I was talking with Ron Blatman, the Producer of an upcoming TV series, Saving the City: Remaking the American Metropolis. I’m a person who is always working hard to understand how we can improve the quality of life of our cities. Therefore, I was very interested to get his take on this, to see if there are patterns others can use.

As you can imagine, the answer is not simple.

Ron Blatman, the executive producer at Saving the City: Remaking the American Metropolis TV series https://savingthecity.org​

Another day, another vulnerability, another cyber attack - and you are again the causality.

Two stories for you this week to illustrate my point.

Reading about Harmony, it triggered the memory of the famous song by Sir Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder.

Which kind of Harmony, you ask? I mean HarmonyOS. That’s the operating system developed by Huawei and it won't definitely be part of any harmonious relationship, though it might get into a war. The weapon of choice? Your mobile phone.

Recently I got asked a question by a regular reader of this newsletter: where do I get my news (so I can think about it and share my insights with you every week)? Or to put it another way, how do I support my learning?

Perseverance has landed safely on Mars.

This is what $3 billions will get you. An SUV size rover riding on Mars, looking for life. You can experience a similar thing when you drive your SUV through Death Valley looking for a hitchhiker. Mars is just colder or cooler. You can compare the temperatures (and many other things) between Earth and Mars at NASA's Mars website.

In the world of technology, there are things which are getting better, faster, bigger with every new release. Our computers are faster. They have more memory, more storage, more pixels. And then there are things which swing like a pendulum.

When the swing takes long enough, people forget about what came before. They claim that this time, things are completely new or different.

Facebook Inc., with revenue of almost $86 billion and profit of $30 billion, depends on one thing and one thing only. It is one simple thing. A pixel.

It is the one pixel which is embedded in every site you visit and in every mobile app you download to your mobile phone.

You have to remove “Don't be evil” from your corporate tagline. Next, replace it with an unspoken rule: “Do the right thing (for myself).”

Then start providing a free service. Well, almost free. in exchange for your user’s souls, you give them the ability to search for whatever they desire, every day.

Do customers actually care about privacy enough for companies to pay attention? In recent years, the verdict seems to be a resounding “no.” That could be changing, though.