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 equal sign is the bedrock of mathematics. It seems to make an entirely fundamental and uncontroversial statement: These things are exactly the same.
But there is a growing community of mathematicians who regard the equal sign as math’s original error. They see it as a veneer that hides important complexities in the way quantities are related — complexities that could unlock solutions to an enormous number of problems. They want to reformulate mathematics in the looser language of equivalence.
Since the mid-20th century mathematicians have tried to develop an alternative to set theory in which it would be more natural to do mathematics in terms of equivalence. In 1945 the mathematicians Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane introduced a new fundamental object that had equivalence baked right into it. They called it a category.
Categories can be filled with anything you want. You could have a category of mammals, which would collect all the world’s hairy, warm-blooded, lactating creatures. Or you could make categories of mathematical objects: sets, geometric spaces or number systems.
“There are lots of things we think of as things when they’re actually relationships between things,” Zakharevich said. “The phrase ‘my husband,’ we think of it as an object, but you can also think of it as a relationship to me. There is a certain part of him that’s defined by his relationship to me.”
“I think a lot of writing about mathematics is done in the tone that mathematicians are searching for these glittering crystalline truths,” Campbell said. “That’s not how it goes. They’re people with their own tastes and own domains of comfort, and they’ll dismiss things they don’t like for aesthetic or personal reasons.”
Scientific communities absorb new ideas all the time, but usually slowly, and with a sense of everyone moving forward together. When big new ideas arise, they present challenges for the intellectual machinery of the community. “A lot of stuff got introduced at once, so it’s kind of like a boa constrictor trying to ingest a cow,” Campbell said. “There’s this huge mass that’s flowing through the community.”
“Genius has an important role in developing mathematics, but actually the knowledge itself is the result of the activity of a community,” Joyal said. “It’s the real goal of knowledge to become the knowledge of the community, not the knowledge of one or two persons.”
With Category Theory, Mathematics Escapes From Equality
The unicorn barn is on fire. Ablaze. A feckless FTC and DOJ, no longer countervailing forces to private power but co-conspirators, have enabled invasive species (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google) to devastate the ecosystem. What to do? No worries, just double up on the MDMA of our economy — charismatic CEOs cut with cheap capital — and the illusion of prosperity party rocks on into the morning.
The markets have been dancing and partying with young firms with a seductive rap: “I think of myself as a tech, SaaS kind of guy.”
But as the lights come on, it’s clear he’s a rich kid exiting the bathroom with short-lived confidence from the cheap capital around his nostrils. He doesn’t have a real job (viable business model), and, worse, his parents are fed up and about to cut him off. (If I sound like someone who spent too much time at Pangea, Lotus, Rose Bar, Bungalow 8, and Butter in 2003 NYC, trust your instincts.)
The lights are on, and the market is now discerning between overvalued unicorns:
— Pinterest
— Snap
— Twitter
— Peloton
— Slack
— DoorDash
— Lime
— Palantir
— Uber
— Compass
And those that could lose more than 80 percent of their value or disappear: …...
Scott Galloway - MDMA
"Large herbivores aren't just passive parts of an ecosystem, we know that they can shape the landscape. They're eating the plants, and the biggest ones are knocking down trees or trampling soils, which collectively influences vegetation structure, fire regimes, nutrient cycling, and impacts other organisms, including humans,"
Early humans evolved in ecosystems unlike any found today
The asocial primate?
Is it obvious to you that humans are evolved social animals? Is it also obvious that our sociality is central to how we distribute resources? If you think so, you’re probably not an economist.
Through years of schooling, mainstream economists are trained to ignore the obvious facts about human nature. The theories that economists learn make it impossible for them to understand human sociality.
Economists are trained that humans are asocial ‘globules of desire’. This is Thorstein Veblen’s satirical term for ‘homo economicus’, the economic model of man.
Unlike scientific theories, ideologies are not about the search for ‘truth’. Instead, they are about rationalizing a certain worldview — usually the worldview of the powerful. Economists’ selfish model of humanity is a textbook example.
