AUDC’s first book captures three moments in modern culture that offer glimpses into our increasingly perverse relationship to architecture, cities, and objects. The first, Ether, explores Los Angeles telecom hotel One Wilshire, a 39 story building of utter banality and complete mystery. The second, the Stimulus Progression, looks at the strange story of the Muzak Corporation and the invention of a culture of horizontality. The third, Swarm Intelligence, visits Quartzsite, Arizona, a desert town of some 3,000 people that annually swells to over a million residents as a horde of modern nomads descends upon it in their Recreational Vehicles.
OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering.
For pharmaceutical companies and health plans, PatientsLikeMe represents a remarkable opportunity to speed up the pace of research. Forget months and years, and start thinking in days and weeks. With PatientsLikeMe, you get instant access to structured, real-world patient data — reported via clinically validated outcome management tools — as well as large, engaged patient communities. And you get it now, without the red tape.
The Future of the Internet explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lockdown, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet—its “generativity,” or innovative character—is at risk.
THE BRAIN CAN CHANGE ITSELF. It is a plastic, living organ that can actually change its own structure and function, even into old age. Arguably the most important breakthrough in neuroscience since scientists first sketched out the brain’s basic anatomy, this revolutionary discovery, called neuroplasticity, promises to overthrow the centuries-old notion that the brain is fixed and unchanging. The brain is not, as was thought, like a machine, or “hardwired” like a computer.
Spatial Agency is an ongoing research project that aims to shift the of focus of architectural discourse from one that is centred around the design (= building) and making (= technology) of buildings to one where architecture is understood as a situated and embedded praxis conscious of and working with its social, economic and political context.
The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute film that takes viewers on a provocative and eye-opening tour of the real costs of our consumer driven culture—from resource extraction to iPod incineration.
PICNIC is a cross-discipline platform for creative conversation and collaboration. It's a unique festival featuring a strategic conference, complimented by hands-on workshops and matchmaking sessions.
BakerTweet is a way for busy bakers to tell the world that something hot and fresh has just come out of the oven. It's as simple as turning the dial and hitting the button. All of the baker's followers get a Twitter alert to tell them that it's bun-time. Or bread time. Or whatever.
