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In the first years of the 21st century, our capacities for imagining new realities have proved inadequate. From Madrid to London, Bali to Mumbai, from Katrina-ravaged New Orleans to the tsunami's devastation all around the Indian Ocean, to the most recent financial crisis, the alarms went unheeded until after disaster had struck. Now, as the first decade of the century has drawn to a close, its many shocks make plain that we are living in a world with greater potential for surprise, uncertainty, and threats to resilience. In a time of poorly understood interacting causes and consequences, we require new habits of thinking, new approaches to assessment, and new ways of engaging with the world. Emerging is a world filled with just as much opportunity as risk, but seeing both of those forces and appreciating their interrelatedness requires new lenses and an unflagging awareness of diverse perspectives. It means investing all of our energies to profoundly challenge the status quo.

"How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule is a report of the New Economy Working Group produced in collaboration with the New Economy Network; it is an outcome of a series of conversations focused on building a policy agenda for transforming our money system. David Korten is the lead author; participating organizations include Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, Capital Institute, Democracy Collaborative, Green America, Institute for Policy Studies, Living Economies Forum, New Economy Network, New Rules Project, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Public Banking Institute, RSF Social Finance, and YES! Magazine."

MIT's Technology Review has just gotten news of a mysterious new project that claims it will "create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources.'" Space exploration company Planetary Resources will be unveiled in a conference call on Tuesday, April 24th. Besides the audacious announcement, which promises to "overlay two critical sectors - space exploration and natural resources - to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP," what makes this unique is its high-profile support group. The venture is backed by Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, director James Cameron, and politician Ross Perot's son, among others.

Facing declining visitors and uncertainty about what to do about it, library administrators in the new town of Almere in the Netherlands did something extraordinary. They redesigned their libraries based on the changing needs and desires of library users and, in 2010, opened the Nieuwe Bibliotheek (New Library), a thriving community hub that looks more like a bookstore than a library. Guided by patron surveys, administrators tossed out traditional methods of library organization, turning to retail design and merchandising for inspiration. They now group books by areas of interest, combining fiction and nonfiction; they display books face-out to catch the eye of browsers; and they train staff members in marketing and customer service techniques. The library is also a Seats2meet (S2M) location where patrons are empowered to help one another in exchange for free, permanent, coworking space, and they utilize the S2M Serendipity Machine to connect library users in real-time. They also have a bustling cafe, an extensive events and music program, a gaming facility, a reading garden and more. The result? The New Library surpassed all expectation about usage with over 100,000 visitors in the first two months. It is now considered one of the most innovative libraries in the world.

2 million photographs are uploaded to Facebook each day. As of this week, every new image will be processed by automatic face recognition software, designed to identify the people in the photographs. It's not the addition of this new function that has caused the creeping sense of unease, but the covert manner with which it has been activated

Facebook users who want an interesting (and perhaps creepy) visualization of their activity on the world's largest social network can get it with the help of Intel's new Museum of Me application. Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20068257-17/intels-facebook-museum-of-me-is-a-must-try/#ixzz1UOjMmAlE

While people have talked about collective intelligence for decades, new communication technologies-especially the Internet-now allow huge numbers of people all over the planet to work together in new ways.  The recent successes of systems like Google and Wikipedia suggest that the time is now ripe for many more such systems, and the goal of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence is to understand how to take advantage of these possibilities.   Our basic research question is:  How can people and computers be connected so that-collectively-they act more intelligently than any individuals, groups, or computers have ever done before?' The Center for Collective Intelligence brings together faculty from across MIT to conduct research on how new communications technologies are changing the way people work together.

"The sewing machine was the smartphone of the nineteenth century. Just skim through the promotional materials of the leading sewing-machine manufacturers of that distant era and you will notice the many similarities with our own lofty, dizzy discourse. The catalog from Willcox & Gibbs, the Apple of its day, in 1864, includes glowing testimonials from a number of reverends thrilled by the civilizing powers of the new machine. One calls it a "Christian institution"; another celebrates its usefulness in his missionary efforts in Syria; a third, after praising it as an "honest machine," expresses his hope that "every man and woman who owns one will take pattern from it, in principle and duty." The brochure from Singer in 1880-modestly titled "Genius Rewarded: or, the Story of the Sewing Machine"-takes such rhetoric even further, presenting the sewing machine as the ultimate platform for spreading American culture. The machine's appeal is universal and its impact is revolutionary. Even its marketing is pure poetry:"

"On June 2nd, I had the pleasure of speaking at the C40 Summit in São Paulo, Brazil. The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group consists of iconic cities from around the world committed to addressing climate change. Chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the group has recently joined forces with the Clinton Climate Initiative's Cities Program. Together, this partnership can have meaningful role in the fight against climate change."

