Growing Innovations ~ Small Farmer Productivity

I moderated a very compelling MIT panel tonight 28 February 2011 on the theme Growing Innovations ~ Improving Agricultural Productivity among Small-Acreage Farmers featuring scholars and practitioners of agricultural innovation and poverty alleviation, including...

• Calestous Juma ~ Ag Innovation in Africa Project, Harvard
• David Funkhouser ~ Fair Trade USA
• Sarah Kalloch ~ Oxfam America
• Marc Shotland ~ MIT J-PAL & Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative

This event was a joint venture between the MIT Food+Agriculture Collaborative, the MIT Technology & Culture Forum, and the MIT International Development Initiative in support of this year's Yunus Innovation Challenge -- Improved Agricultural Processes for Better Livelihoods...

"Around the world, 550 million smallholder farmers lack access to mechanized agricultural technology. Many important food staples like maize (corn) and grains (e.g., rice or wheat) are harvested and processed by hand, which is both labor intensive and time consuming. This year's Yunus Challenge calls for locally and environmentally sustainable innovations to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. The 2011 Yunus Challenge will be awarded to participants who create an innovative solution that has the most potential to increase adoption of beneficial agricultural technologies, financial systems, or market access among smallholder farmers to improve their livelihoods"

Fast Trains in Asia ~ Chinese Highspeed Railways

TrainsTube features High Speed Trains in China and South Korea...

"Trains magazine Senior Editor Matt Van Hattem's April 2011 story, "Fast Times in Asia," [shared] his experiences on high speed trains in China, Korea, and Taiwan. Check out some video of what he saw on his Asian high speed rail trip."

Triumph of the City ~ Glaeser on Skyscrapers...

The Atlantic excerpts Harvard Professor Edward Glaeser's new book Triumph of the City in How Skyscrapers Can Save the City...

"The magic of cities comes from their people, but those people must be well served by the bricks and mortar that surround them. Cities need roads and buildings that enable people to live well and to connect easily with one another. [...] in the most desirable cities, whether they’re on the Hudson River or the Arabian Sea, height is the best way to keep prices affordable and living standards high. The success of our cities, the world’s economic engines, increasingly depends on abstruse decisions made by zoning boards and preservation committees. It certainly makes sense to control construction in dense urban spaces, but I would replace the maze of regulations now limiting new construction with three simple rules. First, cities should replace the lengthy and uncertain permitting processes now in place with a simple system of fees. [...] Second, historic preservation should be limited and well defined. [...] Finally, individual neighborhoods should have more power to protect their special character. [...] Great cities are not static -- they constantly change, and they take the world along with them. When New York and Chicago and Paris experienced great spurts of creativity and growth, they reshaped themselves to provide new structures that could house new talent and new ideas. [...] As America struggles to regain its economic footing, we would do well to remember that dense cities are also far more productive than suburbs, and offer better-paying jobs. Globalization and new technologies seem to have only made urban proximity more valuable -- young workers gain many of the skills they need in a competitive global marketplace by watching the people around them. Those tall buildings enable the human interactions that are at the heart of economic innovation, and of progress itself."

Feeding the World ~ Economist Special Report...

The latest Economist has a special report on Feeding the World, the 9 billion-people question...

"An era of cheap food has come to an end. A combination of factors -- rising demand in India and China, a dietary shift away from cereals towards meat and vegetables, the increasing use of maize as a fuel, and developments outside agriculture, such as the fall in the dollar -- have brought to a close a period starting in the early 1970s in which the real price of staple crops (rice, wheat and maize) fell year after year. This has come as a shock. By the 1990s most agricultural problems seemed to have been solved. Yields were rising, pests appeared under control and fertilisers were replenishing tired soil. The exciting areas of research in life sciences were no longer plants but things like HIV/AIDS. The end of the era of cheap food has coincided with growing concern about the prospects of feeding the world. Around the turn of 2011-12 the global population is forecast to rise to 7 billion, stirring Malthusian fears. The price rises have once again plunged into poverty millions of people who spend more than half their income on food. The numbers of those below the poverty level of $1.25 a day, which had been falling consistently in the 1990s, rose sharply in 2007-08. That seems to suggest that the world cannot even feed its current population, let alone the 9 billion expected by 2050. Adding further to the concerns is climate change, of which agriculture is both cause and victim. So how will the world cope in the next four decades?"

