Weekly Links & Thoughts #83

Here is this week’s edition of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and annotated every Thursday (CET), just in time so you have something good to read over the weekend.

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• The Future as a Way of Life (3)
  
  Very intelligent analysis of one of our time’s major divides between people: There are those who actively and passionately shape the future (their own and/or others’) and there are those who fear the future and think they are powerless. As the author (imo accurately) points out, it is essential that more people switch from the fear into shaping camp.
• App Coins and the dawn of the Decentralized Business Model (2)
  
  Exciting text explaining how crypto currencies and the Blockchain can enable decentralized business models and the rise of new protocols incentivized by collective ownership. This could beat the giant, centralized platforms that accumulate large amounts of value/wealth in the hands of a few.
• More Encryption Means Less Privacy (1)
  
  The more tech companies enable end-to-end encryption for their services, the bigger are governments’ incentives to seek ways to break or entirely prohibit encryption/block encrypted services. Sounds like quite a dilemma, because what should be done instead?
• How the Internet, the Sharing Economy, and Reputational Feedback Mechanisms Solve the “Lemons Problem” (2)
  
  Something to ponder: In the age of online reviews and various other reputational feedback mechanisms, traditional government regulation aimed at countering the information deficiency problem might no longer be needed.
• The lost infrastructure of social media (3)
  
  A walk down the memory lane and a reminder of how most of today’s common elements of centralized, commercial social networks and publishing sites have been invented by the early blogging systems.
• This man is cycling around the UK in virtual reality using Google Street View (1)
  
  Welcome to the future.
• Is this my interface or yours? (2)
  
  Thoughtful take on software’s use of possessive pronouns such as “my”, “your” or “our/we” and the subtle difference the choice makes.
• Fresh Take on “Influence” in the Tech Industry (1)
  
  From February 2016: An overview about the most influential US tech journalists.
• An Inside Look At The Exploding World Of China’s VR Cafes (2)
  
  A though from me: Maybe VR cafés will slowly turn into the next type of cinema?
• Here’s Why TripAdvisor Is Becoming the Facebook of Online Travel (1)
  
  Interesting description, possibly not too far off. I’m checking TripAdvisor probably several times a week (but admittedly, my mind is occupied with travel booking & research a bit too much sometimes).
• Amazon Has Big Plans for Alexa: Running the ‘Star Trek’ Home (2)
  
  Yes, or as I put it a few months ago, to create “Samantha” from the movie “Her”.
• Why Won’t Facebook Release Me From Overnight Oats Hell? (2)
  
  This article could have been shorter, but it points to a real issue: Facebook’s news feed keeps showing the same posts over and over again at the top, over days, due to friend activity on it. I have noticed the same thing lately and it is quite annoying.
• I Just Drove Eight Hours on Tesla Autopilot and Lived to Tell the Tale (2)
  
  An eye-opening read. It makes you realize how unbelievably bold Tesla actually is to put itself into the role of the car company that takes all the risks associated with providing people with advanced autopilot features (which yet fall a bit short off enabling fully self-driving cars). Big risk, big opportunity, of course. But yeah, really big risk.
• Is it drunk driving or drunk riding if you party on AutoPilot? (1)
  
  The alcohol industry seriously must love self-driving cars. When will the world’s leading breweries such as Anheuser-Busch InBev or Heineken start investing in car companies that push this technology?
• Listen to What’s Being Whispered, not What’s Being Said (2)
  
  An amazing, thought-provoking read about the specific message that certain cities communicate to their people. Inspired by this great essay of Paul Graham from 2008 about “Cities and Ambition”.
• Once Taunted by Steve Jobs, Companies Are Now Big Customers of Apple (2)
  
  Apple really pulled it off and became some kind of enterprise IT company. The challenge will be to keep pleasing both individual customers and large companies without too many compromises.
• In Europe, U.S. Cloud Firms ‘Out Innovated’ Competitors in Wake of NSA Leak (1)
  
  The so called “Snowden effect” which predicted that European companies’ would choose local cloud competitors over US protagonists to avoid the NSA’s surveillance (either for real or at least as a placebo effort) did not happen.

Recently on meshedsociety.com

• Stories is to Instagram what Streaming was to Netflix
  
  Is Instagram’s new Stories feature just a little gimmick for Instagram fans to play with? I don’t think so. I’d argue that it’s the future of Instagram. The same way as Streaming was the future for Netflix when Netflix still was a DVD-by-mail company.

Video of the week

• William Talking Blockchains At Google
  
  Sometimes, hearing someone speak about a complex technology is so much more comprehensible than reading about it. That’s how I felt when watching this talk. Well and vididly explained what the Blockchain is and what it can be used for.

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Here is this week’s edition of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and annotated every Thursday (CET), just in time so you have something good to read over the weekend.

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• A Swede Returns to Silicon Valley from China (2)
  
  A brilliant, thought-provoking (and a bit provoking) piece. It’s season for opinionated takes on how China (Bejing) is becoming a more interesting, meaningful and innovative tech cluster than the US (Silicon Valley) right now. Related: China’s new traffic-straddling bus.
• What Does Uber’s Retreat Say About the Ability of U.S. Internet Innovators to Succeed in China? (2)
  
  China was also center of attention when Uber a few days ago announced merging Uber China with its Chinese competitor Didi Chuxing. In this post, 4 China experts lay out their views on the deal. Insightful.
• How the Trump Presidential Campaign is Affecting Trump Businesses (2)
  
  I have been thinking a lot about whether and how the businesses of Donald Trump would be affected by the questionable style of his candidacy and his controversial views on various matters. Now Foursquare has the answer, based on data from its more than 50 million monthly users (of course not all of them are US-based).
• The return of the Luddite president (2)
  