The opposite of altruistic relations is not selfish relations. It’s power and submission.
New Microeconomics: How Evolution Explains Resource Distribution
This is a MUST VIEW 10 min video on Modern Monetary Theory - one of the most promising emerging economic narratives that will likely displace the failed neoliberal economic narrative.
Modern Monetary Theory explained by Stephanie Kelton
Stephanie Kelton is a leading American economist and a Professor of Public Policy and Economics at Stony Brook University. Kelton was Chief Economist on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee and Economic Advisor to the Bernie 2016 presidential campaign. She's most known for being a pioneer of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
If this short video is intriguing here is a 50 min video with a more in depth explanation.
Presidential Lecture Series: Stephanie Kelton
Our nation’s finances are a blistering topic. Democrats blame Republicans for "blowing up the deficit" with tax cuts, while Republicans insist that programs such as Social Security and Medicare are the real drivers of our fiscal mess. As politicians fight over who’s at fault, an important debate is getting lost in the fog.
Professor Kelton casts a different light on these fiscal feuds and the budget deficit, arguing that both sides are missing the bigger picture when it comes to paying for our future.
Stephanie Kelton - Before joining Stony Brook, she chaired the Economics Department at the University of Missouri—Kansas City, where she taught for seventeen years. She is a former editor-in-chief of the top-ranked blog New Economic Perspectives and member of the TopWonks network of the nation’s best thinkers.
And one more 1.5 hour very clear explanation
Stephanie Kelton: The Public Purse
Drawing on her experience as the Chief Economist on the US Senate Budget Committee, Stephanie Kelton gives a beginner’s class on public deficits and what (almost) everyone is missing in the debate over the government’s budget. Is the government’s budget really just like a family budget? (Teaser: It’s not!) What is the purpose of budgeting anyway? Is it to balance spending and revenue, or is targeting a balanced budget the wrong goal altogether? Is the British government living beyond its means?
Stephanie outlines a new way of understanding deficits, debt, taxes, the relationship between the public and private sectors, and what our economy could look like. Turning the public budget into a participatory, mission-oriented endeavor is critical to restructuring public services and public investment and building the kind of economy that will deliver a cleaner, safer, more secure future for all.
This is an amazing MUST SEE visual that illuminates just how complex science and educational curricula have become - and who knows how it will continue to evolve. One this is sure this is a strong signal for the acceleration of transdisciplinary education and work.
Using university syllabi to map the connections between every scholarly and scientific discipline
"This is the 'Co-Assignment Galaxy' created by David McClure. It maps the top 160K titles in the new Open Syllabus 2.0 dataset, based on the frequency with which those texts are assigned (reflected in the size of the dot) and assigned together (reflected in the location and clustering of the dots). It's US centric given the composition of the syllabus collection, but also a unique representation of human knowledge as a collective, connected project.
Another important signal related to all forms of scientific research.
Beyond the 'replication crisis,' does research face an 'inference crisis'?
For the past decade, social scientists have been unpacking a "replication crisis" that has revealed how findings of an alarming number of scientific studies are difficult or impossible to repeat. Efforts are underway to improve the reliability of findings, but cognitive psychology researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst say that not enough attention has been paid to the validity of theoretical inferences made from research findings.
Using an example from their own field of memory research, they designed a test for the accuracy of theoretical conclusions made by researchers. The study was spearheaded by associate professor Jeffrey Starns, professor Caren Rotello, and doctoral student Andrea Cataldo, who has now completed her Ph.D. They shared authorship with 27 teams or individual cognitive psychology researchers who volunteered to submit their expert research conclusions for data sets sent to them by the UMass researchers.
"Our results reveal substantial variability in experts' judgments on the very same data," the authors state, suggesting a serious inference problem. Details are newly released in the journal Advancing Methods and Practices in Psychological Science.
Starns says that objectively testing whether scientists can make valid theoretical inferences by analyzing data is just as important as making sure they are working with replicable data patterns. "We want to ensure that we are doing good science. If we want people to be able to trust our conclusions, then we have an obligation to earn that trust by showing that we can make the right conclusions in a public test."
