Tag: tech

• Last-mile electric scooters — will they work?

  I’ve been hearing a lot about Bird recently. Perhaps it has something to do with the $15 million Series A round they raised last month (February 2018) and the $100 million Series B round they announced earlier today.

  A “Bird” is small electric scooters that look like this and can be rented from your phone for short haul trips. They are currently available in Santa Monica, Venice, UCLA, Westwood, and San Diego, and they are intended to be ridden in existing bike lanes.

  What may be particularly interesting to this blog audience is the fact that Bird is calling itself a “last-mile electric vehicle sharing company.” The pitch: 40% of car trips (in the US?) are less than 2 miles long. Let’s replace those using electric scooters.

  One of the first things that came to my mind is that this feels more accessible than cycling. Cycling to work can be a commitment. You have to think about your attire and the sweat factor, among other things.

  Would you agree?

  2018.03.10

• Hmm…architecture and basic income

  

  Albert Wenger recently published a post on his blog about architecture and basic income. Albert is a venture capitalist and is currently working on a book called World After Capital, which I have mentioned before on this blog. He is also an advocate of basic income as a solution to the growing inequality that the modern economy seems to be producing.

  In this latest post he wades into the world of architecture with two assertions that I would like to respond to today. The first is that with basic income the current trend of everyone piling up in large cities will end. We will decentralize in search of cheaper land on the outskirts of cities. And the second is that affordable housing could perhaps be produced with a more open source approach to architectural drawings and new construction.

  In terms of his first point, I’m not entirely clear why someone earning a basic income would suddenly decentralize. In the comments there is some discussion about how retirees, on a fixed income, often move outward in search of more affordable housing. I understand that phenomenon, but I am not convinced in this scenario. 

  There has been lots of talk about the demise of cities because of new technologies and other factors. But agglomeration economies have proved, again and again, to be a powerful centralizing force. Let’s also not forget about the environmental impacts of large scale decentralization, which would only be partially mitigated by the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. 

  Secondly, you can build a house without an architect. The issue isn’t that good bathroom details are hard to come by. Some of the bigger issues are likely the availability of land (decentralization, I guess, is supposed to solve this); construction costs (it’s a highly inefficient process that generates copious amounts of waste); and the immense regulatory burdens imposed on new construction (process, time, and costs).

  All of this stemmed from a visit that Albert did with a group of architecture students who are researching the relationship between architecture and basic income. I would be very curious to see what they produce.

  What are your thoughts?

  Photo by Mathyas Kurmann on Unsplash

  2018.03.03

• InsurEye acquires the Dirt

  Back in 2013, my friend Mike Lerner and I designed, developed, and launched a condo review platform called the Dirt (thedirt.co). It’s hard to believe that it’s already been five years.

  Our mission was to empower real estate consumers through greater transparency in the marketplace. And we did this by crowdsourcing condo building reviews, as well as pricing comps.

  Today we are excited to announce that InsurEye Inc. has acquired the Dirt. InsurEye began as a moderated insurance review platform for home, auto, and life insurance, but it has since grown to include condo reviews.

  The team at InsurEye shares a very similar goal of creating greater transparency in the marketplace, and so we are thrilled that they will be picking up where we left off.

  Press release, here.

  P.S. The Dirt is the reason why I started the daily blog that you are reading right now. I started writing for the company and fell in love with it as a discipline and practice. Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.

  2018.02.28

• Are we entering a new era of tech-driven city building?

  

  Emily Badger of the New York Times published an interesting piece yesterday talking about the tech industry’s current obsession with trying to fix cities. And there are certainly many problems to fix.

  Staying true to tech and engineering parlance, there’s lots of talk of optimization. How do you technologically optimize a city, for things such as affordable housing?

  There’s no doubt that many of you will sympathize with this statement: 

  “To planners and architects, all of this sounds like the naïveté of newcomers who are mistaking political problems for engineering puzzles.”

  But naïveté is not always a bad thing and with all of the money sloshing around in this industry, there’s also no doubt that this is likely a new era of city building.

