Peter Vander Auwera - Issue #13

Best of the last weeks

When you see the responses from the public in Germany these days you can see that at this point, the third response is shaping how people respond collectively. That does not mean that there aren't right wing people who believe that the first response (regression) is the only way.

We live in an age of simplistic explanations. We build simple systemic models and mono cultures to guide standardization…

The argument Too many people are talking about digital as if the binary world began yesterday. Are companies really in the grip of digital transformation?

Updated below

It’s time to make a choice.

Big Data News, Events, and Expert Opinion

If Western countries want to disprove the dire forecasts of Karl Marx, we must think creatively about how to make the middle class more prosperous and secure.

From innovation to vaccinations, Bill and Melinda Gates address some of the most crucial issues affecting the developing world

Here is an essay version of my class notes from Class 1 of Stanford University’s CS183C — Technology-enabled Blitzscalin…

In the good old days, when most of today’s most senior executives got their business education, only three ways to acquire sustainable competitive

“What gives life to and sustains the corporation resides on the 'outside,' not within its direct control, and the customer is the primary mover of those external realities and forces. It is the prospect of providing a customer with value that gives the corporation purpose, and it is the satisfaction of the customer's requirements that gives it results.” [Peter Drucker, 1954] We are customers Some of us are also employees, managers, CEOs, investors, partners, and service providers to the very same organizations that produce and sell what we buy. With smartphones in our pockets, tools we can access in our...

While wages stagnate, stock prices rise and the rich get richer.

The culprit behind the Volkswagen emissions scandal may be the nature of engineering organizations themselves, Paul Kedrosky writes.

Internet Trends

As interest in influencer marketing grows, columnist Azeem Azhar explores what makes someone influential and how you can measure those characteristics.

Facebook today announced a partnership with French satellite operator Eutelsat to provide broadband internet to sub-Saharan Africa. Under a multiyear agreement with satellite communications firm...

It wasn’t Professor Plum in the Library with the Candlestick. So what killed Twitter?

Top 10 strategic trends 2016 (credit: Gartner, Inc.) At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo today (Oct. 8), Gartner, Inc. highlighted the top 10 technology trends

In the social media age, we know how to connect: but are we forgetting how to talk to each other? Leading psychologist Sherry Turkle wants to fight back

Machine Intelligence

We should acknowledge what computers do better than we do, and get on with the business of being human.

Machines of Loving Grace: The Quest for Common Ground Between Humans and Robots. By John Markoff. Ecco; 400 pages; $26.99. The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for...

The artificial intelligence we will directly see only scratches the surface.

It's a question of morality. There is no way to prove that one entity is conscious and another is not. Virtual characters can claim to be, but that does

Plenty of talk about what we want from artificial intelligent systems, but what do we actually mean by AI? From a legal and regulation point of view, we do need a definition.

Sensors and Robotics are two exponential technologies that will disrupt a multitude of billion-dollar industries.

The future of robot-human relations will be better when robots come with inbuilt imperfections.

Demarcating the parameters between assistance and automation has never been more central to human well-being.

FinTech

Starling Bank: a new FinTech Bank in the UK

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has identified blockchain technology as one of its six mega-trends in a new report.

Devie Mohan looks at the three major areas of investment by banks, and how investments impact fintech startups.

Workplace of the future

Last week’s revelations of the lengths Amazon goes to monitor staff come amid growing evidence that thousands of other companies are using technology to check on workers

Are you one of the millions of Americans opting into "job sprawl" over a short commute?

What innovation is today and how what we create ends up creating us.

Mindfulness matters, but make no mistake: Corporations are co-opting the idea to disguise the ways they kill us

“Unicorn” is the term du jour in Silicon Valley, used to describe a startup with a valuation of more than a billion doll…

Other

The company didn’t think big enough.

Kickstarter is Now a Public Benefit Corporation I am super excited that Kickstarter is no longer an INC but rather now a PBC, a Public Benefit Corporation. This means the company has changed its...