Sustainable Planet

The Sustainability of Proximity

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Rob and Kaihan join Kimberly to talk about their new book, Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life. Highlighting the failures that laid the foundation for the success stories of how to attain P = 0, Rob and Kaihan offer ways to bring consumers and producers closer together while achieving greater sustainability in the process. Innovations as diverse as specialty lab-grown meats, 3D-printed inoculations, and virtual reality implants show how much more immersed we are in a world of on-demand, proximate goods and services than we might realize.

Rob, Kaihan, and Kimberly spend time considering:

  • If Covid-19 was the catalyst or just another building block toward digital adoption
  • Whether proximity technologies are going to put most of us out of work
  • Whether increased demand for minerals will be just as exploitative an industry as the fossil fuel it’s likely to replace
  • Whether we colonize Mars because it’s one more planet humans can (irresponsibly) exploit
  • How both developing and developed countries can benefit from the leapfrogging proximity technologies
  • The possibility that AI takes over the world, justifying the fears of Campaign to Stop Killer Robots
  • Ways businesses can integrate proximity into their strategies
  • For more on her thoughts about Proximity, check out Kimberly’s Substack post


    • Follow Rob Wolcott on X, LinkedIn, and his website

    Follow Kaihan Krippendorff on X, LinkedIn, and his website

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    Sustainable PlanetBy Kimberly Weir