Weekly Links & Thoughts #90

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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Length indicator: 1 = short, 2 = medium, 3 = long

• The Democratization of Censorship (3)
  
  A recent, gigantic DDoS attack targeting the security blog Krebsonsecurity.com and the content delivery network Akamai shows how comparatively easy it has become to silence unwelcome voices on the Internet. A telling remark from the text: “The sad truth these days is that it’s a lot easier to censor the digital media on the Internet than it is to censor printed books and newspapers in the physical world”.
• Traffic Is Fake, Audience Numbers Are Garbage, And Nobody Knows How Many People See Anything (2)
  
  Catchy headline and an outspoken take on a problem few want to admit.
• The price of connection: ‘surveillance capitalism’ (2)
  
  This is tech people’s big inner conflict: The connected lifestyle comes at a very high cost, which is surveillance.
• What if the aliens we are looking for are AI? (2)
  
  How crazy are our times that this actually has to be considered a serious possibility? (in my eyes, it does).
• Network Behaviors to Leverage Network Effects (1)
  
  An intriguing list of behaviors which can help individuals or organizations to maximize network effects.
• Snap Into Virtual Reality (1)
  
  Snapchat has just announced the upcoming launch of sunglasses with an integrated camera, dubbed “Spectacles”. As explained here, the move might eventually lead Snapchat into the world of VR and AR (and merge both).
• Will driving your own car become the socially unacceptable public health risk smoking is today? (2)
  
  The social changes that follow a technological shift are an often overlooked aspect of the future of mobility. Provided that self-driving cars will make it onto our roads in large scale, those who insist in driving themselves might quickly face intense peer pressure to give it up. Based on my personal observation, something like this is currently happening in urban, cosmopolitan areas regarding meat eating.
• Sol vs. Sol, for the fate of humanity (1)
  
  Jon Evans on the sun’s double role for the future of humanity: On the one hand, it might make life on Earth unbearable through heating it up, on the other hand, it might save us by providing cheap and clean energy.
• The End of Tech Companies (2)
  
  I agree that the differentiation between tech companies and the rest does not make sense anymore. From the article: “There are only ‘companies’, steeped in technology, that will survive”.
• Understanding the Price of Music (2)
  
  An informative overview of the current pricing strategies for digital music and how they might evolve.
• The Five Types of Virality (2)
  
  Intelligent categorization of the different types of virality which can help online services to initiate viral growth.
• Danny Meyer Just Single-Handedly Made the Apple Watch Relevant to the Hospitality Industry (1)
  
  That’s an exciting development: The founder of the U.S. Burger chain Shake Shack Danny Meyer plans to open a café in San Francisco at which staff members will be equipped with Apple Watches to improve internal processes and customer service.
• Tech Book Face Off: The Shallows Vs. Thinking, Fast and Slow (3)
  
  I’m recommending this for the first part of the text, which features a review of Nicholas Carr’s book The Shallows, which investigates the Internet’s impact on the human brain. Makes you think.
• Study finds young men are playing video games instead of getting jobs (2)
  
  Maybe video games actually have to be considered a way out of the looming crisis of jobless men.
• The Science of Headline Writing: Does A/B Testing Headlines Work? (1)
  
  Relevant for all the editors, bloggers and online writers out there.
• Credit card payments surpass cash worldwide for the first time ever (1)
  
  Most likely this trend will keep continuing exponentially.
• Ask Slashdot: Who’s Building The Open Source Version of Siri? (1)
  
  An open question to ponder (without any specific answer). And an important question. It would be more than desirable to have an alternative to centralized, proprietary, corporate-owned smart assistants.
• New Study Shows That Tinder Doesn’t Hurt Romance (2)
  
  It only does for those who define romance as a very specific, narrow way to meet. The one from Hollywood movies.

Recently on meshedsociety.com

• The deeper meaning of Spotify’s Discover Weekly
  
  Do you also enjoy Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist? You are not alone. For the music streaming service, the feature and the underlying concept have a huge strategic importance.

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