Weekly Links & Thoughts #175

Here is this week’s issue of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with interesting analyses and essays, significant yet under-reported information bits as well as thoughtful opinion pieces from the digital and technology world. Usually published every Wednesday/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, sign up for free for the weekly email. Here is an archive of previous issues.

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Reading time indicator: 1 = up to 3 minutes, 2 = 4 to 9 minutes, 3 = 10 to 29 minutes , 3+ = 30 minutes or more

Note: Some of the publications may use “soft” paywalls. If you are denied access, open the URL in your browser’s incognito/private mode (or subscribe if you find yourself reading a lot of the content on a specific site and want to support it).

• Challenging the Tech Companies from Within (librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com, 3)
  
  Intelligent, well-reflected thoughts on the rise of tech employee activism, why the tech giants and its leaders probably are happy about it, and the moral responsibility that employees of Facebook, Google etc. need to face.
• How Tech Companies Conquered America’s Cities (nytimes.com, 2)
  
  Slowly, tech firms are taking over US cities, leveraging new channels of influence and dictating how local services are being provided where in the past the government was in charge.
• The Unbearable Awkwardness of Automation (theatlantic.com, 3)
  
  This piece is well worth a read, pointing out the tension and partially awkward side effects of replacing human workers with automation at places that were specifically planned and built with the human workers in mind. I cannot find myself agreeing with the overall negative sentiment though. Is this really so “unbearable”? Personally, I much more prefer to interact with a computer instead of a human if the human only follows a robot-like protocol, which many service workers do. But certainly personal preferences vary.
• I talked to Google’s Duplex voice assistant. It felt like the beginning of something big. (recode.net, 2)
  
  Ok so Duplex is real. Let’s see though if it’ll really ever become accessible to the public.
• The Truth about Smart Contracts (medium.com, 2)
  
  Blockchain-based smart contracts sound great in theory. But in reality they are less smart than they pretend to be, and that’s just one of several issues, writes Jimmy Song.
• Facebook’s retreat from the news business (slate.com, 3)
  
  When it comes to its role as distributor of traffic to news websites, Facebook peaked in January 2017. Since then, the platform’s importance for media outlets as declined, leaving some in troubled circumstances. But hey, no one forced media outlets to make themselves so dependent on Facebook traffic.
• Cosmik Debris (kneelingbus.com, 1)
  
  Very short, thought-provoking take on the nowadays pretty much extraordinary practice of not providing personal data to an external entity – and what this means for the concept of consumer surplus.
• Startups Don’t Need to Make Financial Sense (thealeph.com, 2)
  
  An intriguing systems thinking perspective on the impact of startup crashes on the greater ecosystem and technology industry.
• The US startup is disappearing (qz.com, 1)
  
  Talking about startups: They are slowly becoming a rare breed, at least in the US.
• Ways to think about machine learning (ben-evans.com, 2)
  
  Ben Evans thoroughly analyzes what machine learning actually means for companies and the world, beyond the popular narratives of seemingly magical AI.
• Instagram Is Estimated to Be Worth More than $100 Billion (bloomberg.com, 1)
  
  There is a chance that Instagram one day will be bigger and more powerful than what Facebook is now.
• IGTV: Another brick in the wall of a content conundrum (hackernoon.com, 2)
  
  Solid analysis of Instagram’s new IGTV service and the consequences for Instagram/YouTube as well as for the content consumer.
• The case against teaching kids to be polite to Alexa (fastcompany.com, 2)
  
  Tricky question. There are good arguments both for and against being polite to smart assistants.
• San Francisco Restaurants Can’t Afford Waiters. So They’re Putting Diners to Work. (nytimes.com, 2)
  
  San Francisco is basically a case study of how high housing costs alter the economics of everything else, including restaurant service.
• Focus on What’s Common to Good Transit Cities, not on Differences (pedestrianobservations.com, 3)
  
  “The biggest problem with figuring out things all good transit cities have in common is that in the developed world, the US (and to some extent Canada and Australia) is unique in having bad transit. “
• The surprising reason people change their mind (bbc.com, 2)
  
  We humans rationalize the things we feel stuck with. Another way to change minds: Show people charts.
• I Wore an Expensive Watch While Traveling, and People Treated Me Wayyy Differently (thrillist.com, 2)
  
  Piece from 2016. Sometimes people act in weird ways.
• Germany Will Win the World Cup, UBS Says After 10,000 Simulations (bloomberg.com, 1)
  
  So much about that.
• In Defense of Being Irrational (medium.com, 2)
  
  I like this pragmatic approach of combining reason and emotions: “Reason gives us a huge edge, and we need to respect that edge, but the seeming irrationality of a well-tuned emotional system, within the right context, can fill in gaps that reason misses.”

Quotation of the week:

• “Maybe what happens is that all civilizations get far enough to where they generate huge amounts of information, but then they get done in by attention scarcity. They collectively take their eye off the ball of progress and are not prepared when something really bad happens such as a global pandemic”
  
  Albert Wenger in “World After Capital: Getting Past Capital (Attention Cont’d)” (continuations.com, 1)
  
  

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

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If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection, sign up for free for the weekly email. Here is an archive of previous issues.

