What does the future hold for us in an energy-constrained economy?

Do you search for reliable, thoughtful people whose insights will help navigate the massive changes the world is undergoing? Are your efforts mostly futile? We understand your frustration. In a media environment long since overloaded with unfiltered information, it is becoming harder to sift through the crap that passes for reasoned, impartial analysis these days.

Last week was different.

The Globe Conference is a place one can expect to find people whose ideas will change things. And, ultimately, we weren't disappointed with Globe2012--although the most memorable insights, at least from the perspective of MESH CIties, came from a speaker not listed in the conference program.

Don't get us wrong. There were dozens of important discussions at the conference generated by exceptional people. But one stood taller than the rest. Maybe it was because this voice has earned its authority. With world-class success in science, academia, and business topped off with an Order of Canada, Dr. John McDonald commands attention when he speaks.

McDonald was the keynote at an informal gathering last Wednesday evening. Sponsored by law firm Gowlings, the event attracted a few hundred of the conference's attendees. It was a typical meet and greet occasion. Lots of people talking, eating, and drinking. Typical with events like this one, the crowd showed polite but distracted attention to the speakers. There was the inevitable "shushing" when people got loud.

Then Dr. McDonald took the stage.

We've never met the man before. It is hard to judge his physical age, especially since his reasoned ideas offer the clarity and persuasiveness of a person in their prime. When McDonald started to speak the background noise stopped. Everyone in the room knew this was a voice that had to be heard.

What he said was sobering.

For fifty years or so people in the Western world have lived lives of unparalleled

What Google did for organizing information online MESH Cities will do for aggregating, organizing, and implementing information about how we design 21st Century cities.

How is that possible? Well, we'd agree that Kevin Kelly is right about the Net being the largest most reliable machine ever built. And that machine doubles in its capabilities every two years or so. Layer onto that truth the phenomenon of any information-capable object being part of the so-called "Internet of Things", sprinkle in some smart city infrastructure, and you have the means to solve the big challenges of modern cities.

How does it work? City design has long been a hit or miss project. Big, top-down planners roll out solutions like Brasilia while bottom-up design advocates believe city building rises organically from neighbourhoods. Who is right? In a way, both are... but that's not the argument any more. Today we have the tools to understand in the most detailed and robust way ever how cities are actually used. MESH Cities can, like Google, look at entire populations, follow what they do in broad ways, and use complex algorithms to see what works in cities and what doesn't. The nice thing is that these information-driven solutions go beyond politics (that assertion will be the subject of another post later, but we have empirical evidence that governments and the people who elect them tend to believe big truths when they have access to them in a transparent marketplace).

MESH Cities' mission is to help build the information solutions that will be the basis of tomorrow's livable cities. This is not a fantasy. The tools are available to us just like they were available to Google at the end of the last century. What remains to be seen is what we do with them.