A quick puzzle to tell whether you know what people are thinking
http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/wonkblog/majority-illusion/
Day: 9 October 2015
You Can Be Rejected, but You Cannot be Stopped
https://blog.orangecaffeine.com/you-can-be-rejected-but-you-cannot-be-stopped-479ed1b1403a
“Reversible Concrete” Is Ready to Revolutionize Temporary Architecture
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/mits-reversible-concrete-is-ready-to-revolutionize-temporary-architecture
“The perfect solution appears to be a hybrid between the current Bitcoin remittance startups and the ubiquitous mobile-money network that currently exists only in our dreams. If we can use Bitcoin to replace SWIFT during the international part of the journey, and employ the local mobile money network as our domestic transport, then we’ve really got something. Until then, associating Bitcoin so directly with cheaper remittances is perhaps missing the point: the cryptocurrency has illuminated an even larger problem that it simply cannot solve on its own.”
https://medium.com/@Cryptonight/bitcoin-doesn-t-make-remittances-cheaper-eb5f437849fe
“If all we’re doing with these technologies is finding a quicker way to fix potholes and ignoring the hard issues, we’re not really affecting anything,” he said. “Cities are about those core issues — education, healthcare and safer, better streets. All these point-and-click mechanisms should be aiming to build trust, build networks and really take on the tough problems.”
“For starters, translating the tech-speak of Coders for America into the bureaucratese of civil servants and straining that into the do-gooder language of foundations and environmentalists takes time.”
“Further, investment for social good is miniscule compared to the funds being poured into for-profit technologies by the likes of Google, Facebook and IBM. This space is dominated not by the lords of venture capital but by tinkerers and tech geeks, environmentalists, civil servants and Coders for America. Lastly, innovation is a messy, fits-and-starts business. To keep moving forward, officials and developers mustn’t “get addicted to the quick win,” as Jen Pahlka puts it. Building extensive networks that improve planning and city services, particularly in disadvantaged communities, takes time — and failure. Much of what we’re seeing now is fast, cheap and minimally useful.”
https://nextcity.org/features/view/when-were-all-urban-planners
“But it turns out that cities and companies differ in a very fundamental regard: cities almost never die, while companies are extremely ephemeral. As West notes, Hurricane Katrina couldn’t wipe out New Orleans, and a nuclear bomb did not erase Hiroshima from the map. In contrast, where are Pan Am and Enron today? The modern corporation has an average life span of 40 to 50 years.”
“This raises the obvious question: Why are corporations so fleeting? After buying data on more than 23,000 publicly traded companies, Bettencourt and West discovered that corporate productivity, unlike urban productivity, was entirely sublinear. As the number of employees grows, the amount of profit per employee shrinks. West gets giddy when he shows me the linear regression charts. “Look at this bloody plot,” he says. “It’s ridiculous how well the points line up.” The graph reflects the bleak reality of corporate growth, in which efficiencies of scale are almost always outweighed by the burdens of bureaucracy. “When a company starts out, it’s all about the new idea,” West says. “And then, if the company gets lucky, the idea takes off. Everybody is happy and rich. But then management starts worrying about the bottom line, and so all these people are hired to keep track of the paper clips. This is the beginning of the end.”
“The danger, West says, is that the inevitable decline in profit per employee makes large companies increasingly vulnerable to market volatility. Since the company now has to support an expensive staff — overhead costs increase with size — even a minor disturbance can lead to significant losses. As West puts it, “Companies are killed by their need to keep on getting bigger.”
For West, the impermanence of the corporation illuminates the real strength of the metropolis. Unlike companies, which are managed in a top-down fashion by a team of highly paid executives, cities are unruly places, largely immune to the desires of politicians and planners. “Think about how powerless a mayor is,” West says. “They can’t tell people where to live or what to do or who to talk to. Cities can’t be managed, and that’s what keeps them so vibrant. They’re just these insane masses of people, bumping into each other and maybe sharing an idea or two. It’s the freedom of the city that keeps it alive.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19Urban_West-t.html?_r=0