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Reading time indicator: 1 = up to 3 minutes, 2 = 4 to 9 minutes, 3 = 10 to 29 minutes , 3+ = 30 minutes or more

Note: Some of the publications may use “soft” paywalls. If you are denied access, open the URL in your browser’s incognito/private mode (or subscribe if you find yourself reading a lot of the content on a specific site and want to support it).

• The Machine Fired Me (idiallo.com, 3)
  
  Gripping write-up. In a world in which an increasing number of decisions are automated, things can become pretty unpleasant in the case of a technical error.
• Fatalities vs. False Positives: The Lessons from the Tesla and Uber Crashes (hackaday.com, 2)
  
  The crux of self-driving at the moment is figuring out when to slam on the brakes and when not. The more false positives, the more often the cars brake needlessly under normal driving circumstances. Reducing the number of false positives (with current technology) means that the risk of actually missing a situation in which the car should have hit the breaks increases.
• The War on Tesla, Musk, and the Fight for the Future (dailykos.com, 3)
  
  A long defense of Elon Musk and his endeavors. There is serious polarization going on surrounding his personality and projects.
• What it’s like to watch an IBM AI successfully debate humans (theverge.com, 2)
  
  An AI that can engage in a series of reasoned arguments with no awareness of the debate topic ahead of time and no pre-canned responses. The system has “several hundred million articles” that it assumes are accurate in its data banks, around about 100 areas of knowledge.
• AI Can Track Humans Through Walls With Just a Wifi Signal (inverse.com, 2)
  
  Wifi signals pass through walls but bounce off living tissue. Now an AI has been trained to use this characteristic to monitor the movements, breathing, and heartbeats of humans on the other side of those walls.
• Apple’s Airpods Are an Omen (theatlantic.com, 2)
  
  Apples’ wireless earbuds foreshadow startling changes to the social fabric, writes Ian Bogost.
• The “Facebook Nevers” (500ish.com, 2)
  
  The fall of Facebook (the site, not the company) will not happen due to people quitting in large numbers. Instead, if it happens, then because of a growing number of young people who simply never became habitual Facebook users in the first place. Obviously, the time horizon for this process is long.
• Mapping the Emerging Non-Fungible Token Landscape (medium.com, 2)
  
  Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique crypto assets: they can be distinguished from one another and have varying properties. Cryptokitties are probably the most well-known representative of this category, but far from the only one. Good overview of this dynamic new space.
• Mary Meeker’s annual valentine to Silicon Valley reminds us tech utopianism is alive and well (venturebeat.com, 2)
  
  Reasonable criticism of Mary Meeker’s yearly report on the tech industry (which everybody from the industry always raves about, year after year).
• What’s Wrong With Startup Competitions (medium.com, 1)
  
  “Stop wasting your time and stop entering startup competitions. Win customers, not competitions.” Tough stance. There are probably different ways to look at this.
• The Next Trend In Travel Is… Don’t (brightthemag.com, 2)
  
  Personally I don’t consider abstaining from travel being the right response to the increasing issues caused by mass tourism. I prefer going where fewer others are going instead. And there are still many places like that. Probably we are looking at a typical pareto distribution: 80 % of the people travel to 20 % of the destinations suited for tourism.
• How the 12.9-inch iPad Pro took me by surprise and replaced my laptop (paulstamatiou.com, 3+)
  
  A very extensive piece. It’s not the first one of that kind that makes it into this link selection. Yes, I am definitely considering this option for myself.
• You Never Want To Be The Smartest Person In The Room (medium.com, 2)
  
  This mindset might be helpful in making certain choices.
• What is wrong with tolerance (aeon.co, 3)
  
  A thought-provoking essay arguing for replacing the flawed concept of (religious) tolerance with a philosophy of reciprocity.
• What Do Men Think It Means To Be A Man? (fivethirtyeight.com, 2)
  
  Some instructive charts and statistics, even if they only show attitudes of men in the U.S.

Quotation of the week:

• “It’s bad to have an opinion you’re proud of if you can’t state the arguments for the other side better than your opponents.”
  
  By Charlie Munger according to “The Work Required to Have an Opinion” (fs.blog, 1)

Thanks for reading! If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection in the future, sign up for free for the weekly email.

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

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If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection, sign up for free for the weekly email. Here is an archive of previous issues.

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Reading time indicator: 1 = up to 3 minutes, 2 = 4 to 9 minutes, 3 = 10 to 29 minutes , 3+ = 30 minutes or more

Note: Some of the publications may use “soft” paywalls. If you are denied access, open the URL in your browser’s incognito/private mode (or subscribe if you find yourself reading a lot of the content on a specific site and want to support it).

