R.I.P. Jay W Forrester ~ Sociodynamics Pioneer...

Alas, RIP, Jay W Forrester. Through his panache, presence, and personal feedback (to me!) and through his inventing core memory & CNC machines, the Whirlwind real-time digital computer, Sage air defense network, Lincoln Labs, building up the MIT Sloan School, teaching Professors Ed Roberts, John Sterman, Donella Meadows, Jurgen Randers, etc, et al, founding the System Dynamics discipline, and providing essential inspiration to dozens of MIT alumcos -- i.e. his students were founders of Digital Equipment Corp (DEC), MITRE, 3Com, Pugh-Roberts, Patni Computer Systems (birth of Indian offshoring), Ventana, and many, many more -- plus inspirational role in creating SimCity, pioneering management flight simulators, e.g. creating the Beer Game, writing Industrial Dynamics, Urban Dynamics, World Dynamics and provoking LImits to Growth, C-ROADS simulators, etc, etc, Jay Forrester remains an awesome and iconoclastic inventor, a personal inspiration to me and thousands more, and one of MIT's most epic and innovative heroes. I'm so sad at losing him but so happy to have had him too...

Revolutionary Ventures ~ Bold Transformations!

My MIT Media Lab colleagues Ed Boyden, Joe Jacobson, Adam Marblestone, Desiree Dudley and I are co-hosting an upgraded and basically new incarnation of our Neurotech Ventures class -- now called Revolutionary Ventures -- this Fall 2015 at the Media Lab starting Thursday afternoon September 10th from 2-4pm.

While we emphasize a variety of emerging technology domains including neurotechnology, imaging, cryotechnology, gerontechnology, and bio-and-nano fabrication, this course is all about envisioning, planning, and building ventures -- anything ranging from entrepreneurial startups and intrapreneurial product-lines or business units to new research centers or universities, even the creation of new disciplines and entire industries!

Cultural Complexity ~ MIT's César Hidalgo @ Eyeo

César Hidalgo at Eyeo 2014 on International & Intertemporal Differences in Social and Economic Complexity...

Neurotechnology Ventures ~ Minds, Money, MIT

My MIT Media Lab colleague Ed Boyden and I are again co-hosting our Neurotechnology Ventures class this Fall 2014 at the Media Lab starting this Thursday afternoon September 4th from 2-4pm. This course is all about envisioning, planning, and building ventures -- both entrepreneurial startups and intrapreneurial product-lines or business units -- to bring neuroengineering innovations to the world. Compelling venture themes include Neuroimaging, Neuromarketing, Neurology/Psychiatry Screening & Diagnosis, Mood & Behavioral Influencing, Rehabilitation, Neurosurgery, Neuropharmacology, Brain Stimulation, Prosthetics, Sensory and Motor Augmentation, Regenerative Neuromedicine, Learning, Memory & Cognitive Influencing, and more.

Drone do Amor ~ Brazilian "Love" Quadcopters

Lovely to have Brazilian social entrepreneur Francisco Almendra share his Love Drone story...

"I am using UAVs (drones) to bring awareness and celebration to the skies in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I've created a project called the Love Drone which films what is going on in the city from above with a lighthearted touch, from the summer parties and Carnaval, to the street protests, the FIFA World Cup and the upcoming presidential elections process. In this area, I'm also thinking about ways to use small UAVs to interact with the people on the street in a variety of ways, from delivering personal messages and small objects as part of art or urban intervention projects, to projecting large scale messages using laser pointers connected to embedded electronics hooked on the internet from the air -- e.g., imagine a drone downloading tweets and projecting them realtime on a public building from the air during a street protest..."

Guinea Pig Club ~ Dr McIndoe's WWII Patients...

WWII airmen with terrible injuries were cared for by remarkable plastic surgeon, the New Zealander Sir Archibald McIndoe, who pioneered modern reconstructive surgery through bold but careful experimental methods at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, England.  The injured were "human guinea pigs" and proud of it.  With McIndoe's encouragement, these men formed an exclusive drinking club which endures even now, nearly three-quarters of a century later.  The Guardian's Lucinda Marland shares some of their stories.  And the BBC's Nick Tarver writes in 2011 as East Grinstead 'guinea pigs' celebrate 70th anniversary...

