>> I wrote 'The You-City' to scratch an itch.
Writing it was a process of thinking clearly about cities and people and technology all mixed in a blender and dropped into a time warp. In it, I take the scale of the city and talk about the interactions that happen at each frame. The doorway, the street, the block, the intersection, the neighborhood, and the city. It's a personal tale of my views, relationships and what we sometimes experience in the digital era as augmented, curious, and social people.
http://amzn.to/youcityamazon
Writing it was a process of thinking clearly about cities and people and technology all mixed in a blender and dropped into a time warp. In it, I take the scale of the city and talk about the interactions that happen at each frame. The doorway, the street, the block, the intersection, the neighborhood, and the city. It's a personal tale of my views, relationships and what we sometimes experience in the digital era as augmented, curious, and social people.
http://amzn.to/youcityamazon
If you'd like to purchase The You-City, you can find it at Amazon.
{At the front door}
"It’s a sunny day sometime in the near future, and the threshold of your front door is indeed glowing. It’s blue, which tells you to take the car. It could’ve been green to tell you to take a bike, or yellow for the train, as it has before. A red glow could tell you to stay home and turn on an emergency station or your video conference camera. But it’s giving you a clear signal - one out of many - and you trust it because the system is one you have helped develop and customized yourself. It’s taken your calendar, the decisions of your neighbors, your mood, the predicted temperature and a hundred other factors into account, and it’s confidently telling you to take the car. Just for further transparency, it gives you the ultimate reason: everyone else is going to the beach today."
"It’s a sunny day sometime in the near future, and the threshold of your front door is indeed glowing. It’s blue, which tells you to take the car. It could’ve been green to tell you to take a bike, or yellow for the train, as it has before. A red glow could tell you to stay home and turn on an emergency station or your video conference camera. But it’s giving you a clear signal - one out of many - and you trust it because the system is one you have helped develop and customized yourself. It’s taken your calendar, the decisions of your neighbors, your mood, the predicted temperature and a hundred other factors into account, and it’s confidently telling you to take the car. Just for further transparency, it gives you the ultimate reason: everyone else is going to the beach today."
{The Street}
"Getting from one place to another is a pain in the ass. We’ve built our cities on layers of transportation history, which has been dominated by the auto for 80 years now. We have to re-learn how cities should behave and listen to the needs of the people on the street. We’ve slowly created a country that mostly relies on one mode – the car. So when that mode is out, people are late, absent, miss appointments and lose jobs. We’ve become dependent on a machine that has too many moving parts, is prone to failure and needs more maintenance than a living creature. The future should be about choosing the most suitable way to travel within an ecosystem of varying entry costs."
"Getting from one place to another is a pain in the ass. We’ve built our cities on layers of transportation history, which has been dominated by the auto for 80 years now. We have to re-learn how cities should behave and listen to the needs of the people on the street. We’ve slowly created a country that mostly relies on one mode – the car. So when that mode is out, people are late, absent, miss appointments and lose jobs. We’ve become dependent on a machine that has too many moving parts, is prone to failure and needs more maintenance than a living creature. The future should be about choosing the most suitable way to travel within an ecosystem of varying entry costs."
{The Neighborhood}
"Gliding by each other, people could get a message that there’s pre-screened potential for compatibility. Opt-in, or opt-out? Your choice, but once there are two of you the system starts looking for more, and more, and sooner or later, you have an affinity group. You discuss that common thread however you like, until worn thin or schedules conflict. Ten minutes pass, and you’ve all parted ways. Some you might see again. Others are already back in the crowd. It was nice to meet you."
"Gliding by each other, people could get a message that there’s pre-screened potential for compatibility. Opt-in, or opt-out? Your choice, but once there are two of you the system starts looking for more, and more, and sooner or later, you have an affinity group. You discuss that common thread however you like, until worn thin or schedules conflict. Ten minutes pass, and you’ve all parted ways. Some you might see again. Others are already back in the crowd. It was nice to meet you."