Friday Thinking is a humble curation of my foraging in the digital environment. Choices are based on my own curiosity and 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 is what skills the cat -
for life of skillful means .
Jobs are dying - Work is just beginning.
Work that engages our whole self becomes play that works.
The emerging world-of-connected-everything - digital environment -
computational ecology -
may still require humans as the consciousness of its own existence.
To see red - is to know other colors - without the ground of others - there is no figure - differences that make a defference.
‘There are times, ‘when I catch myself believing there is something which is separate from something else.’
“I'm not failing - I'm Learning"
Quellcrist Falconer - Altered Carbon
Content
Quotes:
People's Expensive NFTs Keep Vanishing. This Is Why
how to destroy surveillance capitalism.
Articles:
Welcome to the World of Tomorrow
Dark patterns, the tricks websites use to make you say yes, explained
Microsoft is supplying 120,000 HoloLens-based headsets to the US Army
First-ever vaccine for malignant brain tumors reported safe, effective in early trial
Cells Form Into ‘Xenobots’ on Their Own
Researchers achieve world's first manipulation of antimatter by laser
Physicists observe new phase in Bose-Einstein condensate of light particles
“It’s like a casino,” he said in an interview. “If it goes up 100 times you resell it, if it doesn't, well, you don’t tell anyone.”
When you buy an NFT for potentially as much as an actual house, in most cases you're not purchasing an artwork or even an image file. Instead, you are buying a little bit of code that references a piece of media located somewhere else on the internet.
People's Expensive NFTs Keep Vanishing. This Is Why
"And now, a Clubhouse chat with Silicon Valley startup ladyboss Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Theranos 2.0"
Bruce Sterling - Tweet
in a world where sprawling and incoherent conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and its successor, QAnon, have widespread followings, something must be afoot.
But what if there’s another explanation? What if it’s the material circumstances, and not the arguments, that are making the difference for these conspiracy pitchmen? What if the trauma of living through real conspiracies all around us — conspiracies among wealthy people, their lobbyists, and lawmakers to bury inconvenient facts and evidence of wrongdoing (these conspiracies are commonly known as “corruption”) — is making people vulnerable to conspiracy theories?
If it’s trauma and not contagion — material conditions and not ideology — that is making the difference today and enabling a rise of repulsive misinformation in the face of easily observed facts, that doesn’t mean our computer networks are blameless. They’re still doing the heavy work of locating vulnerable people and guiding them through a series of ever-more-extreme ideas and communities.
Belief in conspiracy is a raging fire that has done real damage and poses real danger to our planet and species, from epidemics kicked off by vaccine denial to genocides kicked off by racist conspiracies to planetary meltdown caused by denial-inspired climate inaction. Our world is on fire, and so we have to put the fires out — to figure out how to help people see the truth of the world through the conspiracies they’ve been confused by.
But firefighting is reactive. We need fire prevention. We need to strike at the traumatic material conditions that make people vulnerable to the contagion of conspiracy. Here, too, tech has a role to play.
how to destroy surveillance capitalism.
This is a vital signal for all citizens and policy makers for the digital environment. Monopolies and their ilk are not only toxic for market systems they are also toxic to the development of diversity and public infrastructure. This is a downloadable PDF.
Privacy Without Monopoly:
Data Protection and Interoperability
The problems of corporate concentration and privacy on the Internet are inextricably linked. A new regime of interoperability can revitalize competition in the space, encourage innovation, and give users more agency over their data; it may also create new risks to user privacy and data security. This paper considers those risks and argues that they are outweighed by the benefits. New interoperability, done correctly, will not just foster competition, it can be a net benefit for user privacy rights.
In section 2 we provide background. First, we outline how the competition crisis in tech intersects with EFF issues and explain how interoperability can help alleviate it. In “The Status Quo,” we describe how monopoly power has woven the surveillance business model into the fabric of the Internet, undermining the institutions that are supposed to protect users. Finally we introduce the “
privacy paradox ”—the apparent tension between new interoperability and user privacy—that frames this paper.
In section 3 , we present EFF’s proposals for interoperability policy.
Venkatesh Rao is brilliant - and he’s also struggling with the world in transformation - partly because the change is outside the box of management consultation - there is apprehension of an emerging economic paradigm change - where governments ARE of-for-by - collective intelligence & power - markets become real markets = collaborative commons regulated & secured by-for-of -
Imagine an economy NOT based on ‘enclosures’ ?? Looming shadow evocations to neoliberal flatworld views
Welcome to the World of Tomorrow
In this episode of Breaking Smart podcast, I want to explore what it means to say that Covid has accelerated everything. If so, it means we’ve done some time travel relative the old timeline. As the cryogenic lab tech said to Philip J. Fry on Futurama, when he landed in the year 2999, welcome to the world of tomorrow!
