Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization Researchers Present the Facts and Debunk Myths
"The nation's foremost academic researchers on child online safety presented their research and answered questions over a luncheon panel on May 3. This was the first time these prominent academics have appeared together to present their research, which, altogether, represents volumes of data on the state of online youth victimization and online youth habits."
(Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee, 3 May 2007)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Better Place Australia: zero emissions driving
"Better Place Australia is part of a global company dedicated to zero emissions driving. We will enable the mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) in Australia by providing the infrastructure and services that make it easy, affordable and attractive for motorists to adopt and drive electric vehicles.
The key barriers to the mass adoption of EVs in Australia, and globally, have been 'range anxiety', the cost and risk of battery purchase and the impact of EV charging on the electricity grid.
To overcome 'range anxiety' - the fear of EV drivers that their battery will run out of power - Better Place provides a personal charge spot at home, access to a network of charge spots at work and in public, access to 'instant recharge' through battery swap stations and in-car services to help drivers know when and where to recharge.
The system of battery swapping also helps overcome the cost and risk of battery purchase. The driver's subscription to Better Place covers use of a battery and the ability to swap and go at any swap station. Rather than pay upfront, drivers pay a monthly fee which covers their battery use. Better Place manages the risk and performance of the pool of batteries by tracking their capability and use through the battery swap stations.
Better Place manages the impact of EV charging on the electricity grid by using software that coordinates the charge spots so that the charging needs of customers are met within network capacity constraints. . This helps make the electricity grid more efficient and significantly reduces the need for additional generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure."
(Better Place, 2010)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism One School at a Time
"BILL MOYERS: But this intrigues me because you've set out over these years to educate young girls primarily. I mean, you do have some boys in your schools, but primarily your goal is to educate young girls. And given the fact that the Afghani and Pakistani societies are so male dominated, that men run the families, they run the government, they run the villages, they run the Taliban, why focus on girls instead of the men who are going to, in that culture, grow up and run things?
GREG MORTENSON: Well, it's obviously the boys need education also. But as a child in Africa, I learned a proverb. And it says, ‘If we educate a boy, we educate an individual. But if we can educate a girl, we educate a community.’ And what that means is when girls grow up, become a mother, they are the ones who promote the value of education in the community. The education of girls has very powerful impacts in a society. Number one, the infant mortality's reduced. Number two, the population is reduced. The third thing is the quality of health improves. And, from my own observation, when girls learn how to read and write, they often teach their mother how to read and write. Boys, we don't seem to do that as much. They also, you'll see people, kids coming out for the marketplace, have meat or vegetables wrapped in newspaper. And then you'll see the mother very carefully unfolding a newspaper and ask her daughter to read the news to her. And it's the first time that woman is able to get information of what's going on in the outside world around--very powerful to see that. And another compelling reason is when women are educated, they're not as likely to condone or encourage their son to get into violence or into terrorism. In fact, culturally when someone goes on jihad, they should get permission from their mother first. And if they don't, it's very shameful or disgraceful. So when women are educated, as I mentioned, they are less likely to encourage their son to get into violence. And I've seen that happen, Bill, over the last decade in rural areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan. I mean, I could go on all day about this, but educating girls is very powerful."
(Bill Moyers Journal, 15 January 2010, PBS)
CONTRIBUTOR
Lindsay QuennellSHARE
The Open City: The Closed System and The Brittle City
"The idea of an open city is not my own: credit for it belongs to the great urbanist Jane Jacobs in the course of arguing against the urban vision of Le Corbusier. She tried to understand what results when places become both dense and diverse, as in packed streets or squares, their functions both public and private; out of such conditions comes the unexpected encounter, the chance discovery, the innovation. Her view, reflected in the bon mot of William Empson, was that 'the arts result from over-crowding'. Jacobs sought to define particular strategies for urban development, once a city is freed of the constraints of either equilibrium or integration. These include encouraging quirky, jerry-built adaptations or additions to existing buildings; encouraging uses of public spaces which don't fit neatly together, such as putting an AIDS hospice square in the middle of a shopping street. In her view, big capitalism and powerful developers tend to favour homogeneity: determinate, predictable, and balanced in form. The role of the radical planner therefore is to champion dissonance. In her famous declaration: 'if density and diversity give life, the life they breed is disorderly'. The open city feels like Naples, the closed city feels like Frankfurt."
(Richard Sennett, 2006)
Fig.1 Busy street in Naples, marlenworld.com
Fig.2 Paris, Les Olympiades, 1969-1974, Thierry Bézecourt in 2005
[3] Sennett, R. (2006). The Open City: The Closed System and The Brittle City. Urban Age.
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The Internet of Things: What is a Spime and why is it useful?
"World-renowned Science Fiction writer and futurist Bruce Sterling will outline his ideas for SPIMES, a form of ubiquitous computing that gives smarts and 'searchabiliity' to even the most mundane of physical products. Imagine losing your car keys and being able to search for them with Google Earth. This same paradigm will find you "wrangling" with product-lifecycle- management systems that do for physical objects what the iPod has done for music. These and other radical ideas are delivered in Sterling's latest book`Shaping Things'. This concise book was written to inspire designers to visualize radical scenarios connecting information technology and sustainability in a new ecology of artifacts. Sterling suggests new connections between the virtual world and the physical world that will have you rethinking many of your assumptions about how we relate to products. He will be joined by Scott Klinker, 3-D Designer-in-Residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI who leads a graduate design program known for giving form to experimental cultural ideas. Klinker's own design work focuses on digital customization as industry shifts from mass production toward niche production in a networked society. The presentation will include an invitation for Sterlling and Klinker/ Cranbrook to team-up with Google to create a short documentary film that would portray a speculative future of life with SPIMES. Distributed online, this short film would convey the look and feel of SPIME scenarios as a provocation for widespread industry discussion about the new potentials of ubiquitous, ambient, searchable, geolocative products."
(Google Tech Talks, 30 April 2007)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
