Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, spoke this morning at Pop!Tech about non-monetary economics -- a cheery idea, given the current state of monetary economics.
Non-monetary economics, he says, are things like reputation and attention -- valuable properties, but traditionally hard to quantify. That is, until Google came along.
“Google measures somebody’s reputational assets, turns it into a page rank, and determines search traffic,” says Anderson. That traffic can then be converted to money. Think of the conversion this way: Links to page rank to search to traffic to ads to money. Like currency conversion rates in international banking, the conversion rate for reputation is now getting quite formal.
“We now have a central banker for the internet economy,” Anderson says. “Larry page is the Ben Bernake of the Google economy, since he controls page rank.”
There are limits, Anderson says. “Larry Page can’t convene a summit of internet bankers to set conversion rates.” Even when Google tried to institute a “No follow tag” -- an attempt to deflate link currency by stopping spammers, it was only about as successful as Bernake’s infusion of funds has been to stabilizing the market
Right now, Anderson says, “Larry is more like a European national central banker giving over his currency to the EU.”
Is the cellphone the most promising new weapon in the fight against HIV/AIDs? A group of designers, tech companies, health care providers and AIDs activists are betting that mobile phones can help crack one of the world's most intractable problems: delivering health care information to one of the world's most severely affected regions.
Project Masiluleke, (which means to ‘give wise counsel’ in Zulu) the largest ever use of mobile devices for delivery of HIV/AIDS and TB care, was today unveiled at Pop!Tech, the annual in-gathering of digerati, activists, Arctic explorers, organic farmers, and the occasional perfume critic, in Camden, Maine.
Noting that several of the principals in the Project had discovered each other at last year’s conference, Andrew Zolli, Pop!Tech's curator, said the organization, through its Pop!Tech Accelerator activist arm, was instrumental in providing the “glue” that enabled practitioners to collaborate in such ventures. The partners include frog design, the Praekelt Foundaton, iTeach, National Geographic, Nokia Siemens Networks, MTN, and others who together have invested several million dollars of in-kind value to establish the cell phone as a bridge to treatment.
Project M, as its backers have come to call it, is currently in its first month of operation. Its genius is to use specialized text messages piggybacked onto the unused space in “Please Call Me” messages, which many South Africans use when they run out of paid-up minutes on their cellphones. Essentially, a caller sends a “Please Call Me” message to the person they wish to speak to -- and then hangs up. That person gets the message, and calls that person back. Using the free space available in those messages, powered by technology from the Praekelt Foundation, with message content from iTeach, design insights from frog design, and network capacity donated by MTN, the messages can connect mobile users to operators at call centers who can provide callers with healthcare information, counseling and referrals to local testing clinics.
Each day in South Africa more than 1000 people die of AIDS. Some 40% of the population of 48 milllion is infected. Despite the availability of disease fighting medication, those infected often fail to get the information they need to help themselves. In addition, the stigma of AIDS means that a vast number of infected people fail to get tested until it’s too late. “Men only come when they have lost their dignity,” says AIDS activist Zinny Thabethe, who spurred interest in this cause when she sang and spoke at Pop!Tech two years ago.
In its first month of operation, Project M is delivering one million messages a day, such as “HIV and being mistreated by family or friends? For confidential counseling, call AIDS helpline at this number.” Already, calls to the centers have jumped from 1,000 per day at launch, to 4,000 per day.
Ultimately, the goal is to expand the model across Africa.
In a world where both the bottom and top of the pyramid are reeling as markets melt down and tectonic economic shifts are shaking the planet, a conference dedicated to the theme “Scarcity and Abundance” seems stomach-churningly appropriate.
Andrew Zolli, curator of Pop!Tech, the annual gathering of digerati in the foliage-happy precincts of Camden, Maine, kicked off the conference’s opening this morning by noting that while the developed world has mostly been preoccupied recently by the massive wipe-out of its abundant wealth, much of the world has been living simultaneously with excruciating scarcity.