  An important and not very pleasing assessment: No matter who of the two candidates will become the next president of the United States, he/she won’t be very tech savvy.
• Dark Patterns are designed to trick you (and they’re all over the Web) (3)
  
  Interesting read about the widespread design practices used on websites and in apps to trick people into certain, involuntary decisions or purchases.
• I asked Alexa to make me coffee and it was anticlimactic (2)
  
  Fun post to read. And with a solid message: Small daily needs that can be satisfied with a slight gain in convenience and without any significant additional costs will slowly push the smart home forward.
• Instagram Stories might be a Snapchat rip-off, but it’s better (2)
  
  Instagram’s launch of the Stories feature was rather unanticipated. I don’t know if it is really better (as this piece claims), but it’s simpler. However, it also feels somewhat like a foreign object within Instagram right now. Like forced into it, which it obviously was. This might change over time. Or it might not. The initial intention among Instagram’s decision makers was not to enhance the app with what fits best to its current state, but to somehow build one of Snapchat’s most popular features into Instagram (which simply is how this industry works). Long story short: The competition between Snapchat & Instagram (Facebook) is pretty fascinating to watch.
• Facebook Isn’t Just Good at Mobile. It’s How Mobile Works Now (2)
  
  True. It never ceases to amaze how well Facebook has nailed mobile.
• Facebook Is Not a Technology Company (2)
  
  Is Facebook a technology company, or a media company, or an advertising company? Hard to say. Probably everything. But the text is right by pointing out that in an age in which more or less every bigger company makes heavy use of technology, maybe these labels need to be adjusted.
• Singapore Is the Perfect Place to Test Self-Driving Cars (1)
  
  Especially important apart from the technical and environmental factors is open-mindedness for that kind of stuff among the broad public. Singapore has it.
• Verizon: No. We Can’t Become Dumb Pipes (2)
  
  Why did the US telecom giant Verizon buy Yahoo? The chronical fear of becoming dump pipes (which I think Telecom companies should be).
• iPad-only is the new desktop Linux (2)
  
  Spot-on. People who prefer the iPad to the Mac or PC or who go on a long trip only with a tablet do it for one thing: the challenge.
• Refugees build Bureaucrazy app to solve German paperwork problems (1)
  
  The bureaucracy is one of my major points of criticism of Germany and actually, in parts, motivated me to move to Sweden. Thus I can really understand the need for such an app. Fantastic initiative.
• Crypto Tokens and the Coming Age of Protocol Innovation
  
  This is a bit advanced, but also a pretty sexy: incentivizing the creation and governing of protocols through crypto tokens.
• Israel Proves the Desalination Era is Here (2)
  
  The ability to create drinking water from sea water at low cost and without negative consequences for the environment could be one of the biggest contributions to a peaceful future.
• Tesla’s entire future depends on the Gigafactory (2)
  
  Over the past days multiple news websites have published articles describing Tesla’s giant Gigafactory which is poised to become the world’s biggest building (based on the area occupied). If you haven’t read one of them yet, now is your chance. It’s a fascinating project and one which will decide about whether Tesla’s grad ambitions become reality.

Recently on meshedsociety.com

• What 1 billion iPhones mean for the world
  
  The old structure and order of the world is being shaken up right now. Pinpointing the force that causes all this remains a challenge. But here is a suggestion: the Internet-enabled smartphone.

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Here is this week’s edition of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and annotated every Thursday (CET), just in time so you have something good to read over the weekend.

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• Money as Message: How WeChat got users to adopt payments as a way to grow its network (3)
  
  Incredibly interesting insights into China’s (digital) culture.
• The Principia Misanthropica (3)
  
  A brilliant, slightly satirical but yet very serious longread about the historical evolution of culture and people’s view on happiness. Has not a lot to do with technology but I find it to be highly relevant nevertheless. After all, what we are witnessing right now is somewhat of a technology-enabled clash of cultures and ideologies.
• Inside the strange world of Amazon-to-eBay arbitrage (3)
  
  Great read about a seemingly less-known but yet somehow widespread scheme to make money online without actually providing any value: Middlemen who sell products on eBay via Amazon, pocketing the difference in price.
• The Other Yahoo: How Protecting Its Core Business Doomed Innovation (1)
  
  Basically, over the past 15 years, the story of Yahoo is one of one giant failure. From that perspective, it is remarkable that the company still managed to sell itself for almost $5 billion.
• Twitter’s Fucked (2)
  
  Sadly, a lot of what’s written here seems very accurate to me. Twitter’s complete product structure incentivizes and encourages negative user behavior. Sometimes I even think that Twitter is at least partly responsible for some of the absurd phenomenons and hysteria we currently can observe in politics, culture and society.
• Dezinformatsiya has been democratized (1)
  
  Intentional spreading of desinformation is one way of negative user behavior. Although, of course this is not only happening on Twitter. But it is especially easy on Twitter, thanks due to its brevity (I so wish for a removal of the 140 character limit) and the outlook to quickly hoard many new followers.
• Mark Zuckerberg should spend $45 billion on undoing Facebook’s damage to democracies (2)
  
  Of course one cannot single out Twitter as a potential threat to a constructive public discourse without also looking at Facebook. This column had been published last December but started to become widely shared again over the past days, most likely due to recent events such as the Brexit and Trump.
• We Are The Media (1)
  
  Related to the same topic: about the requirements for the networked citizen in an age in which he/she is the media. Short and smart take. By the way, the “networked citizen” didn’t even exist 10 years ago… (see next post).
• Most popular product of all time (1)
  
  You guess it. The iPhone has been sold one billion times over a time span of only 9 years. Now, if you wonder why the world seems to get crazy, this is part of the explanation: A powerful mini-computer in each pocket, connected to every other mini-computer on the planet (and thereby to every other person). No surprise tectonic shifts are underway. Such a thing has never happened before.
• Facebook’s really big plans for virtual reality (3)
  
