WorldChanging.org

[morsla]

I've been reading a lot of blogs lately. I think they're the crack version of the internet: crystallised, concentrated versions of the vast mass of information out there. You can trawl the net for hours hoping to score a hit, sucking up low-grade websites along with the detritus of a million advertising pop-ups. Good bloggers are information pushers. They pick and choose what's on offer, knowing that a bad batch of links might lose them customers...

There's a great sense of immediacy that comes from following new stories as they appear. 'New' news doesn't stay new for long, though, and the rush of finding something new often lasts just long enough to find out that it's an old story you just haven't heard of before. The faster the information comes through, the faster you fall behind the times. It's astounding realising just how much you don't know.

I really like WorldChanging.org (LJ feed at worldchanging). I've been reading their site intermittently for a while now, and just noticed that they have a book coming out this month: A User's Guide for the 21st Century - six hundred pages of ideas for living a greener lifestyle.

While looking for stories about ubiquitous computing applications, I stumbled across WorldChanging's article on New Songdo City - a conscious attempt to create a regional economic hub for northeast Asia, in South Korea. Technically old news (construction began at the end of 2004), but I missed it when the story first appeared. The entire city is being designed with ubiquitous computing in everything from the floors (calling ambulances if elderly people have a fall) to the rubbish bins (crediting your personal recycling account every time you drop a can into the right bin).

The article brings up some good questions, however - particularly about sustainability (not used as a selling point by the developers, so the cynic in me assumes that it's not a major consideration), and whether the city is designed to include people from a range of economic backgrounds. If you look at the glossy developer info, you could be fooled into thinking that New Songdo won't have poor people in it - just economic powerhouses and the bright young things that work for them. I'm sure it's possible to make a place that only contains the top tier of income earners, but that sounds more like a gated community than a city.

Amazon are currently advertising the WorldChanging book alongside Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises. Any Melbournians interested in making a combined order to split the postage costs? (particularly geserit, as the design book seems right up your urban-designed alley...)

Comments

[sols-light.livejournal.com]

My first thought immediately went to my Future Problem Solving training and the couple of hours we spent trying to solve the problems inherent in a cashless society.

I don't think we came up with a viable solution in the time, from memory, I suspect because computers cause as many problems as they solve.

A society that reliant on technology, is in reality that reliant on the people who maintain the technology and what happens if the clocks in their house fail or the alarms don't work.

Maybe I'm not 21st century enough, but I like the mechanisms to be built so that the humans using them have a chance of fixing them if they go wrong.