Fall 2016 @ MIT ~ Ventures, Places, Futures!

I'm co-teaching a very cool folio of MIT class offerings this Fall 2016 and hope you'll either consider joining us or spreading the word about particularly relevant offerings to great students and colleagues who you think might appreciate them! These cluster into three big categories: Transformational Ventures, Creative Places, and Emergent Futures. Details below & online...  

• Development Ventures ~ Thu 10a-12n E14-633 ~ 15.375/EC.731/MAS.665 ~ http://developmentventures.org ~ Towards the entrepreneurial deployment of emerging market innovations solving problems faced by at least a Billion people worldwide in developing countries and underserved communities. First class: Thu 9/8  
• Revolutionary Ventures ~ Thu 2-4p E15-341 ~ 9.455/15.128/20.454/MAS.883 ~ http://revolutionaryventures.org ~ Exploring personal entrepreneurial strategies and envisioning and building transformative ideas and organizations to initiate and/or accelerate bold engineering revolutions. Email reven@media.mit.edu ASAP if interested. First class: Thu 9/8  
• Future Commerce (H1) ~ Tue 1-2:30p E14-633 ~ MAS.s71/15.s73 ~ http://mitfuturecommerce.org ~ New Media meets Markets & Finance. First class: Tue 9/13 (Half Semester offering)  
• Future Health (H2) ~ Tue 1-2:30p E14-633 ~ MAS.s72/15.s74 ~ http://mitfuturehealth.org ~ New Media meets Medicine & Wellness. First class: Tue 11/1 (Second Half of semester)  
• Understanding MIT ~ Tue 4-6p 9-450A ~ 11.s941 ~ http://understandingmit.org ~ Special seminar on the challenges of designing and building research universities and crafting conditions for a supportive, vibrant, and entrepreneurial learning community. First class: Tue 9/13  
• Model Cities ~ Wed 2-5p E15-359 ~ MAS.552/4.557 ~ http://mitmodelcities.org ~ Simulating & Visualizing Entrepreneurial, Innovative, & Creative Urban Hotspots. First class: Wed 9/7  
• SciFab 2050 ~ Tue 7-9p E15-359 ~ MAS.s60 ~ http://scifab2050.org/ ~ An informal seminar using Science Fiction, extrapolation, simulation, and imagination to envision what our world might be like in 2050. Email jpbonsen@alum.mit.edu if interested. First session: Tue 9/13

Future Climate ~ Köppen-Geiger A1FI Scenario...

Future A1FI Köppen-Geiger climate scenario...

Flood Simulations ~ Modeling Disaster Dynamics!

Steven Ward hosts the ingomar200 YouTube page where he posts great simulations of various historical flood and related disasters. These really help visualize historical and physical dynamics of major incidents. He's got many, but here's a few I particularly like: First, Pennsylvania's Johnstown Flood (1889)... France's Malpasset Dam Disaster (1959)... Alaska's Lituya Bay Tsunami (1959)... Historic breaching at Gibraltar and Med flood... Asteroid Eltanin hitting South Pacific... Finally, simulating Las Palmas again triggering megatsunami...

Sustainable Singapore ~ A Role-Model City?

Nice CNBC piece by Anmar Frangoul on Sustainable Singapore...

" Singapore is one of the most densely populated cities in the world -- but it's also one of the most high-tech when it comes to green city planning. Now, other Asian cities are looking to Singapore for inspiration. [...] Chinese authorities are now beginning to take note and view Singapore as a model in terms of planning and sustainability. [...] Chinese all over the country have been to Singapore... they like what we've done in Singapore and they would like their cities to be developed like Singapore."

Spike ~ 3D Measuring & Modeling via Mobiles

NBF spots Spike, laser accurate 3D object and building measurement & modeling via mobile with clip-on. See Kickstarter campaign vid... Especially check out this quick'n'dirty 3D building modeling element! This reminds me of Mok3 crossed with Viztu with a touch of C3 Technologies;-)

Perfect Mannequins ~ Pro Infirmis Body Doubles!

Thanks to Anna Hodgekiss at the DailyMail for spotting the Pro Infirmis perfect mannequins project!

"A Swiss charity has created mannequins based on the bodies of disabled people in a bid to raise awareness that no one has a perfect body. Pro Infirmis, an organisation for people with disabilities, worked with people suffering from scoliosis (a curved spine), shortened limbs and a woman in a wheelchair. Each had a mannequin made to perfectly reflect their body shape -- which, to their delight, was then displayed in a high street store in Zurich's main shopping street. [...] The aim of the project is to raise awareness of people with disabilities, specifically in the image-obsessed worlds of fashion and retail. [...] Because who is perfect?"

Limits to Growth ~ 40 Years of Doom Dynamics

40 years ago Dennis Meadows and colleagues built upon the World Dynamics model of MIT's Jay Forrester and published The Limit to Growth about computer model simulations of global dynamics to explore the macro-possibilities of humanity on earth and study the "Predicament of Mankind." Just a few weeks ago, the Volkswagen Foundation sponsored a workshop asking whether we are Already Beyond? -- 40 Years Limits to Growth. And the Smithsonian's Mark Strauss writes Looking Back on the Limits of Growth, asking...

"Forty years after the release of the groundbreaking study, were the concerns about overpopulation and the environment correct? Recent research supports the conclusions of a controversial environmental study released 40 years ago: The world is on track for disaster. So says Australian physicist Graham Turner, who revisited perhaps the most groundbreaking academic work of the 1970s, The Limits to Growth."

Finally, Der Spiegel's Markus Becker interviews Meadows who says Humanity Is Still on the Way to Destroying Itself...

"...we are going to evolve through crisis, not through proactive change. [...] The fact that the collapse hasn't occurred so far doesn't mean it won't take place in the future. There is no doubt that the world is changing, and we will have to go along with it. There are two ways to do that: One is, you see the necessity of change ahead of time and you make the change, and the second is that you don't and are finally forced to do it anyway. [...] the geological record clearly shows that the global temperature doesn't increase in a linear way. It jumps. If that happens, a collapse will occur. But it would be nothing new, of course. Societies rise and fall. They have been doing so for 300,000 years."

Miniatur Wunderland ~ Germany's Model City!-)

Lovely to see more of Germany's Miniatur Wunderland!

Limits to Growth ~ 40th Anniv @ Smithsonian...

Limits to Growth -- published in 1972, see here a 40 years retrospective discussion at the Smithsonian. First, Dennis Meadows... And Jørgen Randers... (And see here the rest of the series of speakers)

Knuffingen Airport ~ Miniatur Wunderland Flies!

Wow, check out Knuffingen Airport HO-scale model!