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
In the 21st century - the planet is the little school house in the galaxy.
Citizenship is the battlefield of the 21st Century
“Be careful what you ‘insta-google-tweet-face’”
Woody Harrelson - Triple 9
Content
Quotes:
Articles:
The methods developed so far really think about genetics and environment as separate and orthogonal, as independent factors. When in truth, they’re not independent.
New Turmoil Over Predicting the Effects of Genes
In medicine, believing something is true is not the same as being able to prove it. Because the idea that inflammation—constant, low-level, immune-system activation —could be at the root of many noncommunicable diseases is a startling claim, it requires extraordinary proof. Can seemingly unconnected illnesses of the brain, the vasculature, lungs, liver, and joints really share a deep biological link? Evidence has been mounting that these common chronic conditions—including Alzheimer’s, cancer, arthritis, asthma, gout, psoriasis, anemia, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and depression among them—are indeed triggered by low-grade, long-term inflammation. But it took that large-scale human clinical trial to dispel any lingering doubt: the immune system’s inflammatory response is killing people by degrees.
Could inflammation be the cause of myriad chronic conditions?
Medical devices embedded deep in human flesh. Mushrooms growing designer chairs. Engineered probiotic bacteria colonising the guts of soldiers. Implants; fungal factories; bacteria. All three are “biodesigns”, yet each is a product of a very different discipline: biomedical engineering, design, and synthetic biology. Over the last twenty years, each field has in turn claimed the fusing of biology and design as their own. If design is humanity’s process for changing present conditions to other, preferred ones (to paraphrase political scientist Herbert Simon), then biodesign—which we broadly define here as the design of, with, or from biology—offers novel perspectives on what change could look like, for ourselves and other living things. Altered or designed by humans, these organisms could populate “other biological futures”; possible futures different to those dictated by our planet’s naturally evolved present.
Other Biological Futures
Epistemology is the term that describes how we know what we know. Most people who think about knowledge think about the processes of obtaining it. Ignorance is often assumed to be not-yet-knowledgeable. But what if ignorance is strategically manufactured? What if the tools of knowledge production are perverted to enable ignorance? In 1995, Robert Proctor and Iain Boal coined the term “agnotology” to describe the strategic and purposeful production of ignorance. In an edited volume called Agnotology, Proctor and Londa Schiebinger collect essays detailing how agnotology is achieved. Whether we’re talking about the erasure of history or the undoing of scientific knowledge, agnotology is a tool of oppression by the powerful.
What’s at stake right now is not simply about hate speech vs. free speech or the role of state-sponsored bots in political activity. It’s much more basic. It’s about purposefully and intentionally seeding doubt to fragment society.To fragment epistemologies. This is a tactic that was well-honed by propagandists.
The goal is no longer just to go straight to the news media. It’s to first create a world of content and then to push the term through to the news media at the right time so that people search for that term and receive specific content. Terms like caravan, incel, crisis actor. By exploiting the data void, or the lack of viable information, media manipulators can help fragment knowledge and seed doubt.
Agnotology and Epistemological Fragmentation
Scientific advances are accelerating - we all know that. A key implication is the proliferation of new knowledge domains and new fields and methods of inquiry. Here is a good signal of a new domain of study.
“We’re seeing the rise of machines with agency, machines that are actors making decisions and taking actions autonomously,” Rahwan said. “This calls for a new field of scientific study that looks at them not solely as products of engineering and computer science but additionally as a new class of actors with their own behavioral patterns and ecology.”
Studying the behavior of AI
A new paper frames the emerging interdisciplinary field of machine behavior
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 study of artificial intelligence well beyond computer science and engineering into biology, economics, psychology, and other behavioral and social sciences.
“We need more open, trustworthy, reliable investigation into the impact intelligent machines are having on society, and so research needs to incorporate expertise and knowledge from beyond the fields that have traditionally studied it,” said Iyad Rahwan, who leads the Scalable Cooperation group at the Media Lab.
Rahwan, Manuel Cebrian and Nick Obradovich, along with other scientists from the Media Lab convened colleagues at the Max Planck Institutes, Stanford University, the University of California San Diego, and other educational institutions as well as from Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, to publish a paper in Nature making a case for a wide-ranging scientific research agenda aimed at understanding the behavior of artificial intelligence systems.
This is a must see 15 min TED Talk - from one of the journalists that broke the Cambridge Analytica story - For anyone concerned with the future of democracy in the digital environment.
