Baowen Chen

Systems of Social Interdependence

I am interested in the power of information technology to improve social and environmental awareness through well-designed and developed systems. Our urban fabric is collectively shaped by people's behaviors in their day-to-day life, yet those behavioral choices are mostly made by individual entities. Individuals make choices whose result, good or bad, all people should share. The result? A deteriorating urban living environment. I believe there is a need to bridge the link and to create accountability. By today’s technologies, the interaction between people’s choices and the urban fabric is more comprehensible than ever. It is time to put the concept of social interdependence into the context of urban/transport planning and system design and to make bigger picture easier seen and felt by the people.

Urban Informatics

Urban informatics is the use of information and communications technology to better understand metropolitan needs, challenges, and opportunities.

I also believe, with all those smart technologies, we can definitely do more regarding urban life. Through crowd-sourced data collection and reporting, traditional way of large-scale & time-consuming survey and census can become a thing of the past. With more and more public data being released for better management and higher efficiency of urban systems, I think there are still a lot to be done.

Randomness of Life

And so, the coin was thrown in the air, turning many times, landing sometimes heads and other times tails. Man, the measure of all things, speaks through my mouth and narrates in my own language that which my eyes have seen. It is likely that out of 10 possible heads I have seen only one true tail, or vice versa. In fact, it is possible, and there are no excuses, for these lips can only describe what these eyes actually see. Is it that our whole vision was never quite complete, that it was too transient or not always well-informed? Were we too uncompromising in our judgments?

Our eyes cannot possibly see everything, such as nano-level materials and stars outside of our vision. Even if we can see a thing, we probably only happen to have seen it by chance.

What we believe is more important than what we see. And, losing the ability to constantly question ourselves is the last thing I would want to happen.

Passion: The Only Thing You Gotta Have