Edition 13

Cities of the future, phones as bags, cars as phones, loyalty counts for nothing and things that are more exciting than this.....

Welcome to the Thirteenth weekly edition of Nowism. I read the internet so you don’t have to. I’ve still not finished it, but am doing my best.

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This Week

Tomorrow’s World

Much of the last week I was in Riyadh where more than 200,000 people from all over the World met for “Cityscape 2023”. More popular than ever (and expected), it was certainly one of those “events are back” moments.

One of the most notable things about the events’ topics of houses, transport, and city development is quite how long everything takes, and thus how little things have changed.

Someone from New York in the 1850’s would be utterly gobsmacked by New York in the 1930’s ( as would someone from the same era but from 150 miles North or West).

Whereas anyone from the 1960’s looking at almost any part of any city, town or village today?would do well to see any real sign of shift or leapfrog.

In a way most “disruption” until the 1980’s was Hardware, and almost all disruption since has been Software. A visit to Japan shows you what happens to the apex predator of the hardware age, fax machines and high speed trains, the future and the past, in one place.

The Internet and Phones and Cloud and stuff is enormously exciting, but you’d do well to see much evidence of this you go about your lives.? In a way most of the built world is in denial of how we can now live, especially our homes.

We’ve added technology to our cities, homes and lives, but we’re yet to rethink and rebuild our the world around them, and perhaps thats the next step, a reimagined built environment.?

That’s what my talk was on.

As a trained Architect I get very confused by almost all visions for future cities. Go to Google Images NOW and type in “future cities”, or ask generative AI to make “ a city from 2050”, some (most) may have lots of fancy roads, many will have vast green towers, some will have super speedy trains, but I bet you ALL of them don’t look like very nice places to actually live.

One of the great mysteries to me of modern planning is that almost everyone when asked for their dream city to live in mentions somewhere with medium or high density, walkable streets, active street life, pedestrianized areas, small narrow passageways, little coffee shops, plastic Eiffel towers for sale, ferries darting around, old market squares, and yet almost all planned cities look like moodboards of smug people who can find parking easily, talk about baby showers, and say “the camera eats first”.

Maybe the question in planning should be less about “build or no build” but “what should we build” . One day I’ll figure out quite why it is that technology has never come close to changing how we build homes,? maybe Boxabl, going public soon could change that. One day I’ll write more about this, especially as I’m trying to become an expert and build ‘the home of the future” in Miami.

Delta’s divorce.

Nobody is more entitled on the planet than people who think they are important to airlines. Delta this week caused outrage by "simplifying" their rewards program, and moving towards a more streamlined question “how much money have we made from you this year”

Airline loyalty programs have long been heralded as proof that loyalty exists between people and companies and is a worthwhile endeavor for both. For years airlines created elaborate more tasteful proxies to evaluate loyalty, like how many times have we seen your lovely face, for how long have you sat in our lovely chairs, and how big were they.?

It was all a pretense for a more human relationship. Over time these things became so complex that a whole industry of hacks and tricks and airline runs to maintain status emerged, which was quirky, fun and, as someone who once flew to New York to Houston to Dallas to Houston to New York in first class over one night to keep status,? deeply destructive for the planet.

Loyalty, between anything other than two people, rarely is. It’s either a transactional relationship, where if you do this, we do this, or it’s laziness, risk aversion, habit, or just a better product. We always sound silly when we expect companies to be like people, or people like companies.?

Meanwhile I’ve always thought status with companies should be more imaginative. If I fly with you a lot I don’t want more miles, I want to know how late the plane really is, or how full each plane will be before I buy a ticket, or maybe a human to help me check my bag in. If I fly enough to make the top tier of your airline, offer me marriage counseling, or a good divorce lawyer, not another first class upgrade.

Phoning it in.

Anyone seeing the Apple iPhone xxx ( I’ve lost count) event would be reminded of what phone makers/people have long known, innovation has stagnated. The form factors have become identical (and perfect) , and nobody really cares as much as they used to about getting the latest thing. At least add a big 4th camera so people can see I’m better than you.

Flip phones in some ways seem like one way to get people to care like they used to.

Honor, a company pretending not to be Huawei, introduced to the world the idea of the catchily named Honor V Purse. Not in production, it’s a smartphone that folds outwards with hooks for a handbag strap that can be attached to it. I think it’s utterly preposterous, and I love it. It raises all sorts of interesting questions about what happens when tech meets fashion, how can screens be used to express who we are in rich ways, and what happens when we carry bags that only contain digital artifacts, does make-up just become a setting? Maybe one day we won’t carry house keys, like we could have 30 years ago if anyone cared.

More seriously, Smartphone makers are having a tough time, sales are generally subdued and people ( staff) are bored, so most look likely to hop into the EV market.

For years Cars were mechanical engineering, but plonk a battery in and they became electrical engineering meets Software. A quick spin around Guangzhou and you see cars made by Huawei, Oppo and soon Xiaomi , and ( vast iPhone assembler ) Foxconn.

In some ways EV’s being essentially skateboards with screens and seats added means the core competencies of assembly and supply chain at scale suit phone makers more than car makers……… until you need to sell them, or deliver them, or service them, or finance them, or charge them, or everything else car makers are better at.

Meanwhile Polestar, a car maker thats somehow both quirky and deeply boring at the same time, is considering making a phone. Most industries slowly go from hardware, to software, to services and then to experiences, this is proof the car industry may be moving towards the last stages.

Little ones

A while ago when rather sick in London a brilliant NHS doctor calmly told me that there wasn’t any point in taking any single flu or cold medication because none of them worked at all. Feeling quite shocked about the whole thing I did some Googling and it turns out the entire industry is a total scam. So I was quite glad to read thispiece about it this week.

Rather fond of this Honda suitcase/scooter combination, probably a good workout for your arms too, seems better than a phone/purse combo.

Old link to the entire history of philosophy, why not.

More evidence tech folk would rather run away than make things better, but this time it’s California, not Mars.

I was in Detroit and read about the history of car making in the city and it was super interesting.? History really does rhyme.

The people behind AI, first we shape our tools, then they shape us, well, we’re at the shaping tools stage.

I flew from Riyayd to Doha which puzzled me, I thought there was tension, so I read about things for ages and found out things are OK now, but also stumbled across this plan, at the height of tensions, to frustrate Qatar by making it into an island. I’m no History or Geography buff, but perhaps this explains the English Channel. (was it the French or English who dug it?)

Me Me Me

My training course starts this week and you are all too late to join this first group. Better luck next time.

Thats all for now, have a lovely week, and I’m here to read any replies.