Facebook's role in Brexit — and the threat to democracy
In an unmissable talk, journalist Carole Cadwalladr digs into one of the most perplexing events in recent times: the UK's super-close 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Tracking the result to a barrage of misleading Facebook ads targeted at vulnerable Brexit swing voters -- and linking the same players and tactics to the 2016 US presidential election -- Cadwalladr calls out the "gods of Silicon Valley" for being on the wrong side of history and asks: Are free and fair elections a thing of the past?
The future of management? This is a bleak signal.
How Amazon automatically tracks and fires warehouse workers for ‘productivity’
Documents show how the company tracks and terminates workers
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 say those fulfillment center workers face strenuous conditions: workers are pressed to “make rate,” with some packing hundreds of boxes per hour, and losing their job if they don’t move fast enough. “You’ve always got somebody right behind you who’s ready to take your job,” says Stacy Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and a prominent Amazon critic.
The automation aspect: Amazon tracks every individual worker’s productivity, and automatically generates warnings or even terminations without any input from supervisors, the company said. Managers can override the process, but it didn’t say how regularly they do. Amazon says that the termination process can be appealed.
The surveilled world is here and spreading - one key in creating conditions for democracy could be robust legislation and technology enabling ‘sousveillance’
Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State
In Ecuador, cameras capture footage to be examined by police and domestic intelligence. The surveillance system’s origin: China.
The squat gray building in Ecuador’s capital commands a sweeping view of the city’s sparkling sprawl, from the high-rises at the base of the Andean valley to the pastel neighborhoods that spill up its mountainsides.
The police who work inside are looking elsewhere. They spend their days poring over computer screens, watching footage that comes in from 4,300 cameras across the country.
The high-powered cameras send what they see to 16 monitoring centers in Ecuador that employ more than 3,000 people. Armed with joysticks, the police control the cameras and scan the streets for drug deals, muggings and murders. If they spy something, they zoom in.
This voyeur’s paradise is made with technology from what is fast becoming the global capital of surveillance: China.
Remember the argument - if you have nothing to hide then you should worry about surveillance? This is an interesting signal to counter that argument.
Manspreading on the Beijing subway could give you bad social credit
China plans to roll out a national social credit system by 2020
Manspreading is considered by many a breach of subway etiquette. It became such a scourge in 2015 that New York transport authorities started putting up posters asking men to keep their legs together. In Beijing, though, space hoarders could soon face consequences more serious than just the scorn of fellow riders.
The Beijing Municipal Commission of Transportation is proposing to link a passenger’s bad behavior on the subway with social credit. Those who take up extra seats on trains will be marked as “uncivilized” -- and so will those who eat during rides, hawk goods to other passengers or sneak into the subway without paying.
It seems that the legalization of Cannabis is spreading and with it a new openness to other ways to alter one’s consciousness. This is likely very important as the complexity of the challenges we face may mean we also have to (literally) change our minds. This is a good signal of that trend.
“This new Centre represents a watershed moment for psychedelics science; symbolic of its now mainstream recognition. Psychedelics are set to have a major impact on neuroscience and psychiatry in the coming years. It’s such a privilege to be at the forefront of one of the most exciting areas in medical science. I am immensely grateful to the donors who have made all of this possible."
Imperial launches world’s first Centre for Psychedelics Research
The first formal centre for psychedelic research in the world will launch at Imperial College London today.
Funded by more than £3 million from five founding donors, the new Imperial Centre for Psychedelic Research will build on over a decade of pioneering work in this area carried out at Imperial, including a clinical trial that has kick-started global efforts to develop psilocybin therapy into a licensed treatment for depression. It will also investigate their potential for treating other conditions, including anorexia.
Led by Dr Robin Carhart-Harris, the Centre will focus on two main research themes: the use of psychedelics in mental health care; and as tools to probe the brain’s basis of consciousness.
The newly established Centre will be based at Imperial’s Hammersmith campus, sharing space between Imperial College London and the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
The Centre also aims to develop a research clinic that could help to gather additional clinical evidence and become a prototype for the licensed psychedelic care facilities of the future.
Although this is still a weak signal - it seems like it will inevitably emerge as a part of brain-machine interfaces.
Brain signals translated into speech using artificial intelligence
Technology could one day be used to help people who can’t talk to communicate.
In an effort to provide a voice for people who can’t speak, neuroscientists have designed a device that can transform brain signals into speech.
This technology isn’t yet accurate enough for use outside the lab, although it can synthesize whole sentences that are mostly intelligible. Its creators described their speech-decoding device in a study published on 24 April in Nature.
