Kenneth Cukier, the big data editor of The Economist, was invited by knowledge center BrabantKennis to give a lecture in the Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch. I acted as moderator. In his book ‘Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think’ he and his co-author Viktor Mayer-Schönberger describe how big data is already changing everyday life.
The Appsterdam Smart City Challenge in June of 2015 was 48 hours full of creativity, hacking and innovation. It was organised by Amsterdam Smart City, the innovation platform of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area. The goal was to turn urban challenges into opportunities that address the themes: Smart Energy, Smart Mobility and Smart Stadium. During this event, I was interviewed about the Smart City concept and how can it change the future of Amsterdam.
For my monthly live talkshow in Amsterdam, Stadsleven (‘City Life’ ) I interviewed internet critic Evgeny Morosov, prolific essayist and author of ‘To Save Everything, Click Here’ (translated in Dutch by publisher De Wereld as ‘Om de wereld te redden, klik hier’). The theme this month (May 2014) is ‘Slow City’, about how to reconquer calm and focus in hectic urban life, and I talked to Morosov about the virtues of boredom and the onslaught on our time and attention by addictive social media. Morosov admits that he is vulnerable too: he sometimes locks away his router cable and smartphone so as to have a chance to be creatively bored.
For my live monthly talkshow Stadsleven (‘City Life’) the theme in April 2014 was ‘Big Data: What does the city know about me?’. One of my guests, via Skype and video, was the Columbia sociologist Saskia Sassen, well-known for her research on globalization and migration. “Much of the design of smart cities generates a city that is not smart enough,” she says. “Actually they are pretty stupid.” Too much standardized technology leads to a loss of local knowledge, says Sassen. “Ultimately you need openness.”
JanJaap Ruijssenaars of Universe Architecture is working on a method to 3D print an entire house. Preferably to be built on the coast of Ireland, so that house and landscape will merge into one. Read my article for the magazine Metropolis.
The John Adams Institute organized an evening with the biographer of Steve Jobs, the American journalist and writer Walter Isaacson. I was invited as moderator. It was an exciting evening about one of the most remarkable and influential figures of our time, a man on the cusp of creativity and technology. Read my introduction below. Read the article…