Backed by a slide featuring luxury condos overlooking a shantytown, Zolli noted, “Because these two worlds live check by jowl, we share a common destiny. The focus, then, of this year’s Pop!Tech will be on exploring whether there are technologies, ideas and approaches which will work in both the worlds of scarcity and of abundance?”
You don’t need to be in Maine to hear the answers. You can follow the conference as it’s streamed live, on the Web, at poptech.com/live.
Is there an upside to the current recession? Well, maybe, if it means we travel less, turn down the thermostat, and think deeply before flagrantly consuming more stuff. The combined effect of that parsimonious lifestyle is likely the best thing that could happen to our planet -- a huge brake applied to the rampant energy consumption fueled by a bull market, says Saul Griffith, co-founder of engineering think tank Squid Labs, and founder of Makani Power, a high altitude wind company. “A recession would be great for dolphins,” he quipped.
That was the final ‘upbeat’ assessment offered by Griffith, who spoke to Pop!tech about how much energy we each are consuming.. Griffith has been mapping his own energy usage for the past few years. Because he’s a vigilant, bike-riding, newspaper recycling, locavore-eating San Franciscan, he thought he’d fare pretty well. He was horrified to discover, however, that his carbon footprint was well above average, largely due to his heavy traveling, particularly trips to Australia. The average American uses approximately 12K per year; due to his heavy traveling, his annual consumption topped out at 17,027 watts in 2007.
Appalled, he vowed to figure out how to cut back. But how? With partners, he developed a site called Wattszon.com, which calculates a person’s energy conumption based on his or her personal lifestyle. By crowd sourcing – essentially, using users’s profiles to constantly update the database’s intelligence -- Wattson.org hopes to provide one of the most sophisticated ways of calculating personal energy consumption – with the hope that that information will then spur personal change.
He’d also like to see companies label their products with how much energy is embodied in them, as well as their nutritional contents.
Griffith’s message: Personal responsibility counts. Buy better, buy less, he suggests. And the big question for corporations is to find a way to make things that endure, as well as make money. “Making things last a long time is incredibly important. “
Really, who needs another conference bag? Chances are, you already have hordes of them, too good to trash, too besmirched with logos to use, gathering dust in the back of a closet.
So when the San Francisco-based bag maker Timbuk2 approached Pop!Tech organizers about creating bags for this year’s conference, they proposed thinking about the idea in a whole new way. How about designing a bag that had a positive influence on somebody else? What if you could give the bag back when you left the conference? And what if those bags were then passed along to folks who could really use them -- like inner city kids who might actually appreciate a cool free bag?
“The whole thing grew out of a discussion we had started before the economy melted down about what our green strategy should be,” says Perry Klebahn, Timbuk2’s CEO. “We conceived of the idea of a conference bag that would serve its purpose then move on to another life.”
To Timbuk2, that meant more than just a conventional recycling approach. And it had to be about more than just marketing. “Every consumer product now claims to be green, he says. “I don’t want to do ‘trend,’ whether it’s green, durability, or timelessness -- that’s Vanity Fair, not us,” he says. Timbuk2 wanted to be more pro-planet, not just conventionally sustainable, although most of their materials are eco-friendly. And that meant making products that helped people make personal connections in some meaningful way.
Andrew Zolli, Pop!Tech’s curator, loved the idea, not least because it resonated with this year’s motif. “Especially with a theme of Scarcity and Abundance, we felt it was important to declare a unilateral de-escalation in the conference bag arms race,” he says.
“Every day, organizers saddle conference participants with an unending stream of heavily branded, instantly-out-of-date conference bags stuffed with self-serving marketing detritus, all of which is quickly seconded to the back of some closet or the landfill. Enough!”
And Zolli knew just the way to make Timbuk2’s ‘pay it forward’ idea happen, connecting Kevin McSpadden, Timbuk2’s new CMO, with Eric Dawson, a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow, and the founder of Peace Games, a non-profit that works to change schools’ culture by teaching kids conflict resolution and peacemaking skills. Dawson’s group works with youngsters in Boston public schools -- a social responsibility two-fer.
