My other favorite example of Hong Kong’s insane vertical organization: on my last night there, we went to a spectacular restaurant called Aqua on top of a 28-story building in Kowloon. Restaurants on top of buildings are not unheard of in Manhattan, of course, but this building had a twist: there were restaurants on most of the other floors as well. You got in the elevator, and there was a long list of options: floor 20 for the Italian joint, floor 21 for some great sushi, floor 22 for Cantonese.
The Basics
- I'm a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of five books. In early 2007 I went and foolishly got myself a day job running the hyperlocal community site, outside.in that I co-founded the year before. We spend most of the year in Park Slope, Brooklyn, though I'm on the road a lot giving talks. (You can see the full story here.) Personal correspondence should go to sbj6668 at earthlink dot net. Media requests should go to Matthew.Venzon at us.penguingroup dot com. If you're interested in having me speak at an event, drop a line to Wesley Neff at the Leigh Bureau (WesN at Leighbureau dot com.)
Live SBJ
StoryMap
Recent Essays
- The War On Error
Discover column on the web's bottom-up response to Katrina. - Air Purifiers For Data Smog
Discover column on software that helps you focus. - Why The Web Is Like A Rain Forest.
Discover column on Web 2.0. - Finding "Lost"
London Times piece on the mysterious hit show "Lost." - The Urban Long Tail
Discover column on the diversity of cities.
My Books
The Ghost Map
The latest: the story of a terrifying outbreak of cholera in 1854 London 1854 that ended up changing the world. An idea book wrapped around a page-turner. I like to think of it as a sequel to Emergence if Emergence had been a disease thriller. You can see a trailer for the book here.Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter
The title says it all. This one sparked a slightly insane international conversation about the state of pop culture -- and particularly games. There were more than a few dissenters, but the response was more positive than I had expected. And it got me on The Daily Show, which made it all worthwhile.Mind Wide Open : Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life
My first best-seller, and the only book I've written in which I appear as a recurring character, subjecting myself to a battery of humiliating brain scans. The last chapter on Freud and the neuroscientific model of the mind is one of my personal favorites.Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
The story of bottom-up intelligence, from slime mold to Slashdot. Probably the most critically well-received all my books, and the one that has influenced the most eclectic mix of fields: political campaigns, web business models, urban planning, the war on terror.Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate
My first. The book I wrote instead of finishing my dissertation. Still in print almost a decade later, and still relevant, I think. But I haven't read it in a while, so who knows what's in there!
Recent Posts
- Does Apple Think Multitasking Is A Bug Not A Feature? And Other Questions....
- CNN Invests in Outside.In
- Brian Eno Renames My Book
- Searching The "Small Here"
- My fall speaking schedule
- Skim and Plunge
- OIP and the news ecosystem
- Me On Twitter On TIME On Twitter
- eBooks in the WSJ
- Bill Clinton On The Invention Of Air
I remember staying at the infamous Chungking mansions in Hong Kong - a huge high-rise with one or two back packer hostels on each floor. Really weird setup. And completely cramped elevator, with waiting lines. I spent a very unsanitary night, but it only set me back 50 HKD (=9 USD), which is very cheap in Hong Kong! (Coming from Mainland China, I was scared by all the "Western prices").
Posted by: Stian Haklev | December 08, 2005 at 10:36 AM