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Masdar City: ecology, hype, or middle way?
Today I found the existence of an interesting project: Masdar City (the official website, and Masdar City on wikipedia), an eco-city near Abu-Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) for some 50,000 people, which will be built in the next few years, and the first available residences will be sold in late 2009.
The project will cost about 22 billion dollars, and tries to be very eco-friendly, using renewable energies and eco-buildings.
This introductory video (both in english and arabic) can give you more details, even if it’s quite an advertisement, rather than a documentary.
First, it’s remarkable that an arab nation goes in this direction. I’d like to point out, though, that “artificial” cities (cities planned from scratch) are always difficult to “grow”, because their citizens are not “natural” as in normal cities, but must have an incentive to go there. Think of Brasilia, which has been a moderate success for the great urban plans, but also because Brazilians were poor, and they were a lot and needed shelter. Will Masdar be successful as well?
In any case, I’d love, in the future, to live in an eco-friendly, not-so-small and not-too-big city, like Vancouver, for example, which ranks among the top ones regarding ecology, life and economy.
From this topic, I also stumbled upon the wikipedia page of Enrico Mattei, a great italian leader and entrepreneur of the mid-decades of 20th century, who led ENI (the national energy company), made tough decisions, and was killed probably by the seven sisters of energy and/or CIA because he endangered their interests.
I sometimes think of doing something lasting and meaningful for mankind, but people that tried that often share such bitter ends.
It seems that the only way to win the inertia of an overriding economic power is to find a way to soften the change, otherwise bad people will kill you.
If you think about it, it’s (sadly) perfectly normal in a human society (I mean, to preserve the position you earned), in which a single person can’t really stand the power of huge corporations.
I don’t have a solution, I’m just observing.
And you?
Al Gore in Rome: a success for the launch of italian Current_TV
I’m just back from Rome, where I witnessed the launch of the italian Current_TV, the first non-english-speaking version of it.
I was invited at Jovinelli theatre together with about four hundred of other bloggers, technologists, journalists, students and such. It was a great idea (thank to friendly and hyper-energic Marco Montemagno and others), and a great occasion to meet some bloggers that I read, but never met in real life (Paolo Valdemarin, Massimo Mantellini…).
Al Gore, founder of Current_TV, was the main guest.
Enjoy some pictures I’ve taken with my modest Canon EOS 400D (you find these, and other, creative commons Attribution-only photos on my flickr account) :-)
Outside Jovinelli Theatre in Rome, just before the event.
Inside the theatre.
Luca Conti, a.k.a. Pandemìa, a famous italian blogger and latin lover.
Me (Simone Brunozzi) with Daniela Cerrato (Virgilio.it).
Marco Montemagno, italian technologist and journalist for SKY.
Who’s this guy? Can’t remember his name… hmmm…
Well, if he dyes his hair with black, he could resemble Al Gore… :-)
Luca Conti and Marco Montemagno, while Luca is asking a question to Al Gore.
People.
The thing that everybody loved about Al Gore? His boots!
Final word: a great event, and I wish Good Luck to the italian Current_TV!
Lifehacks
I always read Lifehacker.com, a very useful website with tons of interesting tricks.
Today I’ve found Steve Rubel’s LifeHacks on del.icio.us… a treasure I want to share with you.
Happy reading, and happy Life-Hacking.
Where americans put their money
The New York Times has a very interesting article about where americans put their money, and how their spending habits change during the time (the graph is in fact drawn from the Consumer Price Index, one of the possible measures of inflation).
The graph by itself is quite self-explanatory. My comment is below.
Housing is 42% of spending, transportation is 18%. Together they form 60% of US spending. It means that cities of the future (ecologic, efficient, cost-effective) can be the only way for the U.S. to stay on top of the world economy.
My opinion about big cities is: they are incredibly efficient, compared to rural towns, but yet there is lots of room for improvement, both in transportation (which must be only public inside cities, renting cars when you have to go outside) and housing (they must be industrialized like ford T model, but also customizable to meet the client’s request).
If you’re not convinced that taking care of the environment is a good idea, read what Tim O’Reilly has to say about Fermi’s Paradox.
The new Renaissance of Assisi
Today I went at the presentation of a special book, “Il nuovo rinascimento di Assisi” (the new Renaissance of Assisi), which is about the last ten years of reconstruction (after the 1997 earthquake), and development.
I contributed a lot to this book, dedicating hours and hours of my free time to it.
Giorgio Bartolini, former Mayor of Assisi, thanked me in a very nice way, with a copy signed by him.
This is a picture I’ve taken at the event (here a bigger one on flickr.com), at the Lyrick Theatre of Assisi, where more than 600 people gathered.
I’m proud of having been a part of this book.
