Petervan's Delicacies - Issue #113

The very best

About the dystopian deficiencies of capability maturity models (CMMs) such as Lean Six Sigma, Lean Startup, Agile/Scrum. Fantastic read. Very very good.

About the Quartz 2050 project, an exploration of creative solutions to the challenges of urban living: stories of innovation by highlighting unique buildings in eight international cities.

About the need to perform marketing to machines in a very near future

Experts have debated whether reality as we know it might be a simulation. Great (long) week-end read.

About children's (and adults') smartphone addiction. Almost poetic - but it hurts - reflection by Sam Kriss.

At their earliest years, children are able to master some of the most complex motor tasks, through intuitive/playful engagement with the world. Does the control-oriented approach to child rearing - when the adult inevitably intervenes - normalize the reductionism we're to resist?

The Arch Mission Foundation is a non-profit organization that maintains a backup of planet Earth, designed to continuously preserve and disseminate humanity’s most important knowledge across time and space.

Umair Haque, who has to live mostly in the dark, asks if night itself is under threat.

This post describes how incumbent industries can be transformed by platforms, beyond the data buzz

Life is good. The marginal cost of all technology plummetted to near Zero 25 years ago and since then your want for anything was eradicated. Everything except travel. But what’s the point in…

A critical look at Silicon Valley’s effects on the mental health of its youth and the tech industry’s indifference toward the homeless crisis in the region.

It’s the question we’re always asking: what’s next? Futurist Gerd Leonhard tries to answer this by analysing the clues that exist in our current world, that may indicate where we are headed in the future. He’s collated some of his key findings from his latest book, Technology vs Human.

He didn’t hit his stride till he was 50, and now the architect, as inventive and bold as ever, hangs out with everyone from Harrison Ford to Jay-Z

Two new books, “How to Disappear,” by Akiko Busch, and “Silence,” by Jane Brox, explore the benefits of tuning out.

Cameras, microphones and other sensors are showing up everywhere. And this is just the beginning.

We’re accepting utility in exchange for disempowerment. It’s not a fair trade.

Want a Glimpse of Facebook’s Soul in 2019? Look at Its Internal Propaganda Lab. The Analog Research Lab has evolved its messaging, from ‘be the nerd’ to ‘what matters is what you do next.’ Yet it remains a mirror…

At Mobile World Congress, an annual industry conference taking place in Barcelona Feb. 25–28, a new handset will be unveiled that promises to give its users control over their personal data. Taiwan’s…

Data and Society

Mark Zuckerberg that while it's not a "mainstream view," Facebook has been focused on privacy since the company's early days at Harvard.

I saw 50 black swans when thinking how data sharing and data portability/ mobility will migrate value towards the individual. Now some headlines are set up for click bait; however here is my picture…

In all this, I see danger for the net and its freedoms posed by corporate protectionism and a rising moral panic about technology. One at a time: Article 11 is the so-called link tax, the bastard son…

April 10 and 11, 2018 will likely create the kinds of memories for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that his own platform will remind him of for years to come. My guess is he’ll pass on the opportunity…

China Uses DNA to Track Its People. The U.S. is Helping. The Chinese authorities turned to a Massachusetts company and a prominent Yale researcher as they built an enormous system of surveillance…

This simple and attractive GPS-enabled tracker is the best way to keep tabs on your pets and kids.

Zeitgeist

A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth’s climate past a disastrous

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella defended the company’s multimillion-dollar contract with the Pentagon to supply augmented reality headsets in an interview with CNN Business. Dozens of employees had publicly criticized that same contract and called for the company to end its ties with the US military.

“We at Apple believe that privacy is a fundamental human right,” Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, said in a privacy-conference keynote last year in Brussels. “But we also recognize that not everyone sees…

Innovation

Before determining an ecosystem strategy, organizations must first shift to a new perspective and way of thinking.

The focus of the wide-ranging deal between Microsoft and Telefónica will be on blockchain and artificial intelligence, the companies say.

Milk is a gateway item for online grocery.

Removing brain tumors is a difficult, intricate task but soon surgeons’ skills will be augmented by the ability to operate while simultaneously seeing an image — magically floating in the air — of…

We asked Gates to choose this year’s list of inventions that will change the world for the better.

Rony Abovitz, CEO of Magic Leap, says the company is collecting partners to build the Magicverse, a network that will bind physical and digital worlds.

Future of work

What we lose when businesses only care about profits.

Tech saves us time, which is supposed to be a good thing. But what happens when we use that time to work harder than before? Welcome to the Millennial Dilemma, where work begets work — and burnout.

Narasimhan wants to “unleash the power of our people.”