"According to the Guinea Pig Club's honorary secretary, Bob Marchant, who worked with the surgeon in the 1950s, it was his focus on young men's future lives, which paid dividends. "He not only treated them for burns, but also psychologically by getting them back into the community," he said. "There were a lot of wealthy people around here and McIndoe went out and asked them to invite the airmen into their homes. He also did the same in the pubs. "Eventually East Grinstead became known as the town that didn't stare."

Amazing and holistic healing innovations... Finally, 60 Minutes catches up with two Australian "Guinea Pigs" who met during recovery and are still best mates after all these years!

Helmreich's New York ~ Walking the Metropolis...

Thanks to PD Smith for reviewing The New York Nobody Knows by William B Helmreich in the Guardian...

"Sociologist William B Helmreich was born and grew up in New York City. As a boy, he and his father played a game called "Last Stop". It involved riding the subway from the station at 103rd Street near their Upper West Side apartment to the last stop on the line. Then, like intrepid explorers, they would discover the area's secrets on foot. (Helmreich's father died in 2011 at the age of 101.) In a sense, this book is a continuation of that urban game. To write The New York Nobody Knows, Helmreich walked 6,048 miles, covering almost every block in the city's five boroughs: Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, Brooklyn and the Bronx. It took him four years, walking an average of 1,512 miles a year. He wore out nine pairs of shoes. Helmreich admits that "you have to be a little crazy to explore the city as I did". But big cities do that to you. [...] It's refreshing to read a book that celebrates so unreservedly the ethnic diversity of a city and entirely fitting that it should be about a metropolis that has always been defined by its cosmopolitan culture. For Helmreich, the city's diversity is the well-spring of its success."

Be sure to also check out PD Smith's own book, City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age.

Hafu ~ Docu on Being Mixed-Heritage in Japan

Thanks to JT's Kaori Shoji for spotting the Hafu documentary...

"Mixed-race people are no longer that rare, and Japan has become more open about the whole thing. But have things really improved? Megumi Nishikura and Lara Perez Takagi’s documentary “Hafu” takes the bull by the horns and the results are intriguing. [...] Thoughtful and kindhearted, “Hafu” is never an indictment of Japanese mores and society. But you sense the subjects wishing, in some corner of their minds, that they were a little less 'different'..."

MIT Neurotechnology Ventures ~ Money+Minds!

My MIT Media Lab colleague Ed Boyden and I are again co-hosting our Neurotechnology Ventures class this Fall at the Media Lab starting Thursday afternoon 5 September 2013 from 2-4pm. This course is all about envisioning, planning, and building ventures -- both entrepreneurial startups and intrapreneurial product-lines or business units -- to bring neuroengineering innovations to the world.

Compelling venture themes include Neuroimaging, Neuromarketing, Neurology/Psychiatry Screening & Diagnosis, Mood & Behavioral Influencing, Rehabilitation, Neurosurgery, Neuropharmacology, Brain Stimulation, Prosthetics, Sensory and Motor Augmentation, Regenerative Neuromedicine, Learning, Memory & Cognitive Influencing, and more.

The Chosen Few? ~ Explaining Jewish Success...

Fascinating piece in Paul Solman's PBS Newshour Business Desk column on The Chosen Few: A New Explanation of Jewish Success by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein who write...

"Why are the Jews, a relatively small population, specialized in the most skilled and economically profitable occupations? [...] The literacy of the Jewish people, coupled with a set of contract-enforcement institutions developed during the five centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, gave the Jews a comparative advantage in occupations such as crafts, trade, and moneylending -- occupations that benefited from literacy, contract-enforcement mechanisms, and networking and provided high earnings. [...] Jews in medieval Europe voluntarily entered and later specialized in moneylending and banking because they had the key assets for being successful players in credit markets [...] An apparently odd choice of religious norm -- the enforcement of literacy in a mostly illiterate, agrarian world, potentially risky in that the process of conversions could make Judaism too costly and thus disappear -- turned out to be the lever of the Jewish economic success and intellectual prominence in the subsequent centuries up to today."

MIT Neurotechnology Ventures ~ Minds+Money

My MIT colleague Ed Boyden and I (with Rutledge Ellis-Behnke in Germany) are again hosting our Neurotechnology Ventures class this Fall at the Media Lab starting Thursday afternoon 6 September 2012 from 2-4pm. This course is all about envisioning, planning, and building ventures -- both entrepreneurial startups and intrapreneurial product-lines or business units -- to bring neuroengineering innovations to the world.

