Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke last week justifying the shift of Facebook's default privacy settings to public.
"People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time."
This is a radical change from the way that Zuckerberg pounded on the importance of user privacy for years. That your information would only be visible to the people you accept as friends was fundamental to the DNA of the social network that hundreds of millions of people have joined over these past few years."
Fascinating article in Newsweek looking at how living through a recession in your childhood can impact on how you live your life as an adult.
"We all know the type of person who came of age in the Great Depression. They are the grandmothers and grandfathers who can't use a tea bag too many times, yet are enjoying comfortable retirements in warm climates. And we know what the children of the 1950s are all about. They are the optimistic boomers who embodied an age of continual upward mobility and possibility. They have often spent more than they earned, because for them it has been a truism that times can only get better."
An article on newgeography.com, putting the case forward to move the UN headquarters to Dubai, states:
"A relocation committee has recommended that the organization move temporarily to Singapore by 2015. It will be hard to vacate Asia again for New York, which is far away from the bulk of the world's largest population centers...
Bringing the United Nations to Dubai makes sense. New York gets rid of one of its worst welfare cheats, and Dubai finds new tenants to fill its vacant towers."
The theory is that the plastic electronics business will be larger than the semiconductor business with expected market value of $355 billion by 2019.
The UK is a world leader in plastic electronics (146 organisations in UK, 118 in Germany, 195 in USA). (So watch us throw that leadership position away as we usually do!)
Also plastic electronics are cheaper than silicon. Plant costs: silicon $1-2bn, plastic electronics: $100m.
For more on this check out the Creative Knowledge Transfer Network on Twitter.
"A Lancashire town is experimenting with using traditional floral displays, including hanging baskets and herbaceous borders, to grow slightly less colourful but more practical greens.
The idea taking shape in Clitheroe is to replace flowers with edible vegetables and offer a modest "pick-your-own" service of plantings to anyone passing by...
The most striking feature will be three-tiered flower/vegetable structures in the centre of the town, if a motion put forward by councillors gets the go-ahead later this month.
Exponents say the idea is symbolic of the local determination to highlight the risk of food shortages and climate change."
I came across an interesting piece in the New York Times about increasing generation gaps around experience and expectations of technology and consequent world view and attention span.
"Researchers [...] theorize that the ever-accelerating pace of technological change may be minting a series of mini-generation gaps, with each group of children uniquely influenced by the tech tools available in their formative stages of development.
“People two, three or four years apart are having completely different experiences with technology,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.
Shapeways is now producingmodels made of coloured sandstone for business or the general public. All you need to do is upload a 3D-design to their website and their3D-printer will churn out a model. Thetechnique involvesprinting thin cross-sections of sandstone, which are then layeredto build up the 3D-shape.
It's still early days for 3D-printing and, at this stage, thereappear to belimited applications for the general public. However, in the long term, I guess you could locally manufacture pretty much any component -including electronics, vehicle parts, appliances, etc. - using your own (or a community) 3D-printer.
Bill Weihl of Google Renewables revealed, in a New York Times article today, that his focusfor renewable energy generation is nowonconcentrated solar thermal, enhanced geothermal and high-altitude wind. They have recently invested in a total of six companies working in these areas.
The theory is that Google is more patient than typical venture capitalists and able to provide support that may not otherwise be available.
Back in October the Forum launched a competition for sets of our Disruptive Innovation Cards. Entrants were asked to tell us how they would use the cards to disrupt for sustainability. We had a really positive response with entries from as far afield as New Zealand, the US and Brazil.
After serious consideration we managed to whittle the entrants down to five winners, they are:
The Guardian reported today that British Gas and other power firms were instructed by National Grid to cut the supply to major corporate customers, in an attempt to preserve gas supply for households as the weather causes a surge in demand. Businesses impacted include Vauxhall's car plant at Ellesmere Port on Merseyside and British Sugar's refineries at Bury St Edmunds and Newark.
