Conditional Cash-Transfers ~ Savvy Welfare...

The Economist spotlights Quid Pro Quo ~ Anti-Poverty Programmes, noting that "Doling out cash with strings attached is a good idea, but no panacea". Conditional Cash-Transfers (CCTs) are social payments given only if recipients ensure some beneficial act occurs, for instance, they send their kids to school or improve nutrition. On the positive side, they note...

"These programmes have swept across the developing world. In 1997 Mexico was one of only three countries to have a CCT programme. By 2008, as the World Bank documents in a new report, virtually every country in Latin America had one. So did Indonesia, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Turkey, Cambodia, Pakistan and Kenya. Some of these programmes are huge: Brazil’s Bolsa Familia serves 11m families."

But all is not universally glorious, since...

"...there is little evidence that CCTs raise educational standards (as opposed to attendance); and while children may go to clinics more, that does not mean their nutrition or immunisation rates improve. The programmes may not be to blame. The problem may lie with the dire quality of schools and clinics [since] a quarter of Indian schoolteachers were absent on any given day. CCTs, for all their advantages, cannot do much about that."

Enabling the Disabled, Disadvantaged, Dismissed

I'm delighted to see MIT Media Lab Director Frank Moss cast a high call for investment in Enabling Innovations -- those technologies and solutions which serve those who he calls the historically disabled, disadvantaged or dismissed. This is a topic I've cared about for a long time, including having catalyzed our MIT Enterprise Forum Global event two years ago on A.B.L.E. Technologies -- or Achieving Better Life Experiences for people with injury, disability, and aging challenges. And the Neurotechnology Ventures seminar I co-teach with Ed Boyden and Rutledge Ellis-Behnke -- spotlighted recently by MIT TechTalk as Brainy Businesses -- is centrally interested in regenerative and recuperative solutions. Plus, the Development Ventures seminar I co-teach with Sandy Pentland centrally addresses the challenges of the most dismissed -- those in Emerging Markets! Not only are more investments a top priority here, but the accelerated translation of inventions into widely deployed innovations could not be more pressing and urgent. Most exciting of all, some of the currently so-called "disabled" might become the dramatically empowered lead users of tomorrow -- i.e. more enabled than everyone else!

Emerging Market Middle ~ Billions of Bourgeoisie

Nice Economist special report on the Burgeoning Bourgeoisie ~ The New Middle Classes in Emerging Markets...

"...there is indeed something special about the contribution the middle classes make to economic development that goes beyond providing a market for Western consumer goods. The middle classes can, and sometimes do, play an important role in creating and sustaining democracy, though on their own they are not sufficient to create it, nor do they make it inevitable. On balance, the report is optimistic about the prospects of countries where the middle classes are growing. But they are not a homogeneous group, so their impact varies. A middle class that has grown largely to tend to the state will behave differently from one that is based on the private sector."

Charles 'Che' Darwin ~ ¡Viva La Evolución!

The latest hack at MIT -- Celebrating yesterday's 200th birthday of that radical evolutionary, Charles 'Che' Darwin!

Rural Mobiles ~ Indian Farmers Get Connected...

Great to see Eric Bellman's piece in the WSJ titled Rural India Snaps Up Mobile Phones. Bellman notes...

"Even amid the global economic slowdown, one Indian industry continues to boom: selling cellphones to the rural poor. Economists have slashed Indian economic growth forecasts for this year and the stock market is in the doldrums. But cellphone companies are signing millions of new subscribers a month, making India the fastest growing mobile-phone market in the world. There is no sign of a slowdown yet: figures to be released later this month are expected to show that new subscriptions in January reached a record 11 million."

Boeing 747 ~ Happy Birthday to the Big Jumbo!

The BBC's John Strickland celebrates Four Decades of a Flying Giant, the birthday of the Boeing 747... Notes Strickland...

"Since that first flight, the 747 has fulfilled the faith of its designers and has led to reductions in air fares, opening up air travel to many in a way that was previously unimaginable. This has been made possible by the economies of scale which a larger aircraft can offer. In simple terms the overall costs of operating an aircraft with, say 400 seats, are typically not double those of an aircraft with 200 seats. In effect, the cost per seat is reduced."

Märklin ~ Challenging Days In Model Trainsville

Word has just come to me of bankruptcy declaration by my favorite toymaker -- Märklin -- a giant in the field of model trains. Since I was five years old I've played with their product and it inspired my interest in engineering and more. Here's the evidence: DIY play with Dad! I hope that the madness and uncertainty and turmoil that are today's economies and financial markets don't inadvertently kill the very stuff that makes us human -- culture, history, legacy, creativity, joy, and more. Let's hope Märklin makes it through these troubles.

Informal Sector ~ Meet The Kenyan Metalworkers

Dutch videoreporter Ruud Elmendorp tells the entrepreneurial story of the informal metalworking sector in Kenya...

Green Developments ~ Inhabitat's Latest Spots...

Inhabitat spotlights several great green designs...

Stonehenge Reloaded ~ Simple Build Methods!

Thanks to Miss Cellania for spotting Wally Wallington's use of simple build methods to move heavy rocks and perhaps crack some of the mysteries of Stonehenge construction...

