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education programs for residents of all ages--an attempt to create a healthy environment for local kids

Learning involves social participation

. The architects argued that flipping a landscape vertically, so that public space connects homes, schools, and workplaces within one building, would create more mixed use communities than high-rises with hundreds of rooms simply stacked on top of one another.

developers are rarely enthused about building diverse communities--often, it's more profitable for them to build new, luxury towers that act like gated communities for the rich. A project like FLIP/CITY would likely require political will, too, and zoning laws would have to adapt to the new mixed-use shapes and needs created by them.

with a "cloud-based family hub" that allows family members to divvy up chores and financial transactions

the local Marks & Spencer department store (this is the U.K., after all) has been converted into a combination cafe, store that both shares and rents items, and maker-space outfitted with the requisite 3-D printer

The Silver Linings families live in community-centric villages for active older people that offer amenities like yoga and fitness classes

The Ruralites are families living in rural areas that live at the cutting edge of technology--using 3-D printers to get replacement parts for household items and "video walls" to communicate with friends and family

Dragon Rouge refers to single parents sharing a family home as members of the Tandem Tribe. In this vision, energy and resources are tracked individually and a larger micro-community offers shared resources, including tools and vehicles.

Finally, there are the Modular Movers--professionals who hop from one megacity to the other, exploring the world while they work and opting to walk and use bikes whenever possible. Like some of the other family types, this group relies on shared resources and subscription plans.

the number one reason this cohort leaves a job is directly related to a boss. Other research has found that Millennials want communication from the boss more frequently than any other generation in the workforce.

Millennials are strongly drawn to the “anything is possible” spirit of entrepreneurship. Rather than chase these workers away, companies that embrace a risk-tolerant culture and promote learning and experimentation will benefit from the heightened energy around innovation

“[Millennials] expect to work in communities of mutual interest and passion – not structured hierarchies,”

Shifts in organizational design—including fewer management layers, matrix structures, shared services, and outsourcing

Harford argues that much can be done to make public space safe for children. “I would like to see pedestrian-friendly crossings more frequently on streets. I would like to see the streets be more kid-oriented with wider sidewalks, as well as a more coherent attitude amongst people on the street to be watching out for kids.”

in “real life, only from the ordinary adults of the city sidewalks do children learn – if they learn it at all – the first fundamental of successful city life: People must take a modicum of public responsibility for each other even if they have no ties to each other.

Ronda Howard, a Vancouver senior city planner, notes that when there are greater incentives for people to walk in their neighbourhoods, there are more eyes on the street: thus the streets become safer.

Despite the challenges facing parents raising children in the city, different social networks can augment child involvement in public space. Harford says that strong social ties help increase her son’s autonomy in Vancouver

When we actively engage with others who are different from us, we have the opportunity to become more sophisticated and tolerant citizens. When we get to know the diverse members of our communities, we create social networks that make our cities safer and more enjoyable. Public spaces are integral to making this happen. These spaces are an antidote to the inward gaze of individualism. We need to reclaim public space and work to expand its boundaries. It’s time for us to leave the house of the self in the background, and go outside

Recognizing that while technology in and of itself does not save lives, the intelligent use of technology does.

What’s better than something that is basically a story about you?”

We’re happiest when our ties with others are deep and strong. And the research tells us that the ebb and flow of happiness in America is clearly linked to the quality and character of our social ties—including our friendships, community ties, and marriage. It’s also linked, specifically, to the frequency with which we have sex.

So we investigated four indicators of sociability among today’s young adults—marriage, friendship, religious attendance, and sex—in an effort to explain

married young adults are about 75 percent more likely to report that they are very happy, compared with their peers who are not married

As it turns out, the share of young adults who are married has fallen from 59 percent in 1972 to 28 percent in 2018. The decline has been similar for men and women, although from 2016 to 2018 the share of married men fell, while the share of married women rose.

Faith was the second factor. Young adults who attend religious services more than once a month are about 40 percent more likely to report that they are very happy, compared with their peers who are not religious at all

The share of young adults who attend religious services more than monthly has fallen from 38 percent in 1972 to 27 percent in 2018, even as the share who never attend has risen rapidly.

The third factor was friendship. The effect of seeing friends frequently is less clear than that of marriage or religion, but young adults who see their friends regularly do seem to be about 10 percent more likely to report being very happy than their less-sociable peers.

Indeed, it may be that rising social time spent with friends in recent years could be buffering young adults from the declines in institutions such as marriage or religion, as friends stand in place of other relationships or forms of community.*

And, finally, we looked at sex. Young adults who have sex at least once a week are about 35 percent more likely to report that they are very happy, compared with their peers who have no sex.