Scientists have previously used artificial intelligence to translate single words, mostly consisting of one syllable, from brain activity, says Chethan Pandarinath, a neuroengineer at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who co-wrote a commentary accompanying the study. “Making the leap from single syllables to sentences is technically quite challenging and is one of the things that makes the current work so impressive,” he says.
Creating the audible synthetic sentences required years of analysis after brain signals were recorded, and the technique is not ready to be used outside of a lab. Still, the work shows “that just using the brain, it is possible to decode speech,” says UCSF speech scientist Gopala Anumanchipalli.
This is a great signal with a lot of promise for transforming our agriculture and providing a new source of food.
This tiny new grain could save the planet
There's a new food we are all likely to hear a lot more about in the future. Developed from wheatgrass, 'Kernza' is being hailed as a weapon against climate change that could also protect the environment and revolutionize farming. Big claims for a grain that is but one-fifth the size of wheat.
Americans can already buy pasta, pizza, bread and beer made with the grain, which was trademarked 'Kernza' by the Land Institute in Kansas. ...the grain has a much more serious purpose. Unlike wheat, barley and other cereals it is a perennial plant whose roots can be left in the ground to regrow after harvesting.
That removes the need to clear fields, plough and reseed every year, saving energy and reducing farmers’ carbon emissions. Kernza can also be harvested using existing farm machinery. Kernza roots extend over 3 metres beneath the soil, more than twice the depth of wheat, helping to stabilise soil, retain water and improve wildlife habitat.
While wheat has been around for more than 10,000 years, Kernza is the new kid on the block. It was first bred under two decades ago and there are currently less than 500 hectares of the crop under cultivation.
Another signal of emerging AI and micro medical tools for new forms of surgery and treatment.
A robotic catheter has autonomously wound its way inside a live, beating pig’s heart
The device was inspired by the way cockroaches feel their way along tunnels.
Operating inside a beating heart is a complex, delicate procedure that requires skilled surgeons. Medical personnel typically use joysticks and a combination of x-rays or ultrasound to carefully guide catheters through the body.
Now, for the first time, a robotic catheter has been able to autonomously navigate inside a heart to help carry out a particularly complex procedure. The device, which was inspired by the way certain animals learn about their surroundings, was used to help surgeons close leakages within the hearts of five live pigs.
The device is 8 millimeters across, with a camera and an LED light on its tip that work as a combined optic and touch sensor. A machine-learning algorithm that was trained on approximately 2,000 heart-tissue images was used to guide it as it moved. The touch sensor periodically tapped against the heart’s tissue as the device wound its way through, helping it know where it was and making sure it wasn’t likely to damage the tissue.
A great weak signal of nanobots for dentistry. Nanobot toothbrushes.
"Treating biofilms that occur on teeth requires a great deal of manual labor, both on the part of the consumer and the professional," adds Steager. "We hope to improve treatment options as well as reduce the difficulty of care."
An army of microrobots can wipe out dental plaque
A team of engineers, dentists, and biologists from the University of Pennsylvania developed a microscopic robotic cleaning crew. With two types of robotic systems—one designed to work on surfaces and the other to operate inside confined spaces—the scientists showed that robots with catalytic activity could ably destroy biofilms, sticky amalgamations of bacteria enmeshed in a protective scaffolding. Such robotic biofilm-removal systems could be valuable in a wide range of potential applications, from keeping water pipes and catheters clean to reducing the risk of tooth decay, endodontic infections, and implant contamination.
The work, published in Science Robotics, was led by Hyun (Michel) Koo of the School of Dental Medicine and Edward Steager of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
"This was a truly synergistic and multidisciplinary interaction," says Koo. "We're leveraging the expertise of microbiologists and clinician-scientists as well as engineers to design the best microbial eradication system possible. This is important to other biomedical fields facing drug-resistant biofilms as we approach a post-antibiotic era."
This is a fascinating weak signal suggesting a future form of treatment for muscle and other injuries - perhaps eventually to enhance strength, flexibility and resilience.
"We may be able to one day embed these structures under the skin, and the [coil] material would eventually be digested, while the new cells stay put," Guo says. "The nice thing about this method is, it's really general, and we can try different materials. This may push the limit of tissue engineering a lot."
'Nanofiber yarn' makes for stretchy, protective artificial tissue
The human body is held together by an intricate cable system of tendons and muscles, engineered by nature to be tough and highly stretchable. An injury to any of these tissues, particularly in a major joint like the shoulder or knee, can require surgical repairs and weeks of limited mobility to fully heal.
Now MIT engineers have come up with a tissue engineering design that may enable flexible range of motion in injured tendons and muscles during healing.
