I love halloween. I think it's my favorite holiday.
The thing that I like about it the most is that it's one of the only days of the year where you have a reason to go out and meet all of your neighbors. I spent a while last night walking around the neighborhood with Theo and Brieza, having conversations with my nearest neighbors, most of whom I hadn't spoken to before (we've lived in our current place for just over a year). It was really nice.
If you think about it, it's kind of astonishing the extent to which we typically don't know our neighbors. I can't speak for everyone, everywhere, but it seems like a reasonably safe bet that most of us don't know the vast majority of people who live within a one-block radius of us.
Why is that?
To some extent, it's probably a deeply rooted sense of fear and privacy.
But I suspect it's also a practical matter -- there just aren't convenient, socially fluid (i.e., non-awkward) ways to connect with your neighbors. That's part of why Halloween is so great. It's a fun, easy, light-touch excuse to walk around and say hi to everyone. No big commitment, no awkward over-staying the moment. In the best case, just enough connection to reasonably say hi to someone next time you see them on the street. For sure this is not a whole lot, but it's a whole lot more than normal.
Another factor here -- and another reason why this is hard -- is that you actually need to be really careful making these connections. By and large, these are people you are stuck with for some period of time, so you want to tread carefully and make sure you don't create a situation that's weird, or too intense, etc.
So it's not surprising that no one has cracked the "social network for neighborhoods" problem. It's hard on a number of levels - the sensitivities mentioned above, the widely varying levels of comfortability with technology, etc. But if you look at the success of platforms like Facebook (networking for colleges) and Yammer (networking for businesses), there is a proven path of starting with an existing community and building a platform from there. So I still think there's an opportunity here (that folks like CommonPlace, LifeAt, Front Porch Forum and to some extent SeeClickFix and Neighborland are looking at).
Maybe the way to think about this is bringing Halloween to every day? That's clearly wrong, but maybe there's something right in it.
It's hard to find the right balance when bringing technology into our lives. I do think lots of us suffer from some form of internet / social media addiction, and it's getting easier and easier every day to bring all of that with us everywhere we go. This will only continue to accelerate (and I don't even have Google Glass yet).
A few weeks ago, I went to a discussion at the New York Public Library for Steven Johnson's new book -- for the event, Steven's "debate" opponent was Sherry Turkle, author of "Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other". The thesis of Sherry's book is essentially that we are all addicted to our phones, and that we're trading away our real-world connections for distant digital connections. She has spent countless hours interviewing teenagers, observing moms and dads in the playground (with their faces stuffed into their iphones, of course), etc. And basically came away with some troubling, if unsurprising, results.
I am not terrified by all this, but I do think we're at a moment now where we are still forming our cultural norms around all of this, and it will take a while.
I am writing this from 30,000 feet on my way to San Francisco. I have a great car service which I use every week when I travel. This morning, I ended up having a long conversation with Reda, one of my regular drivers, about Uber and how it's shaking up the taxi and car service business. For some reason, I've always loved talking to taxi drivers about how the business operates. It's a fascinating and often surprising lanscape, consisting of regulators (the city), fleet operators, vendors (for example VeriFone, CMT, and now new entrants like Square and to some extent, Uber), drivers -- who are sometimes employees of fleets and sometimes independent entrepreneurs, customers of various stripes, etc. I think the reason I'm fascinated by taxis is two-fold: 1) it's a hugely important part of the fabric of cities. Ubiquitous, reliable cars for hire are a big part of what make dense, urban living possible. While some urbanists and environmentalists may dislike taxis in favor of other forms of public transit, I have always been a huge fan of taxis as a part of the public transit (i.e., non-private car) ecosystem, for how usable they make the city. Taxis use can also
I love halloween. I think it's my favorite holiday.
The thing that I like about it the most is that it's one of the only days of the year where you have a reason to go out and meet all of your neighbors. I spent a while last night walking around the neighborhood with Theo and Brieza, having conversations with my nearest neighbors, most of whom I hadn't spoken to before (we've lived in our current place for just over a year). It was really nice.
If you think about it, it's kind of astonishing the extent to which we typically don't know our neighbors. I can't speak for everyone, everywhere, but it seems like a reasonably safe bet that most of us don't know the vast majority of people who live within a one-block radius of us.
Why is that?
To some extent, it's probably a deeply rooted sense of fear and privacy.
