The UN’s Global Pulse project, which focuses on using close to real-time data to faster react to unfolding crisis situations posted the results of a study they did with other UN bodies. From the blog:

To get a cross-sectoral understanding of how vulnerable populations cope with the impacts of global crises, Global Pulse partnered with research teams from 11 UN Agencies to look at the 2008/2009 Global Economic Crisis through the lens of eight different sectors in 38 countries – under the umbrella of RIVAF.

Head over for the full report. And keep an eye on this project. Something tells me this is worth following.

Thomas Fuchs, in an Op-Ed for the New York Times, argues that the Arab Spring is a result of worsening climatic conditions in the Middle East:

“Syria’s current social unrest is, in the most direct sense, a reaction to a brutal and out-of-touch regime,” write Francesco Femia and Caitlin Werrell, in a report for their Center for Climate and Security in Washington. “However, that’s not the whole story. The past few years have seen a number of significant social, economic, environmental and climatic changes in Syria that have eroded the social contract between citizen and government.

This gives the predominant narrative of the “Internet Revolution” considerably more depth as it might help explain the underlying motivations that have been facilitated by Internet based communications. Further, it provides a chilling outlook of the path that may lie ahead.

A really nice concept for an Energy Consumption dashboard.

With smart meters, a bunch of intelligent devices and a sleak interface design, energy controlling could be so much easier. JuiceControl is an iPad and iPhone app who could just do those things for and with us.

Obviously, this is a design study. It’s nice to see interface designers concerned with such issues, though. Especially since, as I’ve argued before, usability remains one of the main obstacles to a wider deployment of smart energy savings applications.

Andrew Chen, telling of a tour of the Pixar Offices:

There, I asked Matt a casual question that had an answer I remember well, a year later:

Me: “What’s your favorite Pixar movie?”

Matt: SIGH

Me: “Haha! Why the sigh?”

Matt: “This is such a tough question, because they are all good. And yet at the same time, it can be hard to watch one that you’ve worked on, because you spend so many hours on it. You know all the little choices you made, and all the shortcuts that were taken. And you remember the riskier things you could have tried but ended up not, because you couldn’t risk the schedule. And so when you are watching the movie, you can see all the flaws, and it isn’t until you see the faces of your friends and family that you start to forget them.”

That’s why you have to expose your creations to the world. If you don’t, you’ll always be too critical of them, and never be able to step back and look at the creation itself, and not the process that has created it.

And ultimately, if you don’t force yourself to step back that bit, you’ll end up stifling your creativity.

Speaking of cars, here’s Mercedes’ vision:

Mercedes-Benz USA is putting a pared-down version of Facebook in its vehicles, and will be unveiling the tech this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, tech which Reuters says is “specially designed for drivers and centered around the locations of friends and businesses.”

Want some ads with that?

“They can put listening devices where they like. They can tap my telephone calls. I don’t give a fuck. I … In a few months, I’m getting out to mind my own fucking business, from somewhere else, and so I’m leaving this shitty country of which I’m sickened.”

James Bridle:

Maybe, just maybe, I don’t know, NETWORK BEATS HIERARCHY but what I do know is that notional space is real, that WE ARE 6 BILLION PEOPLE WITH NO HEADS and we are only just beginning to figure this shit out.

and again, related:

The photo does not exist. We are 6.9 billion people with no heads who have just started to grow a nervous system.

Welcome to SAD – the Surveillance Awareness Database. SAD allows you to participate in an ongoing quest to chart the surveillance of public space. You can enter information about CCTV cameras and similar surveillance systems alone or together with other SAD users.

Sounds like a very interesting project.

Marcus Westbury:

The built environment and geography of a city is its hardware. It defines much of what a city can and cannot be. The hardware of the city – its topography, the scale of its spaces, its architecture, it’s patterned dense grid or it’s narrow laneways or its chaotic sprawl – places a hard limit on what is and isn’t possible. While the hardware of cities can and does change and evolve slowly over time, in the short term it remains relatively fixed – major changes are invariably expensive, can be paralysingly slow and often contentious.

Cities are also software – they actually have many layers of software. They have an operating system – a hard set of rules and constraints that are imposed and enforced by governments. Operating systems are hard boundaries too – they are laws that forbid and allow. They define what you can and can’t do as much as the hardware does. Far from open to opportunities, the operating systems of cities are often defensive, risk averse and closed to possibility.

He describes what he learned from an experiment in Newcastle, AUS, and how much cities not only depend on their layout, but on the rules that govern the interaction with and within the city.

As cities age, the challenge is not always to rebuild them physically but to re-imagine how they might function and adapt. In Newcastle in many respects nothing has changed since 2008. The buildings are mostly the same. The hardware is unchanged. Nothing has been built. No government has fallen. No revolution has taken place. Yet, on another level much has changed – dead parts of the city is active and vibrant, 60 projects have started, hundreds of new events have been created, and whole new communities are directly engaged in creating whatever it is that the city will become. The software – the legal templates, the contracts and the thinking – that has enabled has changed Newcastle is becoming a kind of shareware – downloaded, hacked and implemented in cities and towns across Australia from Townsville to Adelaide.

Kasey Klimes for Secret Republic:

Bicycles matter because they are a catalyst of understanding – become hooked on the thrill of cycling, and everything else follows. Now that new freeway isn’t a convenience but an impediment. Mixed-use development isn’t a threat to privacy but an opportunity for community. And maybe, just maybe, car-free living will eventually be seen not as restrictive, but as a door to newfound freedom. The real reason why bicycles are the key to better cities? Some might call it enlightenment.