The Rockefeller Foundation and Crowdsourced Cities

What happens when a city fails? How can we make use of the wisdom of the crowd? How are slums using technology to change their worlds? These were the types of questions on the table at The Rockefeller Foundation‘s recent event “The Crowdsourced City (#crowdsourcedcities).” A small group of insightful thinkers (one that unexpectedly included my publisher, Tim O’Reilly) gathered in New York to present the latest on topics like informatics, data visualization and mobile technology, and then moved into a conversation about where this knowledge intersected with the (future) role of city government. My favorite bomb-thrower in this conversation was Clay Johnson, with whom I shared not only an accent, but also a general philosophy that government can’t be responsible for saving our lives. The meeting was a day-and-a-half but the information density was worthy of four days (just take a gander at the first mural), so I had my work cut out for me as the live content visualizer. But, as usual, I left the event intellectually saturated and pleased to have supported the process. And people, please note: VISUAL LITERACY was on the Top 10 list of what will matter in the future. Because I am a profoundly polite human being, I will not say I told you so. Eh hem.