Hello all – Friday Thinking is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. My purpose is to pick interesting pieces, based on my own curiosity (and the curiosity of the many interesting people I follow), about developments in some key domains (work, organization, social-economy, intelligence, domestication of DNA, energy, etc.) that suggest we are in the midst of a change in the conditions of change - a phase-transition. That tomorrow will be radically unlike yesterday.
Many thanks to those who enjoy this. ☺
In the 21st Century curiosity will SKILL the cat.
Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning. Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works. Techne = Knowledge-as-Know-How :: Technology = Embodied Know-How
“Be careful what you ‘insta-google-tweet-face’”
Woody Harrelson - Triple 9
Content
Quotes:
Articles:
Consider: In 2008, the iPhone was less than a year old. BlackBerrys and e-mail dominated the palms of corporate and political information junkies. Television continued to be the dominant medium for political advertising and debates. Social media was a curiosity; governments and politicians who used it were still something of a novelty. It took the protests of the 2009 #IranElection—Time magazine dubbed Twitter “the medium of the movement”—to make mainstream journalists and politicians realize that smartphones and internet connections were fundamentally shifting how we lived, worked, played, advocated, campaigned, and governed.
Since then we’ve been living through probably the most rapid evolution of political campaigning in recent history. In each US election cycle, the technology used has advanced and morphed; the tools that gave Barack Obama the edge in 2008 and 2012 are very different from the ones that nudged Donald Trump to victory in 2016.
So where might things go next? What lessons will candidates for Congress in November’s midterms have taken from Trump’s victory?
US election campaign technology from 2008 to 2018, and beyond
Algorithmic pricing technologies are widespread among both types of retailers and the transparency of the internet has also reduced pricing disparities, he said in the paper delivered to the annual conference of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is among those attending.
A number of Fed policymakers have raised the prospect that relatively low levels of U.S. inflation in recent years in the face of a strong economy may be due to the ability of companies like Amazon to keep a lid on overall prices.
This environment has meant retailers have had to become more nimble, leading to lower margins. For example, Cavallo found that Walmart more frequently changed the prices on its website between 2016 and 2018 for products also easily found on Amazon.
“Fuel prices, exchange-rate fluctuations, or any other force affecting costs that may enter the pricing algorithms used by these firms are more likely to have a faster and larger impact on retail prices than in the past,” he concluded.
'Amazon effect' could have impact on inflation dynamics
The corporate system is transforming into a maze of fragmented tasks and short-term gigs. Although the modern era is often described as a skills economy, most companies have a short-term focus, which means for a worker that when her experience accumulates, it often loses institutional value.
The still prevalent system of the industrial world is based on mass-production and economies of scale. The more identical things are, the cheaper each copy can be. Computer-based digital manufacturing does not work this way. It does not use moulds or casts. Without these, there is no need to repeat the same form. Every piece can be unique, a work of art. As Mario Carpo puts it: “Repetition no longer saves money and variations no longer cost more money.” This means that the marginal cost of production is always the same. Big was better in the industrial world, but not any more. A small workshop can compete with the largest factory. Production is not affected by size. What is emerging leads to a flat marginal cost society, an economy without scale, a human-sized economy.
The biggest challenge for a worker in this new environment is to think like an artist, at the same time making good use of new technology. The artist becomes the symbol of humanness building on the increasing financial value of personalization and variation. It is not a zero sum game between faulty men and flawless machines. The machines propose and create potentials rather than take over.
Work of Art
In heritable epigenetics, we pass on the same genome, but one marked (mark is the formal term for the place that a methyl molecule attaches to one nucleotide, a rung in the ladder of DNA) in such a way that the new organism soon has its own DNA swarmed by these new (and usually unwelcome) additions riding on the chromosomes. The genotype is not changed, but the genes carrying the new, sucker-like methyl molecules change the workings of the organism to something new, such as the production (or lack thereof) of chemicals necessary for our good health, or for how some part of the body is produced. Thus, the young of an epigenetically modified parent can be radically different in phenotype from the parent. Phenotype is the physical manifestation of genotype, such as hair and eye color or body dimensions in a human—or of IQ and brain functioning. Sometimes these changes allow the young organism to deal with environments that were intolerable to the parents. Sometimes these changes rapidly create new species. But sometimes the consequences can be fatal and the changes can be passed on to yet a subsequent generation. In other words, a young child could suffer from the sins of a grandfather.
Why the Earth Has Fewer Species Than We Think
Theoretical physics has a reputation for being complicated. I beg to differ. That we are able to write down natural laws in mathematical form at all means that the laws we deal with are simple — much simpler than those of other scientific disciplines.
