Neil Gershenfeld, Alan Gershenfeld, and Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld used December’s What’s Now: New York as the official New York launch party for their new book Designing Reality: How to Survive and Thrive in the Third Digital Revolution. The book brings the perspectives of science, technology, social science, and humanities to the third digital revolution—through three brothers who are not only observers of the revolution but also active participants in helping guide it.

The number of independent workers around the world—from well-paid contract workers to temp workers struggling to make ends meet—is growing rapidly. There are positive as well as negative sides to this evolution of the global economy. Given the inevitable advance of artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies in the coming decades, the lives of these independent workers could become far more complex and challenging unless we make immediate changes.

Charles Durrett and his wife, Kathryn McCamant, designed the first cohousing community in the United States in 1982, and coined the term in 1985. To date, their architecture firm has completed 51 cohousing projects around the world, and Durett and McCamant have authored a number of books about their experience living in and designing cohousing communities. Durrett is a steadfast proponent of the economic and social benefits of cohousing communities, which ideally consist of 50 or fewer adults (plus kids) who each live in their own houses, but come together in a communal house for some meals and other social activities. Cohousing communities can—but aren’t required to—share everything from cars, to lawnmowers, to crutches. “Once you start thinking about it logically, it simply makes the most sense to not buy one of everything,” Durrett says. Individuals and families living in cohousing communities, according to Durrett, can save an estimated $200 to $2400 monthly by cutting back on utilities, food, and gas costs. Durrett believes that this economic incentive is the primary factor that motivates cohousing, though sustainability is often the byproduct of both co-housing and sharing. But, Durrett warns, “if you come to the table with righteousness, you become a non-voice immediately.”

Megan Epler Wood, the director of the International Sustainable Tourism Initiative at the Harvard School of Public Health, says there’s “no question” that sharing existing city space is good for the environment. The demand to build new hotels is incredibly high, according to Epler Wood, given that tourism is growing at twice the rate of global GDP. Home sharing can negate the need for so many new hotels, and thus mitigate the harmful effects that superfluous construction has on the environment. Epler Wood, who rents a room in her own house through Airbnb, believes that the sharing economy can generate a more distributed form of income for areas that previously didn’t benefit from tourism. “The biggest change about renting a room in your home through Airbnb is that you don’t have to market at all,” says Epler Wood,

The third and final hour of our Treaty of San Francisco event focused on the world of tech, and how tech companies can help proactively build a better future of work. First to speak was Peter Schwartz, SVP for Strategic Planning at Salesforce. "Political and economic systems currently aren't working for the citizens or workers," Schwartz says. He believes in the economic philosophy also advocated by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: stakeholder capitalism (as opposed to shareholder capitalism). Schwartz rejects the presumption that businesses have to be magnanimous to be good leaders. They just have to be sensible. Schwartz believes it's possible that California's four key institutions—government, tech, labor, and education—can collaborate to formulate a new and improved future of work.

Richard Florida, City Lab Co-Founder and editor at large, sees the contemporary American city as a battleground for class conflict, and believes that the solution is more urbanism—specifically, what Florida terms “urbanism for all.” Florida’s recently published book, The New Urban Crisis, reexamines many of the ideas laid out in his bestselling 2002 book, The Rise of the Creative Class. According to Florida, the old urban crisis was based around the city center. As jobs and people moved to the suburbs, Florida says, the hole essentially fell out of the donut. The new urban crisis is one of inequality, and one that’s partly caused by success.

Author and entrepreneur Tim Leberecht wrote the international bestseller The Business Romantic: Give Everything, Quantify Nothing, and Create Something Greater Than Yourself two years ago, in part as a response to our rampant tendency to over-quantify ourselves and our work. Leberecht said that because he used the term “romance” in the title, some people confused his message with “love what you do and do what you love,” but that feels too narrow to Leberecht. “What romance means is to bring your full selves to work,” Leberecht said, including negative emotions. “When we make space for that, we’ll have a greater chance of being human at work.” Leberecht believes that, particularly given the current transition to a more automated world, companies need to realize that efficiency alone isn’t sufficient,

Nikki Silvestri, Founder and CEO of Soil and Shadow, made a strong case for a definition of sustainability in which ecology, economy, and equity are inextricably intertwined. This is the definition of sustainability she initially learned, Silvestri said, and the reason why it appealed to her much more than environmentalism. In international work, according to Silvestri, the three are rarely detangled, yet in the United States, many companies or nonprofits attend to only one or two of the three legs, rather than taking a more holistic view of the whole system.

April Rinne, a new economy advisor and investor who has traveled to 100 countries and worked in half of them, sees the Internet as a great leveler. It lowers barriers to entry, Rinne explains, in terms of applying to jobs, being self-employed, and starting a business. “It’s never been easier to be your own boss,” Rinne says. This plays out in different ways and at different times in various countries around the world, depending on the level of Internet penetration in a particular country, as well as pre-existing regulations and social safety nets.