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Urban life was Jacobs’s great subject. But her great theme was the fragility of democracy—how difficult it is to maintain, how easily it can crumble. A city offered the perfect laboratory in which to study democracy’s intricate, interconnected gears and ballistics. “When we deal with cities,” she wrote in The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), “we are dealing with life at its most complex and intense.” When cities succeed, they represent the purest manifestation of democratic ideals: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” When cities fail, they fail for the same reasons democracies fail: corruption, tyranny, homogenization, overspecialization, cultural drift and atrophy.

I was encouraged to believe that simple conformity results in stagnation for a society, and that American progress has been largely owing to the opportunity for experimentation, the leeway given initiative, and to a gusto and a freedom for chewing over odd ideas. I was taught that the American’s right to be a free individual, not at the mercy of the state, was hard-won and that its price was eternal vigilance, that I too would have to be vigilant.

Her 1,500-word speech, a version of which appears in Vital Little Plans, became the basis for The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Her main argument was Kirk’s: Small neighborhood stores, ignored by the planners in their grim demolition derby, were essential social hubs. She added that sidewalks, stoops, laundries, and mailbox areas were also indispensable centers of community activity, and that sterile, vacant outdoor space served nobody. “The least we can do,” she said, “is to respect—in the deepest sense—strips of chaos that have a weird wisdom of their own.”

Lots of high-minded technological thinkers, particularly Elon Musk, have proposed a universal basic income, a form of wealth distribution that ensures every citizen receives a baseline income whether or not they are employed, as a likely solution to the problem of workforce automation. But the White House report takes a more somber approach, describing a basic income as “giving up on the possibility of workers’ remaining employed.” Instead, the report suggests a number of policy proposals (like Obama’s national free community college initiative, and expanded unemployment benefits) as ways of actively facilitating the transition into a more AI driven economy.

Finance is an essential component of industrial change because it allows technologies to be developed before they can generate a return. But if finance no longer serves industrial change but instead prioritizes rent-seeking (seeking to increase its share of existing wealth without creating new sources of wealth), creative destruction of the present carbon-intensive industrial system cannot occur. The aim of this article is to investigate this issue through a study of the emergence of one low-carbon industry, solar photovoltaics (PV) in the United States. The focus is on the period after the first oil shock in 1973 until the end of the 1980s. The case is contrasted with the more successful development of the industry in Japan. In the late 1970s, American firms held 90% of the global market share; by 2005, it had declined to under 10%, whereas the Japanese share had risen to almost 50% (9). Changes to corporate governance and organization brought by financialization are identified as major causes of the difference in outcome.

One camp consisted of a small number of entrepreneurs who had been involved in producing solar cells for the space program or pioneered their application on Earth.

The other camp consisted of the energy policy bureaucracy and closely affiliated large manufacturing and energy corporations along with utilities (65).

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to help tackle some of the world’s most challenging social problems. To analyze potential applications for social good, we compiled a library of about 160 AI social-impact use cases. They suggest that existing capabilities could contribute to tackling cases across all 17 of the UN’s sustainable-development goals, potentially helping hundreds of millions of people in both advanced and emerging countries. Real-life examples of AI are already being applied in about one-third of these use cases, albeit in relatively small tests. They range from diagnosing cancer to helping blind people navigate their surroundings, identifying victims of online sexual exploitation, and aiding disaster-relief efforts (such as the flooding that followed Hurricane Harvey in 2017). AI is only part of a much broader tool kit of measures that can be used to tackle societal issues, however. For now, issues such as data accessibility and shortages of AI talent constrain its application for social good.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are among the best-known and most frequently cited societal challenges, and our use cases map to all 17 of the goals, supporting some aspect of each one (Exhibit 3). Our use-case library does not rest on the taxonomy of the SDGs, because their goals, unlike ours, are not directly related to AI usage; about 20 cases in our library do not map to the SDGs at all. The chart should not be read as a comprehensive evaluation of AI’s potential for each SDG; if an SDG has a low number of cases, that reflects our library rather than AI’s applicability to that SDG.

For 40 years, Robert E. Friedman and his Washington-based nonprofit Prosperity Now have helped millions of people from economically vulnerable communities gain financial security and stability. Income disparity, however, has only grown across the United States. Now, the 69-year-old Friedman is arguing for a macroeconomic fix — and it doesn’t involve the government just doling out cash. Instead, he advocates giving everyone assets like savings, education and homeownership, instituting a system of universal basic assets (UBA). And Friedman isn’t alone.

As cities and countries across the world experiment with the currently in-vogue idea of universal basic income (UBI), a small but growing number of scholars, nonprofits and researchers are beginning to argue for an alternative framework for prosperity. At its heart, they’re pushing for a 21st-century version of the age-old proverb that it’s better to teach a man how to fish than to simply give him fish. Just four years ago, UBA as a modern concept was unknown. Today, it’s emerging as a challenger to UBI as a means to the same goal: less income disparity and greater opportunities for all.

It’s an idea that has appeal on both sides of the political aisle. Liberals are drawn to UBA’s “provide for everyone” ethos, while libertarians see it as a reason to cut the “safety net” of government subsidies like welfare and unemployment, says Friedman. The bipartisan appeal comes from the notion that asset-building gives people more options, says C. Eugene Steuerle, former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury for Tax Analysis under President Ronald Reagan and co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. ”UBA is a middle-of-the-road policy,” he says. “It’s an ideal compromise between left and right because it promotes mobility and opportunity, and less dependence on government.”