Unfortunately, actually solving those equations is often not so simple. … we have a perfectly fine theory that describes the elementary particles called quarks and gluons, but no one can calculate how they come together to make a proton. The equations just can’t be solved by any known methods. Similarly, a merger of black holes or even the flow of a mountain stream can be described in deceptively simple terms, but it’s hideously difficult to say what’s going to happen in any particular case.
The End of Theoretical Physics As We Know It
This is a longish but must read piece - a brilliant analysis of complexity-as-higher-dimensionality - applicable to 21st century politics, fake news and war. In the contexts of complex systems - improv may be much better than strict adherence to predetermined strategy.
A High-Dimensional Future
A few months ago I tweeted an offhand thought: 4d chess is boring. But I didn't really think about why I thought that until someone pointed out in a recent discussion somewhere (can't find it now) that an important insight from theoretical computer science suggests that 4d chess ought to be simpler than 2d. I went "Doh!" because that insight (which I'll explain in a minute) was one of my favorite ideas (and go-to hacks) from grad school, and I had failed to connect the dots. Then I did a double take: wait, did that really take care of the idea?
Well... yes and no.
Yes, things get simpler in a certain sense when you add dimensions, but no that's not the whole story. To complete the story you need to add another idea: when you add more dimensions, playing to continue the game (infinite game thinking) gets easier than playing to win (finite game thinking). So the headline idea is that players with a certain kind of simpler strategy, and an objective of continuing the game rather than winning, have an advantage. To prevail in higher-dimensional games, you not only have to keep things simple, you have to switch from playing to win to playing to not lose, ie just continuing the game. For extra credit, you should try to make the opponent go for the explicit win.
This is a signal well worth tracking - the transformation of governance towards a more participative democracy - building better more involved citizens.
The simple but ingenious system Taiwan uses to crowdsource its laws
vTaiwan is a promising experiment in participatory governance. But politics is blocking it from getting greater traction.
It was late in 2015, and things were at an impasse. Some four years earlier, Taiwan’s finance ministry had decided to legalize online sales of alcohol. To help it shape the new rules, the ministry had kicked off talks with alcohol merchants, e-commerce platforms, and social groups worried that online sales would make it easy for children to buy liquor. But since then they had all been talking past each other. The regulation had gotten nowhere.
That was when a group of government officials and activists decided to take the question to a new online discussion platform called vTaiwan. Starting in early March 2016, about 450 citizens went to vtaiwan.tw, proposed solutions, and voted on them.
Within a matter of weeks, they had formulated a set of recommendations. Online alcohol sales would be limited to a handful of e-commerce platforms and distributors; transactions would be by credit card only; and purchases would be collected at convenience stores, making it nearly impossible for a child to surreptitiously get hold of booze. By late April the government had incorporated the suggestions into a draft bill that it sent to parliament.
This is another important signal in a couple of ways - one is the power for crowdsourcing to make for better more secure software - the other is how we impede this power through the enclosure movement that wants to colonize knowledge and information with inappropriate business models trying to create artificial scarcity.
Crowdsourcing the hunt for software bugs is a booming business—and a risky one
Freelance cybersleuths can help companies find flaws in their code. But the bug hunters could fall afoul of anti-hacking laws.
They are the Ubers of the digital security world. Instead of matching independent drivers with passengers, companies like Bugcrowd and HackerOne connect people who like to spend time searching for flaws in software with companies willing to pay them for bugs they find.
This cybersecurity gig economy has expanded to hundreds of thousands of hackers, many of whom have had some experience in the IT security industry. Some still have jobs and hunt bugs in their spare time, while others make a living from freelancing. They are playing an essential role in helping to make code more secure at a time when attacks are rapidly increasing and the cost of maintaining dedicated internal security teams is skyrocketing .
The best freelance bug spotters can make significant sums of money. HackerOne, which has over 200,000 registered users, says about 12 percent of the people using its service pocket $20,000 or more a year, and around 3 percent make over $100,000. The hackers using these platforms hail mostly from the US and Europe, but also from poorer countries where the money they can earn leads some to work full time on bug hunting. (For a profile of a freelance ethical hacker based in the Philippines, see our Jobs of the Future series.)
Creating an open-source platform (a new form of infrastructure) for secure and costless coordination provide huge opportunities for unknowable innovations in the digital economy.
The Self-Driving Project That Could Help China Leapfrog the West
Baidu opens up its software, a stark departure from the normally secretive world of commercial AI development.
The CEO of Baidu, Robin Li, arrived at his company’s first AI developer conference, held in Beijing this week, in a vehicle that has the potential to reshape the world of self-driving cars.