China Equivalents ~ Provinces as Country-GDPs

The Economist compares Chinese provinces with countries...

Future Now ~ DW Spotlights Top Innovations...

Thanks to MIT's Azamat Abdymomunov for spotting Deutsche Welle's Future Now...

"20 projects that will change our lives -- not in the distant future, but tomorrow. These researchers are looking for solutions to burning questions about the future."

Compelling ideas in realms of imaging, smart materials, agri-bio, robomation, interfaces, and more applied to health, sustainability, urbanization, education, plus+plus!

Shuttle Launch! ~ Stunning Airplane Perspective

Lucky passengers flying past Florida witness finale Discovery shuttle launch from the air! Thanks to the Bad Astronomer for spotting this footage by NeilMonday! Here's more imagery courtesy DailyMail.

Apollo 18 ~ What Happened to the Last Mission?

The Daily Galaxy spots this scary-as-hell trailer for Apollo 18 horror flick about the secret last mission to the Moon...

Monster Prominence ~ Epic Solar Production!

Check out this video of what NASA calls a Monster Prominence! Thanks to IO9 for spotting this flaregasm.

Me and My Bike ~ 1 Minute To Save The World...

Thanks to Copenhagenize for spotting Me and My Bike...

Animals as People ~ Ridiculous Soundtrack;-)

Thanks to Emily Short for spotting Animals as people...

MIT $100K! ~ Business Plans Due 2/25 6p...

The MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition deadline for the Spring semester Business Plan Contest are due via online submission this Friday night 25 February 2011 by 6pm EST! I encourage everyone eligible to give it a shot. Multiple tracks and overall grand prize of $100,000! Many excellent actual companies have been born from this Competition, including Harmonix, Akamai, SmartCells, Neurometrix, and a hundred more. Plus I'm very proud that a third of the previous round winners and many past track winners and finalists are former students in our Ventures classes!

This Is Nollywood ~ Africa's Booming Industry...

Check out This Is Nollywood, the award-winning documentary about Nigeria's booming movie industry by Producer-Directors Robert Caputo and Franco Sacchi and Associate Producer -- and also our MIT Media Ventures student from Harvard's Ed School -- Aimee Corrigan... The Economist spotlights the industry in Lights, camera, Africa ~ Movies are uniting a disparate continent, and dividing it too...

"It is hard to avoid Nigerian films in Africa. Public buses show them, as do many restaurants and hotels. Nollywood, as the business is known, churns out about 50 full-length features a week, making it the world’s second most prolific film industry after India’s Bollywood. The Nigerian business capital, Lagos, is said by locals to have produced more films than there are stars in the sky. The streets are flooded with camera crews shooting on location. Only the government employs more people. Nigerian films are as popular abroad as they are at home. [...] And yet Africans have mixed feelings about Nollywood. Among Africa’s elites, hostility is almost uniform. [But...] Film also profoundly shapes how Africans see their own continent. Few have access to news channels. They derive many of their opinions on neighbouring countries from the movies. More than once your correspondent has heard Africans say they had not been to such-and-such a place but knew it from a film. That the films they watch are made by other Africans is a source of considerable satisfaction. For decades many Africans have complained that the Western media misrepresent their continent, showing only calamities like war, disease, corruption and famine. They have come to see film as an antidote. “Nollywood is the voice of Africa, the answer to CNN,” says Lancelot Idowu, one of the best-known Nigerian directors. And African films are becoming more adventurous. [On bold and even taboo topics...] Nollywood is tackling it with zest and flair."

Rearden Dissed ~ Clip From Atlas Shrugged

Hank Rearden disrespected in latest clip from Atlas Shrugged... Check out film review by David Kelley of the Atlas Society.

