Open hardware is gaining speed. The appetite for open source vehicles is growing. And while we may not have flying cars yet, we do have Tabby—an open source car design released by Open Source Vehicle this October.
Want to swap out an internal combustible engine for an eco-friendly electric? Tabby can do that. And, this open source vehicle is not just for makers—it’s production ready. Tabby will be rolling off the assembly line in early 2014. Will you see Tabby cruising your streets?
In this interview, we found out more about Tabby and got some insight into the open hardware movement from the team at Open Source Vehicle.
For Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, his team broke down data silos and moved all the data to a cloud repository. The team built Narwhal, a shared data store interface for all of the campaigns’ application. Narwhal was dubbed “Obama’s White Whale,” because it is almost a mythical technology that federal agencies have been trying to develop for years. While Obama may be hanging out with Queequag and Ishmael, there is a more viable solution for the cloud says GCN’s article, “Big Metadata: 7 Ways To Leverage Your Data In the Cloud.”
Data silo migration may appear to be a daunting task, but it is not impossible to do. The article states:
On this blog we are looking at the ideas that had the greatest impact in 2013 and testing them out to see what their impact will be in 2014 and beyond. A good place to start is this post by Neurobonkers, a tribute to the late Aaron Swartz, from January, 2013.
Neurobonkers wrote:
This is the first obituary I have ever written, as this is the first death of a public figure who I have never known, that has profoundly saddened me as the death of Aaron Swartz has done. With Swartz' talent, he could have made huge amounts of money for himself. Instead he selflessly spent his time campaigning for freedom of information and risked everything on his mission to liberate data.
The ideas that Swartz fought for were wide-ranging, but they all fall under the proud banner that information wants to be free. What landed Swartz in trouble with the authorities was his belief that the public should have access to federal court documents as well as access to scholarly research that was being put behind paywalls. Read Neurobonker's original post for a full examination of this idea here.
Collaborative consumption is growing from a trend for the young and urban to a viable alternative for everyone. From renting a movie online (e.g., Netflix) to renting a stranger’s couch (e.g., Couchsurfing), the economy of sharing changes the way we behave, consume, seek new options, and commit to decisions. The phenomenon is not just about getting access to new cars and the latest movies; it’s also about creating a new type of peer-to-peer commerce, making meaningful connections, and establishing a sense of trust among those involved.
A little-known California company called Esri offers a “Facebook for Maps” that promises to change the way we interact with our environment, predict behavior, and make decisions in the decades ahead.
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The setting is central California’s Yosemite National Park. A hiker, let’s call him Steve Clark, has gone missing on one of the trails. As the head park ranger, your job is to lead a search-and-rescue mission to find him. All you have to go on is the point where he was last seen, your training, and a computer; from this, you have to predict the behavior of a lost hiker. Sunset is approaching, and in some parts of the park the temperature will be below freezing in a matter of hours. What do you do?
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Many experienced hikers know that the recommended course of action when lost is to follow a stream downhill and this will eventually lead to civilization. But you can’t assume that Steve Clark is aware of this, or that he’s even seen the Discovery Channel. He might elect to stay put, or, if he has a cell phone, he might be moving uphill to find a signal. You also don’t know if he’s injured. A person with a sprained ankle is less likely to walk up, but he may not move down, either.
You go to your computer and open ArcGIS.com. A computer map of Yosemite that you’ve made and uploaded appears on the screen. Let’s say you also have access to a “big data” database of records from 30,000 lost hiker search-and-rescue missions and you can query this database with key words.
You soon learn that 66% of lost hikers are found within two miles of the spot last seen. You impose a ring over your map reflecting this two-mile perimeter. You then learn that 52% of lost hikers are found downhill, only 32% go up, and 16% keep walking at the same elevation. You impose an elevation layer on the area with all the land above the last point seen shaded one color and the land beneath it shaded another. You can even impose a new lens depicting tree and plant cover and open fields, and one depicting linear objects like trails, roads, power lines, and streams, knowing that the vast majority of lost hikers follow some sort of linear marker to avoid going in circles.
Phi Beta Iota: ESRI code is proprietary and they do not play well with others. They either have to change both of those conditions, or be replaced by CrisisMappers at scale. The future is open. This is not negotiable.
You can’t avoid peer-to-peer marketplaces. For transportation and housing, look no further than Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb. Skillshare and TaskRabbit are tackling education and task completion. Etsy and Shapeways have created handmade and fabrication marketplaces. They all facilitate integration into the economy without the need to secure employment from a large company.
Instead, the growing peer economy enables people to monetize skills and assets they already have. Vendors and providers on these platforms choose when to work, what to do and where to do it, sidestepping traditional constraints of geography and scheduling. Investors, advocacy groups and companies tout its apparent advantages, including a greater sense of solidarity through peer-to-peer commerce and reduction in carbon footprint through access to products and services instead of ownership.
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Peer economy providers are also vulnerable but with a crucial factor that makes all the difference: They are a visible workforce, able to make these collective interests heard.
iRevolution crossed the 1 million hits mark in 2013, so big thanks to iRevolution readers for spending time here during the past 12 months. This year also saw close to 150 new blog posts published on iRevolution. Here is a short selection of the Top 15 iRevolution posts of 2013:
