Planet Labs

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When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach by Ashlee Vance

"Peter Beck" AND "Rocket Lab", 3D printing, Airbnb, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, Burning Man, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, deepfake, disinformation, Elon Musk, Ernest Rutherford, fake it until you make it, Google Earth, hacker house, Hyperloop, intentional community, Iridium satellite, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, Kwajalein Atoll, lockdown, low earth orbit, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, off-the-grid, overview effect, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, private spaceflight, Rainbow Mansion, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, SoftBank, South China Sea, South of Market, San Francisco, SpaceX Starlink, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Strategic Defense Initiative, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, TikTok, Virgin Galactic

The billionaires were about sending things and people to far-off places and abandoning the earth. Astra would embrace Earth. “We are going to enable a whole new frontier and a whole new group of pioneers to go build things in space,” he said. “Planet Labs took a decade and a billion dollars and thirty generations of Doves to make their system work. Well, there are four hundred space companies now that have been formed since Planet Labs. They’ve raised tens of billions of dollars. It’s a crazy amount of money. They are all focused on Earth. They are connecting things on Earth. They are observing things on Earth. They all have this common narrative around improving life on Earth.* The biggest play is to make all these ideas possible—to make it so someone with an idea in a dorm room can send something to space.

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You could see thousands of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites arranged in a mathematical grid pattern around Earth. Hundreds more satellites from OneWeb and Planet Labs were tucked into the matrix. There were also debris fields stretching all the way around our planet. The most notable recent spray of debris had arrived in 2021, when Russia had chosen to shoot one of its own satellites with a missile to remind other countries that it could eliminate satellites on a whim. When the satellite was destroyed, it broke into more than 1,500 pieces. To make sure that their satellites don’t collide, companies such as SpaceX and Planet Labs pay LeoLabs to find their machines in space and keep track of their movements.

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“Pete” Beck and, 207 espionage accusations and, 68 Google and, 58, 61, 64–65 growth of, 42–43 LADEE and, 57 lunar lander and, 55–57 Anisimov, Artiom, 403, 430–432, 447–448, 456, 460, 461, 465, 468, 476 Antares rockets, 29, 95, 104, 445, 493n “antigravity device,” 414 Antonov cargo plane, 446n Apollo mission, 42 Arecibo Observatory, 274 artificial intelligence (AI), image analysis and, 120–122 Astra in Alaska, 319–336, 338–354 attention given to, 317 engine tests at, 301–303 financial issues and, 326, 327, 370–374, 378, 379, 381–382 funding and, 365, 366, 383 goals of, 309–310, 364, 384 going public, 385–391, 393–394 growth of, 300 headquarters of, 397 Kemp and, 59 launch attempts and, 360–361, 375–376, 379–383, 391–393 “Launch Challenge” and, 369–370, 374–375 launch delays and, 326–334, 338 launch dress rehearsal and, 329–331 launch failures and, 335–336, 340–343, 345, 347, 349–354, 363–364 launch locations and, 303–304 launch process and, 345–347 moving rocket and, 302–306 name change to, 294 offices of, 310–311, 368 race to reach orbit and, 230 recent work of, 491–493 Rocket 2 and, 337–354 Rocket 3 and, 395 Rocket Lab and, 337–338, 349–350, 365 RV camp at, 355–358 security and, 301 Skyhawk space and, 367–369 static fire test and, 314–318 Atchison, Tom, 90–91 Ātea-1, 186–193, 195 autism spectrum, image analysts and, 119 Baiknour Cosmodrome, 442 Balls, 90 Beal, Andrew, 418 Beal Aerospace, 418 Bechtolsheim, Andy, 251n Beck, Peter Astra and, 332, 349–350, 381, 388 background of, 147–157 early days of Rocket Lab and, 183–186 early rocket experiments of, 159–166 Electron rocket and, 209–213 field trips with, 244 first launch and, 190–193, 226 founding of Rocket Lab and, 16, 137, 179–182 funding and, 203–204, 205–207, 209, 214, 224, 229 headquarters and, 230 Humanity Star and, 228 importance of to Rocket Lab’s success, 244–245 at IRL, 169–171 Kemp and, 254, 365–366 launch challenges and, 220–221 launch site and, 216–218 Merkel and, 232 military and, 187, 195–199, 202–203 motivations of, 245–246 Musk and, 241–243 new hires and, 236–238 Number 8 wire mentality and, 159 recent work of, 490 regulatory efforts and, 222–223 Rocket and, 180–181 Rocket Lab and, 138–141, 142–146 schedule and, 224 sounding rockets and, 178–179, 182 on “spiral of doom,” 189 stock options and, 235 success of, 17 third launch and, 239, 240–241 United States visit and, 172–177 US offices and, 234 work ethic of, 201 yacht work and, 166–167, 168–169 Beck, Russell, 148–151, 153 BeNaughty, 438 Beresheet lander, 476 Beta, 395, 426, 455 Beukelaers, Vincent, 101 Bezos, Jeff, 13, 17, 18–19, 420 Biblarz, Oscar, 162 Biefeld-Brown effect, 414 Biosphere 2, 274 Black Rock Desert, 90 BlackRock, 387 Blair, Tony, 84 Bloom Energy, 251–252 Bloomberg Businessweek, 470 Blue Origin, 17, 420–421, 449n Blum, Michael, 423–424 Boeing, 53, 443n, 454 Bolden, Charles, Jr., 423 Boshuizen, Chris arrival of at Ames, 62–63 departure from Planet Labs of, 488 founding of Planet Labs and, 100–102 goals of, 26 Lego satellite and, 87–88 PhoneSat project and, 89–96, 97 small satellites and, 98–100 Worden and, 50, 51 “bouncy houses of death,” 113 Boyd, Jack, 42 Branson, Richard, 13, 207, 421, 458 Brexit, 428 Brieschenk, Stefan, 211–212, 213 Brin, Sergey, 55, 65, 77, 104n, 111n, 298, 489, 490 Brockert, Ben, 282, 290–293, 307, 318, 324–330, 332, 341, 391 Bruno, Vita, 304 bungee jumping, 54–55 Buran space shuttle, 437 Burning Man, 253–254, 313–314, 357 Bush, George W., 53 Buzza, Tim, 7n, 9, 301n carbon fiber, 140, 166, 169–170, 186, 189, 198, 209, 263, 364, 426 Cardillo, Robert, 475 Carlson, Roger, 324, 326–333, 338, 343–347, 391 Carter, Doug, 170, 179, 184n Castle Air Force Base, 369 Ceperley, Dan, 482–483 Cheriton, David, 251n China, 112–115, 122 Classmates.com, 273 Clementine mission, 47 Clinton, Hillary, 297–298 Cold War, 145, 437, 444 Common and the Black Keys, 62 CORONA, 115–117, 461 Cosmogia, 96, 100 covid pandemic, 378–379, 389, 460, 476 Cowan-Sharp, Jessy Kate.

Space 2.0 by Rod Pyle

additive manufacturing, air freight, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, barriers to entry, Boeing 747, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, crewed spaceflight, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, experimental subject, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, low earth orbit, Mars Rover, Mars Society, mouse model, Neil Armstrong, overview effect, Planet Labs, private spaceflight, risk-adjusted returns, Scaled Composites, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SpaceShipOne, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jurvetson, systems thinking, telerobotics, trade route, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wikimedia commons, X Prize, Y Combinator

Their client list includes companies small and large, with payloads ranging from national security satellites to tiny cubesats engineered by university students. They also provided some of the first commercial hardware to fly on the ISS. Planet Labs is another Space 2.0 success story. The company was founded in 2010 by a pair of NASA engineers to design, manufacture, and fly small satellites that would be capable of imaging Earth at a fraction of the cost of existing satellites. The company’s designs are based on the cubesat form factor. Planet Labs’ satellites are called 3U (3-unit) cubesats, and they are about four by four by twelve inches in size. They don’t require dedicated launches as traditional Earth-imaging satellites do, and can be included as secondary payloads—sometimes on NanoRacks hardware.

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They don’t require dedicated launches as traditional Earth-imaging satellites do, and can be included as secondary payloads—sometimes on NanoRacks hardware. Today, a swarm of these cubesats creates a complete image of the Earth’s surface each day, available by subscription via a web-based interface. With almost two hundred satellites currently in orbit, their “fleet” is currently the largest ever flown by one company. Planet Labs cubesats ready to go. Image credit: NASA/Planet Labs Made In Space, Inc. is another interesting example of space entrepreneurism operating in a newly discovered market niche. The company was started in 2010 by four students who met at a Silicon Valley training program. The quartet created the first space-rated 3-D printers in a small lab set up in the NASA Ames Research Park in Mountain View, California.

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We invested just before that fourth flight,” he says with a laugh. Jurvetson invested in Planet Labs after meeting an engineer who had moved from NASA to Google to work on cubesats. “I met a guy from NASA who was flying smartphones in rockets to see if they could survive the g-loading and so forth. They had already tested them in vacuum chambers and in other ways. Their argument was that they could make a cubesat and fly it close to Earth and get images as good as others that fly farther away.” Since Planet Labs built its business on inexpensive cubesats, using mostly off-the-shelf electronics and flying in low Earth orbit, its costs were far lower than traditional operators.

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, Apple Newton, augmented reality, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, business process, call centre, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, deepfake, digital divide, digital twin, disintermediation, don't be evil, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, game design, gig economy, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Glasses, hype cycle, intermodal, Internet Archive, Internet of things, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Gruber, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Metcalfe’s law, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, non-fungible token, open economy, openstreetmap, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Planet Labs, pre–internet, QR code, recommendation engine, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, satellite internet, self-driving car, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social graph, social web, SpaceX Starlink, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, thinkpad, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, TSMC, undersea cable, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, Y2K

Today, the company’s software is primarily used by property owners to create vivid and navigable replicas of their real estate on sites such as Zillow, Redfin, or Compass, affording would-be renters, as well as construction professionals and other services providers, a better way to understand the space than allowed by blueprints, photographs, or even live tours. Soon we might use such scans to determine the placement of a wireless router or plant, test out a selection of different lamps (each one purchasable through Matterport), or to operate our entire smart home, including electricity, security, HVAC, and more. Another example is Planet Labs, which scans nearly the entire earth via satellite each day and across eight spectra bands, capturing not just high-resolution imagery, but details including heat, biomass, and haze. The company’s goal is to make the entire planet, in all its nuances, legible to software and to update its data on a daily to hourly basis.

