Petervan's Delicacies - Issue #121

The very best

About project HOME, a school for culturemakers, and some of the origins of the Extinction Rebellion

Joi Ito says we should challenge the cult of Singularity. AI won't take over the world

About the tendency of technology firms to exploit human weaknesses, and what to do about it.

About Kevin Kelly's latest Data Manifesto

About Carole Cadwalladr's TED talk that became a global viral sensation: she told the tech billionaires they had broken democracy.

Propaganda used to mean getting people to believe stuff. Now it means getting them to question what they believe or whether there’s any truth at all. However disorienting this is, it may not be all…

Recently genome-data broker Nebula Genomics began offering sequencing for free in exchange for being able to sell users’ data.

The creator of the “time well spent” movement disappeared for a year, but now he’s come back with a new phrase and a plan to stop technology from from destroying free will, creating social anomie, and wrecking democracy.

Provocative, hopeful essays imagine a future that is not reduced to algorithms. When Joi Ito published an essay, “Resisting Reduction: A Manifesto,” about human flourishing in an age of machine intelligence.

Hal Singer makes his living as an expert witness in antitrust cases and teaching at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. In recent years, he’s also…

Tesla's special update on autonomy to analysts revealed impressive new data on their programs and the bet they are taking on making a self driving car with neural networks -- and a robotaxi fleet based on Tesla cars. These efforts reveal a company ready to make the biggest bet in Automotive.

Uber's CEO maintains the company is committed to autonomous vehicles, but his recent statements and the company's pivot to expanding its transportation offerings suggest Uber's plan has changed.

Design shortcuts meant to make a new plane seem like an old, familiar one are to blame

Maslow’s pyramid: An elitist management symbol?

Data and Society

"We might like to think of our memory as an archivist that carefully preserves events, but sometimes it's more like a storyteller."

On Wednesday, US lawmakers introduced a new bill that represents one of the country’s first major efforts to regulate AI. There are likely to be more to…

EU Parliament green-lights the creation of the Common Identity Repository (CIR), a gigantic biometrics database.

Sidewalk Labs has created a new signage system to explain the invisible sensors that are tracking you when you’re in public areas. But there’s still no way to opt out–besides leaving.

In Ecuador, cameras capture footage to be examined by police and domestic intelligence. The surveillance system’s origin: China.

Zeitgeist

Printed texts are the new hot accessory for off-duty models, luxury lovers, and literati.

In the U.S., one in three international students is from China. What does it mean to have so many students and so much money from one country pouring into America's colleges?

Innovation

The European Commission's push for a wifi-based standard for cars backed by Volkswagen took a big step forward on Wednesday after EU lawmakers endorsed wifi over 5G technology promoted by BMW and Qualcomm.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has approved Alphabet's Wing drone delivery service for commercial use in two Virginia towns.

Tesla's racing to complete its Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai amid trade war tensions and unfulfilled orders for the Model 3.

Future of work

This is a video of Brian Eno speaking at 'Basic Income: How do we get there?' Basic Income UK meet-up at St Clements Church Kings Square, London, 3 December ...

Amazon’s fulfillment centers are the engine of the company — massive warehouses where workers track, pack, sort, and shuffle each order before sending it on its way to the buyer’s door. Critics of the company say those fulfillment center workers face strenuous conditions: workers are pressed to "make rate," with some saying they pack hundreds of boxes per hour, as the company tracks their performance while packages move down the delivery chain.

Internet Culture

In 2013, James Evans, a University of Chicago sociologist and computational scientist, launched a study to see if science forged a…

AI is capable of making music, but does that make AI an artist? The word "human" does not appear at all in US copyright law, and there’s not much existing litigation around the word’s absence. This has created a giant gray area and left AI’s place in copyright unclear.

Rather than establishing a set of rigorous habits, we may need to rethink our approach to life in general, Jia Tolentino writes.

FinTech

The biggest challenge in the quest to become a digital banking organization is not technology or strategy, it is culture.

If you want a new checking account and you’re a T-Mobile subscriber, T-Mobile’s Money checking account has launched for all US customers. It offers mobile banking through Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, and more.

By cracking down on peer-to-peer lending, regulators have narrowed the options for young investors. That’s birthing a generation of gamblers.

Synthetic fraud is a fast growing problem in consumer lending, but neither banks nor consumers are really aware of it yet.

Stripe has introduced new products to help businesses prepare for SCA.

Leaders in bank innovation have ideas for improving financial services with high-speed, highly responsive 5G networks — ideas they say could be implemented relatively quickly.

Six international banks are planning to issue their own stablecoins on IBM’s Stellar-powered money wiring service.

SoftBank will invest 900 million euros into German fintech firm Wirecard, as part of a strategic partnership on digital payments.

Swift has promoted its Americas and UK chief executive Javier Pérez-Tasso to CEO, replacing Gottfried Leibbrandt, who is stepping down after seven...

AI, Robots, Algorythms

Companies like 23andMe have never been more popular. But can they actually unlock the secrets of our genetic code?

As our interaction with “thinking” technology rapidly increases, a group led by researchers at the MIT Media Lab are calling for a new field of research — machine behavior — which would take the…

A group of engineers figured out a way to fool AI surveillance systems with the help of a little colorful patch you can hang around your neck.

The “cocktail party effect” describes humans’ ability to hold a conversation in a noisy environment by listening to what their conversation partner is saying while filtering out other chatter, music…

Startups Are Racing to Commercialize DeepFakes’ Powerful, Internet-Breaking AI. A slew of startups are using AI to push the boundaries of media manipulation—and they all promise to have ethics in mind.

Digital Ethics

Transformational change cannot occur suddenly — and sudden changes rarely turn out to be transformational. It’s clear that common practices at many of our largest tech platforms must change, but…

Aesthetics

New album ‘Flamagra’, out May 24th - https://flying-lotus.warp.net Video directed by Steven Ellison & David Firth. Audio: Flying Lotus - ‘Fire Is Coming feat...

Leta and Wade do it all but it's how they’ve mastered living and working together that will leave you inspired. See more of our design talks and interviews: ...

The beautiful harmony of Shaolin Kung Fu is captured with an amazing bird-view from space. Watch more of Earth From Space: https://bbc.in/2VMchcY Subscribe: ...

Can these 41-foot-high walls protect the country from another tsunami?

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