It’s a common phenomenon for extraordinary events to bring people together. Be it a weirdo on the subway or a ‘superstorm’ kicking the crap out of your city. Nonethless it never fails to suprise when it occurs.

Living the power blackout in NYC post Sandy, as the waters receded they exposed the strength of a great society, known mainly for its brusqueness and egoism.

Like a good family, New Yorkers don’t have to demonstrate their affection for each other all the time (or any of the time) but when the chips are down they’re there for each other.

We need better ideas to address the complex problems confronting our world, and our ideas are better when we think together. Deliberator allows us to think together in unprecedented ways. It is an engine for active thinking and collaborative problem-solving, where ideas are built, remixed, and refined. Deliberator is about thinking in a new dimension.

Complex networks emerge from the combination of simple components through dynamic processes. In Deliberator, those simple components are ideas, which come together in debates around the critical problems of our day. In most debates, ideas are treated as static objects: ossified position statements that are uttered and then die. With Deliberator, ideas come to life.

A simple game dynamic at the heart of the site drives interaction among users to constantly improve upon each other’s ideas in the search for new solutions and perspectives. Debates evolve organically, drawing in expanding circles of thinkers to bring the cognitive power of the internet community to bear.

In the next few weeks, Deliberator will launch. I hope you join us.

Gregory Thaler

Doctoral Student
Department of Government
Cornell University

Content Editor, Deliberator

Original: http://blog.deliberator.com

txchnologist:

By Steven Ashley

Several years ago, when the auto industry faced government pressure to minimize its environmental footprint by reducing fuel consumption and tailpipe emissions, manufacturers turned first to hybrid-electric and then battery-electric powertrains that now move Chevy Volts and Nissan Leafs.

Today, confronted with substantially the same environmental mandates, the aviation industry has begun gearing up to use those same green power plants to propel aircraft.

The electric car is so yesterday; electric airplanes are coming.

EADS (European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company), the parent firm of Airbus, for example, has been flying a battery electric-powered ultralight aircraft for the last year, and at the recent Paris Air Show it introduced a series-hybrid motor glider as well as an ambitious future concept for an all-electric, 50-seat passenger plane powered by superconducting drive motors. Last fall, Boeing released details of a NASA-funded effort to use a hybrid battery-electric/gas turbine propulsion system to power a future 737-class commercial transport. A few months earlier, at the 2010 Oshkosh event, both Cessna and Sikorsky announced plans to fly some time this year electric-powered demonstrators—respectively, a light plane and a light helicopter.

Boeing’s SUGAR Volt (Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research) twin-engine future concept airliner. The 737-size transport would be powered by hybrid propulsion system that would combine gas turbine and battery/electric motor technology. Courtesy Boeing

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Checkout David Pogue’s latest review of Google Glass in the NYT

Light enough to carry anywhere, fast enough to go everywhere. A revolutionary combination of portability and power. I want one! Go fund it on Kickstarter…

In a megapolis like Mexico City, any planning initiative that moves citizens from cars to busses will pay off in reductions to traffic and air pollution. A major deterrent to using public transportation in the city? Comfort, according to Dr. Julio Mendoza, director of Mexico City’s Institute of Science and Technology. 

http://www.good.is/post/the-city-as-lab-21-metropoles-prepare-to-prototype/