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Storied camera manufacturer Leica now sells $20,000 photogrammetric cameras that have up to 360,000 “laser scan set points per second,” and that are designed to capture entire malls, buildings, and homes with greater clarity and detail than the average person would ever see if they were physically on-site. Epic Games’ Quixel, meanwhile, uses proprietary cameras to generate environmental “MegaScans” comprising tens of billions of pixel-precise triangles. The satellite imaging company Planet Labs, mentioned in Chapter 7, performs scans of nearly the entire earth daily across eight spectra bands, enabling not just daily high-resolution imagery, but details including heat, biomass, and haze. To produce this imagery, it operates the second-largest fleet of satellites of any company in the world,* with over 150, many of which weigh less than 5 kilograms and are smaller than 10 × 10 × 30 centimeters.

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Every photo from these satellites covers 20–25 square kilometers and is made up of 47 megapixels, with each pixel representing 3 × 3 meters. Roughly 1.5 GB of data is sent from each of these satellites per second and from an average distance of 1,000 kilometers. Will Marshall, the CEO and co-founder of Planet Labs, believes that the cost per performance of these satellites has improved by 1,000 times since 2011.6 Such scanning devices make it easier and cheaper for companies to produce high-quality “mirror worlds” or “digital twins” of physical spaces—and to use scans of the real world to produce higher-quality and less-expensive fantasy worlds.

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups by Ali Tamaseb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Anne Wojcicki, asset light, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, bitcoin, business intelligence, buy and hold, Chris Wanstrath, clean water, cloud computing, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, game design, General Magic , gig economy, high net worth, hiring and firing, index fund, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, late fees, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Mitch Kapor, natural language processing, Network effects, nuclear winter, PageRank, PalmPilot, Parker Conrad, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, power law, QR code, Recombinant DNA, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, rolodex, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, survivorship bias, TaskRabbit, telepresence, the payments system, TikTok, Tony Fadell, Tony Hsieh, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, web application, WeWork, work culture , Y Combinator

Imaging satellites used to be massive and cost tens of millions of dollars to build, let alone launch into orbit. Planet invented microsatellites, which weigh only eleven pounds each and measure as little as ten cubic centimeters. The founders of the company had worked at NASA for years on similar projects, but it still took them over three years to launch Planet Labs’ very first satellite, in November 2013. Because of this deep-tech innovation, Planet Labs has dispatched hundreds of satellites—the largest constellation of imaging satellites—to cover the entirety of Earth with their cameras. Planet sells the images globally to entities in both the public and private sectors, including governments, and, for example, agriculture, mining, and water businesses.

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And as I’ll explain in a later chapter about how venture capitalists value startups, raising more money may result in increases in valuations ahead of when revenues can justify such valuations. System-integration companies were the most common, but deep-tech and medium-tech companies were more likely to achieve billion-dollar valuations. One example of a deep-tech company is Planet Labs, founded in 2010. It monitors the Earth continuously and can produce one picture each day from any location on the planet. How? The company developed very small satellites, equipped with high-quality cameras, that are launched into Earth’s orbit using rockets. Imaging satellites used to be massive and cost tens of millions of dollars to build, let alone launch into orbit.

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To develop a new drug, a company needs to front the cost of labs, extensive equipment, and salaries for many, many years before there is any chance of revenue. Biotech companies also regularly pay for clinical trials, which can be very expensive. Companies building medical devices, healthcare services, hardware, material science, or energy products all face the same challenges. Planet Labs, which places imaging satellites into the Earth’s orbit and sells the data and insights collected by the satellites, has incredibly high capital needs. But those capital needs could create a form of defensibility. There are only so many companies that can raise enough capital to put hundreds of satellites in space; at some point for new entrants, raising all that money just to have a chance to compete becomes a problem.

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism by John Elkington

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, anti-fragile, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, deglobalization, degrowth, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Future Shock, Gail Bradbrook, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Google X / Alphabet X, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, Hans Rosling, hype cycle, impact investing, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, John Elkington, Jony Ive, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, M-Pesa, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, microplastics / micro fibres, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, placebo effect, Planet Labs, planetary scale, plant based meat, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, space junk, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, systems thinking, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tim Cook: Apple, urban planning, Whole Earth Catalog

Meanwhile, the big space agencies that have dominated space for years are no longer the only game in orbit. A couple of years ago, for example, I visited Planet Labs in San Francisco. They are part of a very different space industry now challenging NASA, the European Space Agency, and their Russian, Chinese, and Indian counterparts for space dominance. Clearly, all this activity is bound to have an impact on the amount of space junk. Here’s how Wired magazine put it: Just how much bigger will the problem get? SpaceX alone plans to send up nearly 12,000 small internet-beaming objects over time. OneWeb has designs on some 700 similar sats. Planet [Labs] just launched around 100 that take pictures of the Earth’s entire landmass every day.

