Gravity7

@gravity7-blog

Ruminations and reflections of Adrian Chan. Social interaction designer and social media theorist, strategist, and consultant. See gravity7.com for more. @gravity7 var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-23365226-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

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…the unit cost of intermediation is higher today than it was a century ago, and it has increased over the past 30 years. One interpretation is that improvements in information technology may have been cancelled out by increases in other financial activities whose social value is difficult to assess. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/thirty-years-of-financial-inefficiency.html#iQZxYhgZJVWBE10t.99

#ecnomics

stoweboyd

Sandberg may mean well, and she may be setting up a run for national office. But she doesn’t understand the difference between a social movement and a social network marketing campaign. Just because digital technology makes connecting possible doesn’t mean you’re actually reaching people. People come to a social movement from the bottom up, not the top down. Sandberg has co-opted the vocabulary and romance of a social movement not to sell a cause, but herself. She says she’s using marketing for the purpose of social idealism. But she’s actually using social idealism for the purpose of marketing.

Maureen Dowd, in Pompom Girl for Feminism, pushes back on Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. (via stoweboyd)

London 2012, a set on Flickr.

Send me to London any day! Just back from a week on business.

#design #systems #SystemsTheory #designthinking

Stormy Monday (at Deloitte)

kateoplis

Satellite images show that the rapid summer melt has reduced the area of frozen sea to less than 3.5 million square kilometres this week – less than half the area typically occupied four decades ago.

climateadaptation-deactivated20

One example why this matters - record heating bills and (an expected) spike in CO2 emissions for 2013:

Canadian scientists said this week that the record melt this year could lead to a cold winter in the UK and Europe, as the heat in the Arctic water will be released into the atmosphere this autumn, potentially affecting the all-important jet stream. While the science is still developing in this area, the Met Office said in May that the reduction in Arctic sea ice was contributing in part to the colder, drier winters the UK has been experiencing in recent years.”

tazart12

The Bloomberg Commission: Giuseppe Penone: Spazio di Luce

In visiting the Whitechapel Gallery, this is the piece that stuck out most of all! The artist, Giuseppehas created a twelve metre bronze cast of a tree, with a gold-leaf interior. Looking through the centre is breathtaking - the light is captured beautifully on the goldleaf and through the gaps in the piece.

toms

Profiles in One for One: Dr. Mariano

Profiles in One for One: Dr. Mariano Yee, founder of Visualiza Eye Care Center After wrapping up his studies in ophthalmology in 2002, Dr. Mariano Yee founded the Visualiza Eye Care System with the help of his brother, Nicolás, and his wife, Kimberly, to provide high-quality eye care in Guatemala City. Moved by Guatemalan’s in need of eye care, but unable to access or afford it, Dr. Mariano and his staff expanded Visualiza in 2005 to offer public eye care services. Following Aravind’s model — the world’s largest eye care system, Visualiza’s paying patients subsidize those that cannot afford care. In 2012, Visualiza became a TOMS Sight Giving Partner.

Read on as Dr. Mariano tells us his inspiring story, and see where his tale intertwines with the One for One movement…

gravity7-blog

More than your average corporation!

thenextweb

(via DOGHOUSE | NASA’s Doing Something Right)

laughingsquid

Photos: Tiki Oasis 3rd Annual Art Show & Spy Briefcase Contest

emergentfutures

Here’s one I made earlier: Making organ donation a thing of the past - the British lab growing human spare parts

Don’t panic, this isn’t a severed human ear – but one that’s been grown in a laboratory at Britain’s remarkable new human body parts store

Full Story: Mailonline

parislemon

Under The Influence Of Klout

As an outsider, my view of Klout has mainly been a bit of fascination about why it pisses some people off so much. I’ve been in conversations where it gets brought up and someone will visibly cringe. As best I can tell, at a fundamental level, it boils down to this:

People don’t like to be ranked — unless they have a high ranking. But if the ranking is too high, it’s better to pretend like you don’t like that ranking so as not to piss off the people below you who have helped give you such a high ranking. In other words, people are pissed off at the bottom *and* at the top of the scale. A rock and a hard place.

This feeling is exacerbated by the fact that this is the internet. The great unifier. Here, everyone can truly be equal. Except that’s not really true.

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