One more emerging signal of the transformation of the economic paradigm and narrative.
While a cost-benefit analysis has not been completed for the six-year study, the preliminary results after the first two years indicated that every 10 dollars invested in Housing First for the high needs group resulted in average savings of $9.60 because participants spent less time in shelters and hospitals.
Study shows Housing First program significantly reduces homelessness over long term
The longest running study of its kind on the "Housing First" model has found that it significantly reduces homelessness over the long term compared to treatment as usual, according to a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry by scientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and St. Michael's Hospital.
"The Housing First model results in a lasting and significant increase in the rate of days stably housed per year," said lead author CAMH Physician-in-Chief Dr. Vicky Stergiopoulos. "We now have evidence that we can offer to policy makers, clinicians and other stakeholders about solutions to chronic homelessness for people with mental illness."
Housing First provides immediate access to rent supplements and mental health support services to people who are homeless and have a mental illness. Traditional models require homeless people to stop using substances or receive psychiatric treatment before being eligible for housing support services.
This is an interesting signal of both the past and of the creative research use of Google NGram.
Were people really happier in the past? Millions of pieces of text suggest not.
Ever wondered whether people were happier in the past? We now have a much better idea, thanks to a new technique that involves analyzing the sentiment behind the words used in millions of pieces of text over the last 200 years. (And the answer is: people in the US are probably happier now than they’ve ever been, despite what you might think.)
The study: A team of researchers, led by Thomas Hills at the University of Warwick, analyzed 8 million books and 65 million newspaper articles published between 1820 and 2009. They assigned happiness scores to thousands of words in different languages and then calculated the relative proportion of positive and negative language for the four different countries.
These scores were used to create historical happiness indices for the UK, the US, Germany, and Italy. The researchers took into account the fact that certain words change their meaning over time (gay, for example). The collection was drawn from Google Books, and it represents a digitized record of more than 6% of all books ever published. The method was validated by comparing the findings with survey data on well-being from the 1970s, collected through about 1,000 face-to-face interviews each year in every European Union country (the Eurobarometer). Their study is published in Nature Human Behavior today.
The big picture: New ways to measure well-being and happiness could help to inform national policies. Using written material to provide historical context could prove invaluable to the fledgling discipline.
This is a good signal on the progress of domesticating DNA.
"The exciting thing is that this study reveals the potential for our method to enable research in other food crops where research funding is not as high. Due to industry and government support, resources are already available to do large-scale studies in maize. But for scientists studying the countless vegetables, fruits, and grains that many communities rely on, funding for massive studies simply isn't possible. This is a breakthrough which will enable cheap and quick identification of trait-gene associations to advance nutrition and sustainability in food crops world-wide."
Cheap as chips: identifying plant genes to ensure food security
An international team of scientists led by the University of Goettingen has developed a new approach that enables researchers to more efficiently identify the genes that control plant traits. This method will enable plant breeders and scientists to develop more affordable, desirable, and sustainable plant varieties. The application will be most valuable for the fruit, vegetable and grain crops that not only end up on our dinner table, but are also critical for global food security and human nutrition. The research was published in BMC Plant Biology.
The new method is an extension of a tool known as GWA (Genome Wide Association). GWA studies use genetic sequencing technologies coupled with advanced statistics and computation to link differences in the genetic code with particular traits. When using GWA to study plants, researchers typically manage large sets of genetically identical plants. However, developing these sets of "inbred lines" is costly and time-consuming: it can take over six years of preparation before such a study can even begin. The new technique is modelled after an approach often used to study human DNA, in which DNA samples from thousands of individual people, who are certainly not identical, are compared.
Antibiotic resistance currently poses a serious emerging threat - but solutions are being explored - here’s a good signal.
Scientists discover new antibiotic in tropical forest
Scientists from Rutgers University and around the world have discovered an antibiotic produced by a soil bacterium from a Mexican tropical forest that may help lead to a "plant probiotic," more robust plants and other antibiotics.
