What a crazy week — we hosted Mobilize 2013, our conference that pondered about the future when everything is connected — and I went a little crazy in buying fountain pen inks, about six of them. Otherwise, I spent most of my waking time trying to find stories that were worth reading.

• Google cars versus public transit: the U.S. problem with public goods: Ethan Zuckerman argues that the U.S. needs better mass transportation technologies and strategies versus self driving cars. He makes some really valid points.
• Turnkey Tyranny, Surveillance and the Terror State: Forget the future, Trevor Paglen argues that we now live in a surveillance state.
• I Love You, David Byrne, But You’re Wrong: Rita King argues against David Byrne’s argument that he would leave “New York if the 1 percent succeeds in squeezing creativity out of New York.”
• My reaction to Zulily IPO filing and flash sales explained: Greg Bettinelli, who in the past has worked for various startups and is now a venture capitalist, explains the intricacies of one of the most watched ecommerce IPOs .
• Malcolm Gladwell’s Pseudo Profundity: New Republic/NewStatesman take Gladwell to task. I am guessing there is a new book on horizon.
• TED Talks are lying to you: Another take down of the creative class. I am neither creative nor have class so don’t know what Thomas Frank is talking about. Jokes aside, it’s a great read.
• Why bags made from crocodile skins are so expensive: Bloomberg explains.

And now a personal message: I am hosting GigaOM RoadMap, a one of its kind experience design conference with Katie Fehrenbacher on November 5th and 6th in San Francisco. I would love for you to join the two of us and we’ll have experts like Jack Dorsey (of Square and Twitter) and Kevin Systrom along with many more speakers tell us the role of design in our increasingly digital society. For details, visit the conference website.