In order to have innovative smart city applications, cities first need to build out the connected infrastructure, which can be a costly, lengthy, and politicized process. Third-parties are helping build infrastructure at no cost to cities by paying for projects entirely through advertising placements on the new equipment. I try to dig into the economics […]
View More The economics and tradeoffs of ad-funded smart city techCategory: Opinion
The innovation supply chain: How ideas traverse continents and transform economies
Realizing the true potential of any idea takes time and requires input from diverse cultures and perspectives. Technological innovation is no exception.
View More The innovation supply chain: How ideas traverse continents and transform economiesGlimpses of China’s parallel tech universe
What can we learn from DETECTIVE CHINATOWN 2? Quite a lot, actually. The 11th biggest box-office hit of the year, it vastly outgrossed the likes of SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY, A STAR IS BORN, and CRAZY RICH ASIANS. You may never have heard of it, though; like OPERATION RED SEA, the 10th biggest hit […]
View More Glimpses of China’s parallel tech universeThe slow corrosion of techno-optimism
Two weeks from now, the Swahilipot Hub, a hackerspace / makerspace / center for techies and artists in Mombasa, Kenya, is hosting a Pwani Innovation Week, “to stimulate the innovation ecosystem in the Pwani Region.” Some of its organizers showed me around Mombasa’s cable landing site some years ago; they’re impressive people. The idea of […]
View More The slow corrosion of techno-optimismGoing to music gigs alone is the best way to do it. Fight me.
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I could be anywhere in the world, but the moment I hear a song from Neko Case’s “Fox Confessor Brings The Flood,” I’m transported back to my friend’s single bed in northern France. The year is 2009, my Erasmus year, and I’m a teaching assistant in a suburban secondary school.
There, I would spend my evenings drinking €3 red wine and listening to the iTunes library of a new American friend (and now, best friend) named Shannon who also happened to be teaching English in the same sleepy French town. It was there, during this year of instructing teenagers how to conjugate, that I realised how intensely personal our relationship with music can be. That’s why, nine years on, I decided I would go to see Neko Case on my own during her European tour. Read more…
More about Music, Opinion, Concert, Gig, and Culture
View More Going to music gigs alone is the best way to do it. Fight me.Mattereum, perhaps the world’s weirdest and most daring startup, intends to own literally everything
How’s this for eyebrow-raising? In London, for the last year and a half, a team of lawyers, cryptographers, software engineers, and/or former military consultants have been brewing a bizarre and/or brilliant plan for a bridge between the blockchain and the real world — a system whose success is directly proportional to the extent to which […]
View More Mattereum, perhaps the world’s weirdest and most daring startup, intends to own literally everythingThree challenges facing blockchain technology
Blockchain technology will eventually impact many industries, but there is still a long way to go before blockchain technology can realize its true potential. Here are the three most important challenges facing more widespread adoption of blockchain technology.
View More Three challenges facing blockchain technologySamsung’s dual-screen folding phone is very strange and probably doomed
Let me just say that I love the idea of a folding phone/tablet device. I was a Courier fanboy when Microsoft floated that intriguing but abortive concept device, and I’m all for unique form factors and things that bend. But Samsung’s first real shot at a folding device is inexplicable and probably dead on arrival. I’d like to congratulate the company for trying something new, but this one needed a little more time in the oven.
View More Samsung’s dual-screen folding phone is very strange and probably doomedWhat if Google unionized?
Last week more than 20,000 Google employees walked out of their workplace to protest, and demand major changes in, how the company handles harassment and discrimination. Mass employee organization, demands made of management — doesn’t that all vaguely remind you of some kind of old-fashioned twentieth-century concept? What was it called again? The name’s on […]
View More What if Google unionized?How to build STEM toys
On chilly Saturday mornings my father would fire up the kerosene heater and get the back of our garage warm. He’d turn on the old radio, constantly tuned to the local public radio station, and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me or Harry Shearer would come on, clearing away the static like a gust of wind […]
View More How to build STEM toysTo actually change the world, Big Tech needs to grow up
It’s not too late for tech giants to learn to be responsible, self-aware competitors. However, a few central questions must be answered.
View More To actually change the world, Big Tech needs to grow upThe tools, they are a-changing
Building web services and smartphone apps, which is most of what I’ve been doing professionally at HappyFunCorp1 for the last decade or so, used to be pretty straightforward. Not easy, but straightforward, especially when the client was a consumer startup, which so many of them were. The more we did the better we got at […]
View More The tools, they are a-changing