“With Timbuk2, we’re redirecting bags them from where they are abundant (among high-end conference goers) to scarce (among deserving students). The cherry on top is that we’re creating a model that other organizations can follow,” Zolli says.
One of the coolest features of the bag, which is made with excess materials in their San Francisco production facility, is a liner that’s embellished with words of wisdom from Pop!Tech attendees to the bag’s future owners, Boston area fifth graders. Among the sage advice: “Embrace your weirdness.” “Tattoo removal hurts even more.” “Popularity is fleeting.” “Avoid credit cards. “ “Be glad you did, not wish you had. “ “Lottery tickets are for suckers.”
Timbuk2 designers were sensitive to the style issues their bags would encounter among such a discriminating audience. “We didn’t do yellow because we didn’t want somebody to get beat up because they carried this thing,” Klebahn says.
Fueled by a fortune built on a handbag, a glossy white art-filled spaceship has touched down in Central Park. It’s designed by Zaha Hadid, the Pritzker Prize winning Iraqi architect and underwritten by Chanel, making for a kind of architecture-meets-fashion-meets-art-meets-brand promotion fantas-magoria.
Spawned in 2006 when Chanel creative director, the Goth-like German Karl Lagerfeld, met Hadid in the lobby of Soho’s celebrity canteen, the Mercer Hotel, the “Mobile Art” exhibition previously swooped through Hong Kong and Tokyo before landing in New York.
Inside, the 7500 square foot pavilion, visitors are outfitted with an MP3 player on which the French actress Jeanne Moreau meditates on life, love, and desire, in her irresistibly sexy, world-weary voice. Like the world’s sultriest docent, she also comments on the art, and keeps traffic moving through Hadid’s curvy maze-like interiors.
The art? It’s a mixed multimedia bag that includes wacky film clips of buck naked fatties frolicking in the bottom of cardboard boxes; a bottomless pit, where images of what appear to be sting rays, fossils, and ganglia swoop around the rim; photographs of women made from reptilian skins; and projected images of women bound in nothing but chains alternating with images of anthuriums, the floral equivalent of flashers in trench coats.
So, what’s the point? At first, the connection is subtle. Moreau begins her commentary by saying, “I have an overwhelming need to empty my bag.” It’s a French saying, she later explains, that means “get something off my chest.” Innocent enough, right? Maybe not...
Things soon get a little more pointed. A batch of screens feature short films by the Indian artist Subodh Gupta. They depict various scenes involving bags – stolen bags, stuffed bags, patterned bags, bags on the run. Moreau intones: “A bag can make life lighter. You can hide anything in a bag. You can get killed for a bag.”
Hmmm. Starting to sense a theme?
Then, around a corner, you happen upon a big enameled green shipping container, partially open, in which a woman in what appears to be a Chanel jacket is humping a big black rubber bear. Nearby is a set of swings --- done up in a suspiciously Chanel-like quilted pattern, and suspended by a suspiciously Chanel-like chain. Get it yet? A linked pair of horseshoes placed prominently in the front hammers the brand message home for any bonehead who’s missed the more subtle clues.
The kicker? At the exhibit’s end, in Hadid’s light-filled atrium, a giant quilted handbag is splayed open to reveal a furry pink interior housing a giant pressed powder compact, with a rope=like gold chain snaking along the floor.
Turns out, Women’s Wear Daily reported, that before starting work, artists had been invited to visit Chanel’s leather goods factory in suburban Paris ‘just to get their creative juices flowing.’ Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s head of fashion, says the project was designed to “surprise customers, communicate the brand’s heritage, and energize one of its iconic products.”
So, the creative muse that inspired this work was linked to the brand as surely as Coco’s C’s are linked in the hardware that dangles off her signature bags.
Still, Chanel stopped short of what rival house Louis Vuitton did when they installed an actual handbag shop as part of the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art earlier this year.
Sadly, given all the brand theatrics, nobody was offering 20% off coupons good for redemption at a Chanel boutique near you.
