Yearly Archives: 2013

Petition to name San Francisco’s Bay Bridge after Emperor Norton gains support

"Norton, a successful businessman, immigrated to San Francisco from South Africa during the 19th century. After losing his fortune, Norton took the unusual step of proclaiming himself Emperor of the United States in 1859. He later added 'Protector of Mexico' to his official title. Norton is still remembered today because the people of San Francisco embraced him. Newspapers printed his proclamations free of charge and businesses accepted his imperial currency. He strolled through the streets clad in a blue army uniform and a beaver hat, inspecting his royal domain and speaking with his loyal subjects." Continue reading →

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San Francisco split by Silicon Valley’s wealth

"Heated bidding wars — especially in a half-mile radius of shuttle bus stops — have broken out, causing rents to soar, even double in some cases. Along shuttle routes, trendy new restaurants that serve high-end food and spirits have taken the place of corner stores and mom-and-pop businesses. Anti-Google graffiti has turned up here, and activists recently held a small anti-gentrification rally at which they smashed a Google bus piñata. Ted Gullicksen, executive director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, said he fears that the techies are permanently inheriting the city and won't pack up and leave as they did after the 2000 dot-com crash." Continue reading →

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Google to challenge telecoms with fleet of solar-powered balloons

"In recent months, Google Inc has announced plans to bring free wireless Internet access to 7,000 Starbucks cafes across America, eventually displacing AT&T Inc; it has asked U.S. regulators for broader access to wireless airwaves; and it has launched 30 solar-powered balloons over the South Pacific ocean, designed to beam the Internet to remote regions. Then there is Google Fiber, the high-speed cable TV and Internet service that was introduced in Kansas City late last year and that will be expanded soon to Austin and Provo, Utah. Fiber delivers Internet speeds at 1 gigabit per second, as much as 100 times faster than the average U.S. network." Continue reading →

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Bono: “Capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid”

"Bono (nee Paul David Hewson) is the lead singer in the rock group U2, one of the most successful rock groups in history. Bono also became a major proponent of greatly expanded U.S. foreign aid and other government programs (including debt cancellation) to alleviate the dire plight in the world of HIV/AIDS, malaria, abject poverty, and other issues. In a speech at Georgetown University, Bono altered his economic and political views and declared that only capitalism can end poverty. 'Aid is just a stopgap,' he said. 'Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic powerhouse.'" Continue reading →

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How Gamers Could Save the (Real) World

"Three years ago, game designer and author Jane McGonigal argued that saving the human race is going to require a major time investment—in playing video games. 'If we want to solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity, I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week [up from 3 billion today], by the end of the next decade,' she said in a TED talk. Her message was not ignored—and it has indirectly contributed to the formation of something called the Internet Response League (IRL). The small group has a big goal: to harness gamers’ time and use it to save lives after disasters, natural or otherwise." Continue reading →

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Startups destroy more jobs than they create – unless they’re tech companies

"While private sector business creation fell 9 percent between 1980 and 2011, the birth rate of new tech businesses was 69 percent higher in 2011 than it was in 1980, according to the report. Over the same period of time, the job-creation rate of those young tech firms – aged between 1 and 5 years old – was twice as robust as the average rate for firms in the rest of the private sector. That’s partly due to what the report cites as the 'up-or-out' dynamic: tech startups tend to either fail quickly or grow rapidly." Continue reading →

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It’s Up to You, Entrepreneurs: Brad Feld on the Rise of Global Startup Communities

"It’s a practically a social movement, and a movement needs a theorist. That’s Brad Feld. In his by-the-bootstraps guide, the 2012 book Startup Communities, Feld laid out a guru-ish, four-point plan for how to create a growing mass of startup companies. But his rules boil down to just one: entrepreneurs must be the 'leaders.' Everyone else—universities, governments, investors—are 'feeders' that, though important, can’t kick-start a startup community on their own. Feld says if even fewer than a dozen established entrepreneurs team up and get serious that nearly any city from Detroit to Cape Town can create a meaningful startup sector." Continue reading →

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Detroit’s Amazing Pop-Up Anarchy

"Detroit pop-ups are not your conventional, temporary businesses such as those unsightly suburban fireworks stores, or the usual Christmas or Halloween retailers. Instead, the city has attracted art galleries, food and beverage cafes, coffee shops, clothing boutiques, tea houses, vegan restaurants, yoga workshops, antique stores, bike stores, and mercantile-type retailers. Pop-ups are a temporary arrangement, often with a defined start and end time for business operations. Detroit is the perfect place for these temporary pop-up businesses." Continue reading →

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Shares in Incorporated Co-op Cities Might Be the Next Big Thing

"Those who own property in a city—houses and businesses, say—probably come the closest to qualifying as its shareholders, but they do not own undivided interests in the city as a whole. Perhaps then we should not be surprised that, like unowned property everywhere, many cities suffer looting, abuse, and neglect. How can we improve this state of affairs? Here, as elsewhere, the public sector can learn from the private sector about how to tap the power of shared equity. Two lessons, in particular, bear our attention: Workplaces resemble cities and worker-owned businesses thrive." Continue reading →

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Fordlandia: Henry Ford’s Amazon Dystopia

"In 1927, the American industrialist Henry Ford began building a private city—Fordlandia—in the depths of the Brazilian Amazon forest. His company had won title to nearly 2.5 million acres of land—over 3,800 square miles—for a planned rubber plantation and company town. Ford spent over $20 million (about $300 million in today’s dollars) putting in roads, water and power systems, rail lines, factories, offices, medical facilities, homes, schools, and stores. Thousands of workers and their families flocked to Fordlandia. Soon, however, waves of rioting, looting, and burning roiled the city. Ford abandoned his namesake in 1945, leaving it to rot in the jungle." Continue reading →

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