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See also change process stages; Future-Fit change approach Paradise, California, 137 Patriotic Millionaires, 132 Peak of Inflated Expectations stage, Gartner Hype Cycle, 174 Pearl, Morris, 132 penicillin, 103–104 People, Planet & Profit (3Ps), 30, 54 Perez, Carlota, 203, 235 PG&E power utility, 137 pharmaceutical industry, 231–232 Phelan, Ryan, 231–232 philanthropy, misuse of, 13 Piketty, Thomas, 60 Pinker, Steven, 28 placebo buttons, 43–46, 54 Plan B work, 234 Planet Labs, 114, 115 plant-based meat, 233 Plastic: A Toxic Love Story (Freinkel), 92–93 A Plastic Ocean (film), 92 plastics, as wicked problem, 92–97 Plateau of Productivity stage, Gartner Hype Cycle, 175 Pliny the Elder, 39 politics. See also democracy activism in, 227–228 breakers in, 221 different thinking, need for, 23–27 in future, 224 future-fit, 163–164 with Green Swan characteristics, 208–213 and need for systemic change, 14–15 underperformance in, 128 Polman, Paul, 19, 131 Polos, Stephen, 215 polymers industry, 92–97 Pope Francis, 128 population decline, 210–211, 222–223 Porter, Michael, 59, 150, 150f Positive Pursuits element, Future-Fit approach, 163 The Power of Unreasonable People (Elkington and Hartigan), 11 precision medicine, 179 predatory delay, 67 “Pre-Science” stage, in paradigm shift, 121–122, 123 product liability, 66 professional media, 227 profit(s), 27, 30–33, 47, 53–55, 128–129 Project Breakthrough, 34–36 Project Drawdown, 141, 232 Prosperity (Mayer), 49–50 Prosperity without Growth (Jackson), 56 psychoanalyzing business terms.

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It) by Salim Ismail, Yuri van Geest

23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, anti-fragile, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, bike sharing, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, book value, Burning Man, business intelligence, business process, call centre, chief data officer, Chris Wanstrath, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fail fast, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, gravity well, hiring and firing, holacracy, Hyperloop, industrial robot, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, Internet of things, Iridium satellite, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, lifelogging, loose coupling, loss aversion, low earth orbit, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Max Levchin, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, prediction markets, profit motive, publish or perish, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, software is eating the world, SpaceShipOne, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, the long tail, Tony Hsieh, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, urban planning, Virgin Galactic, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, X Prize, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Today, twenty years later, a new breed of satellite companies—Skybox, Planet Labs, Nanosatisfi and Satellogic—are all launching nanosatellites (which are, essentially, the size of a shoebox). The cost per launch is about $100,000 per satellite—a fraction of the $1 billion Iridium incurred per launch for its constellation. More important, by launching a cluster of nanosatellites operating in a coordinated, meshed configuration, the capability of these new satellites blows away what the previous generation could do. For example, Planet Labs already has thirty-one satellites in orbit and plans to launch another one hundred during 2014.

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 9 dash line, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Basel III, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, capital controls, Carl Icahn, charter city, circular economy, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital map, disruptive innovation, diversification, Doha Development Round, driverless car, Easter island, edge city, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, Fairphone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, forward guidance, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, ice-free Arctic, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, industrial robot, informal economy, Infrastructure as a Service, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, Khyber Pass, Kibera, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, low cost airline, low earth orbit, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass affluent, mass immigration, megacity, Mercator projection, Metcalfe’s law, microcredit, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Monroe Doctrine, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, openstreetmap, out of africa, Panamax, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Planet Labs, plutocrats, post-oil, post-Panamax, precautionary principle, private military company, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Quicken Loans, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, the built environment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero day

OPENSTREETMAP https://www.​openstreetmap.​org/ OpenStreetMap is a crowdsourced mapping platform maintained by a user community that constantly updates data on transportation networks, store locations, and myriad other content generated and verified through aerial imagery, GPS devices, and other tools. PLANET LABS https://www.​planet.​com/ Planet Labs uses a network of low-orbit satellites to capture the most current images of the entire earth and form composite digital renderings that can be used for commercial or humanitarian applications. SOURCEMAP http://www.​sourcemap.​com/ Sourcemap provides end-to-end visibility into supply chain data from raw materials to end consumers, allowing for visualization of risks, calculation of costs, and planning for resilience.

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OpenStreetMap, for example, crowdsources street views from millions of members who can also tag and label any structure, infusing local knowledge and essential insight for everything from simple commuting to delivering supplies during humanitarian disasters.*1 We can now even insert updated imagery from Planet Labs’ two dozen shoe-box-size satellites into 3-D maps and fly through the natural or urban environment. All of this is coming to the palm of your hand. Google Maps is already by far the world’s most downloaded app; it represents the “ground truth” far better than Rand McNally. With the rise of the global sensor network dubbed the “Internet of Everything” (Internet of Things + Internet of People), our maps will perpetually update themselves, providing an animated view into our world as it really is—even the five thousand commercial aircraft in the sky and the more than ten thousand ships crossing the seas at any given moment.*2 These are the arteries and veins, capillaries and cells, of a planetary economy underpinned by an infrastructural network that can eventually become as efficient as the human body.

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It by Azeem Azhar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Citizen Lab, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deep learning, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Diane Coyle, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, Elon Musk, emotional labour, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, GPT-3, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, lockdown, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Mitch Kapor, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, NSO Group, Ocado, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, price anchoring, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software as a service, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing machine, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, warehouse automation, winner-take-all economy, workplace surveillance , Yom Kippur War

The bosses at Tesla understood that the prices of electric vehicles might decline on an exponential curve, and launched the electric vehicle revolution. The founders of Impossible Foods understood how the expensive process of precision fermentation (which involves genetically modified microorganisms) would get cheaper and cheaper. Executives at space companies like Spire and Planet Labs understood this process would drive down the cost of putting satellites in orbit. Companies that didn’t adapt to exponential technology shifts, like much of the newspaper publishing industry, didn’t stand a chance. We can visualise the gap by returning to our now-familiar exponential curve. As we’ve seen, individual technologies develop according to an S-curve, which begins by roughly following an exponential trajectory.