  Meanwhile, Facebook is doubling down on virtual reality. This well-written, entertaining profile does not offer too much new information but manages to explain very well the company’s ambitions in this field.
• Pokémon Go vs Growth Hacking (1)
  
  A very good point: Pokémon Go did not follow any of the common growth hacking practices. And yet it has generated more than 75 million downloads in about 20 days.
• Digital is just getting started (1)
  
  I like the framing of this: Instead of seeing digital technology maturing, one could also see it as still in a very early stadium.
• How to overcome resistance to innovations (2)
  
  This text does not really deliver on the claim from the headline, but it offers quite an informative historical perspective on resistance to innovation.
• Indian $4 smartphone starts shipping (1)
  
  At least for its first batch, the device is sold at a loss and additional revenue is made through pre-installed apps.
• Germany: Apps are more popular than ever, but downloads have fallen (1)
  
  The general pattern that we have seen before: More people use apps, but that does not lead to more app downloads. On the contrary. People stick to the few apps they already have installed.
• What is the fastest way for a robot with superhuman capabilities to make money? (2)
  
  What a fascinating question to muse about.
• Why I left my new MacBook for a $250 Chromebook (2)
  
  An informative read. Chromebooks are slowly, but steadily becoming serious alternatives to existing notebooks.
• How I built an app with 500,000 users in 5 days on a $100 server (2)
  
  A more technical post but with an important message to everyone who ever plans to create an app or an online service: Scaling to many users does not need to cost a fortune if you do it right.
• Tinder Social, helping friend groups plan their night out, launches globally (1)
  
  I have no idea if this can work out. The name “Tinder” is so much associated with dating that changing people’s perception of it must be a hard nut to crack.
• Hailo and Daimler-owned MyTaxi agree to merge in all-share deal to fend off Uber (and others) (1)
  
  We here could see an European “Uber” in the making. And its owned by Daimler, which puts MyTaxi in quite a strong position.
• When Does a Company Stop Being a Startup? (1)
  
  Being a “startup” has a cool sound and frees a company from many conventional expectations, so it is often used longer than what it should be.
• Why Cash is Worth Less Than You Think (2)
  
  An intriguing, thought-provoking post on the difference of legible and illegible currencies.

Recently on meshedsociety.com

• When you hear about everything bad 1.5 billion people do, almost instantly
  
  The Internet has changed the media landscape, globalized news coverage and thereby significantly impacted how people see the world. Which is, increasingly, in a very negative way. Maybe this text helps to put things into perspective.

Video of the week

• Shenzhen, hardware, openness
  
  15 minutes worth watching about China’s Silicon Valley, Shenzhen. I once was almost there, when I took the Hong Kong Metro to the Chinese border. Due to open questions about my permission to enter without a Visa, I changed my mind at the very last second. In fact, it was already too late to just turn around. Instead I had to go through some administrative procedure with Chinese border guards to be allowed back into Hong Kong. That’s why Shenzhen is still on my list 🙂

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Here is this week’s edition of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and annotated every Thursday (CET), just in time so you have something good to read over the weekend.

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• Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful (3)
  
  An incredible, comprehensive and indeed very useful list compiled by the founder and CEO of the alternative search engine DuckDuckGo. He seems to have too much time, or he found a diligent ghost writer. Either way, great work.
• How I Could Steal Money from Instagram, Google and Microsoft (3)
  
  A fascinating read about an unexpected loophole.
• Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux (2)
  
  Tesla’s vision for the next years. Most exciting: The final step, when owners of self-driving Tesla’s are supposed to become able to add their car to a shared fleet and thereby to help making the use of cars more efficient.
• Apple’s Plan to Own the Entire Music Industry (2)
  
  I linked to a similar piece recently, but this one is even better in explaining Apple’s roadmap.
• What Happened to the Ice Bucket Challenge? (2)
  
  Fantastic that someone remembered the great Internet hype of 2014 and decided to check what impact it had.
• How Pokémon Go is improving your city (2)
  
  To some extend Pokémon Go is the 2016 version of Ice Bucket Challenge. Not from a charity perspective of course, but when it comes to word-of-mouth induced engagement of people to perform real life activity. And similar to the Ice Bucket Challenge, Pokémon Go actually has some positiv effects on society, as outlined in this text.
• Few in tech saw Pokémon coming (1)
  
  True, and it’s awesome, because it reminds us of the unpredictability of our industry.
• Some Thoughts On Steem (2)
  
  I hadn’t heard about Steem before I read this post, but it immediately caught my attention. Steem describes itself as a “blockchain-based social media platform where anyone can earn rewards”. It’s basically like Reddit with a crypto-currency based tipping system. Unfortunately, like most of this Blockchain stuff, it’s not easy to comprehend. I still have “try to really get Steem” on my todo list.
• Microsoft’s Bing Isn’t a Joke Anymore (2)
  
  Most significant to Bing’s growing footprint has been Windows 10. According to the article, 35 percent of its search revenue in March came from Windows 10 computers. Bing also lies at the foundation of Microsoft’s digital voice assistant Cortana.
• The internet is turning us all into sociopaths (2)
  
  A pretty thought-provoking blog post from 2012 written by a nowadays infamous guy who yesterday got banned from Twitter for life following repeating allegations of trolling and harassment. He saw it coming.
• AlphaGo overtakes world’s No. 1 Go player Ke Jie in ranking (1)
  
  In the most recent global rankings of the game Go, Google’s DeepMind AI is now ranked on 1. I wonder how the human players that make up for the rest of the top 10 are feeling about that.
• This is the woman behind the man who runs Airbnb (3)
  
