A Sustainable Train of Thought

I was wondering why certain images in my blog were showing a relatively huge amount of traffic. Turns out somebody deep-linked that image to what appears to have been a pretty busy message board. Grrr.

All the more reason for me to move everything over to Flickr. At least then I know if people are looking at my photos, and I don’t have to worry about bandwidth problems. This is especially useful when dealing with large images. Rumor has it that there’s a handy tool for migrating images from Gallery over to Flickr. At some point I’ll tackle that task…hopefully with a faster internet connection!

I was also looking at .htaccess tricks, but it seemed like more of a hassle than necessary.

I must say that I’ve become a convert to putting as much as possible onto the internet. The more publicity for my photos and projects, the better.

Note: My posts from this point on are probably going to be somewhat chaotic as I digest the process the last Applied Dream and explore opportunities. Entries will still be related to sustainability, although is less obvious ways than in previous posts.

Looks like New York City is always interested in your parking habits. And to increase their profits from parking fees and parking tickets, they’ve installed some solar-powered parking meters which accept credit card payments, according to an article on BemroseBooth.com

“Parking is one of the biggest challenges in a large, congested city with limited space, and the DOT continues to look for new ways to make parking easier for drivers,” said Transportation Commissioner Iris Weinshall. “Under Mayor Bloomberg’s leadership, the City is embracing new technologies to improve the quality of life for all New Yorkers.”

The numbers tell the story:

In the past 18 months, a number of other major U.S. cities have installed pay and display machines with credit card payment facilities and have seen parking revenues increase by up to 40%, on a like-for-like basis. In some cases, up to 60% of all transactions are being completed with credit cards, as drivers find them particularly convenient and are, therefore, inclined to pay for the maximum parking period permitted. Card transactions reduce the volumes of cash that have to be collected by the operators, making them a more secure and cost-effective means of payment.

I find this interesting because of the obvious conflict of interest: the city wants to provide parking for vehicles because fees and fines provide a very large source of revenue for the city. (This report (.pdf) suggests that 14,000 parking spaces can generate $33 million a year from metered parking rates alone.) Yet at the same time, traffic is a huge problem in the city. As described in this report, over 830,000 cars enter the Central Business District of Manhattan, 60% of which are personal cars. This means that the other 40% of vehicle traffic consists of trucks, buses, commercial vehicles, and taxis.

(I found the above links on schallerconsult.com)

Now, I remember hearing about a service which parks you car for you in Manhattan. Not such a big deal, right? Well, this valet service (if you can call it that), is for your personal car, which they stash somewhere around Manhattan, moving vehicles around as alternate side of the street parking goes into effect. When you want your car, you call the service up and they tell you when they’ll be able to deliver your car to you.

In effect (or at least as I imagine something like this working), you get home to your brownstone after a weekend in the Hamptons, give the keys to some dude from this service, he runs off with your car and parks it somewhere. You don’t need your car during the week, so the service moves the car around to avoid parking tickets and the like. When you need your car the next weekend, you give the service a call. Someone goes out and fetches the car and delivers it to your doorstep. Not a cheap service, by far, but it’s an interesting model to take inspiration from or build upon.

A funny thing happened this afternoon. I posted an old video to YouTube.com, and within twenty minutes it was viewed over 60 times. I was editing the details for the file and when I clicked “update” I noticed that the stats read 44 views, which I thought was a mistake.

So I reloaded the page (which had just loaded) and the number was now 46 views. And three ratings.

It’s a 28 second clip of a wind-power generator model being disassembled. I made it about eleven years ago and it’s been on my portfolio site for a while…but I doubt it’s gotten as many hits over the last two years as it did in the last half hour.

“Third spaces” aren’t something I’ve really talked about or looked at during the course of my thesis work, but this article in the NYTimes about Paragraph and other writer’s spaces caught my eye. Paragraph is essentially a member’s-only space where writers can go to write.

Ms. Parisi compares writers’ rooms to gyms. In both, a large group of people share the same equipment. And, paying for membership helps writers take their commitment to writing seriously, she said, and gets them “off of the couch” and onto the literary StairMaster.
As Ms. Manghnani, who writes short stories, explained: “If I’m at home working, people don’t respect that that much; they call or text or e-mail, or make arrangements to have coffee. But if I’m at a place that sounds legitimate to other people – a library or a writers’ room – they don’t disturb me as much. No one calls you at the gym and says, ‘Lets go have a burger.’ ”

I really like this analysis of commitments. People paying money to prove to themselves that they are serious about their task, and the appearance of that commitment to others: do they respect it and encourage it? I suppose it’s as much about the public perception of your status as it is your actual status. You could be a complete faker or even just someone who is coasting along, but a membership affords you a certain amount of respect and heads off some questions which might otherwise be asked. You might be writing or you might not be. But the point is that you’ve entered into a mutual agreement of sorts with others regarding the meaning of your membership. It’s a symbol.

Perhaps it’s even a brand. But in this case it’s one with a clause: you have to write to belong. Once we consider time in this equation, then it’s clear that if you’re a faker, or you’re not really working, you will lose your membership. (A gym, on the other hand, is all too happy to let you aimlessly wander amongst the machines and weight stacks for as long as you want, provided you keep paying your membership dues.) So the brand in this case is one which becomes coveted because it has real meaning. Anyone can buy a certain pair of sneakers given enough money. But not everyone can be part of a writer’s room, because you are required to participate, contribute, produce. The agreement you make with the brand and your participation in its realization and fulfillment is a critical part of the brand’s meaning. A self-policing process is required to ensure its continued integrity.