Second Life
Second Life, if you don’t know it, is a three-dimensional online world, in which you can portray an “avatar” (a virtual alter ego) an explore this virtual world, interacting with people, building things.
In Hindu philosophy, an avatar (derived from the Sanskrit word avatāra) refers to the incarnation (bodily manifestation) of a divine being (deva) into planet Earth. If we can call our real life “first”, this “second” one refers to our “incarnation” in the virtual world.
I’m involved in Second Life since mid 2006 (it seems ages!), when the media weren’t talking about it yet. There were a little bit less than one million registered users, of which only a small fraction was active (I can guess 20%).
Today, in may 2008, Second Life has roughly 15 millions of users, of which the active part is about two millions.
They’re not big numbers, compared to Facebook or MySpace, but being active in Second Life requires bigger efforts, first to learn the interface, then to understand how to enjoy the virtual world.
My biggest achievement in Second Life is the perfect reproduction of a religious monument, the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, one of the most beautiful in Italy (and a World Heritage Site), and perhaps in the entire world.
If you don’t know Assisi, the wikipedia page on Assisi can help you, or you can just look at this picture of Assisi I’ve taken two days ago.
You can see some pictures on the official website of the Virtual Assisi: SecundaVita.com (latin words for Second Life).
Recently, we had two interesting initiatives in Virtual Assisi.
The first is the costant presence (twice a month) of the Mayor of Assisi, engineer Claudio Ricci, portrayed below:
The second was a virtual visit of Assisi, with students from New York city (here the video):
Big companies are investing in Second Life, and Amazon.com itself has a weekly developers meeting on one of its Second Life Islands:
Ah, by the way: Did you know that I got my Job at Amazon.com through Second Life?
It’s a long story… one day I’ll tell you everything.
Personally, I think that Second Life it’s still for early adopters, but has a great potential in the years to come.
Do you use Second Life? Do you find it useful?
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Today is May 1st, 2008, and here in Italy (yes, I’m here for 17 more days) it’s Labour’s Day Holiday.
Since tomorrow is friday, many people took the chance to go away (sea, mountain, lake, whatever).
Instead, I’m still here, in my small apartment near Assisi (enjoy my Creative-Commons photos here on Flickr).
Surfing the internet, I stumbled upon this 1974 book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (see what Wikipedia has to say, or read the full text online).
Robert Pirsig, the author, explains his own concept of Quality: non-intellectualizing, non-conceptualizing, Zen-like direct viewing of the universe. Logic, and Reason, still have an important role in seeking awareness and understanding, differently from the Asian “Zen” philosophy.
In the words of Wikipedia:
“… He understands that technology and the “dehumanised world” it carries with it appear ugly and repulsive to a romantic person. He is, however, capable of seeing the beauty of technology and feels good about mechanical work. The author demonstrates that the cycle maintenance may be dull and tedious drudgery or an exciting and pleasurable pastime; it all depends on the inner attitude and peace of mind, or lack thereof…”
And again:
“Pirsig attempts to reveal rationality’s pretense to be the ultimate and sole source of knowledge and argues for an approach to knowledge that is more varied and inclusive. He seeks a perception of the world that also encompasses “irrational” sources of wisdom and knowledge - in particular, the bursts of creativity and intuition that seemingly come from nowhere and are apparently not rationally explainable. Pirsig seeks to demonstrate that rationality and zen-like irrationality can harmoniously coexist. He suggests such a combination of rationality and mysticism can potentially bring a higher quality of life.”
I’ve read some excerpts of the book in the past, but I’ll definitively read it very soon.
There is a very important reason why, on the title of this blog, you read “Zen and Life of Simone Brunozzi”.
Zen, in my case, is an attitude, a search, an answer, a target.
This book will help me in seeing things more clearly.
I also suggest you to take a look at this blog, Zen Habits. He seems on a path very similar to mine :-)
Outsource your design with 99designs.com
Today I discovered 99designs.com, a website that lets you run design contests: you set up a contest, and the relative prize, and then wait for designs to come. After one week, you decide which one is good, and pay it. Cool.
Design contests are often an exploitation of designers’ time, but in this case it seems that rates are fair, and clients are cool.
They offer, for example, guaranteed prize contests, in which clients pay in advance, and then the winner gets the cash directly from 99designs. In this way, clients can’t just exploit good ideas and then manufacture them at lower costs with their own designer.
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
I suggest you to read this great post on HereComesEverybody: it is about Gin, Television and Social Surplus.
This excerpt is illuminating:
For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.
And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.
And again:
In this same conversation with the TV producer I was talking about World of Warcraft guilds, and as I was talking, I could sort of see what she was thinking: “Losers. Grown men sitting in their basement pretending to be elves.”
At least they’re doing something.
I will definitively buy Mel Blake’s book: Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
