Petervan's Delicacies - Issue #116

The very best

Smaller groups tend to create more innovative work, and larger groups less so

The coders' addiction to efficiency. There is more to life than efficiency.

When we go from an attention economy towards an availability economy

About the importance of play in work and culture

A look into the inner workings of Apple

Tech has made us question who to trust, how to innovate, what’s real and what’s fake, how to make decisions, and even what it is that makes us human.

Borrowing energy from black holes would offer a highly efficient way to navigate our galaxy, an astronomer says.

What do AI researchers think about what business and government leads can do to hedge against the risk of AI if anything? Find out in this article.

"It challenges the very notion of popular sovereignty."

DNA computers have to date only been able to run one algorithm, but a new design shows how these machines can be made more flexible—and useful.

Our blog articles feature the latest ideas and thinking from our Action and Research Centre and Fellowship staff and guest bloggers. You are welcome to contribute and comment.

Data and Society

Privacy protections are at risk yet again. The Five Eyes security alliance, which spans the governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, has issued a…

One year after she broke the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Carole Cadwalladr discusses the state of play with whistleblower Christopher Wylie

Google knows nearly everything about you, from how you commute to your relationship status. There have never been more opportunities for marketers to exploit that data.

The rogue code can disable safety systems designed to prevent catastrophic industrial accidents. It was discovered in the Middle East, but the hackers behind it are now targeting companies in North America and other parts of the world, too.

FIDO Alliance

Screens used to be for the elite. Now avoiding them is a status symbol.

Zeitgeist

The European Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion for what it’s calling abusive advertising practices, but even that stunning amount isn’t close to the largest fine the EC has levied against the search giant. And it pales in comparison to Google’s revenues.

Google's response to the latest European fine.

Innovation

Which technologies will help us explore the human ecosystem beyond cyberspace, geospace and space and understand the very meaning of our existence in the universe?

Negative emissions technologies remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it or convert it to fuel.In addition to capturing carbon, Carbon Engineering also converts stored carbon into a fuel that can be used by everyday vehicles.The ability to profit from carbon capture and conversion will surely help make these kinds of technologies more cost-effective.

Presently the three horizon model for innovation is argued as no longer applying to innovation as it has been suggested, or I feel so, in a recent article written by Steve Blank. Now I am a terrific admirer of Steve and his thinking but he does, I feel, rush to an assumption to fit one…

Future of work

The education system is rapidly changing. Traditional master’s programs for business are ebbing away in the tides of exponential technologies.

The evolution of the workplace is underway. With the rise of artificial intelligence, what might the workforce of the future look like?

FinTech

Facebook is making its own digital currency and could become the largest bank in the world. Here’s why… According to The New York Times (NYT), Facebook is creating its own cryptocurrency. It would be…

FIS is to buy Worldpay for $35 billion, in a blockbuster deal which exemplifies the trend towards large scale consolidation in the payments processing s...

There’s no doubt about it, Visa Plans to Open a Blockchain Department. JP Morgan, Facebook, Visa — the cat is out of the bag. The very folk who were making fun of crypto basically realize that the…

Friction in banking will be eliminated, either by banks or companies in other industries who will simply fix the problems themselves.

Russian authorities are promoting the international use of an alternative financial messaging system it has developed as an alternative to the Swift net...

IBM Blockchain World Wire is the new global financial rail that can simultaneously clear and settle cross-border payments in near real-time. Integrating with...

<p>2018 saw the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) across the European Union and European Economic Area and subsequen...

AI, Robots, Algorythms

Tengai is programmed to conduct every interview the exact same way. She doesn’t engage in pre-interview chit-chat, and asks every question in the same tone.

What’s next for artificial intelligence? Our analysts looked across industries to identify 25 of the biggest AI trends to watch in 2019, ranging from next-gen prosthetics to crop monitoring.

Nothing about Shudu is real, exactly. She doesn’t have a physical form, and until now, she has existed only on our screens. She lives, so to speak, mostly on Instagram, where she models clothes…

Digital Ethics

Any one of us might end up helping the facial recognition industry, perhaps captured in moments of extraordinary vulnerability.

"I do genuinely worry about the erasure of all the women and women of color who have built this industry."

Self-driving cars don’t drink and medical AIs are never overtired. Given our obvious flaws, what can humans still do best?

Art related

Mitten follows the final weeks of rehearsal of Mitten wir im Leben sind, a performance by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, her company Rosas and cellist Jean-Guih...

Born to a family of weavers in Switzerland, Emma Kunz was a mystic, who would sometimes work on a drawing for 48 hours without interruption. She divined the future using pendulums and though she created a large body of work, and published three books, her artwork was not shown until after her death. World Receivers:…

An interview with Andrew Hosner, co-owner and curator of Thinkspace gallery in Los Angeles.

Solarized creator Ethan Schoonover sought colors that would look good together, have the same apparent brightness, and work on light and dark backgrounds.

Jia Tolentino on the Shen Yun dance troupe and its association with Falun Gong, a secretive sect that is persecuted in China.

AI remixes, DNA archiving, AR concerts. It’s been 20 years since Mezzanine and Massive Attack’s experiment is still running

Aesthetics

Introducing Rebirth, a real-time cinematic produced by Quixel, harnessing the power of Unreal Engine and real-world scans from the Megascans Icelandic collec...

french architect dominique perrault has presented the masterplan for the olympic and paralympic village that will host the games’ athletes in 2024.