Gerd Leonhard

TED isn’t a cult. Here’s what attendees actually believe

“Science, philosophy and technology run on the model of American Idol - as embodied by TED talks - is a recipe for civilisational disaster" wrote TED critic Benjamin Bratton for the BBC. TED, he argued, makes solutions to difficult problems seem all-too-easy. "Given the stakes, making our best and brightest waste their time - and the audience's time - dancing like infomercial hosts is too high a price."”

TED isn't a cult. Here's what attendees actually believe
https://www.businessinsider.in/TED-isnt-a-cult-Heres-what-attendees-actually-believe/articleshow/50909731.cms
via Instapaper

Feb 2016

Internet (of Things) ethics

“The ‘Internet of Things’ needs to be better managed from an ethical standpoint, says an article in European Business Review co-authored by Professor David De Cremer of Cambridge Judge.”

Internet (of Things) ethics
https://www.cambridgenetwork.co.uk/news/internet-of-things-ethics/
via Instapaper

Ain't that the truth!

Feb 2016

About Facebook anxiety

“there remain plenty of Facebook detractors. The Kernel shone a baleful light on “Facebook anxiety” comparing the experience of flicking through the curated feeds of friends to that of being an inmate of the infamous Panopticon:
Researchers linked a high number of Facebook friends with feeling burdened or stressed out by the site. our desire to lurk and unhealthily peer into the lives of those around us is built into the experience itself. … the site [is like] an 18th century “panopticon”—a type of prison that allowed inmates to be viewed by guards at all times. “We know what all the prisoners are showing us from their jail cells,””

Week 4 | import digest
https://malm.teqy.net/2016/01/31/week-4-2/
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Feb 2016

Some Buckminster Fuller Bottom Lines (via BrainPickings)

“Fuller then moves on to the vital distinction between money-work and purpose, debunking the myth of the zero-sum game of prosperity:

It is also mistakenly assumed that employment is the only means by which humans can earn the right to live, for politicians have yet to discover how much wealth is available for distribution. All this is rationalized on the now scientifically discredited premise that there can never be enough life support for all. Thus humanity’s specialization leads only toward warring and such devastating tools, both, visible and invisible, as ultimately to destroy all Earthians.

[…]

It is eminently feasible not only to provide full life support for all humans but also to permit all humans’ individual enjoyment of all the Earth without anyone profiting at the expense of another and without any individuals interfering with others.”

Buckminster Fuller’s Manifesto for the Genius of Generalists
https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/03/08/buckminster-fuller-synergetics/
via Instapaper

Jan 2016

What does it mean to be human in the age of technology? (Tom Chatfield – The Guardian)

“This is an astonishing, disconcerting, delightful thing: the crowd in the cloud becoming a stream of shared consciousness.

We think of ourselves as individual, rational minds, and describe our relationships with technology on this basis”

What does it mean to be human in the age of technology?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/20/humans-machines-technology-digital-age
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Jan 2016

Digital Ethics: The role of the CIO in balancing the risks and rewards of digital innovation

“What is digital ethics?

In our hyper-connected world, an explosion of data is combining with pattern recognition, machine learning, smart algorithms, and other intelligent software to underpin a new level of cognitive computing. More than ever, machines are capable of imitating human thinking and decision-making across a raft of workflows, which presents exciting opportunities for companies to drive highly personalized customer experiences, as well as unprecedented productivity, efficiency, and innovation. However, along with the benefits of this increased automation comes a greater risk for ethics to be compromised and human trust to be broken.

According to Gartner, digital ethics is the system of values and principles a company may embrace when conducting digital interactions between businesses, people and things. Digital ethics sits at the nexus of what is legally required; what can be made possible by digital technology; and what is morally desirable.”

MIS-Asia - Digital Ethics: The role of the CIO in balancing the risks and rewards of digital innovation
https://www.mis-asia.com/mgmt/it-governance/digital-ethics-the-role-of-the-cio-in-balancing-the-risks-and-rewards-of-digital-innovation/
via Instapaper

Jan 2016

Stop Being A Loner, It’ll Kill You: low social interaction has worse effects than obesity

“This paper mirrors the results of a 2013 study from Brigham Young University, which found that "low social interaction has the equivalent lifespan impact as smoking 15 cigarettes daily or being a raging alcoholic. Cutting yourself off from others is worse, even, than inactivity. And twice as bad as obesity."”

Stop Being A Loner, It'll Kill You
https://www.fastcoexist.com/3055386/stop-being-a-loner-itll-kill-you
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Jan 2016

Meet the digital dissenters: They’re fighting for a better internet. Made me think

“Where do humans fit into this new economy? Really not as creators of value, but as the content. We are the content. We are the data. We are the media. As you use a smartphone, your smartphone gets smarter, but you get dumber.”

Douglas Rushkoff, author of “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus” █”

Meet the digital dissenters: They’re fighting for a better internet
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/12/26/resistance/
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Jan 2016

What if the Internet Really Isn’t Social? What If It’s the Opposite? (asks Jason Gots)

“Marc Potenza, a psychiatrist at Yale who primarily studies alcohol and drug addiction says that “some people have posited that the Internet is a vehicle and not a target of disorder.”

What If the Internet Really Isn't Social? What If It's the Opposite? | Big Think
https://bigthink.com/connected/internet-gaming-addiction?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook
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Jan 2016

A Taste of the Future: good read by Kim Araz (work, automation and IoT)

“The fact is that sooner than we can imagine, there will be masses of educated people suddenly finding themselves out of a job, no longer having the relevant skills for the type of work that will be required. At the same time, the next generation isn’t being properly prepared for the types of vocations that will be needed, such as Data Scientists, Neuro-Implant Technicians and VR Experience Designers.”