  Facebook has Sheryl Sandberg, Airbnb has Belinda Johnson. Quite an insightful profile.
• Be Prepared: We’re Entering A Post-Device Era (2)
  
  Of course we’ll continue to be in need of devices. But the suggestion that a peak has been reached when it comes to smartphone sales and to the general celebration of digital mobile gadgets has some merit.
• Facebook lifts the veil on its mobile device testing lab (2)
  
  Extremely interesting to learn about how Facebook ensures that its apps are working well on all the various smartphone types out there: By running almost 2000 different mobile testing devices.
• Innovation in Europe Improves, But Only in a Handful of Countries (2)
  
  In short: Switzerland remains the top innovator in Europe, and Sweden defends its leading position among E.U. countries. Also, when it comes to frequent innovation, there is a lot of concentration on very few countries.
• How the Internet Saved Turkey’s Internet-Hating President (2)
  
  You might have already read this or similar pieces about Turkey’s successful utilization of Social Media to counter last week’s coup attempt, but as a very relevant story I am linking to it anyway.
• Capitalism is great. Capitalism is flawed. Both is true. (2)
  
  A post I had the urge to write after a long time of observing how people discuss about Capitalism, but which I felt did not belong on meshedsociety.com. So it’s on Medium.

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Here is this week’s edition of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and annotated every Thursday (CET), just in time so you have something good to read over the weekend.

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• A Nihilist’s Guide to Meaning (3)
  
  Kicking things off in a bit different way this time, with an accessible philosophical longread; a quite thought-provoking, stimulating one. After having read this you will realize how the age-old question about the meaning of life is also relevant in the context of the current acceleration of technological progress.
• Artificial Intelligence Is Setting Up the Internet for a Huge Clash With Europe (2)
  
  There is quite a conflict arising on the horizon: The European Union wants everyone to be able to understand computer algorithms they are exposed to, but deep learning is creating computer systems that no one fully can understand.
• Why Europe’s largest economy resists new industrial revolution (2)
  
  Meanwhile, Germany struggles with implementing the changes necessary to adapt to a digital world – in part fueled by a perceived lack of urgency thanks to a booming economy.
• AR will be startup-dominated, VR will not (2)
  
  A reasonable prediction. Also worth noting: AR and VR are very different things with very different use cases.
• The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money (2)
  
  I wouldn’t call it a “tragedy” but yes, for culture, sequels rule. Or…
• Nailing It (1)
  
  …as Fred Wilson puts it: Nailing something which nobody has nailed before is how to achieve success.
• Uber Is Experimenting With a Service in Manhattan That’s Cheaper Than the Subway (2)
  
  The cynical response: Tempting people to abandon environmental-friendly public transport in favor of individual cars. Way to go, Uber. The optimistic one: Subway riders will keep using the subway, but some people will refrain from taking a seat in their own car and instead use UberPool (which aims at transporting several individual Uber riders in one car to their various destinations).
• Uber to pull out of Hungary (2)
  
  I have my issues with Uber but I also have my issues with governments protecting old, inefficient industries.
• Foursquare President: ‘Huge’ Industry Developing Around Location Intelligence (2)
  
  An interview worth reading. According to the President of Foursquare, check-ins are at an all-time high. Also, the company certainly seems to have found a lucrative niche in which it feels comfortable. Nevertheless, I still expect it to get acquired very soon.
• Looking Forward to 2025 (2)
  
  A enjoyable post promoting the long-term perspective of startups and business.
• Tesla Autopilot Crash: Why We Should Worry About a Single Death (2)
  
  If it wasn’t already clear before, this text illustrates the huge ethical challenges that come with autonomous cars.
• 15 Driver Behaviours In A World of Autonomous Mobility (3)
  
  But let’s say we’ll actually get to a scenario with widespread autonomous mobility, a lot of things would change.
• The Economic Lessons of Star Trek’s Money-Free Society (2)
  
  Maybe we actually can learn a bit from Star Trek.
• The emergent religion of Silicon Valley (1)
  
  A post written by a “believer”. Make of that whatever you want.
• How technology disrupted the truth (3)
  
  The Guardian’s editor-in-chief Katharine Viner outlines the connection between fact-ignoring populist movements, the rise of social networks and self-reinforcing filter bubbles as well as the crisis of journalism. Impressive and at the same time gloomy read. See also this interactive WSJ demonstration of the filter bubble in action.
• Pew: Most news sharing remains low-tech, offline (1)
  
  To those who basically “live” online, this might come as a surprise: By a large margin, American’s share news by spoken word-of-mouth.
• As Online Video Surges, Publishers Turn to Automation (2)
  
  Not sure this is good news, from a quality point of view.
• “23andMe is Monetizing Your DNA The Way Facebook Monetizes ‘Likes’”
  
  That’s what I call a powerfully deterrent comparison.
• 61 Glimpses of the Future (3)
  
  A bunch of informative and inspiring insights from a person who traveled 7000 through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan’s GBAO region and China’s western provinces.

Recently published on meshedsociety.com

• Facebook, Snapchat and others must hate Pokémon Go
  
  The immediate large-scale success of the new AR/mixed reality smartphone game Pokémon Go is fascinating from many angles. One of the especially significant ones: the effects on the attention economy and what that kind of sudden redistribution of user time means for the large social media companies.

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Here is this week’s edition of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and annotated every Thursday (CET), just in time so you have something good to read over the weekend.

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• Are We at the Start of a Tech World War?
  
  Whether exaggerated or not (hopefully it is): With massive changes happening in the geopolitical, social, economical and technological sphere all at once, 2016 certainly has brought up a whole new set of worries about the future.
• Behind Silicon Valley’s Latest Push: To Create A New Kind Of City
  
  Ironically, the Silicon Valley with its urban sprawl and dull car culture must be one of the worst advisors when it comes to building livable, pleasant cities. And neighboring San Francisco doesn’t look like a role model either.
• How AWS came to be
  
  Informative profile of Amazon’s cloud infrastructure division which nowadays is a world leader in its field, but which initially only was built for Amazon’s own scalability needs.
• A South Korean Copy of Snapchat Takes Off in Asia
  
  Nobody should be surprised: No young tech company can focus on each market of this planet at once, and Asian users traditionally have particular needs which often are neglected by Western services – at least inititally.
• Ghost in the machine: Snapchat isn’t mobile-first — it’s something else entirely
  
  Snapchat’s distinctive usability and functionality keeps astonishing the tech crowd and leads to all kind of almost philosophical analyses, circulating around the question: What is Snapchat? Indeed, it’s not easy to answer.
• Putting a finger on our phone obsession
  
  Incredible numbers and statistics about people’s smartphone usage.
• The 16GB iPhone may finally be going away soon
  
  This news appears two days after I decided to give up on my iPhone 6+ 16 Gigabyte and to purchase a 6S+ with 128 Gigabyte. After the release of the 6 I tried to save some money by getting the 16 Gig-version. Huge mistake. Apps are growing bigger and bigger and video and interactive content (like Snapchat) is requiring an increasing amount of cached space. Over the past weeks my iPhone couldn’t even hold my podcast library due to a lack of storage. I mean the meta data, not the audio files itself. The situation became so unbearable that it eventually chose to purchase an iPhone just months before the release of the next version – which I of course might hate myself for in a few weeks (and the WSJ really thinks it is a bad time to buy an iPhone but whatever). So yes, I agree with that the 16 Gigabyte version needs to go.
• Chinese smartphone brands are dying off fast as market consolidates
  
  In China, 136 different Chinese smartphone brands died over the course of 2015. 309 have survived (but some of them are probably gone by now).
• Robot War and the Future of Perceptual Deception
  
  After the fatal crash of a Tesla on active “Autopilot” feature (naming it like this probably was a mistake) most of the reactions have been predictive and uninspired, considering that something like this HAD to happen. However, this writer really found a clever angle: What if the software flaw that caused the crash could be turned into a feature to be utilized in a future scenario in which an hostile autonomous vehicle/machine needs to be deceived?
• Tesla Solar Wants to Be the Apple Store for Electricity
  
  Tesla’s very exciting strategy behind the bid to buy the biggest U.S. rooftop solar installer, Solar City.
• Now that tech more or less owns the news distribution system
  
  Thought-provoking short take: News publishers usually have a publication’s voice/an ideological stance. Today, tech company’s are pretty much owning news distribution. But they don’t have an editorial voice, so no one knows what they are standing for. That’s part purpose (“the algorithms decide”), but it also can lead to problems.
• Facebook tries to overcome language barriers with new multilingual composer tool
  
  A fantastic initiative by Facebook: Trying to avoid situations in which a user sees a status update in a language he/she does not understand. As some one who alternates between posts in German, English and Swedish, I am longing for language-specific targeting. Not only on Facebook but also on Twitter.
• How Facebook Live Streams to 800,000 Simultaneous Viewers
  
  This is heavy technical stuff but nonetheless pretty interesting.
• How Apple Music And Tidal Transformed Streaming (And Why Apple May Be Buying Tidal)
  
  A knowledgeable look at Apple’s performance and strategy in the music subscription sector.
• Why this CEO is worth almost $1 billion but lives in a trailer park
  
  Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is undoubtedly a very special type of person.
• Twitch now lets you watch people eat
  
  The South Korean trend of eating in front of a webcam and streaming this “experience” to the world is being picked up by Amazon’s live-video gaming streaming platform Twitch.
• 52% blamed EU for their problems, blame social media for yours
  
  By now everyone interested in tech is aware of the theory of filter bubbles in social media which are said to lead to a perpetuating, reinforcing confirmation bias and make people completely blind for opposing perspectives. The dynamics of the Brexit referendum look like a giant show case for this issue.
• Why elections are bad for democracy
  
  Reading this was eye-opening for me, which is why I link to it here even if it has little to do with technology. Or actually it does, because the Internet must be seen as one underlying cause for the growing issues with current election practices.

Recently published on meshedsociety.com

• Mobile platforms and retail – comparing Apple(s) with Oranges
  
  The mobile platform market with its two sole global players Apple and Google (Android) is historically unique. That means that as tempting as they might be, analogies and comparisons to other sectors of commercial life will lead to wrong conclusions.

Podcast episode of the week

• Exponent Episode 85: Ballots Versus Guillotines
  
  Brilliant, intelligent exchange between Ben Thompson & James Allworth about Brexit, Trump, inequality, the Internet and how everything is connected. Don’t get discouraged by the initial small talk about the weather.

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Here is this week’s edition of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and annotated every Thursday (CET), just in time so you have something good to read over the weekend.

