Category: Tech

• Shadow Stalker

  The Shed in Hudson Yards has an exhibition on right now called Manual Override. It features the work of five artists. One of those artists is Lynn Hershman Leeson, who is known for exploring the relationship between humans and technology (naturally, she lives in the Bay Area). Her piece at the exhibition is called Shadow Stalker.

  The way Shadow Stalker works is that you enter your email address — a single data point. The installation then pulls up all of the publicly accessible information associated with your email address. Things like your name, age, address, phone numbers, where you were last seen, and more.

  She refers to this information as your “digital shadow.” It is all of the personal information that is publicly accessible because of the internet. And it is the kind of the information that is already used for things like “predictive policing.” Software that predicts where crime is likely to occur.

  I am fairly public as a result of this blog. Already this year I have written over 75,000 words. So I can only imagine what the internet knows about me. Probably a lot. But of course, I am volunteering a lot of this information. What does the internet know about us that we didn’t explicitly tell it?

  If you’re interested in learning more about Shadow Stalker, here’s a video.

  2019.11.15

• Sidewalk Toronto advances to the next phase

  In June of this year, Sidewalk Labs released its draft Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP) for Toronto’s eastern waterfront. I wrote about it here. It was a draft document that was subject to further discussion and refinement, with October 31, 2019 being an important deadline for a lot of that to happen.

  Some of the critical issues included project scope (just Quayside?), the possibility of a Waterfront LRT (needs to happen), data governance (who owns and manages the data that will be generated by this new smart city?) and, of course, land value. How much is Quayside worth?

  A number of these key issues have now been “realigned,” including the land value piece. Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalks Labs have agreed on a fair market value of $590 million (before accounting for any investments that will be required in order to achieve Waterfront Toronto’s goals).

  For a summary of the critical issues and what has been agreed to, click here. With these items now firmed up, Waterfront Toronto’s board voted unanimously to proceed to the next phase. The next critical date is March 31, 2020, which is when the project will seek final approval. Mark your calendars.

  2019.10.31

• Google exhibit demonstrates commitment to STEAM

  As part of this year’s DESIGNART festival in Tokyo, Google Hardware’s Design Studio (led by Ivy Ross) partnered up with Li Edelkoort to create an exhibition that placed Google’s latest hardware products alongside contemporary design objects. Objects that you might find around a home, such as ceramics and furniture. The exhibit is/was called COMMA (it closes this weekend).

  Here is a photo from the exhibition (there’s a Google Pixel 4 XL in this arrangement):

  

  The point of the exhibition was to make you pause (hence the “comma” part) and consider the ongoing conflation of design and tech. It’s about humanizing technology, but also showing you how this is now integral to the way in which Google develops products. All of this is noteworthy because, as many of you know, I am firm believer in the value of art and design.

  A few years ago I wrote about a movement being championed by the Rhode Island School of Design (as well as many others) to transform STEM into STEAM. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math subjects have long been the focus of education agendas. What the STEAM movement aims to do is insert the arts and humanities into this focus.

  What you are seeing above — from one of the largest companies in the world — is recognition that, yes, there’s tremendous value in that one additional letter.

  Photo: Hiroto Miura via Google

  2019.10.26

• Airbnb is powering new purpose-built short-term rental buildings

  This past weekend I was in a condo building here in Toronto with large signs in the elevator saying, “No Short-Term Rentals Including Airbnb Are Permitted. Trespassers Will be Prosecuted.” It was the first time I had seen anything like this, but it immediately signaled to me that the building must be having a problem with short-term rentals. Why else would you deface the elevators? There are some buildings that allow short-term rentals, but most don’t.

  However, over the last few years we have started to see purpose-built short-term rental buildings. In some cases, existing apartments buildings were “converted”, as was the case with Niido’s two properties in Nashville and Orlando. Here tenants in the building can rent both unfurnished and furnished apartments and then rent them out on Airbnb up to a maximum of 180 days per year. To date, I think these are the only two properties to use the “Powered by Airbnb” moniker, but more are on the way.

  The developer behind Niido — Newgard Development Group — recently launched a new Powered by Airbnb brand called, Natiivo. This one looks to be focused on for sale product, with two upcoming projects in Austin and Miami. Both projects will have hotel licenses in order to avoid any regulatory risk going forward. But this makes me wonder how materially different this model is from the condo-hotels we’re already familiar with.

