[sustran] New Mobility Media 2008 + Knoogle + The year ahead

[Eric Britton]

Dear Colleagues,

 

The purpose of this holiday mailing is to share with you a small handful  things 
that I very much hope you will find interesting and possibly even useful.  Quickly 
now:

 

1.  New Mobility Media 2008: Over the last several years we have been increasingly 
engaged in working with expanding group of international partners to create 
engaging new media in order to advance the sustainable transportation agenda 
worldwide.  The attached PDF file presents some of the latest films, videos 
and clips in this collaborative series, together with one-click links which 
allow you to go directly to each.  (If you would prefer to pick up the full 
PowerPoint version, you will find that at www.media-presentation.newmobility.org 
)

 

2.  New mobility knowledge environment:With all of the conferences and discussions 
that are going on these days, one of the things that strikes us most is that, 
although there are many programs and organizations concerned with the issues 
of sustainable transportation in the broader climate, resource and economic 
environments within which they are placed, (a) we are still in most dramatically 
losing this war on virtually all fronts and (b) the level of creative synergy 
between all of these programs is impaired by the fact that they are, as the 
expression goes, overly "siloed".  This is not to argue for centralization 
or "rationalization" with the thought of removing redundancies, since in fact 
what may appear to be redundancies are in fact a signal of the richness of 
the work that is going on to remedy the problems we are addressing.  Redundancy 
is in any event a necessary condition of robustness.  And we very much need 
robust solutions and processes.  With this challenge in mind we set out early 
last summer under the framework of an informal brainstorming effort which we 
called the "New Mobility Knowledge Environment" to see if we could get some 
kind of useful handle on the problem of excessive fragmentation of effort and 
insufficient interaction, exchange and co-learning.

 

3.  Knoogle New Mobility 1.1. :The only specific advance that we have made 
thus far has been in a collaborative project undertaken with the help of a 
small team at theCenter for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society of 
University of Michigan, which is aimed at creating a handy tool which will 
allow researchers, policymakers and others concerned to reach across some of 
the thick walls that separate many of these programs and projects.  The tool 
is called Knoogle New Mobility 1.1.  It is still in beta form but a number 
of us are finding it useful for following developments in the field.  I would 
like to invite you to have a look and should you find it useful to put it to 
work for your own purposes.  The URL is www.Knoogle.net.

 

4.  The year ahead: there is no doubt in my mind, and I am sure yours, that 
2009 is going to be a very important year for new thinking around the world, 
and certainly I very much hope in the United States.  I would almost say that 
this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.  So this is the time to make sure 
that everything we have done over these last years to create both a vision 
and the tools needed to move toward a more sustainable future for the planet, 
the people who live on it, for cities, and for our transportation systems, 
takes a strong, I would hope a leading role in debate and in the actions to 
follow.

 

As a contribution from here, in early January we shall be sending you the 2009 
State of the Commons Message, which as in last year's is largely devoted to 
outlining progress and intended future work in collaboration for the year ahead. 
I very much hope you will keep us informed of your projects and programs for 
the new year, and if you have any thoughts about possible collaboration or 
exchange, I want you to know that these will be warmly received here.

 

It is time to act.

 

Eric Britton

 

                 The New Mobility Agenda 

 

                Technology transforms time and space

                                             . . . and our minds

 

  New Mobility Partnerships  – http://www.newmobility.org 

      Europe:   8/10 rue Joseph Bara,     75006 Paris,  France    

        T:  +331 4326 1323  or  +339 7044 4179   Skype: ericbritton

      USA:      9440 Readcrest Drive   Los Angeles, CA  90210      

        T:  +1 310 601-8468    Skype: newmobility

 

 



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