Greg Lindsay

Downtowns are done. The office is dead. Delivery is the future. At least two of these are wrong – but why? The pandemic may be over, but work-from-anywhere is here to stay. That doesn’t mean the end of the office, but whole new ways of working closer to home and together with more fluid buildings and organizations to match. That, in turn, means rethinking who and what cities are for – forget downtowns vs. suburbs and imagine new uses for empty offices and packed streets. Behind the scenes, technology is turning restaurants and retail inside-out through deliveries, “dark stores” and automation. And above all lurks the threat of climate change and the opportunity of “the Metaverse” to transform the Internet as we know it. Drawing on his research and foresight work for Cornell Tech, Climate Alpha, and MIT’s Future Urban Collectives Lab, Greg Lindsay explores the post-pandemic landscape and explains why the future won’t be as socially-distanced as you might think.

“The Metaverse” may be the future, but what is it? While Mark Zuckerberg hopes you’ll never leave your home again, in reality the next generation of the Internet will beckon us outside, into a world in which information is everywhere — if you can see it. Welcome to the real-world metaverse, where you can change reality like changing a channel. How will this change our relationship to each other and to the world? How will these reality channels transform where we live, how we shop, and how we move through enchanted worlds? Drawing on his “Metaverse Metropolis” project at Cornell Tech university, Greg Lindsay offers real advice and lessons from the technologists, designers, and experts building this real-world metaverse.

Nearly half of Americans were victims of a climate disaster last year, whether fire, floods, heat waves, or hurricanes with insurable losses of more than $100 billion. As people wake up to the realities of climate change and the growing threat to their homes, livelihoods, and families, many are beginning to ask, “Where should I live someday?” Fortunately, we have answers. Combining climate science with demographics and using artificial intelligence, we can predict tomorrow’s more resilient regions. Climate change isn’t just a story about mounting catastrophes, but also opportunity — if we harness the right technologies, policies, and political will to build back better elsewhere. Drawing on his work with the startup Climate Alpha, Greg Lindsay offers cutting edge analysis and maps to explain why and where a warming world may still have shelter for us all.