In 2006, the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier published an incisive, groundbreaking and highly controversial essay about “digital Maoism” — about the downside of online collectivism, and the enshrinement by Web 2.0 enthusiasts of the “wisdom of the crowd.” In that manifesto Mr. Lanier argued that design (or ratification) by committee often does not result in the best product, and that the new collectivist ethos — embodied by everything from Wikipedia to “American Idol” to Google searches — diminishes the importance and uniqueness of the individual voice, and that the “hive mind” can easily lead to mob rule.

So presently the City of Vancouver only shares its garbage schedule (which it divides into north and south) as a PDF file. This is a pity as it means that no one can build any apps around it. Imagine a website or Iphone app that mashed up google maps with a constantly up to date city garbage pick up schedule. With such a application one could: (..)

In recent years, cognitive scientists have turned in increasing numbers to the study of human happiness, and one of their central findings is that we are not very good at predicting how happy or unhappy something will make us. Given time, survivors of tragedies and traumas report themselves nearly as happy as they were before, and people who win the lottery or achieve lifelong dreams don't see any long-term increase in happiness.

One Amish-man told me that the problem with phones, pagers, and PDAs (yes he knew about them) was that "you got messages rather than conversations." That's about as an accurate summation of our times as any.

Very likely, in the near future, I won't "own" any music, or books, or movies. Instead I will have immediate access to all music, all books, all movies using an always-on service, via a subscription fee or tax. I won't buy – as in make a decision to own -- any individual music or books because I can simply request to see or hear them on demand from the stream of ALL. I may pay for them in bulk but I won't own them. The request to enjoy a work is thus separated from the more complicated choice of whether I want to "own" it.

FDR was our radio president, JFK was our television president and Barack Obama will be our Internet President.

Buoyed by two runaway bestsellers, "Blink" and "The Tipping Point," Gladwell has positioned himself as a roving ambassador between cultural and corporate America, penetrating boardrooms and living rooms, providing bullet points for cocktail parties and management seminars, and changing not just the things we talk about but the way we talk about them. But in this new era of belt-tightening, everyone must expect some cost-benefit analysis, and so, in our best consultant-speak, we ask: How much value does Malcolm Gladwell really add?

Objective truth is no longer significant in discussions of political and social matters. _True Enough_ is about how this has happened, and what it looks like. We hear the phrase "marketplace of ideas" quite a bit; Farhad digs into work by psychologists and sociologists to uncover why it is that it is a marketplace in which bad ideas drive out good. I think it's a fascinating book that's full of interesting ideas, and I think these are ideas that we need to be talking about.

Ever wondered how you rank with the rest of the world in the amount of money you spend on food in a week? I got this email and it has some great pictures along with the amount of cash each family spends in feeding themselves for a week all around the world. From the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio

I’ve learned that the World Bank now offers an API for several of its data sets on development, governance, and business conditions, plus a collection of photos.

mySociety runs most of the UK’s best known democracy websites, like TheyWorkForYou and FixMyStreet

Shirky distils his observations of passive and interactive activities into a general principle: "It’s better to do something than to do nothing." But Stephenson makes the case that both activities have their place. Sometimes switching off your brain and w

Report, view, or discuss local problems (like graffiti, fly tipping, broken paving slabs, or street lighting)

Video of Al Gore's speech on how the USA must change energy sources now: "Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years."

Europe's demographic developments will strongly influence the future of the continent.

Recently I spent some time considering the differences between traditional office e-mail and facebook e-mail: the lack of bc, cc and forward buttons, the way links and videos and sound files are attached, the absence of spreadsheet and document and presen

Gen Y is taking over. The generation of young adults that's composed of the children of Boomers, Generation Jones, and even some Gen X'ers, is the biggest generation since the Baby Boomers and three times the size of Gen X. As the Boomers fade into retire

Article about the fundamental difference between a steady-state economy and continuous growth economy. A steady state — a system that permits qualitative development but not aggregate quantitative growth.

"It was this latter concern that led Charles Kettering, director of General Motors Research, to write a 1929 magazine article called “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied.” He wasn’t suggesting that manufacturers produce shoddy products. Along with many o

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--ri

Head's argument is much like that of David Noble in Forces of Production: we had a choice about how to use new technology. We could use it to turn employees into ever-more-skilled craftspeople, allowing them to be more effective and creative in their jobs

The corporations would have you believe that the combination promises "economies of scale" -- that redundant positions can be eliminated, duplicate processes eliminated, volume discounts obtained from suppliers, and efficiencies obtained by combining oper

Any picture can speak 1,000 words, but only a select few say something poignant enough to galvanize an entire society. The following photographs screamed so loudly that the entire world stopped to take notice.

Martijn Aslander leeft van donaties. In dit artikel gaat hij in op hoe dat werkt, en legt hij uit dat het gaat om toevoegen van waarde.

Web 2.0 heeft de prosumer voortgebracht, de producent en consument ineen. Ook bewees het dat de menigte slimmer en sneller kan zijn dan professionals en bedrijven. Haar encyclopedieën, besturingssystemen en media zijn vaak betrouwbaarder, innovatiever en

"Over the last six months, i've noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That's only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it's not a shift so much as a fragmentation

As we've noted before, there is a strong relationship between environmental crises and social instability. Similarly, developing world communities with healthy environments and sound practices (from farming sustainably to building greenbelts) often see fa