…

.), 73 linear value chains, 101 LinkedIn, 26, 110, 121, 237, 238 Linkos Group, 197 Linux OS, 242 Lipsey, Richard, 45 lithium-ion batteries, 40, 51 lithium, 170 localism, 11, 166–90, 252, 255 log files, 227 logarithmic scales, 20 logic gates, 18 logistic curve, 25, 30, 51, 52, 69–70 London, England, 180, 181, 183 London Underground, 133–4 looms, 157 Lordstown Strike (1972), 125 Lotus Development Corporation, 99 Luddites, 125, 253 Lufa Farms, 171–2 Luminate, 240 lump of labour fallacy, 139 Lusaka, Zambia, 15 Lyft, 146, 148 machine learning, 31–4, 54, 58, 88, 127, 129, 143 MacKinnon, Rebecca, 223 Maersk, 197, 199, 211 malaria, 253 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shootdown (2014), 199 Malta, 114 Malthus, Thomas, 72–3 malware, 197 Man with the Golden Gun, The (1974 film), 37 manufacturing, 10, 39, 42–4, 46, 166–7, 175–9 additive, 43–4, 46, 48, 88, 166, 169, 175–9 automation and, 130 re-localisation, 175–9 subtractive, 42–3 market saturation, 25–8, 51, 52 market share, 93–6, 111 Marshall, Alfred, 97 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 18, 147, 202, 238 Mastercard, 98 May, Theresa, 183 Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, 189 McCarthy, John, 31 McKinsey, 76, 94 McMaster University, 178 measles, 246 Mechanical Turk, 142–3, 144, 145 media literacy, 211–12 meningitis, 246 Mexico, 202 microorganisms, 42, 46, 69 Microsoft, 16–17, 65, 84–5, 88, 98–9, 100, 105, 108, 122, 221 Bing, 107 cloud computing, 85 data collection, 228 Excel, 99 internet and, 84–5, 100 network effect and, 99 Office software, 98–9, 110, 152 Windows, 85, 98–9 Workplace Productivity scores, 152 Mill, John Stuart, 193 miniaturisation, 34–5 minimum wage, 147, 161 misinformation, 11, 191, 192, 200–204, 209, 212, 217, 225, 247–8 mobile phones, 76, 121 see also smartphones; telecom companies Moderna, 245, 247 Moixa, 174 Mondelez, 197, 211 Mongol Empire (1206–1368), 44 monopolies, 10, 71, 94, 95, 114–24, 218, 255 Monopoly (board game), 82 Montreal, Quebec, 171 mood detection systems, 152 Moore, Gordon, 19, 48 Moore’s Law, 19–22, 26, 28–9, 31, 34, 63, 64, 74 artificial intelligence and, 32, 33–4 Kodak and, 83 price and, 41–2, 51, 68–9 as social fact, 29, 49 superstar companies and, 95 time, relationship with, 48–9 Moravec, Hans, 131 Moravec’s paradox, 131–2 Motorola, 76 Mount Mercy College, Cork, 57 Mozilla Firefox, 242 Mumbai, India, 181 mumps, 246 muskets, 54–5 MySpace, 26–7 Nadella, Satya, 85 Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020), 206–7 napalm, 216 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), 56 Natanz nuclear site, Iran, 196 National Health Service (NHS), 87 nationalism, 168, 186 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 191, 213 Netflix, 104, 107, 109, 136, 137, 138, 139, 151, 248 Netherlands, 103 Netscape Communicator, 6 networks, 58–62 network effects, 96–101, 106, 110, 121, 223 neural networks, 32–4 neutral, technology as, 5, 220–21, 254 new wars, 194 New York City, New York, 180, 183 New York Times, 3, 125, 190, 228 New Zealand, 188, 236 Newton, Isaac, 20 Nigeria, 103, 145, 182, 254 Niinistö, Sauli, 212 Nike, 102 nitrogen fertilizers, 35 Nixon, Richard, 25, 114 Nobel Prize, 64, 74, 241 Nokia, 120 non-state actors, 194, 213 North Korea, 198 North Macedonia, 200–201 Norway, 173, 216 NotPetya malware, 197, 199–200, 211, 213 Novell, 98 Noyce, Robert, 19 NSO Group, 214 nuclear weapons, 193, 195–6, 212, 237 Nuremberg Trials (1945–6), 208 O’Reilly, Tim, 107 O’Sullivan, Laura, 57–8, 60 Obama, Barack, 205, 214, 225 Ocado, 137 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 239 Oculus, 117 oDesk, 144 Ofcom, 8 Ofoto, 84 Ogburn, William, 85 oil industry, 172, 250 Houthi drone attacks (2019), 206 OAPEC crisis (1973–4), 37, 258 Shamoon attack (2012), 198 Standard Oil breakup (1911), 93–4 Olduvai, Tanzania, 42 online shopping, 48, 61, 62, 75, 94, 102, 135 open-source software, 242 Openreach, 123 Operation Opera (1981), 195–6, 209 opium, 38 Orange, 121 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 119, 167 Osborne Computer Corporation, 16 Osborne, Michael, 129 Osirak nuclear reactor, Iraq, 195–6, 209 Ostrom, Elinor, 241 Oxford University, 129, 134, 203, 226 pace of change, 3 pagers, 87 Pakistan, 145, 205 palladium, 170 PalmPilot, 173 panopticon, 152 Paris, France, 181, 183 path dependence, 86 PayPal, 98, 110 PC clones, 