The team has engineered small coils lined with living cells, that they say could act as stretchy scaffolds for repairing damaged muscles and tendons. The coils are made from hundreds of thousands of biocompatible nanofibers, tightly twisted into coils resembling miniature nautical rope, or yarn.
The researchers coated the yarn with living cells, including muscle and mesenchymal stem cells, which naturally grow and align along the yarn, into patterns similar to muscle tissue. The researchers found the yarn's coiled configuration helps to keep cells alive and growing, even as the team stretched and bent the yarn multiple times.
In the future, the researchers envision doctors could line patients' damaged tendons and muscles with this new flexible material, which would be coated with the same cells that make up the injured tissue. The "yarn's" stretchiness could help maintain a patient's range of motion while new cells continue to grow to replace the injured tissue.
This is a weak signal - but one that has been anticipated for a long time - hacking matter to create almost living robots.
Cornell scientists create ‘living’ machines that eat, grow, and evolve
The field of robotics is going through a renaissance thanks to advances in machine learning and sensor technology. Each generation of robot is engineered with greater mechanical complexity and smarter operating software than the last. But what if, instead of painstakingly designing and engineering a robot, you could just tear open a packet of primordial soup, toss it in the microwave on high for two minutes, and then grow your own ‘lifelike’ robot?
If you’re a Cornell research team, you’d grow a bunch and make them race.
Basically, the Cornell team grew their own robots using a DNA-based bio-material, observed them metabolizing resources for energy, watched as they decayed and grew, and then programmed them to race against each other. We would have made them compete in a karaoke competition, but Cornell’s application is also impressive.
As unbelievable as it sounds, the team is actually just getting started. Lead author on the team’s paper, Shogo Hamada, told The Stanford Chronicle that “ultimately, the system may lead to lifelike self-reproducing machines.”
This work is still in its infancy, but the implications of organically grown, self-reproducing machines are incredible. And the debate over whether robots can be “alive” will likely have an entire new chapter to discuss soon.
A good signal of the ongoing work in domesticating DNA and deepening our knowledge for a flourishing future.
The five-year, $2.6 million Redwood Genome Project, funded by San Francisco’s Save the Redwoods League, was started in 2017 and is the most intensive scientific study ever done on the state’s famous primeval forests.
“You think of plants generally — they don't have brains, so they can’t be that complicated, but a redwood has to stay in the same place for thousands of years and fight off everything that comes its way,” said Steven Salzberg, a professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who skippered the sequencing work. “It has to have a pretty robust ability to fight off fungi, microbes, insects, beetles, and a vast array of temperatures and humidities.”
California scientists unravel genetic mysteries of world’s tallest trees
Scientists have unlocked the genetic codes of California’s most distinguished, longest-lasting residents — coast redwood and giant sequoia trees — in what is a major breakthrough in the quest to protect the magnificent forests from the ravages of climate change, researchers announced Tuesday.
The sequencing of the towering conifers’ genomes is being presented as a transformational moment for the ancient groves because it will allow scientists to figure out which trees are best suited for a warmer, more volatile future.
It turns out the coast redwood genome has six sets of chromosomes and 27 billion base pairs of DNA. That’s nine times the size of the human genome, which has a meager two sets of chromosomes. It even puts to shame the giant sequoia, which has more than 8 billion base pairs of DNA and is roughly three times the size of the human genome.
This is perhaps a weak signal - not just about quantum physics - but also pointing to emerging breakthroughs in fundamental science.
Quantum Physics Experiment Suggests That Reality Isn’t Objective
When it comes to quantum physics, there may be no such thing as a shared objective reality.
A new quantum physics experiment just lent evidence to a mind-boggling idea that was previously limited to the realm of theory, according to the MIT Technology Review — that under the right conditions, two people can observe the same event, see two different things happen, and both be correct.
According to research shared to the preprint server arXiv on Tuesday, physicists from Heriot-Watt University demonstrated for the first time how two people can experience different realities by recreating a classic quantum physics thought experiment.
This is another signal of how much there is to learn - who could predict the affordances of two sheets of carbon twisted to a weird angle.
It’s exceptionally difficult to twist two sheets of graphene exactly 1.1 degrees out of alignment. But this “magic angle” leads to extraordinary effects. “I couldn’t believe it,” said one scientist. “I mean I actually found it beyond belief.”
With a Simple Twist, a ‘Magic’ Material Is Now the Big Thing in Physics
The stunning emergence of a new type of superconductivity with the mere twist of a carbon sheet has left physicists giddy, and its discoverer nearly overwhelmed.
