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:
Canada has future tech leadership with quantum computers, AI, nanotechnology, fusion and molten salt
A 2017 summit of the American Society for Microbiology reported that bacteria possessing the colistin-resistant mcr-1 gene has now spread around the world. In April 2018, in response to this dire prognosis, Rumina Hasan, a pathology professor at Pakistan’s Aga Khan University, told The New York Times that “Antibiotic resistance is a threat to all of modern medicine — and the scary part is, we’re out of options.”
Contrary to common misconception, human beings have not developed a resistance to antibiotics through overexposure. Instead, the bacteria themselves have evolved to evade our methods of killing them. We have, according to Cheeptham, around 1.3 kilograms of bacteria in and on our bodies at any one time. Their mass is roughly the equivalent to that of the human brain and, despite what domestic kitchen cleaners and soaps would have you believe, 99.9 percent of all bacteria are actually neutral or beneficial to our health.
“Previously, we thought that overuse and misuse of commercially available antibiotics caused resistance in bacteria,” Cheeptham explains. “But the truth is that we train them. When bacteria see triclosan [an antibacterial agent found in cleaning products, soap and toothpaste] coming towards them, they want to live, like all life on Earth. Most will die, but some figure out defence mechanisms that help them survive, such as creating a pore in their cell wall to allow them to pump out the drug faster than it comes in.” She taps her finger on the table to emphasis a point that she is clearly still in awe of. “Bacteria are smarter than us.”
This isn’t the only revelation that has changed the way researchers look at bacteria. “We’ve known since 1928 that bacteria produce both asexually and sexually, but we didn’t really make the connection between the latter method – also known as ‘horizontal gene transfer’ – and the passing on of antibiotic-resistant genes until very recently,” Cheeptham explains.
Inside the slimy underground hunt for humanity's antibiotic saviour
In What Is Life? (1944), Austrian physicist and Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger used that (still-unresolved) question to frame a more specific but equally provocative one. What is it about living systems, he asked, that seems to put them at odds with the known laws of physics? The answer he offered looks prescient now: life is distinguished by a “code-script” that directs cellular organization and heredity, while apparently enabling organisms to suspend the second law of thermodynamics.
Schrödinger’s cat among biology’s pigeons: 75 years of What Is Life?
F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”8 To any economist or prime minister who cannot handle measurement and happiness at the same time, let me suggest that you drop the measurement and celebrate the happiness.
How National Happiness became gross
Should we begin to think about an Auditor General of Algorithms?
Twenty years ago, George Dyson anticipated much of what is happening today in his classic book Darwin Among the Machines. The problem, he tells me, is that we’re building systems that are beyond our intellectual means to control. We believe that if a system is deterministic (acting according to fixed rules, this being the definition of an algorithm) it is predictable – and that what is predictable can be controlled. Both assumptions turn out to be wrong.
“It’s proceeding on its own, in little bits and pieces,” he says. “What I was obsessed with 20 years ago that has completely taken over the world today are multicellular, metazoan digital organisms, the same way we see in biology, where you have all these pieces of code running on people’s iPhones, and collectively it acts like one multicellular organism.
“There’s this old law called Ashby’s law that says a control system has to be as complex as the system it’s controlling, and we’re running into that at full speed now, with this huge push to build self-driving cars where the software has to have a complete model of everything, and almost by definition we’re not going to understand it. Because any model that we understand is gonna do the thing like run into a fire truck ’cause we forgot to put in the fire truck.”
Unlike our old electro-mechanical systems, these new algorithms are also impossible to test exhaustively. Unless and until we have super-intelligent machines to do this for us, we’re going to be walking a tightrope.
Franken-algorithms: the deadly consequences of unpredictable code
Every management educational program should include significant training in some form of improv. Here’s some great insight by Stephen Colbert on this in an hour video with the Times.
TimesTalks: Stephen Colbert
spend an intimate evening with Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning comedian, writer, producer and television host Stephen Colbert in conversation with The New York Times. For the second year in a row, “The Late Show” has earned Emmy nominations for outstanding variety talk series, outstanding writing for a variety series and outstanding directing for a variety series. More than just an entertainer, Colbert has used his comedic talents, acerbic wit and political parodies to impact culture in extraordinary ways over the past decade. Please join Colbert — dubbed the most inventive comedian of his generation — for an exciting night of spirited and substantive conversation.
For those who enjoy a good podcast - this is worth the listen.
Podcast: Network Effects, Origin Stories, and the Evolution of Tech
with W. Brian Arthur, Marc Andreessen, and Sonal Chokshi
“The rules of the game are different in tech,” argues — and has long argued, despite his views not being accepted at first — W. Brian Arthur, technologist-turned-economist who first truly described the phenomenon of “positive feedbacks” in the economy or “increasing returns” (vs. diminishing returns) in the new world of business… a.k.a. network effects. A longtime observer of Silicon Valley and the tech industry, he’s seen how a few early entrepreneurs first got it, fewer investors embrace it, entire companies be built around it, and still yet others miss it… even today.
Arthur — former Stanford professor, visiting researcher at PARC, and external professor at Santa Fe Institute who is also known as one of the fathers of complexity theory in economics — has written about the nature of technology and how it evolves, observing that new technology doesn’t come out of nowhere, but instead, is the result of “combinatorial” innovation. Does this then mean there’s no such thing as a dramatic breakthrough?!
In this hour-long episode of the a16z Podcast, we (Sonal Chokshi with Marc Andreessen) explore many of these questions with Arthur. His answers take us from “the halls of production” to the “casino of technology”; from the “prehistory” to the history of tech; from the invisible underground autonomy economy to the “internet of conversations”; from externally available information to externalized intelligence; and finally, from Silicon Valley to Singapore to China to India and back to Silicon Valley again. Who’s going to win; what are the chances of winning? We don’t know, because it’s a very different game… Do you still want to play?
This is an important signal in the ongoing re-examination of how we science and most significantly the publishing process.
‘Replication crisis’ spurs reforms in how science studies are done
But some researchers say the focus on reproducibility ignores a larger problem
What started out a few years ago as a crisis of confidence in scientific results has evolved into an opportunity for improvement. Researchers and journal editors are exposing how studies get done and encouraging independent redos of published reports. And there’s nothing like the string of failed replications to spur improved scientific practice.
That’s the conclusion of a research team, led by Caltech economist Colin Camerer, that examined 21 social science papers published in two major scientific journals, Nature and Science, from 2010 to 2015. Five replication teams directed by coauthors of the new study successfully reproduced effects reported for 13 of those investigations, the researchers report online August 27 in Nature Human Behavior. Results reported in eight papers could not be replicated.
The new study is an improvement over a previous attempt to replicate psychology findings(SN: 4/2/16, p. 8). But the latest results underscore the need to view any single study with caution, a lesson that many researchers and journal gatekeepers have taken to heart over the past few years, Camerer’s team says. An opportunity now exists to create a scientific culture of replication that provides a check on what ends up getting published and publicized, the researchers contend.
This is a good signal about Canada - if only we can invest more. The images, graphics and videos are worth the view.
Canada has future tech leadership with quantum computers, AI, nanotechnology, fusion and molten salt
In 2018, Canada is ranked tenth in the world in nominal GDP. It is a rich developed country. Despite having an economy that is 11 times smaller than the USA or 7 times smaller than China, Canada has world competitive or world-leading projects in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, molecular nanotechnology, nuclear fusion and nuclear-molten salt.
If the 9 other top ten countries had the same level of future technology concentration as Canada based on economy there would be thirty times the level of nuclear fusion, quantum computing, AI and molten salt nuclear as Canada. If there was the same level of future technology concentration as Canada based upon developed population there would be one hundred times the level of nuclear fusion, quantum computing, AI and molten salt nuclear as Canada.
The domestication of DNA can have some very significant shadows - this is a signal well worth paying attention to - how will our capitalistic corporations will use that information?
Nestle Wants Your DNA. Here's What It Plans to Do With It
The company that brought you milk chocolate, Maggi instant noodles and Rocky Road ice cream is worried about your health.
Nestle SA, the world’s largest food company, has joined the trend for personalized nutrition with a blend of artificial intelligence, DNA testing and the modern obsession with Instagramming food. The program, begun in aging Japan, could provide the Swiss company with a wealth of data about customers’ wellness and diet as it pivots toward consumers who are seeking to improve their health and longevity.
In Japan, some 100,000 users of the “Nestle Wellness Ambassador” program send pictures of their food via the popular Line app that then recommends lifestyle changes and specially formulated supplements. The program can cost $600 a year for capsules that make nutrient-rich teas, smoothies and other products such as vitamin-fortified snacks. A home kit to provide samples for blood and DNA testing helps identify susceptibility to common ailments like high cholesterol or diabetes.
The DNA and blood tests are conducted by outside companies that give the full results to consumers. Halmek Ventures Inc. provides the blood test and Japan-based Genesis Healthcare Co. performs the genetic analysis.
It seems like every day new breakthroughs in technology emerge - but more important is the pace of fundamental science is also accelerating. This is another signal on the road to domesticating DNA.
Three research teams have observed that during tissue regeneration, the typical solutions offered by adult stem cells (and the de-differentiated cells resembling them) aren’t enough. Instead, the cells of the damaged tissue turn the clock back all the way to a more fetal state, tapping into the proliferative power that once characterized development — and a program thought to have long gone silent.
To Heal Some Wounds, Adult Cells Turn More Fetal
Once again, body cells reveal unexpected plasticity: In a newly discovered type of wound healing, which some researchers call “paligenosis,” adult cells revert to a more fetal state.
To repair and restore themselves after damage, body tissues need new cells. To get them, researchers are discovering, tissues sometimes recruit ordinary mature cells and revert them to a highly proliferative state usually associated with fetuses.
An embryo starts out as just a single cell. It’s not long before it divides into two cells, then four, then eight, and so on — a process marked by rapid growth, in which these early, unspecialized cells proliferate wildly to start building all the tissues of the body. As development proceeds, these embryonic (and later fetal) stem cells become more specialized, differentiating into the precursors of various cell lineages, which in turn give rise to more mature cells: blood cells, nerve cells, muscle cells, intestinal cells. Major functional changes in these tissues continue to take place after birth, as the organism adapts to life outside the uterus, for the first time using its lungs to breathe air and its digestive system to process food.
A few cell populations retain some of that early plasticity as adult stem cells, helping both to maintain tissues on a day-to-day basis and to heal wounds. In recent years, moreover, it’s become clear that those aren’t the only cells that stay flexible: Sometimes, when the repair process calls for it, more specialized cells can take a few steps back, or “de-differentiate,” to re-enter a stemlike state, too.
This is a startling signal of our progress in domesticating DNA to build structures of our own design.
Genetically engineered bacteria paint microscopic masterpieces
Scientists have used genetically engineered bacteria to recreate a masterpiece at a microscopic scale. By engineering E. coli bacteria to respond to light, they’ve guided the bacteria like tiny drones toward patterns that depict Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. It’s not artistic recognition they’re after. Rather, the researchers want to show that these engineered organisms may someday be used as “microbricks” and living propellors.
“From a physicist perspective, bacteria are marvelous self-propelled micro-machines,” Roberto Di Leonardo, a physics professor at the University of Rome who worked on the project, told Digital Trends. “We are studying possible ways in which these fantastic micro-robots could be controlled using physical external stimuli, such as light, in order to exploit their propulsion for transport, manipulation of microscopic systems inside miniaturized laboratories on a chip.”
The science of quantum seems ever weirder - now the cat is not only alive AND dead - but cause-effect sequences can be reversed simultaneously.
A new quantum device defies the concepts of ‘before’ and ‘after’
The apparatus works by putting particles of light through a series of two operations
A new quantum device can jumble up a sequence of two events so that they take place in both orders simultaneously, researchers report in a paper in press in Physical Review Letters.
“In everyday life, we are used to thinking of events having a definite order,” says physicist Jacqui Romero of the University of Queensland in Australia. For example, in the morning, you might brush your teeth before washing your face, or vice versa. But in the quantum realm, both can be true simultaneously.
The device, known as a quantum switch, works by putting particles of light through a series of two operations — labeled A and B — that alter the shape of the light. These photons can travel along two separate paths to A and B. Along one path, A happens before B, and on the other, B happens before A.
Which path the photon takes is determined by its polarization, the direction in which its electromagnetic waves wiggle — up and down or side to side. Photons that have horizontal polarization experience operation A first, and those with vertical polarization experience B first.
But, thanks to the counterintuitive quantum property of superposition, the photon can be both horizontally and vertically polarized at once. In that case, the light experiences both A before B, and B before A, Romero and colleagues report.
This is another breakthrough signal related to the growing power of 3D printing. The Video is less than 2 min and very clear. Worth the view.
Acoustophoretic Printing Summary
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
An explanatory video of Acoustophoretic Printing.
This article signals a significant breakthrough in 3D-4D printed material.
Research team develops the world's first-ever 4-D printing for ceramics
A research team at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has achieved a groundbreaking advancement in materials research by successfully developing the world's first 4-D printing for ceramics, which are mechanically robust and can have complex shapes. This could turn a new page in the structural application of ceramics.
Ceramic has a high melting point, so it is difficult to use conventional laser printing to make ceramics. The existing 3-D-printed ceramic precursors, which are usually difficult to deform, also hinder the production of ceramics with complex shapes. To overcome these challenges, the CityU team has developed a novel "ceramic ink," which is a mixture of polymers and ceramic nanoparticles. The 3-D-printed ceramic precursors printed with this novel ink are soft and can be stretched three times beyond their initial length. These flexible and stretchable ceramic precursors allow complex shapes, such as origami folding. With proper heat treatment, ceramics with complex shapes can be made.
The team was led by Professor Lu Jian, chair professor of mechanical engineering, who is a distinguished materials scientist with research interests ranging from fabricating nanomaterials and advanced structural materials to the computational simulation of surface engineering. With the development of the elastic precursors, the research team has achieved one more breakthrough by developing two methods of 4-D printing of ceramics.
This is a 10 min video presenting what is claimed to be the world’s first electronic, autonomous personal aircraft. This is worth the view for anyone interesting in the looming possibilities of self-flying urban transport.
Daniel Wiegand: LILIUM
Daniel is Co-Founder and CEO of Lilium Flight
Lilium enables you to travel 5 times faster than a car by introducing the world’s first all-electric vertical take-off and landing jet: an air taxi for up to 5 people. You won’t have to own one, you will simply pay per ride and call it with a push of a button. It’s our mission to make air taxis available to everyone and as affordable as riding a car.
In 1894, Otto Lilienthal began experimenting with the first gliders and imagined a future in which we could all fly wherever we want, whenever we want. Lilium is turning that dream into reality. We are bringing personalized, clean and affordable air travel to everyone.
Climate change involves many challenges - but on the highest level it represents a Crisis of Consciousness - where humans are challenged to clear comprehend themselves as a single species in a single environment. Key to meeting this crisis - is understanding that we literally have to be able to ‘change our mind’. This article is a good signal of a growing awareness that Homo Sapiens Sapiens must again boldly go beyond the pale - enhancing human capability in many new ways. The chart and 2 min video are worth the view.
First ever trials on the effects of microdosing LSD set to begin
In Silicon Valley they say taking tiny amounts of the hallucinogenic drug increases creativity and productivity, but is it all in the mind?
Silicon Valley geeks say it sharpens their thinking and enhances creativity. Other people say it lifts the fog of depression. A novel experiment launching 3 September 2018 will investigate whether microdosing with LSD really does have benefits – or whether it’s all in the mind.
Microdosing using psychedelic drugs – either LSD or magic mushrooms – is said to have become very popular, especially with people working in the Californian digital tech world, some of whom are said to take a tiny amount one or more days a week as part of their routine before heading to work. It’s not for a psychedelic high, though – it’s to make them more focused.
Microdosers tend to use either tiny amounts of LSD – as little as one-fifteenth of a tab – or of psilocybin, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. The study is recruiting just those who use LSD, because of the difficulty in disguising even ground-up mushrooms in a capsule.
But it’s illegal. So how many people are microdosing is unknown and there is only anecdotal evidence of the effects and any downsides. In a bid to learn more, the Beckley Foundation, which was set up to pioneer research into mind-altering substances, and the unit it funds at Imperial College London, will launch the first ever placebo-controlled trial of microdosing on Monday, 3 September 2018.
For anyone interested in the history and culture of the emoji - First Monday has a special issue dedicated to this theme.
Histories and cultures of emoji vernaculars
Table of Contents
Between art and application: Special issue on emoji epistemology
Cultural literacy in the empire of emoji signs: Who is crying with joy?
Biaoqing: The circulation of emoticons, emoji, stickers, and custom images on Chinese digital media platforms
Inciting anger through Facebook reactions in Belgium: The use of emoji and related vernacular expressions in racist discourse
Facial recognition, emotion and race in animated social media
I second that emoji: The standards, structures, and social production of emoji
Emoji as a 'language' of cuteness
Emoji at MoMA: Considering the 'original emoji' as art
Emoji hashtags // hashtag emoji: Of platforms, visual affect, and discursive flexibility
And more - language lives - which means it evolves, innovates and creates new terms.
25 of the New Words Merriam-Webster Is Adding to the Dictionary in 2018
If you don't spend most of your time on the internet, it can be hard to keep up with the evolving lingo of the digital age. Luckily, the editors at Merriam-Webster have done the hard work of keeping track of the most important new terms to know: The American institution has added over 840 new words to its dictionary, many of which didn't exist a couple of decades ago.
Readers fluent in internet-speak will be familiar with many of the entries on the list, and there are also plenty of new words that are specific to the tech world. Not every word that's new to the dictionary is necessarily new to language; Merriam-Webster now includes some culinary terms that have been around for a while, and the new list also features abbreviations of common words. Check out a sample of the new entries below.
My favorites:
TL;DR
"Too long; didn't read—used to say that something would require too much time to read."
FORCE QUIT (V.)
"To force (an unresponsive computer program) to shut down (as by using a series of preset keystrokes)."
BIOHACKING (N.)
"Biological experimentation (as by gene editing or the use of drugs or implants) done to improve the qualities or capabilities of living organisms especially by individuals and groups outside of a traditional medical or scientific research environment."
FINTECH (N.)
"Products and companies that employ newly developed digital and online technologies in the banking and financial services industries."
MOCKTAIL (N.)
"A usually iced drink made with any of various ingredients (such as juice, herbs, and soda water) but without alcohol: a nonalcoholic cocktail."
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