Sam Liebeskind
@samliebeskind
product partnerships at New_Public; previously community & growth @ Geneva
Sam Liebeskind
Apologies and Copywriting
Working in technology means one thing above all else: chasing scale. There is a reason why much of the tech world is obsessed with growth. Free from physical constraints, digital systems can scale to an incomprehensible size. The appeal of conquering the engineering, design and business challenges of mega-scale is strong, the rewards immense. But
... See moremany “social network” products/platforms think they’re just tech, but really they’re socio-technical systems, and part of the reason they break “at scale” is bc while the software might scale, other systems like safety & moderation don’t necessarily scale as easily. A single player (e.g) calculator app is tech/software only, social platforms are more than that.
With technologies that can now facilitate discussion and decision-making among groups both big and small, we must ask if we can build new kinds of intermediating digital spaces, ones that provide perspective, attention, and action on shared rather than personal problems, while at the same time accommodating discussion and deliberation at local as... See more
Alex Pentland • Rediscovering the Pleasures of Pluralism: The Potential of Digitally Mediated Civic Participation — Digitalist Papers
Americans used to live within “place-based networks” of clubs, churches, schools, commerce, and recreation that overlapped, wrapping individuals in social support. Local networks protected individuals from isolation and loneliness.
Those networks have largely disappeared, replaced by networks based outside the local community. We shop and interact... See more
Those networks have largely disappeared, replaced by networks based outside the local community. We shop and interact... See more
Why we need to design community into neighborhoods
Why the Lab failed is a story of grand plans cast into turmoil by the disgrace of the grand planner himself. Among other things, it reveals how difficult it is to hold on to a place at the table, once you’ve got it (assuming you’d even want to). In the end, it boils down to a question: Is local government really the best place for public interest... See more
Amanda Kolson Hurley • One Mayor’s Downfall Killed the Design Project That Could’ve Changed Everything
urban planning and local government innovation
Story of San Diego Civic Innovation Lab (2015)
The two-tower era: efficient but static
The two-tower architecture has been the workhorse of modern recommendation systems, and for good reason: it’s elegant, scalable, and remarkably effective at learning patterns from massive amounts of data. Here’s how it worked for us once we deployed it in early 2024.
The system had two neural networks working... See more
The two-tower architecture has been the workhorse of modern recommendation systems, and for good reason: it’s elegant, scalable, and remarkably effective at learning patterns from massive amounts of data. Here’s how it worked for us once we deployed it in early 2024.
The system had two neural networks working... See more