But I suspect it's also a practical matter -- there just aren't convenient, socially fluid (i.e., non-awkward) ways to connect with your neighbors. That's part of why Halloween is so great. It's a fun, easy, light-touch excuse to walk around and say hi to everyone. No big commitment, no awkward over-staying the moment. In the best case, just enough connection to reasonably say hi to someone next time you see them on the street. For sure this is not a whole lot, but it's a whole lot more than normal.
Another factor here -- and another reason why this is hard -- is that you actually need to be really careful making these connections. By and large, these are people you are stuck with for some period of time, so you want to tread carefully and make sure you don't create a situation that's weird, or too intense, etc.
So it's not surprising that no one has cracked the "social network for neighborhoods" problem. It's hard on a number of levels - the sensitivities mentioned above, the widely varying levels of comfortability with technology, etc. But if you look at the success of platforms like Facebook (networking for colleges) and Yammer (networking for businesses), there is a proven path of starting with an existing community and building a platform from there. So I still think there's an opportunity here (that folks like CommonPlace, LifeAt, Front Porch Forum and to some extent SeeClickFix and Neighborland are looking at).
Maybe the way to think about this is bringing Halloween to every day? That's clearly wrong, but maybe there's something right in it.
It's hard to find the right balance when bringing technology into our lives. I do think lots of us suffer from some form of internet / social media addiction, and it's getting easier and easier every day to bring all of that with us everywhere we go. This will only continue to accelerate (and I don't even have Google Glass yet).
A few weeks ago, I went to a discussion at the New York Public Library for Steven Johnson's new book -- for the event, Steven's "debate" opponent was Sherry Turkle, author of "Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other". The thesis of Sherry's book is essentially that we are all addicted to our phones, and that we're trading away our real-world connections for distant digital connections. She has spent countless hours interviewing teenagers, observing moms and dads in the playground (with their faces stuffed into their iphones, of course), etc. And basically came away with some troubling, if unsurprising, results.
I am not terrified by all this, but I do think we're at a moment now where we are still forming our cultural norms around all of this, and it will take a while.
I am writing this from 30,000 feet on my way to San Francisco. I have a great car service which I use every week when I travel. This morning, I ended up having a long conversation with Reda, one of my regular drivers, about Uber and how it's shaking up the taxi and car service business. For some reason, I've always loved talking to taxi drivers about how the business operates. It's a fascinating and often surprising lanscape, consisting of regulators (the city), fleet operators, vendors (for example VeriFone, CMT, and now new entrants like Square and to some extent, Uber), drivers -- who are sometimes employees of fleets and sometimes independent entrepreneurs, customers of various stripes, etc. I think the reason I'm fascinated by taxis is two-fold: 1) it's a hugely important part of the fabric of cities. Ubiquitous, reliable cars for hire are a big part of what make dense, urban living possible. While some urbanists and environmentalists may dislike taxis in favor of other forms of public transit, I have always been a huge fan of taxis as a part of the public transit (i.e., non-private car) ecosystem, for how usable they make the city. Taxis use can also
For instance, Frannie and I have a rule of no screens in bed (that includes TV) -- it just seems like the bedroom should be a place to unplug, slow down, and relax. But over the past few days while she's been away, I've been breaking the rule. On Sunday night, I blew through my email backlog on my laptop (woo!), and on Monday night I followed #Sandy via Twitter on my phone.
Of course, this sparked anargument discussion last night when I continued to break our rule by bringing my laptop to bed to write "one last email". To make matters worse (better?) I posted a snap poll to twitter to see what people thought about this particular nuance of digital culture. The results were mixed:
Some great gems in there.
I do think that thinking about this in terms of addiction seems about right -- we have this thing with really powerful social pulls drawing us in, and we need to make sure we understand how to live in moderation. I might even argue that the addictive strength of the internet and social media is stronger than that of alcohol or other drugs; at least the social aspect of that addiction. i.e., I may feel some social pressure to drink more than I should, but it's not coming at me 24x7 from hundreds of friends, thousands of acquaintances, and millions of others.