WTF, TSA? ~ Adam Savage Junk Gets Past Idiots

Thanks to Jim Youll for spotting Adam Savage saying "What The Fuck, TSA?" busting the myth that junk groping US "security theatre" bozos are either competent or relevant, nevermind Constitutional...

Green Inhabitats ~ Delightfully Vital Designs...

Inhabitat serves up more delightful designs...

Then & Now ~ WebUrbanist on Stunning Urbania

Check out WebUrbanist's Then & Now: The Stunning Speed of Urban Development showing boom times in a dozen cities...

"Twenty-one years ago, Dubai was a desert. It sprang up seemingly from nothing into the lively and technologically advanced world-class city that it is today. This is just one example of the dramatic speeds with which cities can change, sometimes rendering their skylines virtually unrecognizable within decades."

Tokyo Timelapse ~ Epic Shinjuku Skyscrapers...

WebUrbanist reminds me of this Shinjuku Skyscrapers timelapse...

Future Screens ~ TAT on Tomorrow's UI's...

Nice little visualization of future screen interfaces by TAT... The most implausible part was Sweden winning the WC in 2014;-)

Enduring Voices ~ Engaging Language Hotspots

Excellent to see the NatGeo Enduring Voices project dial things up...

"By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth -- many of them not yet recorded -- may disappear, taking with them a wealth of knowledge about history, culture, the natural environment, and the human brain. National Geographic's Enduring Voices Project (conducted in collaboration with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages) strives to preserve endangered languages by identifying language hotspots -- the places on our planet with the most unique, poorly understood, or threatened indigenous languages -- and documenting the languages and cultures within them. Each year the Enduring Voices Project sends teams to language hotspots around the globe to interview speakers and document vanishing cultures and languages. When invited, the Enduring Voices Project assists indigenous communities in their efforts to revitalize and maintain their threatened languages."

Check out their Enduring Voices channel...

Alternative Pathways ~ Mix of SF and Imagination!

While reading about Victorian genius engineer Brunel, I wondered about his big ideas which did not succeed, including his atmospheric railway. Suppose he could have iterated and improved and ultimately made it work? What alternative pathways would humanity now be on? This got me thinking about what if Charles Babbage had succeeded in building his mechanical computer. That's such a ripe theme that science fiction authors William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote an alternate history SF novel exploring it, The Difference Engine, a world where both Industrial and Information Revolutions happen together and human progress is accelerated. Several comic/novelist/movies have taken up variations on this theme as well, including the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the Wild Wild West and even the polychronic Back to the Future. One of my favorites is from the WAKE graphic novel series by Jean-David Morvan and Philippe Buchet when lead character Navee visits a strangely steampunk world in volume 3, Gearing Up. Perhaps the most intriguing of this genre, though, is Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age set in a future when sophisticated nanotechnology and AI prevail and enable a wild mixing of sociomes, including a curiously neo-Victorian culture. What this genre especially allows is exploring what is central to being human in the face of vastly differing technologies. Epic!

World Climate ~ Mapping Changes 1976-2100

Thanks to Scalable Future Cities for spotting the World Map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification updated...

World Large Cities ~ Growth Anime 1950-2050

Thanks to tumblr de juan freire for spotting Nordpil's World database of large urban areas, 1950-2050 and this century-long anime of past through future posted by founder Hugo Ahlenius...

Brunel's Sketchbook ~ Genius Engineering Anime

Whilst exploring the history of genius inventor engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, I came across this lovely anime of Brunel's Sketchbook by Paul Matson who writes...

"Researching his workaholic life, I imagined Brunel huddled over a sketchbook in the early hours of morning, drawing by candlelight in a frenzy of activity. Lines on paper that, over time, would become the starting points for his greatest engineering works. His sketchbooks, diaries and letters are now archived in the Brunel Collection at the University of Bristol. Full of energy and vitality, they tell us a great deal about the man and his ambition. Scans were supplied as digital files, which were printed out so that a 90 second sequence could be storyboarded. The biggest challenge was to 'lift' the drawings off the sketchbook paper and find a way of animating them. [...] I'm interested in the creative interpretation of historical archives and bringing them to life in new ways, particularly online. This commission was an opportunity to discover more about Brunel, while bringing his sketchbooks to a new, and wider, audience."

Weightloss Coachbot ~ Cory & Autom @ TiECON

MIT Media Lab alum Cory Kidd showcases Autom -- the Intuitive Automata weightloss coachbot -- at TiECON East 2010...

The Vertical Garden ~ Blanc on Nature in Cities...

Cityscape pioneer Patrick Blanc on The Vertical Garden: From Nature to Cities at the California Academy of Sciences via Fora.tv...

Water Flow ~ Documenting Privatization's Perils

See here the Flow documentary on water and privatization...

Music Industry Dynamics ~ Visualizing Changes...

Thanks to Sergey Gribov and Ilya Ponomarev for spotting The REAL Death Of The Music Industry...

Metropolis Now ~ Longterm Rise of Cities...

Lex writes in the FT about Metropolis Now, the rise of cities...

"...the proportion of the world’s urban dwellers exceeded rural dwellers for the first time a couple of years ago. If you have money to invest, that is great news. Cities galvanise economic growth, lift incomes, allow comparative advantages to be exploited and provide economies of scale [...] Urbanisation is likely to have implications for investment and development patterns. São Paulo and Rio together account for 16 per cent of Brazil’s population but 30 per cent of its GDP. They should attract the lion’s share of inward investment [...] Global investors usually think in terms of countries. They should be paying more attention to cities."

Nano Hummingbird ~ AeroVironment UAV Demo!

Wow, thanks to IO9 for spotting AeroVironment's working life-size Nano Hummingbird unmanned aerial vehicle built for DARPA...

Normal Bicycling ~ Million Rides per Hour in NL!

David Hembrow spots Mark Wagenbuur's Round the Clock Cycling video in his A million journeys per hour by bike post...

"In the daytime on a normal working day in the Netherlands, more than a million journeys are made by bike every hour."

Solar Dynamics ~ Enormous X-Class Flare...

Graham Smith at the DailyMail delivers flaring news...

"The sun has unleashed its most powerful explosion in four years. So violent was the eruption -- known as an X-class flare, the strongest type -- that scientists have warned it could interfere with communications on Earth. Erupting from active region AR1158 in the sun's southern hemisphere, the flare was captured in extreme ultraviolet image by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The intense burst of electromagnetic radiation above a 60,000mile-wide dark sunspot momentarily overwhelmed pixels in SDO's detectors, causing the bright vertical blemish. The X-class flare was also accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME), a massive cloud of charged particles travelling outward at nearly 900 kilometres per second."

Mr.Beam ~ Amazing Video Projector Artworks!

Wow, thanks to amy in .nl for spotting Mr.Beam and their latest 3D video beaming concepts, including Living Room... And participating at the Ghent Light Festival...

Solowheel ~ Another Personal Mobility Solution

Thanks to UniqueDaily for spotting the Solowheel... I still think the Honda U3-X is more epic, but this is a fine contribution to the personal mobility innovation-space!

Transit-Oriented Development ~ Streetfilms...

Thanks to Copenhagenize for spotting Transit-Oriented Development in Streetfilms series Moving Beyond the Automobile...

Leo Bonanni ~ MIT's Sourcemap Futurecrafter...

Excellent to have MIT alum Leonardo Bonanni join me tonight on MaximizingProgress.tv! Leo is lead creator of Sourcemap.org which maps product root-origins, calculates carbon footprints, and opens supply chains. He is now a postdoc at the MIT Media Lab where he is scaling up Sourcemap, deploying with multiple industry and civic partners, and getting ever more supply chains mapped! Leo also instigated one of the coolest and most relevant classes at MIT, FutureCraft, on sustainable product design...

"...which applies emerging digital tools and processes to product design toward new objects that are socially and environmentally sustainable. [Included are the] principal themes of public, local and personal design, resources, assignments and student work. Novel ethnographic methods are discussed with relevance to informing the design of physical products. We aim to create a dialogue around these themes for the product design and HCI communities"

Glass I/O ~ Futuristic Corning Promo Inspires...

