“Technology will play a central role in determining whether future cities are harmonious, vibrant and sustainable or discontented, wasteful and unsustainable. Efficient future cities will integrate technologies to reduce their environmental impacts while sustainably coping with growing populations.”
“The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair.”
IBM100 - Colloquia – IBM Research – Smarter Cities Technology Centre
IBM Research & Development – Ireland, a Smarter Cities Technology Centre in Dublin, Ireland is bringing together esteemed leaders from academia, government, and industry to discuss and debate the most pressing issues of urbanisation and the future of science and technology required to address the challenges and aspirations of cities.
Cities are vibrant hubs of life, engines that drive the global economy, and proving grounds for social and technological innovation. However, while cities offer the economies of scale needed to cope with the world’s increasing population, contemporary urban infrastructures are plagued by pollution, resource inefficiencies, unreliability, crime, and social inequities.
The Science of Cities Colloquium is focused on bringing computer science and mathematical expertise to bear on the challenges of transportation, water, energy, and urban information systems. It will enable researchers and city leaders from diverse domains to make new connections, engage in thought-provoking conversations, and identify directions that will drive new progress.
The Colloquium is being held at the IBM Technology Campus, Dublin, Ireland on October 26th and 27th, in conjunction with the Opening Ceremony for the new IBM Research and Development – Ireland facility.
A Berkeley transportation scholar offers an appealingly simple rule in Adam Nagourney’s dispatch on the sizeable subway and light-rail expansion in Los Angeles: Robert B. Cervero, the director of the University of California Transportation Center in Berkeley, said that if the subway expansion cut commuting time as promised, it would indeed change ridership habits. Transit officials said the ride from Koreatown to Westwood by subway would take 24 minutes, compared with 50 minutes during the rush in a car or on a bus. “The science of public transit is not too complicated,” Mr. Cervero said in an e-mail message. “It comes down to how time-competitive transit is with the private car. If it takes two to three times longer to get from Point A to Point B by transit, the vast majority of folks will drive. If it’s faster going by bus or train, then most will forsake their car and ride transit.” Is it that simple? Social-science research proves over and over again that people are less rational with their money than we’d like to believe — which has forced the field of economics to reconsider once-cherished assumptions. It’s hard to believe people are any more rational with how they allocate their time. Don’t habit, social pressure, perceptions about what’s pleasant and safe all affect which mode of transport people choose?
How cities are good for science, and vice versa | Grist
This week’s issue of the journal Nature is all about the connection between cities and science. They’ve put a terrific package together, with lots of great graphics (want to know where the next megacities will emerge, or where the most scientific papers are published?) and feature articles on the synergy between urban areas and scientific innovation. Some of the articles is behind a paywall, but there’s a lot that’s available to non-subscribers as well.
“Cities are … home to considerable scientific capital; they hold most of the world’s top universities and the vast majority of its researchers…. The resources that cities offer can stimulate outstanding science for reasons that researchers are just starting to explore. On the other side of the equation, scientists can assist cities in tackling their biggest problems.”
“ “One of the most important things we can work on now is creating systems that provide collectives — groups, organizations and communities — with sophisticated, healthy, virtual selves. These virtual selves provide collectives with a mirror of themselves. Having a mirror enables the members of those systems to see the whole, and how they fit in. Once they can see this they can then begin to adjust their own behavior to fit what the whole is trying to do. This simple mirroring function can catalyze dramatic new levels of self-organization and synchrony in what would otherwise be a totally chaotic “crowd” of individual entities.” “
(…)
“Meta-Individuals. The highest level of collective intelligence is the meta-individual. This emerges when what was once a crowd of separate individuals, evolves to become a new individual in its own right, and is faciliated by the formation of a sophisticated meta-level self-construct for the collective. This evolutionary leap is called a metasystem transition — the parts join together to form a new higher-order whole that is made of the parts themselves. This new whole resembles the parts, but transcends their abilities.
To evolve a collective to the level of being a true individual, it has to have a well-designed nervous system, it has to have a collective brain and mind, and most importantly it has to achieve a high-level of collective consciousness. High level collective consciousness requires a sophisticated collective self construct to serve as a catalyst. Fortunately, this is something we can actually build, because as has been asserted previously, self is an illusion, a consturct, and therefore selves can be built, even for large collectives comprised of millions or billions of members.” ”