This is an interesting site for a digital experience.
Refuse to be Human ⤩
Have you ever wanted to surf the web as a bot?
As a Russian bot?
Ever wondered what a bot gets to see online and you don't?
Refuse to be Human lets you pretend to be a Yandex bot to find out. It is a simple web extension which changes your browser’s user agent to that of the Yandex bot. While Google is the most popular web search engine in the world, Yandex is number one in Russia. Yandex uses web crawlers which surf the web extensively to scrape the contents for their search engines (making the Yandex bot the most influential Internet user in Russia. Only what the bots see is indexed and can later be found by other users through Yandex search). By changing your settings to match those of the bot, you become one of thousands of Yandex bots browsing the web to index its contents.
Surfing the web as a search engine bot gives you access to what is referred to as the grey web, a layer of content only visible to bots. In some cases it might give you access to websites and archives that are usually hidden behind a paywall. While the website owner will present the regular user with a login page, they will give web crawlers access to their full archive in order for it to be represented in Yandex’s or Google's search results.
Tired of the current environment of social media? This is a new platform founded by Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia-Wikimedia.
Welcome to WT.Social!
The non-toxic social network
Welcome to a place where advertisers don’t call the shots.
Where your data isn’t packaged up and sold.
Where you – not algorithms – decide what you see.
Where you can directly edit misleading content.
Where bad actors are kicked out and kept out.
Where you actually like spending time.
Welcome to social media the way it should be.
WT.Social is just a newborn babe in the woods, not even a toddler yet. In other words: This place is a work in progress and may not yet be fully functional. Please don't be surprised if you encounter some bugs;
This sure is a very different platform for interaction than Facebook. Firstly, it's oriented around sharing news and ideas rather than the sort of free-for-all we find "over there".
At least at the moment, there is no way to hide what you show this person from that person. If it's visible at all, it's visible to everyone (even people without an account). Lots of sunlight here. Full transparency amongst us users.
An interesting article about the use of ‘nudge’ or choice architectures to make websites stickier and lead us to Yes.
There’s now a growing movement to ban dark patterns, and that may well lead to consumer protection laws and action as the Biden administration’s technology policies and initiatives take shape. California is currently tackling dark patterns in its evolving privacy laws, and Washington state’s latest privacy bill includes a provision about dark patterns.
Dark patterns, the tricks websites use to make you say yes, explained
How design can manipulate and coerce you into doing what websites want.
If you’re an Instagram user, you may have recently seen a pop-up asking if you want the service to “use your app and website activity” to “provide a better ads experience.” At the bottom there are two boxes: In a slightly darker shade of black than the pop-up background, you can choose to “Make ads less personalized.” A bright blue box urges users to “Make ads more personalized.”
This is an example of a dark pattern: design that manipulates or heavily influences users to make certain choices. Instagram uses terms like “activity” and “personalized” instead of “tracking” and “targeting,” so the user may not realize what they’re actually giving the app permission to do. Most people don’t want Instagram and its parent company, Facebook, to know everything they do and everywhere they go. But a “better experience” sounds like a good thing, so Instagram makes the option it wants users to select more prominent and attractive than the one it hopes they’ll avoid.
This is definitely a good signal - regardless of whether Microsoft actually delivers - because this level of augmentation is coming to us all eventually.
Microsoft is supplying 120,000 HoloLens-based headsets to the US Army
The contract could be worth up to $21.88 billion over 10 years
Microsoft has won a contract to supply the US Army with HoloLens-based headsets. The contract could be worth up to $21.88 billion over 10 years, and CNBC reports that it will involve Microsoft supplying 120,000 headsets. The software maker has been working closely with the Army since 2018, and soldiers have been testing the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) headsets over the past two years. These devices combine high-resolution night, thermal, and soldier-borne sensors into a heads-up display.
“The system also leverages augmented reality and machine learning to enable a life-like mixed reality training environment so the Close Combat Force (CCF) can rehearse before engaging any adversaries,” reads a US Army statement. In February, the Army revealed how a newer, more ruggedized version of its heads-up display can let operators of armored vehicles see through the walls of, for instance, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. An earlier version was criticized for poor sensor and GPS performance, but you can see that the design has now changed quite a bit.
This is an amazing signal related to the domestication of DNA and medical treatments.
"Our idea was to support patients' immune systems and to use a vaccine as a targeted way of alerting it to the tumor-specific neo-epitope,"
First-ever vaccine for malignant brain tumors reported safe, effective in early trial
Tumor vaccines can help the body fight cancer. Mutations in the tumor genome often lead to protein changes that are typical of cancer. A vaccine can alert the patient's immune system to these mutated proteins. For the first time, physicians and cancer researchers from Heidelberg and Mannheim have now carried out a clinical trial to test a mutation-specific vaccine against malignant brain tumors. The vaccine proved to be safe and triggered the desired immune response in the tumor tissue, as the team now reports in the journal Nature.