Thanks to MIT's Rupreet Singh Soni for spotting nice Corning promo about pervasive, smart, digital glass...

Our Moments of Decision ~ On Becoming MIT...

I'm at MIT's 150th panel discussion on Moments of Decision: An Historical Retrospective moderated by David Mindell of MIT's Program in Science, Technology, and Society featuring, in order...

• Merritt Roe Smith, Cutten Professor of the History of Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society;
• Deborah Douglas, curator for science and technology at the MIT Museum;
• John Durant, director of the MIT Museum;
• David Kaiser, associate professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society and author of Becoming MIT: Moments of Decision;
• Karen Arenson '70, former Alumni Association president and education reporter for The New York Times;

Very cool, the history of our amazing Institute!

Flex Time ~ Guilmette's Vegas Hotel Hot Shots!

Tom Guilmette at play in Vegas with his Phantom Flex camera...

The Printed World ~ From Laserjet to 3D Fab Bots

The Economist spotlights The Printed World in cover story this week...

"...many other people are using three-dimensional printing technology to create similarly remarkable things. These include medical implants, jewellery, football boots designed for individual feet, lampshades, racing-car parts, solid-state batteries and customised mobile phones. Some are even making mechanical devices. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Peter Schmitt, a PhD student, has been printing something that resembles the workings of a grandfather clock. It took him a few attempts to get right, but eventually he removed the plastic clock from a 3D printer, hung it on the wall and pulled down the counterweight. It started ticking."

Witness the birth of DIY, sharable, printable robo-mechatronics! See also Amit Zoran's Printstrument, Shapeways service, and the Ultimaker @ MITERS!

Digital Jeopardy ~ HAL 2001? No, IBM 2011!

CNN's John Sutter writes Computer ties human as they square off...

"An IBM supercomputer named Watson finished one round of the TV show "Jeopardy!" on Monday night tied with one of his human competitors and $3,000 ahead of the other. The man vs. computer face-off won't be complete, however, until the final rounds of the extended trivia game show are aired on Tuesday and Wednesday. IBM trumpets Watson, which has been in development for years and has the processing power of 2,800 "powerful computers," as a major advancement in machines' efforts to understand human language. The computer receives clues through digital texts and then buzzes in against the two other "Jeopardy!" contestants like any other player would. It juggles dozens of lines of reasoning at once and tries to arrive at a smart answer."

HAL 2001? No, IBM 2011!-)

P.S. Watson kicked @$$. Plus, check out BBC interviews with the competitors who "represented the human race" versus the machine;-)

Torture Test ~ Kids Marshmallow Experiment !-)

Thanks to Lucinio Munoz for spotting this Kids Marshmallow Experiment -- a.k.a. the Torture Test...

"Are you a one-Marshmallow or a two-Marshmallows person? It is a famous experiment in which some kids were given a Marshmallow and were faced with the choice of eating it straight away or waiting for 20 minutes; if they waited they were rewarded with a second one. Kids that waited (delayed self-gratification) performed much better later in life. The attitudes of the kids are hilarious."

Radical Learning ~ Design, Inspiration, Kids!

MIT Media Lab colleagues launch RADical design for LEARNING...

"Wtf is going on? Why are people limping out of 20 years of schooling without directed motivation, a solid internal compass, or a commitment to passionately pursuing their interests? Let’s examine why in a cozy, edgy, authentic seminar where we balance theory with real-world action (praxis). We’ll study the radical learning greats such as Illich, Papert, and Llewelyn, with focused readings and videos followed by discussion. Whenever possible we’ll try to have the authors or their direct students available for Q&A&Q. And through hands-on labs and projects we’ll design and enact experience-based transformations, like improvised music, consciousness altering strategies, electronics workshops etc."

iWall ~ Reality Touchscreen at Groningen U...

Thanks to Branko Collin at 24 Oranges for spotting Groningen students build world’s largest touch screen...

Green Habitats ~ Latest Design Delighters...

Thanks to Inhabitat for spotting these design delighters...