17 PeerIndex, 8, 201, 237 Pegasus, 214 PeoplePerHour, 144 PepsiCo, 93 Perez, Carlota, 46–7 pernicious polarization, 232 perpetual motion, 95, 106, 107, 182 Petersen, Michael Bang, 75 Phan Thi Kim Phuc, 216–17, 224, 225 pharmaceutical industry, 6, 93, 250 phase transitions, 4 Philippines, 186, 203 Phillips Exeter Academy, 150 phishing scams, 211 Phoenix, Arizona, 134 photolithography, 19 Pigou, Arthur Cecil, 97 Piketty, Thomas, 160 Ping An Good Doctor, 103, 250 Pix Moving, 166, 169, 175 PKK (Partîya Karkerên Kurdistanê), 206 Planet Labs, 69 platforms, 101–3, 219 PlayStation, 86 plough, 157 Polanyi, Michael, 133 polarisation, 231–4 polio, 246 population, 72–3 Portify, 162 Postel, Jon, 55 Postings, Robert, 233 Predator drones, 205, 206 preprints, 59–60 price gouging, 93 price of technology, 22, 68–9 computing, 68–9, 191, 249 cyber-weapons, 191–2 drones, 192 genome sequencing, 41–2, 252 renewable energy, 39–40, 250 printing press, 45 public sphere, 218, 221, 223 Pulitzer Prize, 216 punctuated equilibrium, 87–8 al-Qaeda, 205, 210–11 Qatar, 198 quantum computing, 35 quantum physics, 29 quarantines, 12, 152, 176, 183, 246 R&D (research and development), 67–8, 113, 118 racial bias, 231 racism, 225, 231, 234 radicalisation pathways, 233 radiologists, 126 Raford, Noah, 43 Raz, Ze’ev, 195, 209 RB, 197 re-localisation, 11, 166–90, 253, 255 conflict and, 189, 193, 194, 209 Reagan, Ronald, 64, 163 religion, 6, 82, 83 resilience, 257 reskilling, 159–60 responsibility gap, 209 Restrepo, Pascual, 139 Reuters, 8, 56, 132 revolutions, 87 Ricardo, David, 169–70, 177 rights, 240–41 Rise of the Robots, The (Ford), 125 Rittenhouse, Kyle, 224 Roche, 67 Rockefeller, John, 93 Rohingyas, 224 Rome, ancient, 180 Rose, Carol, 243 Rotterdam, Netherlands, 56 Rule of Law, 82 running shoes, 102, 175–6 Russell, Stuart, 31, 118 Russian Federation, 122 disinformation campaigns, 203 Estonia cyberattacks (2007), 190–91, 200 Finland, relations with, 212 Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020), 206 nuclear weapons, 237 Ukraine cyberattacks (2017), 197, 199–200 US election interference (2016), 217 Yandex, 122 S-curve, 25, 30, 51, 52, 69–70 al-Sahhaf, Muhammad Saeed, 201 Salesforce, 108–9 Saliba, Samer, 184 salt, 114 Samsung, 93, 228 San Francisco, California, 181 Sandel, Michael, 218 Sanders, Bernard, 163 Sandworm, 197, 199–200, 211 Santander, 95 Sasson, Steve, 83 satellites, 56–7, 69 Saturday Night Fever (1977 soundtrack), 72 Saudi Arabia, 108, 178, 198, 203, 206 Schmidt, Eric, 5 Schwarz Gruppe, 67 Second Machine Age, The (Brynjolfsson and McAfee), 129 self-driving vehicles, 78, 134–5, 141 semiconductors, 18–22, 28–9, 48–9, 52, 113, 251 September 11 attacks (2001), 205, 210–11 Shamoon virus, 198 Shanghai, China, 56 Shannon, Claude, 18 Sharp, 16 Shenzhen, Guangdong, 182 shipping containers, 61–2, 63 shopping, 48, 61, 62, 75, 94, 102, 135 Siemens, 196 silicon chips, see chips Silicon Valley, 5, 7, 15, 24, 65, 110, 129, 223 Sinai Peninsula, 195 Sinclair ZX81, 15, 17, 21, 36 Singapore, 56 Singles’ Day, 48 Singularity University, 5 SixDegrees, 26 Skydio R1 drone, 208 smartphones, 22, 26, 46, 47–8, 65, 86, 88, 105, 111, 222 Smith, Adam, 169–70 sneakers, 102, 175–6 Snow, Charles Percy, 7 social credit systems, 230 social media, 26–8 censorship on, 216–17, 224–6, 236 collective bargaining and, 164 data collection on, 228 interoperability, 121, 237–8 market saturation, 25–8 misinformation on, 192, 201–4, 217, 247–8 network effect, 98, 223 polarisation and, 231–4 software as a service, 109 solar power, 37–8, 53, 65, 77, 82, 90, 171, 172, 173, 249, 250, 251 SolarWinds, 200 Solberg, Erna, 216 South Africa, 170 South Korea, 188, 198, 202 Southey, Robert, 80 sovereignty, 185, 199, 214 Soviet Union (1922–91), 185, 190, 194, 212 Spain, 170, 188 Spanish flu pandemic (1918–20), 75 Speedfactory, Ansbach, 176 Spire, 69 Spotify, 69 Sputnik 1 orbit (1957), 64, 83 stagflation, 63 Standard and Poor, 104 Standard Oil, 93–4 standardisation, 54–7, 61, 62 Stanford University, 32, 58 Star Wars franchise, 99 state-sized companies, 11, 67 see also superstar companies states, 82 stirrups, 44 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 208 Stockton, California, 160 strategic snowflakes, 211 stress tests, 237 Stuxnet, 196, 214 Sudan, 183 superstar companies, 10, 11, 67, 94–124, 218–26, 252, 255 blitzscaling, 110 collective