  The article ends by quoting JD Ross, the 27-year old co-founder of Opendoor – a startup that we have discussed many times before on this blog and is now valued at over $1 billion.

  It is him saying that he wants to figure out how to put $100 million into this space as soon as he can figure out the right target to optimize for. “It’s better than buying a Bugatti.”

  Of course Sidewalk Toronto – which is mentioned a few times throughout the article – is already a perfect example of tech infiltration.

  But I think Dan Doctoroff gets it right when he posits that the real naïveté will come from disrespecting urbanist traditions.

  Photo by David Alacaraz on Unsplash

  2018.02.25

• Attract and extract

  Chris Dixon’s recent piece on why decentralization matters is currently making the rounds online. It clearly explains the first two eras of the internet and how the third era is developing as we speak. Cue decentralized cryptonetworks.

  I particularly like how he describes the relationship that centralized platforms – like Facebook – have to their users and to their complements (other businesses, software developers, creators, and so on). 

  Here are two graphs from his article:

  

  In the early days it’s all about cooperation and doing everything you can to attract users. The platform gets more valuable the more users are on it and so the immediate goal is to build up the network effects and lock people in.

  But as the platform grows, the relationship flips (top of the S-curve). In Dixon’s words, it becomes a zero-sum game whereby to continue growing the platform starts extracting data from its users and competing with its complements.

  The promise of cryptonetworks is that they will do away with many of these negative externalities, but at the same time empower the kind of sophistication that we see today with centralized platforms.

  The venture capitalists are circling because a fundamental shift in the architecture of the internet will mean disruption. I’m following it because I want to understand how it may apply to real estate and the built environment.

  2018.02.19

• Experiences over fashion — or is that really the case?

  Bloomberg recently published this interesting piece talking about the death of clothing. The reasons are as follows: we’re spending more on experiences, as well as technology (tech spending surpassed apparel spending in 2010); casual dress in the workplace has become more widely accepted; fast fashion companies like H&M and Zara are putting downward pressure on prices; and social media influencers – instead of big companies – are now the ones showing us what to buy and wear.

  Here is a graph from the article comparing experiences, apparel, and technology expenditures: 

  

  The first thing I noticed is that experiences, while still increasing, haven’t really spiked since 1977, even though everybody seems to be talking about how social media-fueled Millennials are all about experiences. I was also surprised to see that the share of US employers that allow casual dress every day seems to be closing in on 50%. (Informal survey for the comments and for Twitter: Do you wear casual clothes to work? I’m a no.)

  But perhaps the biggest contributors to this decline are fast fashion and low-cost manufacturing. Stanley Pignal – South Asia business and finance correspondent for the Economist – pointed out on Twitter that since 1982 inflation in US apparel was only 123% compared to 248% for overall CPI. So maybe a lot of the above reasoning is just a distraction.

  2018.02.11

• The case for self-driving electric car fleets

  Below is a presentation by Frank Chen – head of research, deal, and investing at the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz – which makes the case for self-driving electric car fleets.

  He starts the presentation by talking about why he thinks this shift is going to happen faster than most people think. 

  One reason for this is that the batteries are becoming dramatically cheaper and the battery makes up a large part of the cost. By 2025, it is expected that electric vehicles will become cost neutral with ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles assuming zero government subsidies.

  And by 2038, Bloomberg believes we will hit peak ICE vehicle sales. That is, electric vehicle and ICE vehicle sales globally will hit 50/50. Norway has already hit this threshold but they impose heavy financial penalties on ICE vehicles.

  2025 is not that far away.

  If you can’t see the presentation below, click here.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=of5j-Lztqrg?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

  2018.02.06

• In defense of Instagrammable moments

  Surface Magazine – and more specifically the CEO of Surface Magazine – recently published this article criticizing the “trend” toward designing for Instagrammable moments.

  Here is an excerpt:

  We—and yes, this includes architects, too—have succumbed to the pressures of gaining followers, likes, and comments. High-priced, difficult-to-attain architecture degrees are now, incomprehensibly, being used to create “Instagrammable” installations for things like impromptu selfie fashion shoots and hotel lobby photo booths. The whole thing is, I must say, sad. It’s embarrassing enough that our team at Surface has received press releases from architects promoting their latest project with “Instagram-friendly interiors.” They can’t be serious.