The vehicle was controlled using software that Baidu (50 Smartest Companies 2017) plans to offer for free in the coming years through a project called Apollo. By making the brains of a self-driving car available to anyone, the Apollo project could help China’s many young carmakers get up to speed rapidly.
It also reflects China’s broader ambition to establish itself as a leading hub of artificial intelligence. Baidu’s move of making its training data openly available marks a significant departure in the field of commercial AI, where the information used to train sophisticated algorithms is typically guarded with obsessive jealousy.
This fits with the Chinese government’s desire to see its nascent AI industry become increasingly competitive, and to see the underlying technology feed into its planning for the future, including the design of new cities. Indeed, if the Apollo effort gains momentum, it may make it harder for any of the companies protecting their own code to dominate the automated driving field.
It seems to me that there is no reason that every major city to not have a significant urban farm - or for every local major Grocery store to not have containers growing fresh greens on every roof. The images are interesting.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 48 million people get sick from a foodborne illness each year. The process of indoor farming allows companies to have full control over their growing environment, reducing the chance of contamination.
Las Vegas has a new $30 million vertical farm that aims to produce over 1 million pounds of produce every year
Las Vegas isn't the first place that springs to mind as a hub for sustainable agriculture. But the city could soon become a major purveyor of fresh greens, thanks to a new $30 million vertical-farming facility. At 215,000 square feet, it's one of the largest indoor vertical farms in the US.
The facility is home to Oasis Biotech, a startup that transformed a vacant Las Vegas industrial property into a center for hydroponic farming, a process of growing plants without soil to conserve water and speed up the maturation process. The technique has become quite popular in recent years as farmers look for ways to deliver food year-round, within hours of harvesting their crops.
Though several vertical-farming companies have failed in recent years, Oasis Biotech is leveraging the resources of Las Vegas, a city known for its high-end cuisine and celebrity restaurants.
In July, the company hosted a grand opening featuring local chefs and mixologists who prepared salads and cocktails using in-house produce. Since then, Oasis crops have been sold to Vegas restaurants and casinos under the name Evercress. Prices are similar to what a customer might pay for an organic or specialty product, according to Oasis.
As climate change appears to become perceivable in our daily lives - progress is and can continue to be made.
“They are able to manage quite significant economic growth, but have been able to stabilize their emissions over the past few years,” said Dabo Guan, a professor of climate change economics at the University of East Anglia in Britain.
China, World’s Biggest Polluter, Hits Carbon Goals—12 Years Early
The country may have hit the peak it promised in the Paris climate accord well before its 2030 timetable. But there’s still more work to do.
In a year when climate change is moving from abstract theory to grimly tangible reality, a faint dot of hope may be on the horizon.
China, the world’s largest source of planet-warming carbon emissions, may have hit the peak it promised in the Paris climate accord well before its 2030 timetable. That’s the conclusion reached by scientists who looked at the country’s estimated carbon output between 2007 and 2016, as the country’s rapid industrialization slowed and its consumption of coal declined. The research is published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Here’s a great signal of another method of renewable energy - transforming energy geopolitics.
A 550-ton floating turbine smashes records in a significant step forward for tidal power
The European Commission describes "ocean energy" as being both abundant and renewable. The 550-ton turbine is located at the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney, Scotland.
The 2 megawatt (MW) SR2000 turbine produced more than 3 gigawatt hours (GWh) of renewable electricity in less than 12 months, Scotrenewables Tidal Power said in a statement Tuesday.
The turbine is located at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland. Scotrenewables described the SR2000 as "the world's most powerful operating tidal stream turbine." Tidal stream technologies are able to harness the kinetic energy of currents flowing in and out of tidal areas, according to the EMEC.
Scotrenewables said its turbine had supplied the equivalent annual electricity demand of roughly 830 U.K. households and, at times, more than 25 percent of the Orkney Islands' electricity demand. An estimated 22,000 people live on the islands.
Here is a very interesting way to build a battery for energy storage. There’s a 2 min video illustrating the concept.
Stacking concrete blocks is a surprisingly efficient way to store energy
About 96% of the world’s energy-storage capacity comes in the form of one technology: pumped hydro. Whenever generation exceeds demand, the excess electricity is used to pump water up a dam. When demand exceeds generation, that water is allowed to fall—thanks to gravity—and the potential energy turns turbines to produce electricity.
But pumped-hydro storage requires particular geographies, with access to water and to reservoirs at different altitudes. It’s the reason that about three-quarters of all pumped hydro storage has been built in only 10 countries. The trouble is the world needs to add a lot more energy storage, if we are to continue to add the intermittent solar and wind power necessary to cut our dependence on fossil fuels.
