Alex Steffen

We get so little news about the developing world that we often forget that there are literally millions of people out there struggling to change things to be fairer, freer, more democratic, less corrupt. ”

In almost all city governments in America, the small group of people who don't want change are able to block change. ”

Americans trash the planet not because we're evil, but because the industrial systems we've devised leave no other choice. Our ranch houses and high-rises, factories and farms, freeways and power plants were conceived before we had a clue how the planet works. ”

Carbon zero simply means that the emissions you are releasing either are zero or balance out to zero. ”

If we're talking about transportation, the best thing a city can do is densify as quickly as it can. That needs to be said every time this issue comes up, because it's the only universal strategy that works. ”

If nothing else, the Internet allows people to put their ideas out there and let the world decide whether they're worth paying attention to. ”

People - especially the geeks who created it - have tended to look at the Internet as something that's hermetically sealed: there's the Internet and the rest of the world. But that's not how people want to use the Internet. They want to use it as a way of better navigating the real world. ”

If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite. ”

The Internet has made some phenomenal breakthroughs that are still only poorly understood in terms of changing people's ideas of us and them. If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite. ”

Saying the Tech Bloom is not commercially driven is like saying Mother Teresa had an interest in the poor. ”