  For landlords and developers, the goal is obviously to maximize rents and prices. Allowing (or explicitly encouraging) residents to rent out their place and earn some extra cash, should help with that. And given the way I started this post, we also know there’s a desire to do this, particularly in places with strong tourist demand like in Nashville and Miami. But the reviews are mixed. Not everyone wants to live in a hotel. But then again, not everyone wants to co-live. To each their own.
  

  2019.09.24

• Pleasure and product discovery

  Benedict Evan’s most recent blog post, called “Amazon as experiment,” draws some interesting parallels between what Amazon is doing today (and experimenting with) and the beginning of mass retail, namely the invention of the department store. He also talks about some of the shortcomings of Amazon’s model, which isn’t at all focused on (or good at) things such as “pleasure” and product discovery. Here are a couple of excerpts:

  On the other hand, it’s interesting that Amazon seems to be doing as much experimentation as possible around the logistics model—from stores to drones to warehouse robots of every kind—but much less around the buying experience, other than small-scale tests of the Four-Star stores. After all, historically, department stores were about pleasure as much as they were about convenience or price. They changed what it meant to “go shopping” and helped turn retail into a leisure activity.

  This has always been the gap in the Amazon model. It’s ever more efficient at finding what you already know you want and shipping it to you, but bad at suggesting things you don’t already know about, and terrible whenever a product needs something specific—just try finding children’s shoes by size.

  This is probably inherent in the model. For Amazon to scale indefinitely to unlimited kinds of products, it needs to have more or less the same commodity logistics model for all of them. That’s the line it’s never been willing to cross. Amazon doesn’t do “unscalable.” And yet, while we now know there is nothing that people won’t happily buy online, not everything will fit that commodity model. So maybe that’s the real test of Amazon’s pride: can it work out how to let us shop, rather than just buy?

  2019.07.29

• Getting things done

  

  Fred Wilson wrote a post this morning about the “certainty of close.” He was talking about fundraising for startups, but similar parallels can be drawn to other aspects of life and business. The point Fred makes is that if you can live with the “bird in the hand” economics and if you have a comfort level with the humans/partners you’re getting involved with, it’s hard to go wrong and it’s often the right approach for early stage companies where fundraising speed is critical.

  The tension that usually gets weighed against this line of thinking is one of maximizing economics, which often sits part and parcel with a fear of “leaving money on the table.” Should I take the deal in front of me or should I push and/or wait to extract every last dollar? This can lead to indecision. Oftentimes, as Fred mentions, these decisions aren’t particularly black and white. Few things are.

  While every deal and situation is unique, there is nothing inherently wrong with a fair and reasonable price if the the economics make sense for you, and your investment and return criteria are being met (or whatever criteria you have set for yourself). It is “satisficing” vs. “optimizing.” The latter may appear most favorable, but there are countless benefits in moving as quickly as possible and in getting things done. I am a fan of doing.

  Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash

  2019.07.28

• Smart home market penetration in Canada and the US

  Here are the results of a Global Consumer Survey that was conducted in Canada this year (2019) and that asked respondents whether or not they own a smart home device. That is, a device that can be controlled via a smartphone / internet connection.

  

  Even with all of the concerns around privacy, virtual assistants (such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home) appear to be the most popular device with Canadians. Next are connected speakers and smart thermostats.

  The vast majority of respondents (68%) stated that they don’t own any smart home device. However, if you look at the trend lines for Canadian household penetration in the “smart home market,” this is naturally changing:

  

  Curiously, there appears to be a household penetration rate spread between Canada and the US, with the US exhibiting meaningfully higher numbers. Here is the US chart:

  

  Based on these charts, the lowest penetration rate appears to be for “energy management” devices, which would include anything that helps households reduce energy consumption. The rates are the lowest in the case of both Canada and the US.

  This is a bit unfortunate given that energy management is an important one. But it’s also one that isn’t best addressed with only a few smart devices. It should involve a more holistic approach to the way in which we design and build homes.

  All charts and data taken from Statista.