So, this is something we'll have to keep figuring out.
show us a lot about how our cities work
. And 2) taxis have always been a big part of the american dream. For some reason (and I'm not exactly sure what that is), driving a taxi provides a certain path to employment, and often times to entrepreneurship -- maybe in reality this is on par with other careers, and perhaps it's just a more visible one, I'm not sure. My dad drove a NYC taxi in the 1970s, and I've always been proud of that. My wife's grandfather represented cab companies in Boston through his whole career as a lawyer and has endless tales of drama from that experience. So anyway, I think taxis are fascinating, and the industry has seen a lot of change in recent years. When NYC introduced (mandatory) pay-by-credit-card a few years ago, along w/ GPS tracking I had lots of conversations about how drivers felt about that (initial displeasure w/ both the cards and GPS - but ultimately appreciation for pay-by-card as tips skyrocketed). When NYC introduced new medallions for hybrid cars, I asked a lot of questions about that. All of these changes have raised questions about power, control, and opportunity in the industry. For example, in Boston, the payment processors in taxis take 6% of every transaction -- there is some speculation that this fee is artificially high due to coordination among the operators, city and the vendors. By contrast, Square takes 2.7% (plus some flat fees, I think), and many of the livery services use that. Uber takes a 20% cut, which includes a tip for the driver. Uber has shaken things up the most, as it blurs the line between "street hails" & metered rides (typically the purview of medallioned taxis) and dispatched pickups / fixed-price rides (typically the purview of car services / limos). Uber also shakes up the role of car service dispatchers, which has traditionally been very local. If you haven't been following, the entrance of Uber into American cities has caused a major stir, triggering legislative battles and lawsuits in
. In nearly every case so far, Uber has prevailed -- often times enlisting their passionate userbase to come to their defense. But it's still the case that Uber operates in a legal gray area, that tests our assumptions and beliefs about the value and necessity of regulation. Not surprisingly, the tech community is solidly behind Uber in this effort. When the DC City Council introduces an amendment specifically targeting Uber, TechCrunch (in what seems to be an unusual act of advocacy)
. Epic internet investor Paul Graham recently tweeted (with 850 retweets and 250 favorites): [tweet https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856] David Alpert, proprietor of Greater Greater Washington, former Googler, and urban & transportation policy wonk,
outlining the clash of philosophies at work here, calling it a tension between the "permission model" (regulation and permission to operate in a certain way up front) and the "innovation model" (freedom to operate up front until you cause harm). His post, in my opinion, totally nails it: if companies like Uber can offer a service that customers
and drivers
want, and that uses competition to improve the industry overall, then we should encourage that. Though he points out an important wrinkle:
taxis are a regulated industry today. An innovation model might be better, but most taxis don't operate on one. It is indeed unfair to put a lot of regulations on one group of businesses in a space (the traditional taxis) and none on others (Uber).
That is a fascinating and somewhat hard problem, at least in the short term. So anyway, all that is to say: it's clear that Uber (and similar innovations) are better for customers (more reliable, more convenient service), and that they are threatening to regulators (loss of control / medallion revenue) and to incumbent dispatchers (routing around them). My big question is still how drivers feel about it. So this morning, I asked Reda how he felt about Uber -- and in particular, how he thinks drivers like it. His response was that he doesn't personally use it (he has plenty of business as it is), but his brother (also a driver with his company) uses it and likes it a lot. And that, in general, he feels like the regulators, fleet owners, and monopoly payment providers are generally involved in a coordinated scam to pad their pockets. If this is the case (and it's been supported by other drivers) My feeling, on the whole, is that we should support solutions that benefit two primary groups: producers and consumers, and get out of the business of protecting the intermediaries of the past. In the case of Uber, if it works for drivers and it works for riders, great. Of course, I -- like other folks working in tech -- are on the side of the intermediaries of the future (internet companies). But I would of course support a future that was even more disintermediated, open and efficient (for more on this, see Eben Moglen's great talk on Innovation Under Austerity). But to make this approach, it's critical that networks -- the intermediaries of the future -- take steps to distribute the value they create throughout the community (not just at the center), in order to create long-term, sustainable ecosystems (for instance, the way Etsy has established itself as a B Corporation). That's why I'm particularly interested in how the producers -- in this case taxi drivers themselves -- see the emergence of these new platforms, and why I'll keep on asking them.
For instance, Frannie and I have a rule of no screens in bed (that includes TV) -- it just seems like the bedroom should be a place to unplug, slow down, and relax. But over the past few days while she's been away, I've been breaking the rule. On Sunday night, I blew through my email backlog on my laptop (woo!), and on Monday night I followed #Sandy via Twitter on my phone.
Of course, this sparked anargument discussion last night when I continued to break our rule by bringing my laptop to bed to write "one last email". To make matters worse (better?) I posted a snap poll to twitter to see what people thought about this particular nuance of digital culture. The results were mixed:
Some great gems in there.
I do think that thinking about this in terms of addiction seems about right -- we have this thing with really powerful social pulls drawing us in, and we need to make sure we understand how to live in moderation. I might even argue that the addictive strength of the internet and social media is stronger than that of alcohol or other drugs; at least the social aspect of that addiction. i.e., I may feel some social pressure to drink more than I should, but it's not coming at me 24x7 from hundreds of friends, thousands of acquaintances, and millions of others.