" On November 11th 2013 researchers, innovators and creators will gather in Amsterdam for the co-working unconference LaFutura. The goal of this meeting is to map the business of trend research and future insights in order to create a framework for this new industry. The theme of this event is 'NOW NEW NEXT Building the future industry'. "

"Prof Castells suggests we may be about to see the emergence of a new kind of capitalism, with businesses growing out of the counter-cultures of the last 20 years. Here are some extracts from their conversation. "

Do new information and communication technologies (ICTs) empower repressive regimes at the expense of civil society, or vice versa? For example, does access to the Internet and mobile phones alter the balance of power between repressive regimes and civil society? These questions are especially pertinent today given the role that ICTs played during this year's uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond. Indeed, as one Egyptian activist stated, "We use Facebook to schedule our protests, Twitter to coordinate and YouTube to tell the world." But do these new ICTs-so called "liberation technologies"-really threaten repressive rule? The purpose of this dissertation is to use mixed-methods research to answer these questions.

One way to ensure you're right at least some of the time is to make the same prediction year after year -- after all, a stopped clock is right twice a day. "Dr. Doom" himself -- New York University economist Nouriel Roubini -- has been expecting a U.S. financial catastrophe for years. As Anirvan Banerji of the Economic Cycle Research Institute told the New York Times Magazine last year, Roubini's explanations -- increasing trade deficits, soaring current account deficits, Hurricane Katrina, skyrocketing oil prices -- have tended to evolve over time. But as we now know, he hit the jackpot by calling the housing bubble in 2006. Smart or lucky? Wait to see where his next predictions land.

The Australian online media space is bracing for a brave new entrant, with former Age editor Andrew Jaspan's The Conversation website set to launch in February under the managing editorship of ABC Media Watch researcher and ex-Crikey tsar Misha Ketchell. Crikey can reveal the planned $8.4 million project - a news and commentary portal penned by academics - recently secured its short-term financial future after fears of a funding shortfall threatened to leave it stillborn.

looks totally cool and great example of ugc, but where is their rss feed ;(

Keep a gratitude journal. Write down and record what you are grateful for, and then when you need to reaffirm your good lot in life, look back on the journal.Remember the bad. If you do not remind yourself of what it was like to be sick, unemployed, or heartbroken, you will be less likely to appreciate health, your job, or your relationship.Ask yourself three questions every evening. Fill in the blanks with the name of a person (or persons) in your life. What have I received from ___? What have I given to ___? What troubles and difficulty have I caused ___?Learn prayers of gratitude. One Emmons suggests in his book from the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh: Waking up this morning, I see the blue sky. I join my hands in thanks; for the many wonders of life; for having 24 brand-new hours before me.Appreciate your senses. One approach: Practice breathing exercises.Use visual reminders. For example, Emmons has a refrigerator magnet in his home bearing this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery … today is a gift."Make a vow to practice gratitude. "Swearing a vow to perform a behavior actually does increase the likelihood that the action will be executed," the psychologist notes.Watch your language: It influences how you think about the world.Go through the motions. Research shows that emotions can follow behavior.Be creative. Look for new situations and opportunities in which to feel grateful, especially when things are not going well.Though he practices these techniques, Emmons acknowledges that maintaining an attitude of thanksgiving is hard work even for him."Most psychologists study what they're bad at," he says.

Out there on the internet is a place where you can buy and sell anything anonymously using untraceable money. What is mostly being bought and sold in this stealth market right now are recreational drugs -- pot and acid, etc. There has always been black markets in every city of the world, but as underground and out of sight as they might be, you still needed to show up in person to trade. And there has long been outlaw areas of the internet where black markets thrive and you don't need to reveal yourself, but paying without any trace has been a problem. This new online stealthy anonymart, called Silk Road, solves these problems with two existing technologies. Silk Road uses established anonymizing Tor network to trade anonymously, and it employs the new Bitcoin peer-to-peer encrypted payment system to provide untraceable payments, which can in theory be converted to dollars or other national currencies.

" Zapaday is an open news agenda and a global public calendar. Zapaday lets you see the future with day-by-day events, news stories, facts and trivia. "

"A NEW citizen science project will be launched next month to help researchers assess how our marine ecosystems are changing in response to ocean warming. Currently each year over three million Australian's go fishing, diving and boating and scientists want to enlist their help to collect valuable data for the RangeExtension Database and Mapping Project. Redmap invites recreational and commercial fishers, scuba divers, boaters and scientists in Western Australia to spot, log and map any uncommon marine species not usually seen in their particular coastal areas."

"This year's Slush conference in Helsinki has been a terrific event, with a very high standard of startup and a disproportionate number of great ideas floating around. One of the most intriguing has been that of Futureful, a sort-of-browser app that's going to be made available to iPad users in the U.S. in January. Futureful has been under rather stealthy development for two years, and the team is backed and mentored by Skype co-founder Janus Friis. It's a bit like StumbleUpon, in that it's an app that contains a browser (as opposed to being a browser - you can't enter a URL) and is designed to help the user find new content. However, Futureful is all about semantic tagging and artificial intelligence. As you browse, the app presents subject tags in a row at the top - click on a tag, and you get taken to another related page with its own set of tags. So, clicking on a 'Silicon Valley' tag may take you to a tech story, with the fresh tags above it including something like 'Moore's Law'. It basically provides an intelligent chain of content discovery."

Project Glass, an enterprise at Google's highly secretive Google X lab, released photos and posted a video to YouTube on Wednesday to preview the search company's long-rumored foray into building a better pair of specs.