Educating for uncertainty Charles Handy

The downsides of mobile-device dependency on mental health are well documented. But Mobile World Congress is not where you’d expect them to be aired.

While robots and artificial intelligence are certainly able to do many things humans once did, there are still jobs humans can do better than robots.

Panelists at the conference, convened by The New York Times, discussed the opportunities and risks that are emerging as the use of artificial intelligence accelerates.

Internet Culture

The fear of A.I. has long been that we might merge with computers, create hybrid superbeings, or become enslaved by them. But the rise of “deepfakes” points toward a very different outcome.

Should children be taught to treat a device that can interact with them in a human-like manner the same way that they would treat other humans? Should children get opinions from such devices? Should they defer to such devices and see them as parental or authority figures?

FinTech

From payments to lending to insurance to checking accounts, Amazon is attacking financial services from every angle without applying to be a conventional bank. This report is a collection of everything we know about Amazon’s forays in financial services and where it's rumored to looking next.

I’m still fascinated by last week’s scoop in The Wall Street Journal by Tripp Mickle, Liz Hoffman, and Peter Rudegeair that Apple is on the verge of launching a credit card product alongside Goldman…

Buying and selling securities is not free. So how do these brokers plan to make money?

Applicants asked to work for free, rudeness, and high staff turnover tarnish the fintech startup's success story

A key question for the fast-growing companies is whether they'll be able to meet sky-high investor expectations.

Affirm, Inc., the financial technology company that provides transparent and consumer-friendly payment alternatives to cash and traditional credit, toda...

Most of us just want a convenient option for making payments. We'll take whatever anonymity comes with it.

Facebook is keeping its cryptocurrency plans under wraps, even to other company employees, according to a New York Times report.

AI, Robots, Algorythms

Wearing a haptic feedback glove, I pilot a robotic hand from across the world, feeling what it feels. The sensation is almost too weird to be real.

We can summon cars at the push of a button, we can video chat with our grandparents, and we are connected to our friends 24/7.  Yet the same devices that enable those miracles have ushered in an epidemic of anxiety and depression, which has hit our kids particularly hard. Studies couldn’t show a clearer connection between…

Private companies with a billion-dollar valuation were so uncommon not long ago that they were dubbed unicorns. Now there are 325 of them.

Our study of 25 years of artificial-intelligence research suggests the era of deep learning may come to an end.

Digital assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa should be able to snitch on their users for smoking cannabis or “immoral behaviour”, experts say.The scientists propose that smart-home systems could be equipped with “moral” reasoning engines to decide when to notify the police or a child’s parents o

As a devastating disease afflicts the country’s swine, companies are scrambling to roll out facial and voice recognition and other unproven ways to save them.

https://mashable.com/article/google-assistant-android-messages/?europe=true&utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=webfeeds#CLW.n0vcs8qu&jwsource=cl

One Tinder user's matches turned out to have something strange in common…

In 2019, we live in a world where we are augmenting our soldiers and military units with AR. We are increasing living in a world of deep fakes, and the weaponization of AI appears to have no limit…

Digital Ethics

I am co-curating a dedicated Digital Ethics newsletter with Futurist Gerd Leonhard. Most Digital Ethics topics are there now. You can subscribe via this link. Below are some morsels that are not in this week DE-newsletter:

Expanded and improved genetic testing, like preimplantation genetic testing, or PGT can lead to a new era of family planning. Designer babies are already here.

The Chinese government provided funding that was used by a scientist to genetically edit babies using the CRISPR tool, according to documents obtained by Stat. Though it’s unclear whether government officials were paying close attention to how the money was used, the documents contradict China’s narrative of CRISPR scientist He Jiankui as a rebel who acted alone and against the wishes of higher-ups.

Here's Neil Raden's critique of four key AI characteristics, and a new way of thinking about ethical AI, which badly needs a new framework.

Post Capitalism

Many companies invest in automation because the tax code encourages it, not because robots are more productive.

Art related

From ecological installations to groundbreaking virtual reality films, the arts have gradually moved from the fringes towards the moral and political centre ground at the Forum's Annual Meeting.

Musician Beatie Wolfe has uploaded her latest album Raw Space onto a pack of cards that listeners tap on a phone to play each song.

Aesthetics

Born in the ’90s from hip-hop culture, this critical architecture movement has been coalescing for decades though may be poised for a second wave.

Hungarian photographer Márton Mogyorósy shares a new series of drone photos taken in Barcelona, which show the geometry of the urban environment.

People of The New Sun

Other

As housing prices spiral in Hong Kong, young professionals are living in ever-shrinking spaces, with "nano-flats" touted as fashionable solutions. Finance wo...