So, this is something we'll have to keep figuring out.
show us a lot about how our cities work
. And 2) taxis have always been a big part of the american dream. For some reason (and I'm not exactly sure what that is), driving a taxi provides a certain path to employment, and often times to entrepreneurship -- maybe in reality this is on par with other careers, and perhaps it's just a more visible one, I'm not sure. My dad drove a NYC taxi in the 1970s, and I've always been proud of that. My wife's grandfather represented cab companies in Boston through his whole career as a lawyer and has endless tales of drama from that experience. So anyway, I think taxis are fascinating, and the industry has seen a lot of change in recent years. When NYC introduced (mandatory) pay-by-credit-card a few years ago, along w/ GPS tracking I had lots of conversations about how drivers felt about that (initial displeasure w/ both the cards and GPS - but ultimately appreciation for pay-by-card as tips skyrocketed). When NYC introduced new medallions for hybrid cars, I asked a lot of questions about that. All of these changes have raised questions about power, control, and opportunity in the industry. For example, in Boston, the payment processors in taxis take 6% of every transaction -- there is some speculation that this fee is artificially high due to coordination among the operators, city and the vendors. By contrast, Square takes 2.7% (plus some flat fees, I think), and many of the livery services use that. Uber takes a 20% cut, which includes a tip for the driver. Uber has shaken things up the most, as it blurs the line between "street hails" & metered rides (typically the purview of medallioned taxis) and dispatched pickups / fixed-price rides (typically the purview of car services / limos). Uber also shakes up the role of car service dispatchers, which has traditionally been very local. If you haven't been following, the entrance of Uber into American cities has caused a major stir, triggering legislative battles and lawsuits in
. In nearly every case so far, Uber has prevailed -- often times enlisting their passionate userbase to come to their defense. But it's still the case that Uber operates in a legal gray area, that tests our assumptions and beliefs about the value and necessity of regulation. Not surprisingly, the tech community is solidly behind Uber in this effort. When the DC City Council introduces an amendment specifically targeting Uber, TechCrunch (in what seems to be an unusual act of advocacy)
. Epic internet investor Paul Graham recently tweeted (with 850 retweets and 250 favorites): [tweet https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856] David Alpert, proprietor of Greater Greater Washington, former Googler, and urban & transportation policy wonk,
outlining the clash of philosophies at work here, calling it a tension between the "permission model" (regulation and permission to operate in a certain way up front) and the "innovation model" (freedom to operate up front until you cause harm). His post, in my opinion, totally nails it: if companies like Uber can offer a service that customers
and drivers
want, and that uses competition to improve the industry overall, then we should encourage that. Though he points out an important wrinkle:
taxis are a regulated industry today. An innovation model might be better, but most taxis don't operate on one. It is indeed unfair to put a lot of regulations on one group of businesses in a space (the traditional taxis) and none on others (Uber).
That is a fascinating and somewhat hard problem, at least in the short term. So anyway, all that is to say: it's clear that Uber (and similar innovations) are better for customers (more reliable, more convenient service), and that they are threatening to regulators (loss of control / medallion revenue) and to incumbent dispatchers (routing around them). My big question is still how drivers feel about it. So this morning, I asked Reda how he felt about Uber -- and in particular, how he thinks drivers like it. His response was that he doesn't personally use it (he has plenty of business as it is), but his brother (also a driver with his company) uses it and likes it a lot. And that, in general, he feels like the regulators, fleet owners, and monopoly payment providers are generally involved in a coordinated scam to pad their pockets. If this is the case (and it's been supported by other drivers) My feeling, on the whole, is that we should support solutions that benefit two primary groups: producers and consumers, and get out of the business of protecting the intermediaries of the past. In the case of Uber, if it works for drivers and it works for riders, great. Of course, I -- like other folks working in tech -- are on the side of the intermediaries of the future (internet companies). But I would of course support a future that was even more disintermediated, open and efficient (for more on this, see Eben Moglen's great talk on Innovation Under Austerity). But to make this approach, it's critical that networks -- the intermediaries of the future -- take steps to distribute the value they create throughout the community (not just at the center), in order to create long-term, sustainable ecosystems (for instance, the way Etsy has established itself as a B Corporation). That's why I'm particularly interested in how the producers -- in this case taxi drivers themselves -- see the emergence of these new platforms, and why I'll keep on asking them.
