Peter Vander Auwera - Issue #72

The very best

About debunking the hysteria about the future of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

About companies and jobs: rather than being treated as assets that companies seek to invest in, people have become costs to be minimized. Very good essay on the role of a company in society.

About the key management capability of not being in control but to participate and influence the formation of sense making and meaning.

About AI and the need to preserve Human Agency

About the bullshit of design thinking and much more. If Google Image search is your sole barometer, “design thinking uses just one tool: 3M Post-Its,” says Pentagram partner Natasha Jen. “Why did…

About invisible technology. For a digital beauty brand, cosmetics live not on you, but with you in images

About Sensemaking is not about becoming better machines

Also about sensemaking and judgement and technology only being the agent of our desires

There's often a line out the door. It's not surprising. The ice cream is really good, the portions are enormous, and a waffle cone costs less than three Canadian dollars. And it's served with a smile, almost a grin. It's...

The drumbeat of science, technology, engineering, and math has picked up tempo, but a crisis of culture has emerged from its cadence. As we embark ever more aggressively on the path to master machines, we are forgetting the very foundations of what it means to be human. As we seek to optimize every process, collect...

What explains the power of charismatic leaders? Elizabeth Lunbeck introduces Freud's classic on the nature of mass psychology

So-called real Americans are screwing up America.

How we see others is a reflection of what and how we think, our personal culture, and the influence of our environment and social interactions on us, the culture where we live and work. Culture is dynamic and determines what and how we acquire and maintain as knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits. The science of networks pervades everything we do ― nothing happens in isolation, most occurrences and developments are connected, caused by, and interacting with a large number of other pieces of a complex puzzle. Added with culture, we have the potential for exponential combinations and variations in our interactions. It's a miracle we connect at all, but there is a silver lining ― our ability to be present to each other. Networking is a lot more than a business strategy to advance our professional position. It's also a way to test...

Data and Society

If you're interviewing for a graduate position with an investment bank for 2017 and you haven't heard of HireVue, wake up.

Opinion: The power of platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter has prompted a call for decentralized social networks. Good luck with that.

As teachers launch personal brands and cast themselves as influencers, start-ups and tech giants alike are racing to cultivate them to spread their wares.

Zeitgeist

The EU is an existential, not a transactional project

It has taken me longer than I thought to write this. I had wanted to share some of what I learned from our expedition in a way that was constructive and positive, but that's proven to be a challenge. With what I've seen and read this summer, it’s difficult to feel encouraged and upbeat. After…

Sex scandals, rows over terrorism, fears for its impact on social policy: the backlash against Big Tech has begun. Where will it end?

Once the most celebrated American companies of all time, Eastman Kodak built the town of Rochester, New York. It also built the lives of its employees, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands at…

Innovation

It was sometime in 2013, and Tristan Harris and I were worrying about perverse incentives in the tech and media industry. We were having private conversations on topics which are now mainstream: fake…

Leaders can encourage their organizations to construct their own futures by empowering internal iconoclasts and establishing a sense of urgency.

The new Nike Makers’ Experience in New York gives us a glimpse of retail’s future.

Future of work

The smart factory represents a leap forward from more traditional automation to a fully connected and flexible system—one that can use a constant stream of data from connected operations and production systems to learn and adapt to new demands.

(Want to get insights into emerging tech on a more regular basis? Sign up for the official Traction Report newsletter here). We are at the beginning of a major transition in the relationship between…

JOB juggling, three-day weekends, interviews via virtual reality, and roles we havent dreamt up yet welcome to the year 2030.

Internet Culture

Alphabet Inc. is forming a new holding company designed to finalize its evolution from Google, the web search giant, into a corporate parent with distinct arms that protects individual businesses in far-flung fields like health care and self-driving cars.

FinTech

xCurrent enables banks & payment providers the full capability to instantly send & receive cross-border payments across RippleNet’s global payments network.

I'm not your lawyer, this is not legal advice. It's not investment advice, either. One of the nice things about stepping away from blockchain for a bit to get my U.S. legal qualifications in order is that I don't have to sit through meetings or phone calls with venture capitalists anymore. With a few notable…

Buzz vs. Life Changing Innovations? New risks and pitfalls. A Systemic, a Consumer and an Innovator point of view. A couple of months ago, when I read Barclays’ CEO Jes Staley say “Fintech won’t…

In a document, regulators said new projects that raise cash or other virtual currencies through cryptocurrencies will be banned, report says.

Crypto markets are frothy. Earlier this month, CNBC reported that crypto ICOs (“initial coin offerings” for the uninitiated) have raised more than $1.2B for startups, surpassing VC. What happens next?

Around 400 BC, Sparta captured silver mines controlled by Athens and released the slaves. This caused a shortage of silver that forced Athens to issue new bronze coins with a thin plating of silver…

There’s been a lot of questions about whether or not Square aspires to become a bank. Now that speculation can be laid to rest. Square will file an..

You can't go wrong with either service, but you may want to consider the specific features that could make you favor one service over the other.

Proposals to bring transparency to the fundraising market come just days after China’s government declared ICOs illegal

Many banking executives aren't just out of touch with consumers and the external market. They are out of touch internally, with each other.

Rivals R3 and Ripple Labs sue each other in options dispute

AI, Robots, Algorythms

North Korea ‘low on our list of concerns’ says Tesla boss following Vladimir Putin’s statement that whoever leads in AI will rule world

Uber Engineering introduces Michelangelo, our machine learning-as-a-service system that enables teams to easily build, deploy, and operate ML solutions.

An algorithm deduced the sexuality of people on a dating site with up to 91% accuracy, raising tricky ethical questions

I got a glimpse into the future world of our robot overlords today. It was nervy at times. I watched two robots go on stage at a tech event to "debate" the..

To live in harmony with AI we must create a modern Magna Carta

Post Capitalism

Beautiful experiences lift the human spirit. They say, optimistically, life is worthwhile. If we can be more beautiful in our thoughts and in our actions, we can learn to live and work more…

Art related

Delvaux Miniatures have Belgitude

Artist Zach Lieberman uses Apple's ARKit to make audio recording that you can see in space.

vincent leroy slows down time and displays his mechanism, using the same technology as his boreal halo: inflatable with steel cables in slow rotation.

A survey of approaches to playing music live accompanied by visuals. Includes excerpts from the Ableton Loop summit and videos of artist performances

Other

A new Guinness World Record was set for the most robots dancing simultaneously by WL Intelligent Technology in Guangzhou, China with 1,069 robots dancing.