The discovery has been the biggest surprise to hit the solid-state physics field since the 2004 Nobel Prize–winning discovery that an intact sheet of carbon atoms — graphene — could be lifted off a block of graphite with a piece of Scotch tape. And it has ignited a frenzied race among condensed-matter physicists to explore, explain and extend the MIT results, which have since been duplicated in several labs.
The observation of superconductivity has created an unexpected playground for physicists. The practical goals are obvious: to illuminate a path to higher-temperature superconductivity, to inspire new types of devices that might revolutionize electronics, or perhaps even to hasten the arrival of quantum computers. But more subtly, and perhaps more important, the discovery has given scientists a relatively simple platform for exploring exotic quantum effects. “There’s an almost frustrating abundance of riches for studying novel physics in the magic-angle platform,” said Cory Dean, a physicist at Columbia University who was among the first to duplicate the research.
And quantum phenomena may now become perceivable to human sensorium.
If humans can see single photons, an observer can play a direct role in a test of local realism
Exactly why and how superposition states collapse to definite outcomes is still one of the great mysteries of physics today. Testing quantum mechanics with a new, unique, ready-to-hand measurement apparatus – the human visual system – could rule out or provide evidence for certain theories.
Seeing the quantum
The human eye is a surprisingly good photon detector. What can it spy of the line between the quantum and classical worlds?
Using a single-photon source based on spontaneous parametric downconversion, and a forced-choice experimental design, there are now two possible experiments that could bring quantum weirdness into the realm of human perception: a test using superposition states, and what’s known as a ‘Bell test’ of non-locality using a human observer.
Superposition is a uniquely quantum concept. Quantum particles such as photons are described by the probability that a future measurement will find them in a particular location – so, before the measurement, the thinking is that they can be in two (or more!) places at once. This idea applies not just to particles’ locations, but to other properties, such as polarisation, which refers to the orientation of the plane along which they propagate in the form of waves. Measurement seems to make particles ‘collapse’ to one outcome or another, but no one knows exactly how or why the collapse happens.
The human visual system provides interesting new ways to investigate this problem. One simple but spooky test would be to determine whether humans perceive a difference between a photon in a superposition state and a photon in a definite location. Physicists have been interested in this question for years, and have proposed several approaches – but for the moment let’s consider the single-photon source described above, delivering a photon to either the left or the right of an observer’s eye.
The signals indicating the approach of the autonomous car are increasingly strong - Tesla has created a customized chipset - but Alphabet’s (Google) efforts are approaching primetime.
Waymo is turning to Detroit to build its first self-driving car factory
Alphabet subsidiary Waymo, not to be outdone by its sister company Wing, announced today (April 23) that it had selected a facility in Detroit, Michigan, to house the company’s first factory dedicated to building autonomous vehicles. The company first hinted at working in Detroit back in January.
Waymo is working with the component company American Axle & Manufacturing to convert an existing factory in the traditional heart of the US’s car-making industry up and have it running before the end of 2019.
Waymo will be leasing a building on American Axle’s campus and refitting it. The facility will primarily be used to install autonomous hardware and software in Chrysler Pacifica minivans and Jaguar I-Pace SUVs the company has purchased, Waymo told Quartz.
The move comes as fewer Americans are getting drivers’ licenses, more people are using ride-sharing services instead of owning cars, and startups are making cars that are beginning to drive themselves. Waymo’s choice suggests that even in a time of great upheaval in the US auto industry, tech companies interested in automotive technologies are still turning to those who historically have had the expertise.
Waymo has been expanding its commercial autonomous ride-hailing test service in the Phoenix, Arizona area, ahead of a wider launch.
The signals for autonomous cars are ever stronger - but the personal flying ‘chariot’ remain relatively weak. The images of the five winners are worth the view.
Meet the 5 Winners Of GoFly Phase II
Congratulations to all of our innovators and teams for completing Phase II of the GoFly challenge! We were incredibly impressed with the technical prowess and creativity of the entries—in fact, we received so many stellar high quality entries that we have added an extra prize, and will now be awarding 5 Phase II Teams with prizes. Each of these teams will receive $50,000 in prizes.
The GoFly community is comprised of more than 3,500 innovators from 101 countries across the globe. Of these innovators, 31 Phase II Teams across 16 countries submitted entries for review by a panel of experts across 2 rounds of rigorous judging. These Phase II teams were required to submit visual and written documentation detailing their personal flyer prototypes. It’s the first time physical prototypes were introduced into the challenge, and this crucial step has brought us ever closer to the Final Fly-Off.
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