Compelling venture themes include Neuroimaging, Neuromarketing, Neurology/Psychiatry Screening & Diagnosis, Mood & Behavioral Influencing, Rehabilitation, Neurosurgery, Neuropharmacology, Brain Stimulation, Prosthetics, Sensory and Motor Augmentation, Regenerative Neuromedicine, Learning, Memory & Cognitive Influencing, and more.

Thinking Cities ~ Hubs of Innovation & Solutions

Check out this very nice Thinking Cities short documentary which is part of Ericsson's Networked Society promo series...

Netherlands from Above ~ Godviews of Us++

Thanks to Greetings From Holland for spotting the Nederland van Boven godviews! This Netherlands from Above show visualizes patterns of us from abstract heights through the magic of timelapse, sensors, tracking, and other sociotechnological tricks! Lovely views!

Mobility Borders ~ Brockmann et al Follow US$

Fascinating visualization of Community Structure in Multi-Scale Transportation Networks leading to Mobility Borders. Click...

Twitter Diffusion ~ Accelerating US Adoption...

US Twitter Adoption map over time...

"From late March 2006 through the early August 2009, nearly 3.5 million people signed up for twitter. 2.3 million of those users signed up in the 408 cities displayed here. As users sign up, the blue circles grow and size and turn read then that city reaches a critical mass of users. We defined critical mass as achieving 13.5% of the total number of users that city will gain over the three years. The graph represents the number of new users signing up each week."

Definitely read Traditional social networks fueled Twitter’s spread...

"...the site’s growth in the United States actually relied primarily on media attention and traditional social networks based on geographic proximity and socioeconomic similarity"

Diaspora Networks ~ Mapping Migrant Clusters

The Economist Daily Chart spotlights Indian & Chinese diasporas...

"Where are the world's biggest Chinese and Indian immigrant communities? More Chinese people live outside mainland China than French people live in France, with some to be found in almost every country. Some 22m ethnic Indians are scattered across every continent. Diasporas have been a part of the world for millennia. But today their size (if migrants were a nation, they would be the world’s fifth-largest) and the ease of staying in touch with those at home are making them matter much more. No other social networks offer the same global reach—and shrewd firms are taking notice..."

Plus related Economist article on The magic of diasporas notes...

"Immigrant networks are a rare bright spark in the world economy. Rich countries should welcome them. [...] Diaspora networks -- of Huguenots, Scots, Jews and many others -- have always been a potent economic force, but the cheapness and ease of modern travel has made them larger and more numerous than ever before. [...] These networks of kinship and language make it easier to do business across borders. They speed the flow of information. [...They] also help spread ideas. Many of the emerging world’s brightest minds are educated at Western universities. An increasing number go home, taking with them both knowledge and contacts. [...] Diasporas spread money, too. Migrants into rich countries not only send cash to their families; they also help companies in their host country operate in their home country. [...] Rich countries are thus likely to benefit from looser immigration policy; and fears that poor countries will suffer as a result of a “brain drain” are overblown. The prospect of working abroad spurs more people to acquire valuable skills, and not all subsequently emigrate. Skilled migrants send money home, and they often return to set up new businesses. One study found that unless they lose more than 20% of their university graduates, the brain drain makes poor countries richer."

Social Life of Small Urban Spaces ~ Whyte's Docu

Thanks to Copenhagen Cycle Chic for spotting The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces by William H Whyte from 1979...

TweetQuake ~ Twitter Outraced VA Quake Vibes!

Twitter outpaced geological vibrations during recent VA 'quake!

"Inspired by XKCD, [here's a] heat map of the frequency of tweets mentioning the word "earthquake" in the 5 minutes after the Virginia earthquake on 08/23/2011. The locations are self-reported by Twitter users and may be erroneous. The spread of the earthquake is approximated to be 4000 m/s."

And see here actual seismometrics across the US...

Crowd Crime ~ Flash Mobs Rob Multiple Stores...

Watch here as urban vermin flash rob multiple stores... Here is some constructive commentary about this vile trend...

Real Life Social Network ~ Understanding Circles

Check out this Presentation That Inspired Google+