A Taste of the Future
https://medium.com/@kimarazi/a-taste-of-the-future-a16672bc5c20
via Instapaper

Jan 2016

How Facebook Makes Us Dumber – confirmation bias is a huge issue on large social networks

“As Del Vicario and her coauthors put it, “users mostly tend to select and share content according to a specific narrative and to ignore the rest.” On Facebook, the result is the formation of a lot of “homogeneous, polarized clusters.” Within those clusters, new information moves quickly among friends (often in just a few hours).

The consequence is the “proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia.””

How Facebook Makes Us Dumber
https://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-08/how-facebook-makes-us-dumber
via Instapaper

Jan 2016

Will we see Human-Animal Chimeras soon (must read by MIT Technology Review)

“The effort to incubate organs in farm animals is ethically charged because it involves adding human cells to animal embryos in ways that could blur the line between species.

Last September, in a reversal of earlier policy, the National Institutes of Health announced it would not support studies involving such “human-animal chimeras” until it had reviewed the scientific and social implications more closely.”

Human-Animal Chimera | MIT Technology Review
https://www.technologyreview.com/news/545106/human-animal-chimeras-are-gestating-on-us-research-farms/
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Jan 2016

Rushkoff on the future of work, automation and the economic OS

“we may come to see that the values of the industrial economy are not failing under the pressures of digital technology. Rather, digital technology is expressing and amplifying the embedded values of industrialism.”

Viewed in this light the Industrial Age may have had no more to do with making products better or more efficiently than simply removing human beings from the value equation, and monopolizing wealth at the top

the-future-of-work-rebooting-workprogramming-the-economy-for-people
https://www.psmag.com/business-economics/the-future-of-work-rebooting-workprogramming-the-economy-for-people
via Instapaper

Jan 2016

The Internet of Things is already here—just not the way you expected (#futuristgerd quoted)

“Gerd Leonhard, CEO of the Futures Agency, believes companies chasing user information “will never want less data from us, and they will find it impossible to resist the mantra of ‘yes we can and so we will,’” describing it as a “huge issue looming right in front of us.” In his estimation, it’s an issue that will need to be addressed both on individual and regulatory levels.

Currently, protections for IoT consumers are too often absent. A 2014 study of connected devices and services found that 52 percent didn’t even provide a privacy policy to inform users what can be collected and how it can be used. It’s already difficult for companies to avoid the temptation of overreaching when it comes to data; it’s even harder to prevent them from crossing the line when there is no line drawn in the first place.

“The problem is similar to why oil companies were and are heavily regulated,” Leonhard says. “Data is the new oil but we have very few regulations as to who, where, when and why.””

The Internet of Things is already here—just not the way you expected
https://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/headline-story/15404/state-of-internet-of-things-2016/
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Jan 2016

Techno-social engineering: will humans become ‘pervasively programmable’? Scott Allan Morrison via Boing Boing

“Scott Allan Morrison: There would be nothing inherently wrong with this if we could be absolutely certain the companies that control this technology will act only in our best interests. But if not, we could all be susceptible to manipulation by powerful systems we couldn’t possibly understand. Some academics have even raised the specter of techno-social engineering and questioned whether we are moving into an age in which “humans become machine-like and pervasively programmable.”

Techno-social engineering is freaking insiders out
https://boingboing.net/2015/12/11/techno-social-engineering-is-f.html
via Instapaper

This is one of my key concerns in regards to exponential technological progress

Dec 2015

Marc Andreessen on the IoT: ‘In 20 years, every physical item will have a chip implanted in it’

I tend to agree but don't know if this world will be heaven or hell - what to you think ?

“Andreessen is a fierce believer in the impact of this wave of software-driven sensor startups. His core thesis is that over the next 20 years every physical item will have a chip implanted in it. “The end state is fairly obvious - every light, every doorknob will be connected to the internet. Just like with the web itself, there will be thousands of of use cases - energy efficiency, food safety, major problems that aren’t as obvious as smartwatches and wearables,” he says.”

Marc Andreessen: 'In 20 years, every physical item will have a chip implanted in it'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/12050185/Marc-Andreessen-In-20-years-every-physical-item-will-have-a-chip-implanted-in-it.html
via Instapaper

Dec 2015

The US government vs Apple and Google’s: the smartphone encryption discussion

“The US government and police officials are in the midst of a misleading PR offensive to try to scare Americans into believing encrypted cellphones are somehow a bad thing.”
— Trevor Timm”

Yes... That just about says it all! This is why I like to use apple phones, btw - you pay for privacy.

Feds only have themselves to blame for Apple and Google's smartphone encryption efforts | ZDNet
https://www.zdnet.com/article/feds-only-have-themselves-to-blame-for-apple-and-googles-smartphone-encryption-efforts/
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Dec 2015

What the world will be like in 2045, according to DARPA’s top scientists (via business insider)

I tend to agree on these predictions - but I really worry about all these changes being driving by the military on the one side, and investors / money on the other.

"I think in 2045 we’re going to find that we have a very different relationship with the machines around us,” says Pam Melroy, aerospace engineer, former astronaut, and deputy director of DARPA’s Tactical Technologies Office. “I think that we will begin to see a time when we’re able to simply just talk or even press a button” to interact with a machine to get things done more intelligently, instead of using keyboards or rudimentary voice-recognition systems.”

Here’s what the world will be like in 2045, according to DARPA’s top scientists
https://www.businessinsider.com/darpa-world-predictions-2015-12
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