Trust Is Not An Algorithm

[Illustration from http://www.hhs.gov/open/initiatives/hdi/]

By some accounts the world’s information is doubling every two years. This impressive if unprovable fact has got many people wondering: what to do with it?

Many big brands hope that the analysis of Big Data will give them a ‘360 degree view’ of customers: Who they’re interacting with, where they shop, how they think about a bank, hotel, or store.

Banks and insurance companies are especially fired up by the prospect that Big Data will yield more accurate and profitable pricing models. They’re also keeping a nervous eye on start-up land where a queue of newbies perceive an opportunity to Read More »

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Diseñando Para un mundo complejo. Acciones para lograr la sustentabilidad

 

I’m totally thrilled that my book has just been published in Spanish by my fabulous friends at Editorial Disegnio in Mexico City. Please tell everyone you know, once met, or vaguely heard of, who is Spanish-speaking, and who might be interested. Health warning: the “$” price shown means Mexican pesos, not US$.

Oh, and did I mention? Please tell *everyone*…..

 

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Cycle Commerce As An Ecosystem

(Illustration: Sameer Kulavoor Ghoda Bicycle Project)

At a workshop in Delhi a few weeks back, during the UnBox Festival, Arjun Mehta and myself posed the following question to a group of 20 professionals from diverse backgrounds: What new products, services or ingredients are needed to help a cycle commerce ecosystem flourish in India’s cities, towns and villages? Read More »

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Paranoid But Pretty

In his new show at the German Architecture Center (DAZ) Matthias Megyeri has developed a design language for the artefacts of protection and security in public space.

Megyeri poses the question: does protection have to be inconsistent with harmony and beauty? His answer is a family of padlocks, chains, fences, and razor wire that he describes as ‘lovable objects’. Read More »

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A Roof, A Skill, A Market: The Multiple Dimensions of Scale


[ Photograph: http://www.arquiteturadeterra.com ]

“Beware the scale trap”.  In a recent Letter To Philanthropists Parker Mitchell,  a former CEO of Engineers Without Borders in Canada, advises potential donors that “scale is important, but don’t rush it. Most good ideas take time – to iron out the details, to bring down the costs, to be tested in different environments”. It takes time to focus on the little, programatic details, adds Mitchell. “Organic demand-driven scale will happen in time  - – if you have the patience to find the right elements of a solution”. These lessons are exemplified by the 14-year story – so far – of The Nubian Vault Association. The writer spoke with is co-founder, Thomas Granier. 

One hundred million people living in the Sahel region of West Africa are either homeless, or live precariously in short-life structures. Because deserts are spreading, the bush timber they once used to build homes is no longer available; as a result, Read More »

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Big, Hairy, and Agile

The UK government’s digital services platform, gov.uk, has won the Design of the Year award – and if I were running a big IT consulting firm grown fat on big government contracts, I’d be worried.

Gov.uk is a revolutionary web operation that governments around the world are beginning to notice. Twenty four UK government departments will be on the site by the end of the month –  and Government Digital Services (GDS) plans to bring 300 adjacent agencies on board in a next phase. In all, the programme will replace 2,000 websites.

In the UK, more than a billion transactions per year take Read More »

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Design At The Service of Living Systems: Lecture in Milan

For those readers heading for the annual Salone in Milano next week, here follows a summary of my talk next Tuesday at a conference organised by Interni and the Be Open Foundation. 

The ecologist Thomas Berry described as the ecozoic the “reintegration of human endeavours into a larger ecological consciousness”. Our species will only make true progress, Berry believed, when we learn to cherish the vitality of all life-forms and living systems equally – not just our own.

An ecozoic economy, of the kind that Berry hoped for, is now emerging. Thousands of communities are looking for Read More »

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The Ecozoic City

This story is available in Japanese and in Spanish.

For an exhibition that has opened in The Hague called Yes Naturally  I was asked to contribute a text for the book about what nature might mean for cities, and vice versa, in the near future. Here is an extract. 

The writer Thomas Berry described as the ecozoic the “reintegration of human endeavours into a larger ecological consciousness”. The ecozoic, Berry believed, would supplant the Anthropocene age, that we live in now, in which human needs take precedence over the health of the earth’s forests, oceans, and other living systems. Our species will only begin to make true progress, Berry believed, when Read More »

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