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• The Brexit Possibility
  
  A true must-read, about systems thinking, Brexit, and the role of technology companies in a changing world.
• Are cities the new countries? (repost)
• The Rebirth of the City-State
  
  The results of the Brexit referendum showed a discrepancy between attitudes of people living in cosmopolitan cities and industrial/rural areas. Similar differences can be witnessed regarding many other polarizing political debates, in many countries. It’s possible that we currently are seeing an escalating conflict between city and rural populations. These two articles have been published before the Brexit referendum but are more relevant than ever.
• Less Than 1000 Brits Googled “What is the EU?” After Referendum
  
  On the day after the Brexit referendum, you probably saw headlines from major news outlets claiming that Google searches related to the consequences of a Brexit exploded. They did, but on a very small scale. Yet another example for why large parts of today’s digital news media are almost completely useless and nothing but a huge time-thief, unfortunately.
• Why Should You Care About Virtual Reality? Because It’s a Source of Hope
  
  If you are looking for some arguments supporting the concept of Virtual Reality, this piece will provide you with plenty of options. Admittedly, it is hard not to be optimistic about the potential of VR.
• The Winner in Mixed Reality Will Be…Snapchat
  
  Great article, highlighting Snapchat’s advances in the field of mass-market Augmented Reality, and explaining why Snapchat is more likely to succeed in that area than Facebook.
• The three ages of digital
  
  A smart take describing the process with which digital changes the world, from a business perspective.
• The Phenomenon of Contextual Parity
  
  A post on a corporate blog, but a really good one: about consumers’ increasing expectations on digital services. When it comes to a banking app for example, consumers don’t just compare its features to apps of other banks, but to the best tech they’ve seen anywhere. This is true for most areas of business and private life, and it means that in the end, every (consumer) company to some extend competes with every other company.
• The Moral Economy of Tech
  
  A plea to the movers and shakers in tech to stop treating today’s technology as something unprecedented in human history, and to not lose those values out of sight that brought us to where we are today.
• What if you could live forever?
  
  Trying to imagine a world in which people do not die is unbelievably hard.
• How Google is remaking itself as a “machine learning first” company
  
  Not all longreads about tech companies are worth their thousands of words, but this one is. Very informative.
• The New Censorship
  
  Meanwhile, Google has risen to become a powerful global gatekeeper that created all kinds of rules about people’s access to information. This is an extensive overview about Google’s various black lists.
• Cannes Lions is the ad industry’s rowdiest week of the year
  
  When the tech industry meets the ad industry, excess is guaranteed.
• “Medium’s team did everything”: How 5 publishers transitioned their sites to Medium
  
  Medium, the popular publishing platform founded by Twitter creator Evan Williams, is offering publishers to give up on their own web sites and to run a customized site hosted on Medium instead. 5 publishers who tried it describe their experiences and learnings. Pretty interesting.
• How This Unknown Livestreaming App Jumped to the Top of the Apple Charts
  
  The makers of the very popular lip synching app musical.ly have launched a new live streaming app called live.ly, which instantly made it to the top of the download charts. That’s remarkable considering the intense competition in that field. It shows how a company can leverage one of its apps to promote another one, and it is proof that even in 2016, this can even be accomplished if you are an inexperienced startup.
• Encryption for the people: Telekom and Fraunhofer unveil ‘Volksverschlüsselung’
  
  The German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom has teamed up wit researchers to develop a software which is supposed to enable average Joe and Jane (or Horst and Hannelore) to encrypt their emails.
• Facebook to Change News Feed to Focus on Friends and Family
  
  Back to the roots.

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Here is this week’s edition of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and annotated every Thursday (CET), just in time so you have something good to read over the weekend.

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• What If There’s No Next Big Thing?
  
  Unlike what the title suggests, this essay does not try to argue that one day we’ll be out of new things. But it questions some of the seemingly self-evident assumptions of a culture of technological progress and hypes. Makes you think.
• I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything
  
  I know of people who listen to podcasts with 1.5 or even 2 times the regular speed, but apparently, the same practice also works for TV shows and videos. Interesting account including a look back into the past on how the spoken word and the rise of the written word impacted people’s ability to gather information quickly.
• How ISIS Became The World’s Deadliest Tech Start-Up
  
  That’s quite a catchy metaphor.
• Saudi princess defends Uber: “Change often happens slowly in our ancient kingdom”
  
  If a Saudi Princess argues that the presence of Uber in the country has a massive positive effect on women’s ability to get around and to start working then one probably should listen. Not because she is a Princess but because she is a Saudi woman and probably knows the reality of women in the country better than people outside. Her final remark is especially noteworthy: “I have no doubt that one day Saudi women will be able to drive off into the sunset. We’ll Uber in the meantime.” That’s the astonishing thing about human cultures: Sometimes, impending changes are widely considered inevitable, yet it is impossible to jointly and through consensus speed up the process to get there.
• Kickstarter Just Did Something Tech Startups Never Do: It Paid a Dividend
  
  Gotta love Kickstarter for breaking the norms of the tech industry.
• Europe’s $1 billion tech companies are starting to outperform their Silicon Valley counterparts
  
  As an Europe-focused investment bank, one could argue that GP Bullhound is biased. But the comparison of the average yearly revenue certainly looks interesting.
• Phones without headphone jacks are phones with DRM for audio
  
  Rumors about Apple’s plan to remove headphone jacks from the next iPhone persist. The move is not in the interest of consumers.
• Amazon Echo and Alexa really matter
  
  A bunch of good arguments for the significance of Amazon’s smart-speaker Echo and its personal assistant Alexa.
• Europe’s robots to become ‘electronic persons’ under draft plan
  
  “Electronic persons”. Even if this draft won’t lead to further measures right now, this is a fascinating and possibly inevitable idea.
• Buffer News and Updates Tough News: We’ve Made 10 Layoffs. How We Got Here, the Financial Details and How We’re Moving Forward
  
  Buffer is the tech industry’s most transparent company and thus always a guarantee for highly educative and informative insights. This post is no exception. A must-read for everyone affiliated with the startup world.
• Google helps you self-diagnose with its new symptom search
  
  Sounds like a heaven (or nightmare) for every hypochondriac. But that aside, there is demand. Apparently about 1% of Google’s searches are symptom-related.
• The Sausage Index: Which Dating Apps Have the Most Dudes?
  