The new antibiotic, known as phazolicin, prevents harmful bacteria from getting into the root systems of bean plants, according to a Rutgers co-authored study in the journal Nature Communications.
The bacterium that produces phazolicin, is an unidentified species of Rhizobium. It was found in a tropical forest in Los Tuxtlas, Mexico, in the soil and roots of wild beans called Phaseolus vulgaris, hence the antibiotic's name: phazolicin. Like other Rhizobia, the phazolicin-producing microbe forms nodules on bean plant roots and provides plants with nitrogen, making them grow more robustly than others. Unlike other Rhizobia, it also defends plants from harmful bacteria sensitive to phazolicin. The phenomenon could eventually be exploited in beans, peas, chickpeas, lentils, peanuts, soybeans and other legumes.
Another signal of the transformation of energy geopolitics.
The UK just got more power from renewables than fossil fuels for the first time
In the third quarter of this year 40% of the UK’s electricity came from renewables like wind, biomass, and solar, while fossil fuels—virtually all gas in the UK’s case—made up 39%, according to climate change analysts Carbon Brief. The remaining 21% mostly came from nuclear. It’s the first time this has happened since the UK’s first power plant fired up in 1882. The UK’s National Grid (its power transmission network operator) had predicted that zero-carbon electricity would overtake gas and coal-fired power this year.
Why? The milestone is largely due to a few new offshore wind farms that came online from July to September this year. The wind farm industry in the UK is in the midst of a boost as turbines become bigger and more efficient, making projects easier to justify commercially.
The global context: The country has made rapid progress, considering that fossil fuels made up four-fifths of its electricity just a decade ago. However, others are further ahead still, and it’s worth remembering the UK accounts for a tiny proportion of global carbon emissions anyway. Germany passed the same milestone as the UK last year, while Sweden met it seven years ago. The power grids in Iceland, Norway, and Costa Rica run almost entirely on renewable energy already.
This is an interesting signal of the future of the digital environment and the Internet of Things and Sensors.
FCC approves wireless charging tech for IoT devices, Walmart to adopt it
Ossia's Forever Tracker technology would charge multiple IoT devices.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted an equipment authorization for wireless power delivery for an Internet of Things (IoT) tracking device.
Ossia's Forever Tracker technology, which the company claims can charge multiple IoT tracking sensors at the same time, would be embedded in shipping packages aboard trucks or other vessels.
Unlike today's most popular wireless chargers, which require devices to rest on a charging pad, Ossia is among several companies developing trickle charging capability at distances of many feet. Some of the technologies, also known as "uncoupled wireless charging," can even charge through walls, or simply top off a device as you enter a room.
Ossia's Cota technology uses radio frequency (RF) to send power and data over distances greater than 15 feet. Cota Transmitters can link to charge dozens of mobile devices within a several-meter radius, and the transmitters come in multiple form factors, including a drop ceiling tile.
This is a fascinating signal - one that will likely further the arms race between patent makers and patent breakers - but also make security easier.
X-Ray Tech Lays Chip Secrets Bare
Researchers in Switzerland and the U.S. have a non-destructive technique that can reverse engineer an entire chip without damaging it
Scientists and engineers in Switzerland and California have come up with a technique that can reveal the 3D design of a modern microprocessor without destroying it.
Typically today, such reverse engineering is a time-consuming process that involves painstakingly removing each of a chip’s many nanometers-thick interconnect layers and mapping them using a hierarchy of different imaging techniques, from optical microscopy for the larger features to electron microscopy for the tiniest features.
The inventors of the new technique, called ptychographic X-ray laminography, say it could be used by integrated circuit designers to verify that manufactured chips match their designs, or by government agencies concerned about “kill switches” or hardware trojans that could have secretly been added to ICs they depend on.
“It’s the only approach to non-destructive reverse engineering of electronic chips—[and] not just reverse engineering but assurance that chips are manufactured according to design,” says Anthony F. J. Levi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of Southern California, who led the California side of the team. “You can identify the foundry, aspects of the design, who did the design. It’s like a fingerprint.”