A startup called Energy Vault thinks it has a viable alternative to pumped-hydro: Instead of using water and dams, the startup uses concrete blocks and cranes. It has been operating in stealth mode until today (Aug. 18), when its existence will be announced at Kent Presents, an ideas festival in Connecticut.
This is a vitally important signal - why the Internet must become public infrastructure.
Verizon throttled fire department’s “unlimited” data during Calif. wildfire
Fire dep't had to pay twice as much to lift throttling during wildfire response.
Verizon Wireless' throttling of a fire department that uses its data services has been submitted as evidence in a lawsuit that seeks to reinstate federal net neutrality rules.
"County Fire has experienced throttling by its ISP, Verizon," Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a declaration. "This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services. Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services."
Bowden's declaration was submitted in an addendum to a brief filed by 22 state attorneys general, the District of Columbia, Santa Clara County, Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, and the California Public Utilities Commission. The government agencies are seeking to overturn the recent repeal of net neutrality rules in a lawsuit they filed against the Federal Communications Commission in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
This is an amazing paradigm change innovation in medical imaging of our bodies.
How we can use light to see deep inside our bodies and brains
In a series of mind-bending demos, inventor Mary Lou Jepsen shows how we can use red light to see and stimulate what's inside our bodies and brains. Taking us to the edge of optical physics, Jepsen unveils new technologies that utilize light and sound to track tumors, measure neural activity and could eventually replace the MRI machine with a cheaper, more efficient and wearable system.
This is an important signal for at least two reasons - one is the continuing acceleration of medical advances - two is the need to explore the fields of adjacent possibles around each innovation.
the new study suggests that just two injections of BCG could virtually cure the condition for many years at a time.
“This is clinical validation of the potential to stably lower blood sugars to near normal levels with a safe vaccine, even in patients with longstanding disease," said Dr Denise Faustman who led the trial at Massachusetts General Hospital.
BCG vaccine can reverse Type 1 diabetes to almost undetectable levels, eight-year study shows
The BCG vaccine against tuberculosis can reverse Type 1 diabetes to almost undetectable levels, an eight-year study has shown.
US researchers found that just one jab, followed by a booster four weeks later, brought down average blood sugar levels to near normal within three years, and the effect lasted for the following five years.
British experts hailed the results as "very exciting" and said such a treatment would be a "major advance" in the treatment of Type 1 diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the body attacks cells in the pancreas which produce insulin. Insulin is needed to move sugar from the blood to cells where it is used as energy and without regular top-up injections, patients can fall into a lethal coma.
About 400,000 people are living with the condition in Britain and need daily injections of insulin.
This is interesting and brings to mind the old concept of ‘miasma’ as the source of illness.
Microbes hitch a ride inland on coastal fog
Fog can act as a vector for microbes, transferring them long distances and introducing them into new environments. So reports an analysis of the microbiology of coastal fog, recently published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
Co-author Kathleen Weathers, a Senior Scientist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, explains, "Fog's role in transporting water and nutrients to coastal areas is well documented. Far less is known about the biology of fog, including the communities of microbes that live in fog droplets, and how they travel between marine and terrestrial ecosystems."
When I was a youth I had a job delivering newspapers in a local route. Those days are gone. But you might find you teenagers finding new types of part-time work.
Posting Instagram Sponsored Content Is the New Summer Job
As long as you’re a teen with a following.
While some teens spent the summer of 2018 babysitting, bagging groceries, or scooping ice cream, thousands of others made hundreds of dollars—and in some cases, much more—the new-fashioned way: by doing sponsored content on Instagram.
With “jobs you need to do a lot of training,” says a 13-year-old Pennsylvanian who asked not to be named. “Then you have to, like, physically go out and do the job for hours a day. Doing this, you can make one simple post, which doesn’t take a while. That single post can earn you, like, $50.” Last month, she started posting brand-sponsored Instagrams for her more than 8,000 followers. So far, she says, she’s earned a couple hundred dollars.
Young people are still struggling to compete with older workers for seasonal minimum-wage and retail jobs, and increased academic demands have left them with little time for shift work. Still others are eager to earn money of their own, but at 12 or 13 aren’t old enough to legally do so. Instagram is the one space where they have a competitive advantage, and, as Mary, a 14-year-old from California, told me, it’s “pretty much the easiest way, without becoming famous on the internet, to make money.”
Hi everyone the non-profit social enterprise I'm involved with had a short documentary made of it - and it is now one of the 10 finalists - for TVO’s People's Choice Award.
If you like the documentary - you could vote for
"Find Your Place Within TheSpace"
For more information about theSpace
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