  And here are his final words:

  If retail is dead, then its rebirth will depend on creating memorable atmospheres that don’t call for #✌💙👯🙋📷.

  I certainly appreciate the push for lasting and memorable spaces, but, at the same time, I can’t say I’m nearly as fussed about lobby selfies and the alleged timelessness of Instagram. 

  In fact, I think it would be an interesting exercise to study how social media may be impacting the way we design physical spaces.

  Maybe it is simply a fad being promulgated by “knucklehead junior marketers” or maybe 100 years from now nerdy architectural historians will look back on that quaint period of time when we designed spaces to service rudimentary 2D images shared amongst friends.

  Whatever the case may be, I think that architecture, like all art, should embody the milieu in which it was designed. 

  But often we have biases telling us that what is new is not as good as what’s existing and already accepted.

  2018.02.02

• No is the second best answer

  

  In addition to email, phone, and text, we live in a world where you can also easily and directly connect with people on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, Swarm, WhatsApp, Slack, as well as on many other platforms.

  As much as I love tech, I personally find this exhausting and far too distracting. So early last year I turned off all social media and messaging notifications – on both mobile and desktop – other than on the two platforms that I most commonly use. (Facebook and LinkedIn are not on this shortlist.)

  The result is that I am now missing (and consequently ignoring) a ton of direct messages. But as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as too much information, just poor filters. If you really want to reach me, I am not hard to find. You’re reading my public and daily journal right now.

  Zooming out from social media DMs, I am reminded of one of my all-time favorite Seth Godin posts where he talks about the value in saying no – which is, of course, just another kind of filter:

  No I can’t meet with you, no I can’t sell it to you at this price, no I can’t do this job justice, no I can’t come to your party, no I can’t help you. I’m sorry, but no, I can’t. Not if I want to do the very things that people value my work for.

  No is the foundation that we can build our yes on.

  And nobody should feel bad for saying no. A friend of mine likes to remind me that no is the second best answer. Yes is obviously the best, but a firm no is far better than an indecisive maybe that leaves everyone wondering what to do next.

  I should probably say no more often than I do. But I am working on it. Every now and then I remind myself that there’s huge value in saying no. Today’s post is that reminder and maybe it will be yours too.

  Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash

  2018.02.01

• Amazon’s cashier-less grocery store finally opens

  This morning the first Amazon Go store opened to the public in downtown Seattle. It’s more convenience store than grocery store, but the big deal is that there are no cashiers and no lines.

  You enter the store through a gate and with your phone and Amazon’s app. As you walk around the store and pick up items they get automatically added to your online cart on Amazon.

  So everything goes right into the offline bag you’ll be leaving the store with. Place an item back on the shelf and it is instantly removed from your “cart.” Walk out of the store and you’re automatically charged.

  It’s not yet clear how exactly the technology works, but Amazon says that all of this is accomplished through sophisticated computer vision (cameras), machine learning, and lots of sensors. 

  What’s really remarkable is that it doesn’t rely on every product having a special chip or sensor attached to it. I would think that was one of the biggest hurdles to overcome in order to remove the pain point of grocery store lines.

  Now that this is up and running, I can only imagine the customer behavior data that they must be collecting. Heat maps of every shelf showing conversion rates for every imaginable customer segment. (Are tall people more likely to buy products displayed higher up?) Correlating people’s food purchases to their broader Amazon shopping habits. And the list, I’m sure, goes on. 

  There is even speculation that Amazon will begin licensing this technology to other retailers, similar to what it does with Amazon Web Services. That seems like a reasonable assumption given the data play we just talked about. Assuming the tech works, it’ll get copied. So they may as well embed themselves.

  In case you were wondering, the Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the number of cashiers in the US at about 3,555,500 (2016 number).

  And this number is projected to remain more or less flat until 2026.

  That doesn’t feel right to me.

  2018.01.23