This is a great signal of the emerging dimensions of mixed reality. One great novel that explores the implications for the future of life and work augmented with Mixed Reality is Canada’s own Karl Schroeder who’s “Stealing Worlds” is a must read. The 2.5 min video is worth the view.
Google used photogrammetry to create a detailed VR tour of Versailles
It's the largest photogrammetry capture ever done on the site.
Versailles palace is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world, but fighting those crowds in person can be frustrating. Now, Google and the Château de Versailles have teamed up to take VR users on a private tour of Louis XIV's royal residence. It's the largest photogrammetry project ever done at the castle, with 21 rooms and 387,500 square feet of internal surfaces captured. HTC Vive and Oculus Rift users can handle and inspect over 100 sculptures, paintings and other works of art and see them with incredible close-up detail.
Well everyone who knows me knows I love coffee - I now roast my own green beans and have great coffee that is never more than $6 per pound. So when I saw this signal - I of course had to share.
Coffee bean extracts alleviate inflammation, insulin resistance in mouse cells
When coffee beans are processed and roasted the husk and silverskin of the bean are removed and unused, and often are left behind in fields by coffee producers.
Food science and human nutrition researchers at the University of Illinois are interested in the potential of inflammation-fighting compounds found in the silverskin and husk of coffee beans, not only for their benefits in alleviating chronic disease, but also in adding value to would-be "waste" products from the coffee processing industry.
A recent study, published in Food and Chemical Toxicology, shows that when fat cells of mice were treated with water-based extracts from coffee beans skins, two phenolic compounds—protocatechuic acid and gallic acid—in particular reduced fat-induced inflammation in the cells and improved glucose absorption and insulin sensitivity.
The findings show promise for these bioactive compounds, when consumed as part of the diet, as a strategy for preventing obesity-related chronic illnesses, such as Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
This weak signal of domesticating DNA, may hold a lot of promise to the aging population.
Humans have salamander-like ability to regrow cartilage in joints
Contrary to popular belief, cartilage in human joints can repair itself through a process similar to that used by creatures such as salamanders and zebrafish to regenerate limbs, researchers at Duke Health found.
Publishing online Oct. 9 in the journal Science Advances, the researchers identified a mechanism for cartilage repair that appears to be more robust in ankle joints and less so in hips. The finding could potentially lead to treatments for osteoarthritis, the most common joint disorder in the world.
"We believe that an understanding of this 'salamander-like' regenerative capacity in humans, and the critically missing components of this regulatory circuit, could provide the foundation for new approaches to repair joint tissues and possibly whole human limbs," said senior author Virginia Byers Kraus, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the departments of Medicine, Pathology and Orthopedic Surgery at Duke.
"We believe we could boost these regulators to fully regenerate degenerated cartilage of an arthritic joint. If we can figure out what regulators we are missing compared with salamanders, we might even be able to add the missing components back and develop a way someday to regenerate part or all of an injured human limb," Kraus said. "We believe this is a fundamental mechanism of repair that could be applied to many tissues, not just cartilage."
A fascinating study of how small actions when combined change our world.
How tiny creatures are reshaping the very rivers they live in
What shapes a river? People typically imagine large-scale processes such as storms and floods or human modifications like dams or fortified banks. But the shape of our rivers today is also a result of the cumulative impact of millions of tiny invertebrates, often small enough that most people don't even notice them.
"Zoogeomorphology" is the study of how animals effect their physical environment, such as by moving sediment or modifying the habitat. The zoogeomorphic effects of larger organisms are easily seen. For example, when a beaver builds a dam it retains water, creating diverse wetlands upstream and sometimes helping to reduce flooding downstream. Fish also alter the river, turning over gravels while feeding and spawning.
The individual impacts of invertebrates are much smaller but, collectively, they can make a big difference. Charles Darwin recognized this as early as 1881 in his snappy-titled "The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits", and the same is true in rivers. This army of small engineers is changing river environments, and we are part of a research group that is working out exactly how.
Here are three small creatures we already know are having a big impact:
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