The design is “based on what we know is affordable housing in Puerto Rico for a single family,” says Hector Ralat, an architect based in the firm’s Puerto Rican office. “But the focus was to alter the DNA of that knowledge and to put in the essential components that someone would need to sustain living conditions for at least two weeks, which is the recommended time here for someone to receive aid after a disaster.” The houses will likely cost around $120,000, a number that lets homeowners access favorable interest rates on mortgages. The units can be stacked on top of each other; in Villalba, most of the community will be three stories high (the solar will serve the whole building).

“We just know our product is better than stick-built construction in these types of dangerous environments,” says Paul Galvin, chairman and CEO of SG Blocks, the parent company of SG Residential. “Heavy-gauge steel structures are just designed to a high tolerance for the effects of climate change.” The houses, most of which will have two bedrooms, will start at $90,000 to $130,000. It might be possible to build cheaper houses, Galvin says, but the company is “trying to deliver product that is quality-driven, in that it’s going to be built once and it’s not going to be destroyed every storm.” The company is also working with a bank to create a mortgage that is similar in monthly cost to a car payment. The design can incorporate solar panels.

HiveCube, another modular housing company, is also using shipping containers, and has targeted a much lower cost–the houses start at $39,000 for a two-bedroom home. “We believe that your safety should not be a matter of income, but a given when you are planning to buy a home for your family,” says María Velasco, cofounder of HiveCube. The homes are designed to be fully off the grid, with solar power and batteries, a rainwater collection system, and a gray and black water treatment system that uses plants and bacteria to treat wastewater instead of septic tanks.

Nearly every moment of our lives, we’re producing data about ourselves that companies profit from. Our smartwatches know when we wake up, Alexa listens to our private conversations, our phones track where we go, Google knows what we email and search, Facebook knows what we share with friends, and our loyalty cards remember what we buy. We share all this data about ourselves because we like the services these companies provide, and business leaders tell us we must to make it possible for those services to be cheap or free.

We should not only expect that these companies better protect our data – we should also ensure that everyone creating it shares in the economic value it generates. One person’s data is worth little, but the collection of lots of people’s data is what fuels the insights that companies use to make more money or networks, like Facebook, that marketers are so attracted to. Data isn’t the “new oil”, as some have claimed: it isn’t a non-renewable natural resource that comes from a piece of earth that a lucky property owner controls. We have all pitched in to create a new commonwealth of information about ourselves that is bigger than any single participant, and we should all benefit from it.

The value of our data has a lot in common with the value of our labor: a single individual worker, outside of the rarest professions, can be replaced by another with similar skills. But when workers organize to withhold their labor, they have much more power to ensure employers more fairly value it. Just as one worker is an island but organized workers are a force to be reckoned with, the users of digital platforms should organize not only for better protection of our data, but for a new contract that ensures everyone shares in the historic profits we make possible.

The human brain has always loved the dopamine rush of notifications, in any form; recent research indicates the unpredictable but ubiquitous updates of Gmail or Twitter carry the same neurological effect as rocking a slot machine. While Internet use is "not addictive in the same way as pharmacological substances are," as cognitive scientist Tom Stafford noted in 2013, we continually chase those unpredictable payoffs on Facebook and Instagram in ways that tend to mirror gambling or sex addictions, even if "Internet addiction" writ large currently holds an ambiguous position in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

For products whose fundamental business proposition is harnessing attention, building those so-called "compulsion loops" isn't an accident of technology—it's the whole point. Indeed, observers have argued since Parker's "human psychology" flub last year that Facebook has not just meticulously measured, but fundamentally altered human behavior, and nascent technology ventures emboldened by Facebook's world-changing success have sought to translate the behavioral tricks that psychologist B.F. Skinner applied to the gambling kiosk to every mobile app under the sun. "When a gambler feels favored by luck, dopamine is released," Natasha Schüll, author of Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, told the Guardian in March. All Facebook managed to do was find a way to miniaturize the captivating logic of the slot machine—with no cost to the user but their time and attention.

While the human brain is tremendously plastic, that doesn't mean Facebook is savagely rewiring the human brain. Indeed, the Facebook users in the Cal State–Fullerton study "showed greater activation of their amygdala and striatum, brain regions that are involved in impulsive behavior," as Live Science's Tia Ghose reported at the time. Ghose continued: "But unlike in the brains of cocaine addicts, for instance, the Facebook users showed no quieting of the brain systems responsible for inhibition in the prefrontal cortex." Facebook isn't fundamentally rewiring the structure of the human brain, but its ubiquity has the same relative effect by kicking our rewards centers into overdrive.

uarterBack August 3, 2017 at 8:31 am Re NYT Hacking Wars story, I have long had the same “self-licking ice cream cone” concerns. The military industrial complex has been slowly shaping polic opinion to make “kenetic” response to cyber attacks palatable. Consider this 2013 article: https://armscontrolnow.org/2013/05/30/is-there-a-place-for-nuclear-deterrence-in-cyberspace/ Cyber as a Casus Belli has two inherent fatal flaws in its inability to accurately prove attribution and the extent of damage. The former makes it impossible to know if a counter attack is against a party that had any role in the original cyber attack, and the latter makes it impossible to prove or verify harm, which is the foundation of the “proportional response” required under the international laws of war. These two flaws can raise the potential of false flags to a new level. Do we really want to shed blood of untold numbers of military and civilian soles because of a report of a unattributable cyber attack on a purported “crital infrastructure component” that nobody every heard of,and that cannot be confirmed as existing in the first place? Gulf of Tonkin, eat your heart out. Look no further than our present history. We are slowly moving towards war with Russia based on the premise of a cyber attack that may, or may not, have actually happened, and no one has been allowed to inspect the physical servers related to the claimed attack. International laws of war should be clear that kenetic response to cyber attacks must be off the table. The only acceptable proportionate attacks should e economic or offensive cyber. Full stop.