Petervan’s Delicacies – Week 11 Feb 2019

 

Edition-136 of Delicacies. As usual, max 5 articles that I found interesting and worth re-reading. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Enjoy!

• About a status quo with no illusion of ethics, morals, or humanity: maintaining this status quo is the core operating model of global management consultancies like McKinsey. By @jharche https://jarche.com/2019/02/extracting-human-value/
• Like the medium is the message, “platform-scale social technology is a political ideology in the conventional sense. Its nature dictates a particular political “grain” and it is hard, perhaps futile, to try to go against directly.” by @ribbonfarm  https://mailchi.mp/ribbonfarm/politically-opinionated-platforms?e=951a16bd6f
• A New Science-Fiction Story About Surveillance in China. Technology is making people unhinged and violent. Can an algorithm stop them? https://medium.com/mit-technology-review/the-reunion-a-new-science-fiction-story-about-surveillance-in-china-903815ce2134
• Albert Wenger is done with privacy. As it cannot be solved technically, and not be enforces afterward, let’s just get rid of it. Controversial at least. https://continuations.com/post/182734896485/world-after-capital-getting-over-privacy-contd
• About the digital dark age becoming a reality when we mistake the internet as our reality. By @Mike_K_Spencer https://medium.com/futuresin/the-advent-of-the-digital-dark-age-446d35ee7643

If you can’t get enough of these and want more than 5 articles, you can hang on to the firehose, the extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE. Subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan

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Mario Klingemann’s neural network art

Artist Mario Klingemann’s groundbreaking piece of Artificial Intelligence (AI) generates a never-ending real-time stream of original art.

I found this mesmerizing video, where the artist explains how it works:

 

“If you hear somebody play the piano, would you ever say “the piano is the artist”? No. Same thing here: just because it is a complicated mechanism, it does not change the roles.”

The neural network is the brushes that I use, but in the end, it is always the feedback between me the artist and the medium and the material.

“It’s like a child that I can say “ok, now you go out in the world alone, and I can trust that you will keep on doing what I hope you would do, even if I am not sitting next to and still able to change something.”

That’s a hard moment for me when I can say “Ok, now I take my hands off the keyboard, and let it out in the world.

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Petervan’s Delicacies – Week 4 Feb 2019

 

Edition-135 of Delicacies. As usual, max 5 articles that I found interesting and worth re-reading. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Enjoy!

• A brain-frying review (long read) by Evgeny Morozov of Shoshana Zuboff’s new book on “surveillance capitalism”. Take the time to read and let it sink in. It will be worth your time: https://thebaffler.com/latest/capitalisms-new-clothes-morozov
• World-renowned security guru Bruce Schneier gives the arguments why cryptocurrencies are useless. Blockchain solutions are frequently much worse than the systems they replace. Here’s why: https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/
• About everything that is wrong with management. Niels Pflaeging is a passionate advocate for a “new breed“ of leadership and profound change in organizations. He is a “Management Exorcist”. Enjoy this great talk, very enjoyable and quite funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lRWp7moJ2U&feature=youtu.be
• Tim O-Reilly lists pros and cons of Reid’s “Blitzscaling” promises: it’s not a recipe for success—it’s survivorship bias masquerading as a strategy: https://qz.com/1540608/the-problem-with-silicon-valleys-obsession-with-blitzscaling-growth/?utm_medium=daily-brief&utm_source=email
• About the importance of silence: http://canscorpionssmoke.com/2019/02/04/sixty-shades-of-silence/

If you can’t get enough of these and want more than 5 articles, you can hang on to the firehose, the extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE. Subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan

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Big data and surveillance in cities: convenience vs tracking

Sidewalk Labs is Google’s / Alphabet Inc.’s urban innovation organisation. Its goal is to improve urban infrastructure through technological solutions, and tackle issues such as cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage (Wikipedia). Looking at their website, it’s full of ambitious goals: reimagining cities to improve quality of life, people-centered design, street safety, affordable housing, sustainability, people first, etc. In other words: do the right thing.

The Intercept takes a deeper look and presents a more skeptical perspective: instead of the usual statistical data, the project uses real-time location data, but it’s unclear where does data come from. The Intercept is also raising questions about how Sidewalk Labs sets limits in regards to the type and quality of consent; and – more worrying – its potential for corporate and government surveillance.

“If Sidewalk Labs has access to people’s unique paths of movement prior to making its synthetic models, wouldn’t it be possible to figure out who they are, based on where they go to sleep or work?”

“Replica is a perfect example of surveillance capitalism, profiting from information collected from and about us as we use the products that have become a part of our lives. We need to start asking, as a society, if we are going to continue to allow business models that are built around exploiting our information without meaningful consent”

Initially posted at Futurist Gerd

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Petervan’s Delicacies – Week 28 Jan 2019

Edition-134 of Delicacies. As usual, max 5 articles that I found interesting and worth re-reading. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Enjoy!

• About power and responsibility in creating alternate synthetic minds. A philosophical take by Susan Schneider: https://www.edge.org/conversation/susan_schneider-the-future-of-the-mind
• About the wrestle of business leaders to stay honest with themselves or to give in to greed and growth. By Business Romantic Tim Leberecht: https://medium.com/@timleberecht/purpose-washing-hustle-culture-and-automation-business-at-a-crossroads-9897006d00ec
• About fighting “embedded growth obligation”​ and the “Intellectual Dark Web”. By Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital: https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/eric-weinstein-intellectual-dark-web?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2
• About a redefinition of work in the age of artificial intelligence. A very good report with @jhagel Deloitte Centre for the Edge: https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/technology-and-the-future-of-work/what-is-work.html
• One more about responsibility and anticipating what could go wrong and the role for VCs and entrepreneurs: https://hbr.org/2019/01/the-era-of-move-fast-and-break-things-is-over

If you can’t get enough of these and want more than 5 articles, you can hang on to the firehose, the extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE. Subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan

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The currency of humanity (Joi Ito’s Practice of Change)

As mentioned in my announcement post, I have joined The Futures Agency as a curator on the topic of Digital Ethics. Together with Futurist and Author Gerd Leonhard, I am curating a weekly newsletter (Subscribe HERE), and some regular posts and podcasts on the topic. I will start re-sharing some of these posts on this Petervan Site. Here is one we did on Joi Ito’s “Practice of Change”.

In late 2018, Joi Ito, Director MIT Media Lab presented his draft Phd. dissertation on the “Practice of Change“. Organised in 6 chapters, he articulates how to intervene in complex systems. It’s a fascinating, long and deep read on how to keep our humanity at heart in this fast changing world. What is refreshing in this dissertation is that Joi is looking at a possible future where growth is not the main driver. He also seems to drop the notion of progress – in the sense of always more and better – and suggests a critical design to enable human flourishing.

A key graphic in Joi’s thinking is Krebs Cycle of Creativity, a synergy between science, engineering, design, and art. Joi expands on the motivations in such systems based on “currencies” as in “current-seas”, a term coined by Arthur Brock, founder of the Metacurrency Project and Holochain projects.

It really gets interesting when Joi explains the concept of “markets of currencies”. In economic markets, the currency is money. The Internet’s currency is attention. What would be the currency of humanity? (Hint: maybe happiness…?)

Initially published at Futurist Gerd

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