bargaining and, 163 horizontal expansion, 111–12, 218 increasing returns to scale, 108–10 innovation and, 117–18 intangible economy, 104–7, 118, 156 interoperability and, 120–22, 237–9 monopolies, 114–24, 218 network effect, 96–101, 121 platform model, 101–3, 219 taxation of, 118–19 vertical expansion, 112–13 workplace cultures, 151 supply chains, 61–2, 166–7, 169, 175, 187, 252 surveillance, 152–3, 158 Surviving AI (Chace), 129 Sutskever, Ilya, 32 synthetic biology, 42, 46, 69, 174, 245, 250 Syria, 186 Taiwan, 181, 212 Talkspace, 144 Tallinn, Estonia, 190 Tang, Audrey, 212 Tanzania, 42, 183 TaskRabbit, 144 Tasmania, Australia, 197 taxation, 10, 63, 96, 118–19 gig economy and, 146 superstar companies and, 118–19 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 150, 152, 153, 154 Tel Aviv, Israel, 181 telecom companies, 122–3 Tencent, 65, 104, 108, 122 territorial sovereignty, 185, 199, 214 Tesco, 67, 93 Tesla, 69, 78, 113 Thailand, 176, 203 Thatcher, Margaret, 64, 163 Thelen, Kathleen, 87 Thiel, Peter, 110–11 3D printing, see additive manufacturing TikTok, 28, 69, 159–60, 219 Tisné, Martin, 240 Tomahawk missiles, 207 Toyota, 95 trade networks, 61–2, 166–7, 169, 175 trade unions, see collective bargaining Trading Places (1983 film), 132 Tragedy of the Commons, The (Hardin), 241 transistors, 18–22, 28–9, 48–9, 52, 113, 251 transparency, 236 Treaty of Westphalia (1648), 199 TRS-80, 16 Trump, Donald, 79, 119, 166, 201, 225, 237 Tufekci, Zeynep, 233 Turing, Alan, 18, 22 Turkey, 102, 176, 186, 198, 202, 206, 231 Tversky, Amos, 74 23andMe, 229–30 Twilio, 151 Twitch, 225 Twitter, 65, 201, 202, 219, 223, 225, 237 two cultures, 7, 8 Uber, 69, 94, 102, 103, 106, 142, 144, 145 Assembly Bill 5 (California, 2019), 148 engineering jobs, 156 London ban (2019), 183, 188 London protest (2016), 153 pay at, 147, 156 satisfaction levels at, 146 Uber BV v Aslam (2021), 148 UiPath, 130 Ukraine, 197, 199 Unilever, 153 Union of Concerned Scientists, 56 unions, see collective bargaining United Arab Emirates, 43, 198, 250 United Autoworkers Union, 162 United Kingdom BBC, 87 Biobank, 242 Brexit (2016–20), 6, 168 collective bargaining in, 163 Covid-19 epidemic (2020–21), 79, 203 DDT in, 253 digital minilateralism, 188 drone technology in, 207 flashing of headlights in, 83 Golden Triangle, 170 Google and, 116 Industrial Revolution (1760–1840), 79–81 Luddite rebellion (1811–16), 125, 253 misinformation in, 203, 204 National Cyber Force, 200 NHS, 87 self-employment in, 148 telecom companies in, 123 Thatcher government (1979–90), 64, 163 United Nations, 87, 88, 188 United States antitrust law in, 114 automation in, 127 Battle of the Overpass (1937), 162 Capitol building storming (2021), 225 China, relations with, 166 Cold War (1947–91), 194, 212, 213 collective bargaining in, 163 Covid-19 epidemic (2020–21), 79, 202–4 Cyber Command, 200, 210 DDT in, 253 drone technology in, 205, 214 economists in, 63 HIPA Act (1996), 230 Kenosha unrest shooting (2020), 224 Lordstown Strike (1972), 125 manufacturing in, 130 misinformation in, 202–4 mobile phones in, 76 nuclear weapons, 237 Obama administration (2009–17), 205, 214 polarisation in, 232 presidential election (2016), 199, 201, 217 presidential election (2020), 202–3 Reagan administration (1981–9), 64, 163 self-employment in, 148 September 11 attacks (2001), 205, 210–11 shipping containers in, 61 shopping in, 48 solar energy research, 37 Standard Oil breakup (1911), 93–4 taxation in, 63, 119 Trump administration (2017–21), 79, 119, 166, 168, 201, 225, 237 Vietnam War (1955–75), 216 War on Terror (2001–), 205 universal basic income (UBI), 160, 189 universal service obligation, 122 University of Cambridge, 127, 188 University of Chicago, 63 University of Colorado, 73 University of Delaware, 55 University of Oxford, 129, 134, 203, 226 University of Southern California, 55 unwritten rules, 82 Uppsala Conflict Data Program, 194 UpWork, 145–6 USB (Universal Serial Bus), 51 Ut, Nick, 216 utility providers, 122–3 vaccines, 12, 202, 211, 245–7 Vail, Theodore, 100 value-free, technology as, 5, 220–21, 254 Veles, North Macedonia, 200–201 Véliz, Carissa, 226 Venezuela, 75 venture capitalists, 117 vertical expansion, 112–13, 116 vertical farms, 171–2, 251 video games, 86 Vietnam, 61, 175, 216 Virological, 245 Visa, 98 VisiCalc, 99 Vodafone, 121 Vogels, Werner, 68 Wag!