Fluid Interfaces ~ Any Surface Interactive Display

Some really lovely Fluid Interfaces wearable imaging work by MIT Media Lab colleague Pattie Maes and student Pranav Mistry noted in recent Wired blog by Kim Zetter on TED: MIT Students Turn Internet Into a Sixth Human Sense -- Video. Also mentioned in Fast Company note by Kit Eaton on MIT's Sixth Sense Machine Makes Reality Better. Turns any surface into interactive display...

Permeable Buildings ~ Digital Water Pavillion!

Just now sitting in the MIT Media Lab's Permeable Buildings event. Bill Mitchell shared his work with Carlo Ratti on the Digital Water Pavillion at Zaragoza. Very cool!

Bird Strike ~ We're Going To Be In The Hudson...

Listen to the actual audio exchange from the US Airways Flight 1549 and New York air traffic controllers following bird strikes killing both engines just after take-off. Without other alternatives, cool-headed Captain Sully and crew emergency landed in the Hudson River...

Social Entrepreneurship ~ Solving Global Problems

Together with a highly motivated MIT student colleague, Wendy Chen, I'm organizing an introductory seminar on Social Entrepreneurship for underclassmen at MIT (and, it turns out, cross-registrants from Harvard.) Our goal is for them to become increasingly able social entrepreneurs while at MIT, learning by doing work on a more senior student's social enterprise project, and ultimately planning and/or building their own efforts. We'd like to help our students make the very most of their all too limited time at the Institute, which includes learning how to take full advantage of the resources, connections, and opportunities which abound here!

Imaging Ventures ~ Cameras, Displays, Visuals!

One Billion Cameraphones worldwide. Gigapixel pano's with everyday imagers. Exponentially improving price-performance curves in cameras and displays. Imaging is the core. Ventures are the vehicle. Imaging is essential to many biotech, neurotech, mobile, security, robotics, and other compelling venture sectors -- including several winners of the MIT $100K prizes -- e.g. Actuality, MIMIO, Imagen, ClickDiagnostics, Brontes -- among them our guest speakers in our new prototype Imaging Ventures seminar...

Responsive Cities ~ Emergent Urban Innovations

My colleague Kent Larson and I are running an informal MIT survey seminar on Responsive Cities this Spring 2009. Our focus is on six themes of emergent urban innovation:

1. New Model for Transportation -- February 10th -- How can city design, new vehicle concepts, and technology enable more responsive personal and mass transportation?
2. Digital Cities -- February 17th -- How can personal technology, sensing, urban-scale media, and just-in-time information foster community, sustainability, and a better life-balance?
3. Live-Work -- February 24th -- How can the city plan, architecture, transportation systems, technology, and services support a changing pattern of 24-hour distributed work, virtual offices, live-work environments, etc.?
4. Distributed/Centralized Energy -- March 3rd -- How can we design for both distributed and centralized energy? How can heating, cooling, and electrical loads be dramatically reduced through design innovation and technology?
5. The Code of Creative Cities -- March 10th -- How can codes, zoning, and master plans allow for change and enable bottom-up innovation? And...
6. New Model for Building Design, Fabrication, and Technology Integration -- Mar 17th -- How can mass-customization, disentangled systems, off-site fabrication, and information technology enable agile, adaptable, high-performance, responsive housing?

We challenge our students to explore the design, commercial and cultural consequences of emergent urban innovations across several levels of analysis from individual artifacts through urban plan.

NextLab II ~ Mobile Ventures for the Next Billion

My colleague Jhonatan Rotberg is running the NextLab II focusing on Launching Mobile Ventures for the Next Billion Consumers... Mobiles are a truly transformative technology dialing up the lives of billions of people worldwide!

D-Lab ~ The MIT Int'l Development Action Labs

At MIT we live up to our motto Mens et Manus and our humanistic mission -- "for the betterment of humanity" -- by doing international development. The D-Lab family of classes has blossomed from a Haiti Class taught by my MIT colleague Amy Smith, an extracurricular DesignThatMatters offering by Media Lab grad students, and a water and sanitation class by Civil & Environmental colleague Susan Murcott to a whole suite of offerings throughout the year along the extended development innovation pipeline from Discovery to Design to Dissemination and beyond! The latest incarnations include ICT, Wheelchairs, Prosthetics, Health, and more. There's an ever expanding Fall and Spring sequence (green and yellow, respectively)... This is a great set of activities and I'm proud to be collaborating on this with some really wonderful colleagues!

Sober Optimist ~ We've Just Exactly Enough Time

The latest MIT Sloan Management Review interviews Professor John Sterman in A Sober Optimist’s Guide to Sustainability. Sterman covers a wide range of items, including defining sustainability, describing his own and MIT colleagues efforts, and towards the end, quotes his mentor Dana Meadows...

"...if you believe that the world is unlimited, that technology will always be there with a solution that lets you have more, that markets always work perfectly, then we will never change what we're doing and we will inevitably crash into the physical limits of the planet. On the other hand, if you say it's too late, that there's too many of us, that we're too greedy, that no change is possible, then we might as well just give up and for sure we're going to get what we expect. What Dana worked for is to live as if there's just exactly enough time. There's enough time to do it, with no time to waste. Just exactly enough time, enough resources, enough environmental resilience and enough human compassion to bring about the change we need to create a sustainable world."

Unnecessary Censorship ~ Spoofing the FCC ;-)

Jimmy Kimmel's show has a great segment called Unnecessary Censorship, spoofing the FCC's unconstitutional interference in our lives. Enjoy!