Diffuse gliomas are usually incurable brain tumors that spread throughout the brain and are difficult to remove completely by surgery. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy often have only a limited effect. In many cases, diffuse gliomas share a common feature: In more than 70% of patients, the tumor cells have the same gene mutation. An identical error in the DNA causes a single, specific protein building block to be exchanged in the IDH1 (Isocitrate dehydrogenase 1) enzyme. This creates a novel protein structure, known as a neo-epitope, which can be recognized as foreign by the patient's immune system.
This is an amazing signal - of the domestication of DNA and the development of different life forms.
xenobots are nothing less than a new type of creature — one “defined by what it does rather than to what it belongs developmentally and evolutionarily.” ... the findings might illuminate the very origins of multicellular life.
The results seem to imply that individual cells have a kind of decision-making capacity that creates a palette of possible bodies they could build — constrained and guided by the genome but not defined by it.
cells might be programmed to collectively “compute” their own ways solutions to growth and form, rather than for their genome to prescribe them
Cells Form Into ‘Xenobots’ on Their Own
At a glance, these xenobots might be mistaken for other microscopic aquatic animals — amoebas or plankton or Giardia parasites — swimming here and there with apparent agency. Some move in orbit around particles in the water, while others patrol back and forth as though on the lookout for something. Collections of them in a petri dish act like a community, responding to one another’s presence and participating in collective activities.
When he shows movies of these spontaneously grown xenobots to other biologists and asks them to guess what they are, Levin said that “People say, ‘It’s an animal you found in a pond somewhere.’” They are astounded when he reveals that “it’s 100% Xenopus laevis.” These microscopic entities are utterly unlike any stage in the normal development of a frog.
The xenobots are turning some conventional views in developmental biology upside down. They suggest that the frog genome doesn’t uniquely instruct cells about how to proliferate, differentiate and arrange themselves into a frog body. Rather, that’s just one possible outcome of the process that the genomic programming permits.
This is definitely a small signal of some fundamental progress in the human domestication of matter.
"With this technique, we can address long-standing mysteries like: 'How does antimatter respond to gravity? Can antimatter help us understand symmetries in physics?'. These answers may fundamentally alter our understanding of our Universe."
Researchers achieve world's first manipulation of antimatter by laser
Researchers with the CERN-based ALPHA collaboration have announced the world's first laser-based manipulation of antimatter, leveraging a made-in-Canada laser system to cool a sample of antimatter down to near absolute zero. The achievement, detailed in an article published today and featured on the cover of the journal Nature, will significantly alter the landscape of antimatter research and advance the next generation of experiments.
Antimatter is the otherworldly counterpart to matter; it exhibits near-identical characteristics and behaviors but has opposite charge. Because they annihilate upon contact with matter, antimatter atoms are exceptionally difficult to create and control in our world and had never before been manipulated with a laser.
The physics of the real are … well real strange - the one is the many.
Physicists observe new phase in Bose-Einstein condensate of light particles
About 10 years ago, researchers at the University of Bonn produced an extreme aggregate photon state, a single "super-photon" made up of many thousands of individual light particles, and presented a completely new light source. The state is called an optical Bose-Einstein condensate and has captivated many physicists ever since, because this exotic world of light particles is home to its very own physical phenomena. Researchers led by Prof. Dr. Martin Weitz, who discovered the super photon, and theoretical physicist Prof. Dr. Johann Kroha now report a new observation: a so-called overdamped phase, a previously unknown phase transition within the optical Bose-Einstein condensate. The study has been published in the journal Science.
The Bose-Einstein condensate is an extreme physical state that usually only occurs at very low temperatures. The particles in this system are no longer distinguishable and are predominantly in the same quantum mechanical state; in other words, they behave like a single giant "superparticle." The state can therefore be described by a single wave function.
#micropoem
mhm -
the hidden toll of living -
no matter what I do -
I’m not doing unimaginable afford-dancings -
with other possibles -
no matter how creative I effort -
enacting uncreates -
to many-fes-trans-form -
what-was - to - what-is -
loses-the-was to gain-the-is -
It’s interesting -
in the critiques of social media -
babel - towering -
our life -
we forget -
the stepfordwifes of -
company-men -
Once the cache -
of Easter chocolate was secured -
made easter dinner -
sauteed kale-broccoli -
mixed rice -
amaretto-soaked button mushrooms -
and -
roasted easter bunny -
yumity yum -
Imagine -
an economy NOT -
based on ‘enclosures’ -
Looming shadow evocations -
of neoliberal flatworld views -
paradigm change -
where governments ARE -
of-for-by -
collective intelligence & power -
real markets as -
collaborative commons by-for-of -
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