Weekly Links & Thoughts #92

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

• Why We are Uncomfortable Talking to Our Computers (2)
  
  Essential insights to be aware of in a phase in which tech companies are working hard to push voice-controlled user interfaces into the mainstream.
• How Bots, Messaging & AI Are Evolving (3)
  
  People are fine though talking to computers through chatbots. They come with another set of challenges, as summarized here through plenty of remarks made by leaders and innovators in this field. By the way, have you tried Duolingo’s new language learning bot? Really cool. This is the future of language learning.
• Crash: how computers are setting us up for disaster (3)
  
  The headline is a bit too sensationalist for my taste and the text felt too long. But the phenomenon it focuses on deserves more attention: the paradox of automation, meaning that the better the automatic systems, the more out-of-practice human operators will be, and the more extreme the situations they will have to face.
• Why Does Pessimism Sound So Smart? (2)
  
  A couple of interesting thoughts (from January) on an issue which won’t change anytime soon, since evolution has equipped the human brain with a tendency called “loss aversion”.
• Artificial Intelligence is the new electricity (2)
  
  A widely-used expression says that “data is the new oil”. The analogy between AI and electricity wouldn’t be too far off.
• Being Human in the Age of AI, Robotics & Big Data (3)
  
  AI is also where technology and philosophy meet. The question couldn’t be more substantial: What does it mean to be human when machines become so ubiquitous, versatile and intelligent (and even can get depressed)?
• Can we open the black box of AI? (3)
  
  Super insightful read about the challenge of being able to understand the “thinking” of an AI.
• iMessage is the glue that keeps me stuck to the iPhone (2)
  
  Not switching to Android because of the lack of iMessage there? If that’s a widespread phenomenon, then Apple does everything right by not releasing iMessage for Android.
• A critical analysis of the iOS 10 lockscreen experience (2)
  
  Every time I have to deal with the iOS 10 lock screen I experience a certain negative emotion. Until I read this analysis I couldn’t really pinpoint why exactly. So this really helped me.
• Freedom of speech in the digital age (2)
  
  A balanced take on the tricky question of freedom of speech and its limits in a connected world. I found this statement to be particularly intriguing: “Speech that disseminates ideas is more valuable than speech whose purpose is to intimidate others”.
• The Internet Finally Belongs to Everyone (2)
  
  With the recent handover of the last vestiges of control from the US government to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the US does not have the final say over the domain name system anymore.
• We Need to Save the Internet from the Internet of Things (1)
  
  A huge problem: IoT manufacturers don’t care about the security of their devices, which is exploited by criminals who build botnets using these devices to conduct large DDoS attacks.
• ‘Security Fatigue’ Can Cause Computer Users to Feel Hopeless and Act Recklessly, New Study Suggests (2)
  
  “Security Fatigue” sounds like an apt term for a feeling I myself experience sometimes.
• As Facebook turns fickle, publishers focus again on search (2)
  
  History repeats itself. Of course refocusing on search traffic can only work as long as users keep searching for stuff.
• Why Samsung Abandoned Its Galaxy Note 7 Flagship Phone (2)
  
  If you are not completely tired yet of reading the name “Galaxy Note 7” which has dominated the technology media’s coverage over the past weeks, then this is a handy overview about what happened. The case for sure will go into the history books as probably the biggest failed product launch ever (to date).
• Fuck You Startup World (1)
  
  An entertaining rant about the typical behaviors that can be observed within startup culture. Has been shared so widely on social media over the past two days that I expect most of you having stumbled upon it already.

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