: what does this mean for publicness of places?"

What does it mean for the publicness of places? Or, alternately, what does it mean for polite anonymity, for protective anonymity? At what point does privacy become just a big too ...aggressive and impolite for civic intercourse?

www.themobilecity.nl/...sses-watching-video-in-private - Preview

anonymity cities privacy public_space technology

Why do I find this interesting? First of all it’s another addition to the array of media to shield off private media consumption in public places. Just like the Walkman/iPod earbuds privatized personal music listening, these glasses may do something similar for watching video/TV. The same ol’ question arises again: what does this mean for publicness of places? I can also imagine the possibilities for musea and the tourism industry to use this device for visually augmented tours? Any examples yet?
Second, this device points to some media characteristics that are important to distinguish. This pair of glasses in its current state overlays physical reality with an added layer of information. Just like ‘passive’ navigation devices such as TomTom, it is augmenting space with an extra level of added information. It is not creating a truly hybrid space in the sense of - following Adriana De Souza e Silva’s writings - enabling social interaction in both physical and digital spaces at the same time, which are mutually influencing each other.

Yet what if new uses are created with such a device? What if video-calls (e.g. via Skype) are possible through these pair of glasses, calls that take place both in digital space and influence the physical space and vice versa? Or if you watch Youtube video’s on this thing and immediately comment on them via your cell phone? Then this device would enable the creation of hybrid spaces. So augmented space or hybrid space it is not inherent in the technologies but always defined by the social processes in which technologies are used.

22 Dec 07

Situated Technologies Pamphlets 1: Urban Computing and its Discontents by Adam Greenfield, Mark Shepard (Book) in Arts & Photography

page from which to find pdf on urban computing & its discontents

www.lulu.com/1554599 - Preview

architecture computing media technology ubiquitous urbanism

SDTC The Funding Gap

SDTC = Sustainable Development Technology Canada; this particular page describes the Innovation Chain, particularly in Canada. Points out its weak spots, very interesting.

www.sdtc.ca/...innovation_chain.htm - Preview

canada funding innovation research sustainability technology

Yule Heibel's Library tagged technology → View Popular

Canada's innovation gap - The Globe and Mail

YouTube - Did You Know?

"Better Wind Turbines" (MIT Technology Review)

"The Web and Beyond: Mobility (1) - Adam Greenfield" - The Mobile City » Blog Archive »

Transmaterial 2: To Redefine Our Physical Environment - PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things”

At The Churchill Club: The Top 10 Tech Trends (Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online)

"Gandhi on Ubicomp," by Nat Torkington - O'Reilly Radar

Nomads at last | Economist.com

We are not 'the next Silicon Valley' by Margaret Pugh O'Mara (Crosscut Seattle)

Place Wars - Seattle vs. Silicon Valley (Richard Florida and The Creative Class Exchange)

The Lawyers Weekly: From A to Z: new developments in Canadian technology law

The Mobile City - TV glasses - watching video in private

Situated Technologies Pamphlets 1: Urban Computing and its Discontents by Adam Greenfield, Mark Shepard (Book) in Arts & Photography

SDTC The Funding Gap

Selected Tags

Related Tags

Sponsored Links

Top Contributors

Groups interested in technology

Discovery Educator Network

AT in SPED

educators

Elearning

Technology Tools in the Classroom: Using Computers to Engage Your Students

Web 2.0