2. Complexity Rules
“Butterfly effect”
Local culture matters and are often put in place by unusual
initial conditions
Fracking explosion in SD
Chines to construct railroads in US
Law of Unintended Consequences
CA environmental quality act used to support Union labor
rules
Picking the right “strange attractor”
Should Oakland try to be the poor mans SF?
Opportunities
Complexity because often time both benefits & costs of
decisions are highly distributed in space and time. Can we
hack that in some way?
Are there lessons from complexity theory and design of
robust systems?
3. Hacking Infrastructure
Temporary transportation
Uber
Temporary housing
Airbnb
Regulatory bodies being ignored
Probably best in short term
Wont work in the long term
Political bodies and regulatory systems are not
subject to Schumpeterian “Creative Destruction”
like big companies
Opportunities
Parking
Physical infrastructure (HOV lanes)
What are the platforms? What could they be?
Can we build API’s?
4. Can you DIY or make Hackable
physical infrastruture?
Complexity again
The basics are hard and better come first
What will the impact be of
Low cost easily installed power and network
What about water? Sewage?
How will we all want to live?
5. Do we want cities?
300 Million in India in the big cities, 800
million outside
They deserve opportunities for improving
their lives. Education, water, life span, …
Can we afford and do we want a future
where population is highly concentrated?Do
we need a new way?