It's a holiday weekend, so this is a lazy post: I was recently asked what kinds of technological developments I found interesting. Here's the list I sent back.
URBAN TECH
We're getting close to good models of the land use-transportation-energy-climate emissions interactions, and these are pretty much all saying that land use is at least as important a transportation task as clean energy/new vehicles, if not more important
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007800.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007898.html
but wire those cities tightly and ubiquitously and all sorts of mayhem gets possible
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007897.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007929.html
including making buildings themselves a lot smarter
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007965.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006421.html
infrastructure could get really weird
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007838.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008211.html
URBAN DATA USES
Walkscore
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008231.html
Not because it's perfect -- far from -- but because it sorta works, and it's really popular, which strikes me as a good leading indicator of the combination of urban proximity and digital precision.
people mentioned transit mapping for iPhones, but iNap is critical
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008687.html
if you don't want to miss your stop
(and I more and more think that divergent innovation's a real thing)
And packstations for your deliveries
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007854.html
dynamic parking metering?
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008113.html
ENERGY
Energy mortgages: someone else puts in the distributed energy equipment, you pay them back (plus interest) from the savings:
Fabio Rosa wiring rural Brazil
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//003295.html
Berkeley paying for its citizen's solar
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008094.html
Locavolt/ district energy
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008596.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007986.html
OTHER COOL STUFF
Front Design air-sculpting chairs
http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/front_design_sketch_furniture_wow_4865.asp
Talented Swedish designers using motion-capture and fabbing to design chairs in the air.
Bruce Sterling's story Kiosk about cheap fabbers and copyright and revolutions and cultural crazes and everything... well, it used to be available free, and it stuck in my head (though now I can't find it).
Outquisition Technologies
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008208.html
Some parts of the developed world are collapsing slowly, and some of those are going to get hit hard by economic transitions and climate change: what sort of tech would help folks who live there?
Remote sensing to do cool things, like find ghost nets
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//002656.html
FarmSubsidy.org still thrills me
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006272.html
heck, I like all the tech+ farming stuff
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007018.html
fish-farming
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008375.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007998.html
cowpooling
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008187.html
Jonathan Harris' whalehunt
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007688.html









