Peter Vander Auwera - Issue #49

The very best

Locking the Web Open: A Call for a Distributed Web

About loose and tight synchronisation and the principles behind missionary tactical contracts.

The concept of software is much broader and deeper than simply substituting software for gears and levers. It is a way of telling stories and creating agents that can take on a life of their own.

Machines that truly understand language would be incredibly useful. But we don’t know how to build them.

About how the 0,001% can/should/must/may look at the 99,99%

new version of Mathematica and the Wolfram Language

Follow the Stripe blog for product announcements, feature updates, new countries, and technical posts about payments.

Over the last few decades, globalization has created great wealth and brought millions out of poverty.  Today, a combination of technology, politics, and s

Digital technology and new competitors are disrupting the banking industry and fragmenting its structure. An emerging new architecture called industry stacks reflects a shift from competition among vertically integrated companies to horizontal competition at each layer of the banking business.

Welcome back. In part 1, we covered a general framework for how to make sense of paradigm shifts in the world. The critical task is to…

The time has come to build a better Web.

Data and Society

I dread to think (but cannot help!) of a cybernetic dystopia where mammals rule computers rule mammals living in a sad world with no humanity algorithms polluting our water and our sky. I dread to think (but cannot help!) of a cybernetic garbage dump filled with dross and electronics where deer are killed by protective…

Making sense of the mountain-loads of data being captured about individuals could see a shift in the way companies market to consumers and give rise to a new industry.

As a software intern at The Times this summer, I’ve been lucky to work on a project that both enables data insights and serves as a nice example of how product and technology teams can support our mission in the newsroom.

Zeitgeist

A decade after Greece hosted the world’s greatest sporting extravaganza, many of its once-gleaming Olympic venues now lie abandoned

Watch an excerpt from Future Suspended, a documentary on the privatisation of Athens that accompanied the 2004 Olympics

Innovation

Highly capable firms are often reluctant to take risks, but they have much to gain if they try to innovate.

I’ve been spending the last week in Calvanico, a small rural town near Salerno, one of the most beautiful provinces in Southern Italy. ¶ I’ve been there b…

Future of work

The international design and innovation consultancy applies its famed methodology to its own office space

Our age is not short of great ideas — of ways new technology can be applied to fix global industries and increase prosperity. But we are…

Internet Culture

Beautiful women with laser boobs. If you asked me “What’s Playboy’s future,” that would’ve been my guess.

I live in the future. I drive a Tesla electric vehicle, which controls the steering wheel on highways. My house in Menlo Park, Calif., is a “passive” home that expends minimal energy on heating or cooling. With the solar panels on my roof, my energy bills are close to zero — and that includes charging the car. […]

FinTech

An absolute must read

Blockchain technology is rapidly developing. Content on the subject increased tenfold between 2015-2016. Here are the top 20 books and whitepapers...

Over the past few months Alibaba's 'Finance Cloud' has gained significant traction with an estimated 40+ banks subscribing to some, if not all, of the...

AI, Robots, Algorythms

I Google search, therefore I bot.

Now it's bot against bot.

A team of researchers has found that Volkswagen stores secret keys in car components that leave almost all its vehicles since 1995 vulnerable to theft.

A few years ago, Michael Osborne and a colleague at the Oxford Martin School caused a stir when they published research suggesting that 47% of jobs in the US are at risk of being replaced with robot labor. Subsequent studies suggest closer to 10% of jobs in developed countries could be automated, which is only marginally less...

Overcoming Bots

Post Capitalism

Trillions of yuan worth of capital raised.

Bill Gates reviews the book “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” by author Robert Gordon.

The tech giants thought they would beat old businesses but the health and finance industries are using data troves to become more, not less, resilient

Art related

architects and institutions are turning labs into places for grand statements

Other