Pop!Tech

How Many Calories for a Dollar?

Michael Pollan, as always, making perfect sense:

Now watch Will Allen on urban farming…

Designing for Generosity

Clay Shirky is always a great speaker.  Here’s his Pop!Tech from last year:

Global Economic Constitution?

Greening the Bailout

bed Code)

He makes so much sense!  Kevin?


The New Model for Primary Care Medicine

What is Cancer?

[ I’m asking for your help in answering this question, read past the fold to see how ]

In my post on invisible etiology, I challenged us all to be as open-minded as possible when dealing with our most complex problems, for this is the only way to make the invisible become visible.  Here’s where I attempt to practice what I preach.…

Invisible Etiology

One of the most poignant moments of this year’s Pop!Tech for me — which, BTW had many — was Gary Slutkin’s talk on the idea of violence being a virus.  You may have heard about his work in stopping violence in Chicago in a NY Times Magazine cover article earlier this year.  The premise is simple: if you throw out what you think you know about violence and just look at the etiology of how it manifests in the world, you find incredible similarities to the etiology of microbial viruses.  This includes not only how it spreads from person to person, but also the larger epidemiological patterns, and importantly, how it can be stopped via interventions which logically follow from the hypothesis that violence is a virus.  Not that violence is caused by those invisible critters we call viruses, but rather that violence itself is a virus.…

Favorite Pop!Tech Talks, part 1

One of the best speakers of Pop!Tech this year was also one of the best of TED.  But if you’ve seen Ben Zander‘s TED talk, you still need to see this one, it’s not the same!

Here are a few more favorites, hot off the presses……

Out of Poverty

One of the more inspiring talks at Pop!Tech this year was Paul Polak’s talk about serving the “other 90%” with life-saving and transformative products using a for-profit micro-franchise model that scales.  Paul’s vision and track-record speaks for itself, check it out.…

Want to Influence Financial Crisis Policy Debate?

One of the talks at Pop!Tech this year sparked intense emotions regardless of whether people agreed with the premise or not:

Juan Enriquez (2008) Pop!Tech Pop!Cast from PopTech on Vimeo.

To address these intense feelings and the demand for public discussion, a wiki was created, in which you are invited to join the discussion.  This forum was designed as “a place for a rich, lively, respectful and facts-based dialog on what’s necessary to address the serious economic challenges confronting America today.”  Hope to see you there.

Click here to go to the policy debate.

Pop!Tech Notes, part 3

  • Sustainable ecocities (Dickson Despommier)
    • One shed of hydroponic barley = 200 acres of land
    • No new tech required
    • VerticalFarm.com

Pop!Tech Notes, part 2

This session of 3 speakers has been the best so far.  All three were great speakers and must-watches on poptech.org.

Chris Anderson - attention and reputation are also economic markets; google is world’s largest reputation market (via pagerank); larry page and will wright are central bankers, like bernake; so is phil rosedale of second life; check out Maple Story (korean game coming to US); games enable time/money fungability…

Pop!Tech Notes, part 1

The conference is being streamed live via video on live.poptech.org

Theme of the conference is Scarcity and Abundance.

BarefootCollege.org (Bunker Roy)

  • training poor, illiterate rural, older women from around the world to engineers, take knowledge back to their village and transform it
  • decentralizing and spreading technical knowhow (women, no written word)
  • rainwater collection
  • solar electricity
  • teaching done only by illiterates (don’t even speak same language) because literates can’t teach illiterates
  • children’s parliment