  An informative (US-centric) look at the online dating landscape featuring various graphs.
• Any song on SoundCloud can be pressed to vinyl thanks to new service
  
  From a sound quality perspective, this cannot be good. But the idea itself is amusing. We have gone from digitizing music from analogue recording to putting all music productions online as playlist to pressing the digital songs from these playlists onto analogue recording mediums.
• Instagram’s growth is astounding, if you ignore the US
  
  A short post pointing out the two general themes related to Instagram’s milestone of 500 million active users: The app is growing rapidly everywhere except in the U.S. – where Snapchat increasingly outperforms Instagram. Sooner or later, the same will happen elsewhere.
• Why I think TheDAO is a Success
  
  Two weeks ago I linked to a piece focusing on The DAO, a crowdfunded investor-directed venture capital fund based on the Ethereum Blockchain and run completely autonomous, made possible by so called “smart contracts” – code that defines the possible actions and rules for everyone participating. Turns out that a flaw in the code allowed for unintended exploitation, which inspired one individual to empty out more than 2 million ether (about $40 million). Now the tricky question: If smart contracts which a group of people have accepted as “rulebook” enable undesired actions, would that be wrongdoing or not? This is what the DAO community has been debating over the past days, following the “hack”. It might sound like geek problems, but in fact one might consider it a crucial philosophical question for the information and computer age: Should code govern organizations/groups instead of decision making committees comprising of humans, and if so, how can this be done in a way consistent with the underlying principles of autonomy yet without becoming unable to adjust the contract if necessary?
• Sam Altman takes a break from Twitter
  
  Sam Altman, the president of the Silicon Valley’s famous startup accelerator Y Combinator, is taking a break from Twitter because the platform “rewards negativity”, is “extremely addictive” and makes him “feel worse after using it”. Many others have expressed similar thoughts before.

Recently published on meshedsociety.com

• The optimal broadband speed
  
  When your broadband download capability increases from 1 Mbits to 50 Mbits, it’s a game changer. But if you upgrade from a 250 Mbits to 500 Mbits connection, there basically is no difference in the user experience. Doesn’t that dynamic sound familiar? Yes, it’s pretty much the same as with money.

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Here is this week’s edition of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and annotated every Thursday (CET), just in time so you have something good to read over the weekend.

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• The truth about the blockchain: It’s not ready
  
  Whenever I try to fully understand new ideas built on the Blockchain, my head keeps spinning and I wonder how developers in this field ensure to not completely get lost in the complexity of this topic. Reading that even a Blockchain developer can feel that way is comforting. The whole piece is very worth reading and offers some welcome realism to a very hyped topic.
• A Thought on Thoughts About the Future
  
  People tend to take dystopian depictions of the future much more seriously than utopian ones. Imagining an utopia is harder and usually gets you less respect and appreciation by others. A thought-provoking take.
• The Tech Story Is Over
  
  John Battelle asks a relevant question: Now that digital technology is mainstream, ubiquitous and at the core of each social issue, what is the next big thing?
• What is Differential Privacy?
  
  Whether one was disappointed by the lack of cutting-edge innovation presented at Apple’s most recent keynote or not, one has to give that to the company: It rather unexpectedly managed to popularize a fairly new privacy concept: Differential privacy. This text offers a comprehensible and critical explanation of what differential privacy means and why it would be interesting to Apple. It’s too early to say whether it mainly has to be seen as a marketing ploy or whether Apple is serious about it as a new USP to compete with Google, Facebook and other companies in the age of AI.
• The End of the Apple Man
  
  Good observation: Apple seems to have stopped considering affluent white men in their 40s as the (ideal) prototype user for its products.
• Snapchat Launches a Colossal Expansion of Its Advertising, Ushering in a New Era for the App
  
  A long, detailed and very informative piece describing Snapchat’s rapid expansions of its ad business. It pretty much was non-existent 2 years ago but is now expected to generate $1 billion in revenues next year.
• With LinkedIn, Microsoft will know us all too well
• With LinkedIn Purchase, Microsoft Not Learning Lessons of the Past
  
  Microsoft announced its plan to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. As one can expect, the opinions on this giant acquisition differ. These two takes are very different. One suggests that through LinkedIn, Microsoft will get vast amounts of valuable user data, whereas the other paints a picture of Microsoft repeating the mistakes it did with Skype. Bonus links: Salesforce should be worried, and it is getting likely that Google might respond with an acquisition of struggling Twitter.
• How Yahoo derailed Tumblr
  
  If we are at discussing acquisitions which turned out to be failuxres, this one should be mentioned.
• How 26 Tweets Broke My Filter Bubble
  
  Escaping one’s filter bubble leads to personal growth, valuable insights and an improved understanding of the world. But it requires quite some effort, as described in this instructive text.
• Starbucks has more customer money on cards than many banks have in deposits
  
  Remarkable. Maybe large consumer companies are turning into the new banks?
• German Rail aims for driver-less trains in 5 years
  
  Recently, the German Rail faced a sequence of large-scale strikes by train drivers. These might have encouraged the management to search for alternatives.
• The Venmo Request: A New Wrinkle in Modern Dating
  
  As someone living in Northern Europe the practice of splitting the bill after a date does not appear strange to me. Now the peer-to-peer payment app Venmo seems to shaken up the behavioral norms surrounding dates in the US.
• The Mistrust of Science
  
  A worrying trend.

Special reading

• The Future According to Women
  
  A free mini book in PDF format presenting what over 40 women from various industries expect from and hope for the future. Considering that usually men are dominating the discourse about the future – especially in technology – , this is an important contribution.

Podcast episode of the week

• a16z Podcast: Apple and the Widgetification of Everything
  
  Insightful talk about Apple’s latest news, focusing among other things on the different approaches of Google and Apple to bring Artificial Intelligence to users.

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If you like what you read, you can support meshedsociety.com on Patreon!