The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration by Donald Goldsmith, Martin Rees

Apollo 11, Biosphere 2, blockchain, Colonization of Mars, cosmic abundance, crewed spaceflight, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, gravity well, hydroponic farming, Isaac Newton, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, Kuiper Belt, low earth orbit, Menlo Park, microplastics / micro fibres, Neil Armstrong, operation paperclip, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, place-making, Planet Labs, planetary scale, Ronald Reagan, satellite internet, self-driving car, South China Sea, SpaceX Starlink, Stephen Hawking, UNCLOS, V2 rocket, Virgin Galactic, Yogi Berra

Equally useful, and now more abundant, are small satellites used to relay messages and data, for surveillance, and to bring rapid broadband ser­vice to remote parts of the world. Advances in miniaturization and changing economics have now enabled the launch of entire flotillas of small satellites—as many as one hundred on a single rocket. T ­ hese satellites enable companies such as California’s Planet Labs to obtain daily images of the entire globe with a resolution sufficient to reveal road traffic, building sites, land use, and related information. Even greater advances lie in the near ­f uture, as SpaceX envisages that its Starlink proj­ect ­will place up to 40,000 satellites in orbit to create a network for enhanced global broadband communication.14 Other companies, including Amazon, have announced similar plans.

The New Gold Rush: The Riches of Space Beckon! by Joseph N. Pelton

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Biosphere 2, Buckminster Fuller, business logic, Carrington event, Colonization of Mars, Dennis Tito, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, full employment, global pandemic, Google Earth, GPS: selective availability, gravity well, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, life extension, low earth orbit, Lyft, Mark Shuttleworth, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, megastructure, new economy, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Planet Labs, post-industrial society, private spaceflight, Ray Kurzweil, Scaled Composites, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, skunkworks, space junk, SpaceShipOne, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Strategic Defense Initiative, Thomas Malthus, Tim Cook: Apple, Tunguska event, uber lyft, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wikimedia commons, X Prize

Satellite constellationsA configuration of multiple satellites that are deployed over Earth in some sort of pattern or even random deployment so as to provide planetary coverage by a network of small satellites. Examples of these include Iridium and Globalstar for mobile satellite communications, Terra Bella and Planet Labs for remote sensing, and the planned OneWeb satellite constellation that is optimized for low latency Internet-based networking. All these systems and more are in low Earth orbit. Small satellitesGeneral term that refers to extremely small satellites weighing only a few grams or ounces, ranging from cubesats that might be in the 5–20 kg (11–44 pound) to quite capable commercial small satellites in constellations (i.e., twenty to even many hundreds of satellites blanketing Earth that would typically be in low Earth orbit) to provide communications, remote sensing or other services.

Pragmatic.Programming.Erlang.Jul.2007 by Unknown

Debian, en.wikipedia.org, fault tolerance, finite state, full text search, functional programming, higher-order functions, Planet Labs, RFC: Request For Comment

The usual approach is to start (for example) a web server and then install web server plug-ins. My approach was to back off one step and install an empty server. Later the plug-in turns the empty server into a web server. When we’re done with the web server, we might tell it to become something else. ∗. A planet-wide research network (http://www.planet-lab.org) Just make sure it’s compiled, and then we can tell process <0.57.0> to become a factorial server: 2> c(my_fac_server). {ok,my_fac_server} 3> Pid ! {become, fun my_fac_server:loop/0}. {become,#Fun<my_fac_server.loop.0>} Now that our process has become a factorial server, we can call it: 4> server5:rpc(Pid, {fac,30}). 265252859812191058636308480000000 Our process will remain a factorial server, until we send it a {become, Something} message and tell it to do something else.

New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

Anthropocene, availability heuristic, back-to-the-land, Black-Scholes formula, Burning Man, central bank independence, creative destruction, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, decarbonisation, East Village, full employment, gentrification, happiness index / gross national happiness, hive mind, income inequality, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Ken Thompson, Kim Stanley Robinson, liquidity trap, Mason jar, mass immigration, megastructure, microbiome, music of the spheres, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, Planet Labs, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, quantitative easing, Reflections on Trusting Trust, rent-seeking, Social Justice Warrior, the built environment, too big to fail

It was awesome to dive into such a complicated screen with the actual backdrop of lower Manhattan out the window, and combined with the cappuccino, and the flight down the river, it felt like dropping into a big breaking wave. The economic sublime! At pride of place in the center of my screen was a Planet Labs map of the world with sea levels indicated to the millimeter by real-time satellite laser altimetry. Higher sea levels than the average for the previous month were shaded red, lower areas blue, gray for no change. Every day the colors shifted, marking the water’s slopping around under the pull of the moon, the push of prevailing currents, the sweep of the winds, and so on.