  2019.07.22

• Comparing ICE vehicle and electric vehicle travel times

  While we were doing our West Palm Beach to Toronto road trip last weekend, I started wondering how much longer the trip would be taking had we been driving a Tesla. The drive, according to Google Maps, is normally about 20 hours and 46 minutes. It’s a long one. About 2,288 km. The mountains in Virginia are nice, though.

  The route I threw in is West Palm Beach to Junction House (2720 Dundas St W, Toronto):

  

  According to Tesla, this same route using a Standard Range (400km) Model X SUV is now estimated to take 34 hours.

  

  

  The additional travel time is a result of charging time (anywhere from 20 – 70min per charge depending on the device) and the fact that you need to go where the chargers are. In this scenario, you end up driving an additional 155 km. However, you will end up saving money on gas.

  This reminds me of something that Bill Gates argued in the talk I recently posted. Electric vehicles are the future of personal transport, but they’re not great for commercial applications: planes, boats, and so on. The battery capacity simply isn’t there, and it’s unlikely to be there anytime soon. But perhaps the charging times can be brought down. That would help.

  I’m not planning on doing this drive again anytime soon. But if any of you are, you may want to leave the Tesla at home if you’re in a rush. However, using an EV would, of course, be the right thing to do for our planet.

  2019.07.05

• The sensing power of taxis

  The latest project out of MIT’s Senseable City Lab examines the “sensing power of taxis” in various cities around the world. Looking at traffic data, they determined how many circulating taxis you would need to equip with sensors if you wanted to capture comprehensive street data across a particular city. This might be useful if you wanted to measure things like air quality, weather, traffic patterns, road quality, and so on.

  What they found is that the sensing power of taxis starts out unexpectedly high. It would only take 10 taxis to cover 1/3 of Manhattan’s streets in a single day. However, because taxis tend to have convergent routes, they also discovered rapid diminishing returns. It would take 30 taxis (or 0.3% of all taxi trips) to cover half of Manhattan in a day, and over 1,000 taxis to cover 85% of it. A similar phenomenon was observed in the other cities that they studied: Singapore, Chicago, San Francisco, Vienna, and Shanghai.

  However, if you look at the percentage of trips needed to scan half of the streets in a city, Manhattan has the lowest rate at 0.3%. Vienna is the highest at 9%. But I’m not sure if this is a function of the utilization rate of their taxis or if it has something to do with urban form. Singapore has a similarly low rate (0.44%), but its street grid looks nothing like that of New York’s.

  Here’s a short video explaining the project:

  2019.06.25

• Libra expected to launch within Indian WhatsApp

  

  I was at a wedding last night (congrats, again, Kate + Rob) and a group of us started talking about Facebook, or, more specifically, how most of us have stopped using it all together. I deleted my account last year, but ended up having to create a ghost account with no friends just so that I could run social ads. But other than that, I don’t go on. This, of course, is a problem for Facebook. Here are some stats on its declining user base.

  This trend line could be one of the motivating factors behind Libra (Facebook’s new blockchain-based currency). Payment infrastructure, if successful, should be a lot stickier than social infrastructure. But being the classic underachiever that he is, Zuckerberg’s ambitions run even deeper than this. Max Read published a fantastic article on Libra in New York Magazine last week. Here is an excerpt:

  As far as I know, there’s only one other entity out there developing a blockchain-based digital currency for a billion-plus-member economy: China. The People’s Bank of China has been amassing blockchain and digital-currency patents as it develops its own cryptocurrency — loosely pegged to a basket of other currencies, just like Libra — which could help it more efficiently monitor and control capital flows. (So much for the decentralized, anarchist dream of cryptocurrency.) Facebook doesn’t want to compete with Mastercard, or even with Goldman Sachs. It wants to be the currency platform Mastercard operates on. Facebook’s payment product is a whole new currency because its long-term competition isn’t PayPal or Visa or even WeChat, but the renminbi, the euro, the yen, and the dollar.

  Libra is expected to be first available to Indian WhatsApp users. The goal is to gain a foothold in the $689 billion global remittance economy, of which $80 billion flowed to India last year (2018). In the short-term, this probably won’t make any or much money for the company. But it should get people using and bought in to Libra in the medium-term.

  If you’re looking for more on Libra, including what checks and balances can expected to be in place regarding your privacy and personal information, have a listen to this podcast:

  Photo by Nitin Mendekar on Unsplash

  2019.06.23