that embrace this philosophy will stand a much better have created an equal split between inhabitants of cities
chance at prosperity long after organizations adhering and rural areas for the first time in human history. This
to the traditional model have run aground. general trend will continue for the next several decades
It is difficult to visualize and prepare for a coming and will produce a very urbanized world.
phase change before the event, when it seems as if In 1950, New York City was the only megacity on the
chaos and entropy are increasing boundlessly. Conse- planet, with 10 million occupants. Today, there are 25
quently, when we originally shared our comprehensive megacities that are mostly in developing countries. To
vision with potential investors and other stakeholders, verify this trend, we need only to look at the rapid ur-
we were told that our ideas are scattered, unfocused, banization in China to see the mass migration of the ru-
and without direction. Yet it is precisely this model of ral poor to urban areas for economic opportunity. Pop-
scattered, distributed components working together as ulation experts project that most of the urban growth
a global information system that creates value in the will occur in Asia and Africa for the next several dec-
Syntiant network. ades. Simultaneously, humanity’s thirst for personal
We are committed to overcoming the challenge of mobility will continue to grow. History shows that, as
limited information access and striving to bridge the countries develop economically, so does their use of
gap by creating a global, user-built community. We be- four-wheeled motorized transportation.
lieve the tipping point is soon upon us for a more con- The world’s automobile fleet is currently estimated at
sumer-driven, user-focused world in social networks. 800 million cars that serve the 7.8 billion people living
on Planet Earth. In the developed world, roughly seven
About the Author out of 10 people own a car, whereas in the developing
Jason P. Clark is a serial entrepreneur in the field of network infra- world, it’s two out of 10. The continued economic de-
structures, multimedia, and virtual-reality content. He’s the creator velopment of Brazil, Russia, India, and China will fuel
of three international patents for uni-directional audio navigation,
the growth of this fleet to more than 1 billion cars by
which were later purchased by Hewlett-Packard. At age 32, he’s
2020. The continued use of this personal transportation
developed and acquired funding for more than five start-up
companies. He’s currently chief technical officer for Syntiant, model is simply unsustainable given the combination
www.syntiant.com/. of energy inefficiency, environmental consequences of
The author acknowledges Brad Thompson, CEO of Altruent, fossil-fuel usage, potential disruptions to fuel supplies,
and Elliot Kulakow, partner/VP Technology R&D at Syntiant, as urban sprawl created by automobile reliance, and con-
contributors to this article. Without their distributive intelligence gestion caused by inadequate alternative modes of
and vision, this article would not have been possible. transport. What we need is to radically rethink the
problem by examining not only the automobile itself,
but also how it is used in cities (where most of u