Important work being done here by OK Do and Sitra. I'm proud to see so many of our recommendations reflected in the final report.

Precisely.

The truly terrifying aspect of Fabien Brunsing's piece illustrating differential permissioning and the monetization of public space...is that you can bet someone somewhere's going to take it as a best practice.

Getting to this inexcusably late. Combine this becoming scheme with the sort of frameworks I've spent so much time thinking about and you've got a responsively green urban fabric of impressive potential.

You know I'm not convinced that what the world's megacities "need" is any kind of car at all.

In my view, the mistake here is to assume that the necessary solutions for 2030 need primarily to be about new architecture. It's also the case that you're not terribly likely to get clear thinking about mobility in a contest sponsored by Audi.

Here's my talk from dConstruct in Brighton a few weeks back. My goodness, I do go on. This is an absolutely sprawling talk! Check the tags for some idea of content.

Substantiating my instinctual revulsion for Tom Friedman and his lesser Internet brethren (i.e. Robert Scoble), this site demonstrates that pundits actually have a worse record than pure chance when it comes to making testable claims about the future. More than a few of these guys are wrong *all the time*, and stone dumb besides. Conclusion: people need to weigh the available evidence, draw such conclusions as they will, and make their own dang truth.

SO EXCELLENT! Our hosts in Umeå made us these amazing gifts, of which I was somehow lucky enough to walk away with two: the Neutral Gender Propagator and the Criminal Love Implant.

I smell Dynabook.

Sigh. Double sigh.

Rewards watching the whole 8:48.

The Economist on the narrowing horizon and the declining fortunes of the Toffler set.

God, I admire Matt's restraint. In similar circumstances, I have no doubt I'd have launched on warning. Good to see him writing again, too.

Foreign Office's impeccable media and interface imaginings for "Children of Men." Only Britain soldiers on...

Kunstler must've gotten up on the right side of the bed this morning. This here is him at or pretty close to his best.

Via Jones. I think this is a very generous reading of a deeply problematic film (which, nonetheless, I've managed to see no fewer than three times in the two months it's been out)

How many different "Web2.0" tropes can the Times pack into one piece? The wisdom of crowds, the power of data visualization, open source collaboration, it's all in here...

In which I decloak

Apparently despised, but utterly fascinating

RAND's, um, insights

Lots of interesting points about downstream consequences of unconscious decisions at the level of architecture, the neotenous society, and so forth. Bottom line: the last few decades of my life don't look as if they will be much fun at all.

Problematizing "Massive Change"

Jamais Cascio on extimate watchfulness

Paging Dr. Ain...Dr. Ain to the white courtesy telephone, please...

Yesssssss.

The original piece, somewhat modified for that issue of Whole Earth I read in a grim Seattle winter ten years ago..

"Thanksgiving Day, 2005": Laissez les bon temps roulez

Read the last line, let it sink it, shed a few tears and move on

Mo' Kunstler

Gotta love Gore Vidal

Von Neumann, here we come

"Ecology, anarchy and primitivism"

Stick a fork in us, we're done

Assessing asteroid/comet Earth impact scenarios. Cheery!

Cheery, uncomfortable despite the disclaimers about "not being racist," but not too far from accurate in some ways

Gets the big "hmmmm"

Not sure I agree: to think about