Here is this week’s edition of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with thoughtful opinion pieces, interesting analyses and significant yet under-reported information bits from the digital and technology world. Published and annotated every Thursday (CET), just in time so you have something good to read over the weekend.

======

If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection, do like more than 200 other smart people (as of June 2016) and sign up for free for the weekly email. It is sent out each Thursday right after this post goes live, including all the links. Example.

======

• No One Wants to Be Apple
  
  What an incredible turn of events. All this pessimism about Apple can’t be justified. Or can it?
• Movie written by algorithm turns out to be hilarious and intense
  
  So much about the claim that computers lack creativity.
• The Internet as Conspiracy Theory
  
  A captivating text about the Internet as an instrument to spread conspiracy theories and about what this says about the Internet itself.
• There’s a pretty crazy Snapchat conspiracy theory going around
  
  Here we have a rather recent conspiracy theory suggesting that Snapchat’s facial recognition feature (which is widely used to apply filters to faces) could be a way to amass millions of peoples’ faces, possibly by the FBI. The likelihood of this to be true probably lies somewhere between 0 and 1 percent. However, reading this made me think about the feature a bit more. I can see why some people might be skeptical. Performing a frequent face scan with an Internet enabled app to create funny, modified face shots requires quite a level of trust into an organization and its data security measures. On the other hand, average profile photos are already enough to identify faces in most cases, as shown by Russia’s app success FindFace app. So in the end, as long as one’s photo is available somewhere on the Internet, using Snapchat’s facial recognition should not make things worse.
• Social Media App Usage Down Across the Globe
  
  With third party statistics like these there is always the chance of inaccuracies. But assuming the measured reduction of time spent by Android users with the 4 leading social apps in most (big) markets is accurate, it would be a big deal, and it leads to the question whether we are witnessing the beginning of the end of social media the way we know it.
• Ground Control To Silicon Valley
  
  Critical take on Recode’s Code Conference where tech billionaires are being celebrated for their visions of a future. Criticism aside, the talk with Jeff Bezos was definitely interesting. You can watch the whole 80 minute thing here.
• Inside Uber’s Auto-Lease Machine, Where Almost Anyone Can Get a Car
  
  How to get more Uber cars on the road? By providing those who cannot afford a car but would like to drive for Uber with (accessible but expensive) car leases.
• Uber’s No Good, Very Bad Deal with Saudi Arabia
  
  Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has invested $3.5 billion into Uber. Considering the pecularities of this country, I share the author’s criticism of the deal. And in case you are wondering what motivated Saudi Arabia to pour money into Uber, you should read this analysis. It won’t be the last investment of its kind.
• The most interesting tech IPO of the year
  
  Many leading Internet and tech companies are relying on the services of Twilio whenever they send SMS to their users/customers. WhatsApp’s SMS identification alone represents 17 % of Twilio’s revenue. Now the US company is preparing for an IPO. According to Quartz its the most interesting tech IPO of the year.
• Why It’s Time to Take Google’s PC Operating System Seriously
  
  Google’s Chrome OS indeed has not been taken too seriously by most, but as the WSJ notes, it’s time to change that.
• Video is the new HTML
  
  In an (in my opinion) unnecessarily elaborate blog post Benedict Evans points to something interesting: How video in all its various forms and shapes (including Gifs, short clips, “native” content formats) is becoming an increasingly common container for all kinds of online content, rivaling HTML.
• Twitter’s anti-Semitism problem is exactly why Twitter has a growth problem
  
  Not sure everyone is aware how different Twitter and Facebook approach the verification of new users: Facebook has some rudimentary verification steps as part of the signup process, Twitter has none. Facebook’s real name and email verification requirements do not fully lock out trolls and trouble makers, but it puts at least some obstacles in their way.
• Voice Assistant Anyone? Yes please, but not in public!
  
  A new study confirms what I have been pointing out in my articles and Twitter discussions about Amazon Echo: Most people are not comfortable talking with voice assistants in public, but they like to do it in private spaces such as the car and the home.
• 93% of phishing emails are now ransomware
  
  It’s amazing how adaptive online criminals are. Once a new method of scamming delivers positive results, everyone quickly jumps on the bandwagon. No complacency and resistance to change to be seen.
• Kevin Kelly on Soft Singularity and inevitable tech advances
  
  Kevin Kelly is out with a new book called “The Inevitable”. I have not read it but based on the interviews with him (in which he pretty much says the same thing every time), the trivial message is that the major technology trends that excite us these days are inevitable, and that’s how it always was and always will be. This conclusion is so obvious to me and also feels like what his previous book “What Technology Wants” was partially about, so I do not understand how one can fill yet another full book about it. But who knows, those who are not too involved with the tech circus might find it eye-opening. Certainly we are far from a general public consensus about the inevitability of certain developments.
• How the Internet works: Submarine fibre, brains in jars, and coaxial cables
  
  This is a long and quite heavy explainer for those who are wondering how data packets travel from the US to Europe.
• The Broken Window Theory In Design & Product Development
  
  The Broken Window Theory is a very useful concept from social sciences which can be applied not only to local urban environments and social settings but also when it comes to creating software products.

Recent article on meshedsociety.com

• Forget Facebook: Twitter looks to Snapchat for Inspiration
  
  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey finds his own service to be more confusing than Snapchat. That’s an astonishing comment considering how especially people older than 30 seem to struggle with getting used to Snapchat’s user experience. Young users however might agree with Dorsey. And it’s them who he cares about the most. Get ready for the Snapchatification of Twitter.

Podcast episode of the week

• Exponent.fm: We Have Always Been at War with Amazon
  
  In my favorite tech podcast, Ben Thompson and James Allworth talk about the future potential of Amazon and explain why they are more bullish on the company than on Google, Apple or anyone else.

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