This trend in rising sexlessness is broadly confirmed in other surveys of sexual behavior,

Less sex, we speculate, could help account for declining happiness for many young adults.

What’s more, as the #MeToo era has taught us, there has been too much unwanted or nonconsensual sex out there, which is obviously bad for the (more often female) target of such advances. From this perspective, the so-called sex recession might just amount to a sexual recalibration, with a lot of bad sex being eliminated from our social lives—and this would be a good thing. For all these reasons, the feminist family historian Stephanie Coontz is “suspicious of any hand-wringing” about the sex recession.

physical objects to understand the real world and using that information to behave intelligently, we can treat these characters in the physical world as if they were just characters in a video game

elements that make video games so engaging and fun and literally program them onto physical characters to make an entertainment experience that has never been possible before.

a massive opportunity in consumer products to change the way people interact with the physical world around them

new category of entertainment that brings these technologies to people in a familiar and fun way

Almost anything we interact with in the physical world has the potential to act with autonomy and purpose, and the challenge is in identifying the truly high-impact opportunities at the right times

was not one of the big studios, but the streaming service Amazon.

But blockbusters have a design flaw: their marketing costs are enormous — opening a movie typically costs anywhere from $20m — and they spend less and less time in cinemas. To take a recent example, ticket sales for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice dropped by an astonishing 68.4 per cent on its second weekend

“What you’re going to end up with is fewer theatres,” George Lucas said during a panel at the University of Southern California in 2013. “Bigger theatres, with a lot of nice things. Going to the movies is going to cost you 50 bucks, maybe 100.”

He argued that a film will come out in cinemas for 17 days — three weekends — which is where 98 per cent of films make 95 per cent of their revenues anyway. On the 18th day, the film will be available everywhere and you will pay for the size: a movie screen will be $15, a 75-inch TV will be $4, a smartphone will be $1.99.

“Fifty per cent of Americans did not step into a movie theatre last year, and of the 50 per cent that did go into a theatre, 95 per cent of them went to one or two films,”

Arguably, it’s more visual than television. It has our full attention: each frame must pull its weight in terms of narrative and spectacle. That is why it is a director’s medium: it envelops us. TV comes to us, into our homes, casual, familiar, favouring habit-forming episodic narratives. That is why it is a writer’s medium. The big screen glamorises — its stars are the stuff of myth; the small screen is more like a member of the family

And something like The Avengers, it’s too much fun laughing with the audience. These things are communal experiences.

But then many film-makers would argue that movies should be consumed differently from music: a song is a song wherever you play it, whereas films were built for the big screen.

“I don’t think that experience is going to die,” says Obst, “although I do worry that eventually we will all be inside on our huge computer screens, watching all of the different types of entertainment together

Nothing breaks the spell of the movie more instantly than the pause button.

The invention of 3D printing, in which every home or office will be equipped with an in-house printer that can spew out the goods we want – from shoes to pills – anticipates a world of what Summers calls automated "doers". They will do everything for us, eliminating the need for much work.

we have come to the end of the great "general purpose technologies" (technologies that transform an entire economy, such as the steam engine, electricity, the car and so on) that changed the world. There are no new transformative technologies to carry us forward, while the old activities are being robotised and automated.

The second is in human wellbeing. There will be vast growth in advising, coaching, caring, mentoring, doctoring, nursing, teaching and generally enhancing capabilities.

Notwithstanding robotisation and automation, I identify four broad areas in which there will be vast job opportunities.The first is in micro-production

The third is in addressing the globe's "wicked issues" . There will be new forms of nutrition and carbon-efficient energy, along with economising with water, to meet the demands of a world population of 9 billion in 2050.

And fourthly, digital and big data management will foster whole new industries

the truth is, nobody knows. What we do know is that two-thirds of what we consume today was not invented 25 years ago. It will be the same again in a generation's time

We actually were, I think, one of the first customers who actually requested this API

Imperson provides technology that knows how to automate this conversation in a realistic way, so the user believes he is speaking with a character or even the actor doing the character

I think there are a few different reasons why today it's more relevant and more attractive. We are taking familiar figures like celebrities; it's not just a chat bot that you speak with for the sake of your artificial intelligence curiosity. This is an entertainment experience. People chatting with Miss Piggy enjoy the experience as if they were chatting with the real Miss Piggy. In order to create the interaction, we were working with Disney people and Disney writers who actually write for Miss Piggy and make sure it's a completely authentic conversation.

OpenBCI is designing the Lego blocks; someone else will build the castle.

Making EEG-controlled novelties is one thing, but designing better medical devices to enable paralyzed people to move their wheelchairs, or locked-in patients to communicate, is a truly noble enterprise