Don’t get me wrong: this show is entertaining. Moreau is a terrific guide, and for most North Americans, this is as close as we’re likely to get to experiencing a building by Hadid on our own soil. But don’t mistake this for anything other than what it is: a luxury house’s high-brow foray into brand building.
Fortunately, the show is free to the public so, apart from the time you invest in standing on line, you don’t have to pay to be sold. It’s open from Oct. 20-Nov. 9. Enter Central Park from Fifth Avenue at E. 72nd St., and look for the signs.
A new design for what was once the shabbiest show on Broadway – the discount ticket booth in Times Square – was unveiled today, and it’s a look that will razzle dazzle ‘em.
Anchored by 27 skid-resistant red steps, illuminated by glowing red LED lights, the booth will serve both as a conduit for same day discount tickets, and a place to hang out while watching the greatest show on earth: the daily mayhem that is Times Square.
Two years in the making, the new facility, which replaced the cramped, annoying 1970s-era TKTS booth, was designed by two Australian designers, John Choi and Tai Ropiha, who beat out 683 other designers for the commission. The bake-off, sponsored by the Theater Development Fund, was the largest New York design competition prior to Ground Zero.
Among other improvements: the facility will now take credit cards, and two traffic lanes have been re-claimed to make the plaza 110% larger than it was. The temporary TKTS booth at the Marriott Marquis has closed, but the statue of Father Duffy, the chaplain of the Fighting 69th Infantry and a World War I hero who became the namesake of the square in 1937, is still there.
It’s not enough just to design useful tools for the developing world, IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown told the audience at the Social Capital Markets 2008 conference now going on in San Francisco. It’s equally critical to design the distribution channels, supply chains, and marketing strategies that would allow them to reach the people they’re intended for. “Breakthrough innovation in the developing world is happening by designing systems,” he told the audience in a session on Design for the Developing World.
Paul Polak, another panelist, agreed that the ability to mass market is as important as the ability to conceive of a product that addresses a need.
It’s standing room only at the conference, a stunning achievement given the continuing market meltdown on the opposite coast. As conference organizer Kevin Jones noted in his opening remarks, of the 600 attendees, 450 registered after Lehmann Brothers filed for bankruptcy.
You betcha. As somebody with four iPods -- from a clunky old fat white
one from the Paleolithic era, to a sleek new iPod Touch - I’ll be the
first to confess that I’m a sucker for a sexy gadget, an easy mark for
a cool new pair of shoes, and utterly irresponsible when it comes to
lavishly illustrated design books. Design lust has helped turn my
carbon footprint from a dainty size 7 ½ to something Michael Phelps
would appreciate.
That doesn’t square too well with our current passion for sustainable design.
Luckily, some of the world’s savviest designers are also grappling with
their own culpability in trashing the planet, and trying to find ways
to make cool stuff that doesn’t consume so many resources, or to use
recyclable materials to create new ones.
Things may be teetering on the brink of the apocalypse in Detroit, but there’s an alternative automotive world going on in Paris, where the 2008 Motor Show is currently underway.
Paris is always a good place to pick up on global trends – whether they be food, fashion, or motorcars – and this year is no exception. According to a story in the British design magazine, Wallpaper, manufacturers are all showing cars that embrace the idea of urban mobility. What does that mean? Well, smaller for one – parking is as much of a problem in Tokyo as it is in London or New York. Even Audi and BMW had mini-SUVs for those who need to haul stuff and still squeeze into tight spaces. Wallpaper has mounted a cool slide show featuring the hottest designs.
Everybody had at least one non-fossil-fueled vehicle, but they didn’t necessarily trumpet their ecological aptitude – more often, it was a case of lighter materials, less gadget-driven dashboards, and thinner seats.
Of course, this being Paris, it wasn’t all hair-shirt auto design. For those who still prefer old school luxury to the new frugality chic, there was a Lamborghini Estoque. Asking price? A cool $226,507 at today’s exchange rate. Perfect for the hedge fund king who managed to short the market before the Feds intervened.
