MIT Media Ventures ~ Thurs 10a-12n Spring '16

Our MIT Media Ventures ~ Media Lab Entrepreneurship & Digital Innovations class surveys a broad landscape of emerging media technologies interwoven with live- and historic-cases of inter- and entrepreneurship-based on new media ideas, culminating in a term project. The core goal of this Action Lab offering is for students to gain increased understanding of how emergent media and digital innovations translate into commercial reality and transform society.

We survey case examples of both successful and failed businesses and generally grapple with the difficulties of deploying and diffusing products and as a means of exploring a range of business models and opportunities enabled by emerging Media Lab and related innovations. This year we will be especially emphasizing urban innovations, personal data rights, public health, financial service innovations, mobile transactions, and social media generally with special focus on social networks, quantified self and society, and "Big Data" analytics. Join us at first class Thursday morning 10a-12n February 4th, 2016 in Media Lab E14-633.

Creative Places ~ On Urban Hot Spots Spring '16

I'm co-teaching Creative Places class this Spring 2016 together with MIT Media Lab colleague Kent Larson and team, starting Wednesday, 3 February at 2pm, as part of our MIT Cities Initiative. We're particularly keen on understanding and enabling innovation, entrepreneurship, and creative vitality in cities. We seek better indices (or rankings or scores) and analyses especially of important but often intangible aspects of the city. Ultimately we aspire to deep understanding of how urban attractiveness can be best achieved through design, zoning, development, and more.  Join us at first class Wed afternoon 2pm February 4th, 2016 in Media Lab E14-633.

Us All ~ World Population Cartogram 2015...

NASA Favorites ~ Top Ten Stellar Imagery!

NASA shares their top Ten Awe-Inspiring Photos!

Prelude Progress ~ Shell's FLNG Project Update!

gCaptain spots Shell's latest construction porn -- a progress video on the Prelude FLNG and related facilities!

"The 600,000 tonnes Prelude FLNG facility, the largest offshore facility ever constructed, is nearing completion at the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) shipyard in Geoje, South Korea. Once completed, the floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility will be moored off Western Australia for a period of 20 to 25 years where it will be used to chill natural gas produced at the Prelude field to –162°C (-260°F), shrinking its volume by 600 times so it can be exported to customers in Asia. Once operational, the Prelude FLNG facility will produce at least 5.3 million tonnes (mtpa) per annum of liquids: 3.6 mtpa of LNG, 1.3 mtpa of condensate (equivalent to 35,000 bbl/d) and 0.4 mtpa of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)."

Beautiful ~ Seeing and Acknowledging Others;-)

Shea Glover's high school video observations of Beauty...

Ghost Gunner ~ Tiny Anarchic Rifle Factory...

WIRED's Andy Greenberg makes an untraceable AR-15 Ghost Gun...

Urban Growth ~ Mapping Population Dynamics...

The Guardian spotlights Cities in numbers: how patterns of urban growth change the world...

"Beneath the crude statistic that the world is heading towards 70% urbanisation by 2050 lie regional differences in demographic, economic and environmental change. LSE Cities’ Urban Age programme takes a deeper look at the data"

Vincent Who ~ van Gogh & Dr @ Musée d'Orsay

If only time travel...

"The Doctor and Amy take Vincent Van Gogh -- who struggled to sell a single painting in his own lifetime -- to a Paris art Gallery in the year 2010. Emotional scenes from Doctor Who Series 5 Episode 10, Vincent and the Doctor."

And here is good geo-biography of van G...

Ink Mapping ~ Projection Augments of Tattoos

Sarah Barness at APlus spots Ink Mapping...

CODEGIRL ~ High School Technovation Teams!

Cool new documentary CODEGIRL...

"From rural Moldova to urban Brazil to suburban Massachusetts, CODEGIRL follows teams who dream of holding their own in the world’s fastest-growing industry. The winning team [in the Technovation Challenge] gets $10K to complete and release their app, but every girl discovers something valuable along the way."

Hélo ~ Husmann's Smartbud Concept Design

Nice example smartbud concept -- Hélo...

Ocean Ranching ~ OFT's Offshore Fishpens...

In his Scuttlefish piece How to Farm Fish Without Killing the Planet, author Owen James Burke spotlights fish farming...

"Aquaculture has been the world’s fastest-growing food sector for several decades, and some argue it is the only feasible answer to the predicament of trying to feed a growing global population that is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050."

Burke spotlights this Motherboard video about Steve Page of Ocean Farm Technologies and their free-range offshore fishpen enclosure method...

Farm & Red Moon ~ Docu on Animals as Food...

Interesting to see ML alum David Tames and colleague Audrey Kali Kickstarting their documentary film Farm and Red Moon...

"A passionate vegan, while exploring the personal quandaries surrounding harvesting of animals for food, becomes a conflicted omnivore."

Star Trek Memories ~ Shatner's Reminiscence...

William Shatner and other cast members of Star Trek reminisce about the series...

Hoverboard ~ Mini Self-Balancing Scooter!

Misleadingly-named self-balancing scooter is booming sales!

The Long Walk ~ Edwin Land's Polaroid at Peak!

In WGBH News Edgar Herwick spotlights How Edwin Land Built Polaroid Into The Ultimate Mass. Consumer Technology Powerhouse, and he notes...

"There’s this fascinating, kind of haunting video from 1970 that you can watch on YouTube, in which Edwin Land -- chemist, inventor, inspiration to Steve Jobs, and co-founder of Polaroid Corp. -- walks through a half-built factory in Norwood where he planned to change the world."

Inventing Honeyflow ~ Inspired Bee-friendly Hive!

Cedar Anderson and his Dad Stuart have invented the beekeeper's dream hive -- the Flow -- which splits the honeycombs apart in a way harmless to the bees but releasing the honey easily! Didn't happen overnight, though, and here's Cedar telling their story... And here you get close-up view of what's going on when the beekeeper turnkeys the Flow...

Amino ~ Desktop DIY Bioengineering Kits!

Very cool to see Media Lab alumna Julie Legault launch Indiegogo campaign for her Amino desktop DIY bioengineering kits bringing synthetic biology techniques to laypeople! This is part of the burgeoning "Grower" movement that's adding to the already thriving "Coder" and "Maker" movements...

"Amino is our first product, a counter-top sized biolab that enables anyone to grow living cells to create new and interesting things - like fragrances, flavours, materials, medicine, and more."

Poverty Inc ~ Moving Beyond the Aid Industry...

Check out trailer for Poverty Inc documentary expose...

"The film examines the rise of the multibillion industry of charity and aid through the lens of developing world entrepreneurs and working parents, who can often be displaced in their roles as the rightful protagonists of their own story of development. The West has positioned itself as the protagonist of development, giving rise to a vast multi-billion dollar poverty industry -- the business of doing good has never been better. Yet the results have been mixed, in some cases even catastrophic, and leaders in the developing world are growing increasingly vocal in calling for change. The film has earned over 40 film festival honors and has been selected to the "Best of Fests" category in the upcoming IDFA Amsterdam -- the biggest documentary festival in the world."