The other part of the article which caught my attention:

...playwright Kirk Wood Bromley, a member of the Brooklyn space, says he finds the atmosphere bracing. “I think writers get jazzed by writing in a room with other writers,” he said. “Writing is a very competitive art.”

I think the same applies to designers in close confines…

During my last review, Alex mentioned tipping points in relationship to some of the concepts I presented. Malcolm Gladwell discusses tipping points as the moment when mass in a system shifts.

The relationship to sustainability is that you don’t have to convince each and every person of the merits of sustainability. Rather, if you can reach the tipping point for a system, then once the system changes, everyone has to go along with it. As an example, if enough people (say, 51%) petition for a bus schedule to change, then the other 49% are going to use that system regardless of whether they wanted that system of not.

Clearly, this is both a good and bad thing. But in this case I’d like to look at the positive side, which is that by reaching that tipping point (which is comparatively easier to do than changing the entire system), we can effect large-scale change relatively easily. I wasn’t thinking explicitly in terms of tipping points, but in retrospect I think this was what I was trying to achieve by framing my concept around the US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.

The US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement and tipping points are similar in that through their implementation they both preempt certain discussions. The hard-core constituencies which would fight tooth and nail against implementing certain resolutions or achieving critical mass become less of a concern because in the end it’s the implementation which matters. Once a system is in place, it becomes both harder to argue against it and harder to resist.

Thinking this way gets me out of the morass of trying to shift an entire society over to new systems and ways of thinking. Now it’s just a matter of shifting the right people, or piggybacking on the best opportunities.

I originally read The Tipping Point last year while working on the service design project, and I found it really helped my approach at the time. So all of this came back to me while I was reading this article in GreenBiz about investors who are filing shareholder resolutions to investigate corporate energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. The connection to the above? It’s not about ALL shareholders filing these resolutions…it’s about enough shareholders filing. Granted these resolutions are largely on behalf of large institutional investors, but it doesn’t really change the point: get enough of the right people to effect change, and the rest will follow.

After a weekend of typing, here it is:

Dave Chiu – Thesis Report Draft 1_1.pdf (374k)

I should have posted this earlier. Here is the brief for the last Applied Dreams, entitled Social Agents of Change (.pdf).

Salon.com talks about something which I’ve brought up before: insurance companies are concerned about the effects of climate change on their business and may begin to act as catalysts for change within industry. Well, it looks like one of them is doing something about it.

Executives at Swiss Re are beginning to worry that the executives of corporations responsible for greenhouse gas emissions may ultimately be found legally liable for damage from natural disasters that result from climate change. Swiss Re has decided that it would rather not be on the hook for that kind of legal liability, especially for those corporate executives who are denying that there is any problem at all.

For a scenario illustrating what insurance companies might do, I suggest checking out the end of the Salon.com article.

The short timeframe of the Applied Dreams leaves a lot of open ends and unexplored paths. If you’ve listened to my presentation, or viewed the slides, or even done both, I’m curious to know if you think there are any points which need or could use expansion?

For example:

• Joining the service—we began this project with a certain brief which enabled us to jump right into the service as if it’s existed for quite some time. But convincing people to join and to share or rent their objects is a challenge, and one which requires some thought, research, and experimentation to solve.

• Verification—how do you know someone has a certain reputation? How can you verify or confirm his or her standing? And how do you know that all the information is correct or wasn’t manipulated? In the AD project, my assumption was that just like in real life, you will lose your ability to borrow things if you behave poorly. I’d like to take a closer look at this issue, because it may be external to the project, or it may be critical. Specifically, if someone gets the short end of the stick in a transaction with someone else, will their mistrust and disappointment be aimed solely at the individual, or will the service come into the picture as well? My thought is that this system is very much like the stock market. It’s just making visible existing information that you can’t see at the moment. So, like the stock market and the tools used to analyze it, reactions to poor performance might not be associated with the tools.

• Time – This was cut short by the timeframe of the project. I think it’s important to distinguish between things you did in the past and your most recent behavior. As a college student, you might have gotten drunk a lot, but as a businessman in a Fortune 500 company maybe you’ve changed your ways (or maybe not). Taking time into consideration is important because it reflects changes in your lifestyle and trends: maybe this isn’t the best time of the month to lend you money, because you’ve historically been really bad at returning it within the timeframe I’ve requested.

• Further applications: can a reputation management system be used outside of the framework of renting and borrowing? Having a reputation for recommending other people is immediately conducive to employment situations, for example.

Any more that you can think of?

We’re always up to something interesting here at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea!

In a few weeks we’ll be exhibiting work during the Salone del Mobile, the biggest furniture exhibition in the world. Over the years, Salone has turned into an opportunity for young designers to show their work after-hours throughout the city of Milan. Known as the “fuori salone” these small exhibitions are where the really exciting stuff happens. Last year we exhibited work alongside Tecno as part of Strangely Familiar Future.

This year we are part of a joint exhibition with Domus Academy. Our working prototypes will be shown alongside a selection of production pieces by Domus Academy graduates. This is the last year of Interaction Design Institute Ivrea’s existence, and it should prove to be an interesting and stimulating event.

Please find the official invitation attached. I’ll be showing three pieces, two of which were made in collaboration with Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and one which was made in collaboration with Haiyan Zhang and Alexandra. We are currently very very busy prepping the projects for the exhibition, writing our thesis reports, documenting the last Applied Dreams project (which just finished last week), and working on our thesis projects. In other words, business as usual.

For photos and updates, check out the following resources…

I’ll be posting photos on Flickr.

Keep an eye on my thesis blog for more updates.

and check out http://milano.interaction-ivrea.it for more information as the event draws nearer.

After Salone, the next big event will be our graduation in June…