Gabe Zichermann

The shooting of Trayvon Martin is a national tragedy that has left many Americans surprised and dismayed. For students of gay rights in the United States, the emerging facts of the case, and particularly how police appear to have handled it, are eerily familiar.

For the better part of...

Recently, the NTSB published a report calling for drivers to completely stop texting/calling while in motion. While coming up shy of a complete ban, the NTSB report was sobering to say the least. Of course, changing this kind of behavior with "traditional" approaches (TV spots, legislation) will come...

New York around Christmas is a pretty quiet place. In this city of fierce individualists, where millions come to seek their fortune precisely because it's not the small, shitty town they grew up in, the late December exodus can catch a newbie by surprise. You can practically bowl down Manhattan's...

The United States Postal Service is in trouble. Severe financial problems are looming due to pension funding issues and structural changes in the economy that move us away from physical mail. While I'd love to see a political change to the former, the latter seems inexorable. It's not...

It's been a wild week for the Occupy Wall Street movement. While there have been literally hundreds of insightful analyses of the protests and their reasons, one area that deserves a deeper dive is how we can use behavioral economics and motivational design to better understand the movement and ultimately...

Hurricane Irene has dominated the news on the US East Coast for the past week, and I was among those trapped (though not harmed) by her passing in New York City. Of all the different story angles told about Irene, the most intriguing has to be the story...

Even without protests in Cairo and Tea Party insouciance, there's no doubt that most governments eventually lose "sync" with their people. Much like the software process that keeps the contacts, music and photos on our phones up to date with our computers, syncing government with the governed is challenging from...

With the midterm elections now over, most of us are relieved to be free of the tea party media frenzy - if not the organization itself. Unfortunately, the technology industry is increasingly the setting for a similar conflict. And although they lack a name and formal organization, these provocateurs are...