• AI Nationalism (ianhogarth.com, 3)
  
  In this in-depth analysis, the entrepreneur, investor and AI expert Ian Hogarth explains how accelerating progress in machine learning could lead to instability in the international order and a rise of a new kind of geopolitics, which he calls “AI Nationalism”.
• Instagram Influencers Are Driving Luxury Hotels Crazy (theatlantic.com, 2)
  
  According to the article, one five-star resort in the Maldives receives at least six requests a day about free stays from self-described influencers, typically through Instagram direct message.
• The Hustlers Fueling Cryptocurrency’s Marketing Machine (wired.com, 3)
  
  Meanwhile, crypto influencers are also very busy capitalizing on the boom of their niche, making use of the fact that many not-yet launched crypto projects are giving away tokens as “bounties” for tasks such as promoting the project.
• Has Consciousness Lost Its Mind? (chronicle.com, 3)
  
  The yearly “Science of Consciousness” conference appears to be one of the probably rare occasions during which one can see and hear both respected figures of the field as well as rather controversial spiritual gurus. Tom Bartlett attended this year’s event and wrote an enlightening as well as entertaining report.
• Expose Thyself: On the Digitally Revealed Life (iasc-culture.org, 3+)
  
  What the clock did to time, technologists hope to do to emotion—regulate and regiment it, measure and monitor it. But taming the temperamental beast that is human emotion might prove a challenge that contemporary technology is unfit to take on.
• Why the Future of Machine Learning is Tiny (petewarden.com, 2)
  
  Turns out that machine learning needs rather little energy (in comparison to other computing processes), which means it can run on tiny, low-power chips.
• 18 Things Facebook Tracks About You (buzzfeed.com, 1)
  
  Reading this makes me confident that despite all the side effects of the GDPR, it’s the right move.
• Illegal memes? Weak Safe Harbor? Unpacking the proposed EU copyright overhaul (arstechnica.com, 2)
  
  This planned EU legislation on the other hand is highly worrisome. About the same topic: 70+ Internet Luminaries Ring the Alarm on EU Copyright Filtering Proposal.
• Uber is playing with fire (thebehavioralscientist.com, 1)
  
  In some test markets, Uber is using a dirt-cheap and rather questionable flatrate offering. The author suspects that it is intended to create a behavioral change in riders aimed at making them stop looking at the fare price during booking.
• Netflix-onomics (taimur.me, 2)
  
  A look at how Netflix spend billions of Dollars on the content it licenses and produces.
• How to Cheat the Kindle Store (the-digital-reader.com, 2)
  
  If a Kindle ebook encourages you at its beginning to jump to the end of the book, this should raise suspicion.
• Hypergrowth and The Law of Startup Physics (firstround.com, 3)
  
  Humans grow linearly, companies grow exponentially – very insightful article on how to best align these two mechanisms.
• Habits of Highly Miserable People (alternet.org, 3)
  
  This might be a more valuable guide than the countless pieces about habits of highly successful and effective people.
• Why the Best Things in Life Are All Backwards (markmanson.net, 3)
  
  The ability to let go of control when one wants it the most is an important skill.
• Sweden Tries to Halt Its March to Total Cashlessness (bloomberg.com, 2)
  
  When it comes to the use of cash in a society, there clearly is a reverse tipping point: In Sweden, it has been crossed – now it is rather unattractive for anyone (except criminals) to deal with cash or to provide services involving cash.
• It’s official: Ikea is no longer just a furniture company (fastcodesign.com, 2)
  
  One cannot accuse Ikea of failing to experiment with ways to transform itself.
• Volvo targets 33% autonomous sales and 50% subscription sales by 2025 (autocar.co.uk, 1)
  
  Ok this is becoming a bit Sweden-heavy now… But talking about transformation.
• This is how working hours have changed over time (weforum.org, 2)
  
  Full-time workers in Europe today work 20 or even 30 hours less every week than in the 19th century.

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

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If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection, sign up for free for the weekly email. Here is an archive of previous issues.

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Reading time indicator: 1 = up to 3 minutes, 2 = 4 to 9 minutes, 3 = 10 to 29 minutes , 3+ = 30 minutes or more

Note: Some of the publications may use “soft” paywalls. If you are denied access, open the URL in your browser’s incognito/private mode (or subscribe if you find yourself reading a lot of the content on a specific site and want to support it).

• The Limits of Expertise (quilette.com, 2)
  
  Brilliant analysis of how experts’ lack of humility and overestimation of their predictive abilities in open systems have caused the erosion of trust in expertise.
• Looking for Life on a Flat Earth (newyorker.com, 3)
  
  Fringe beliefs such as those of “Flat Earthers” might be the direct consequence of the erosion of trust in expertise.
• Your Phone Is Listening and it’s Not Paranoia (vice.com, 2)
  
  Talking about beliefs: Even after reading this piece, I still find it hard to conclude whether large tech companies do in fact listen to conversations and use the data for targeted ads or not. Lots of people (including the author) report having noticed this. But this still could be cognitive biases at work (such as selective perception or frequency illusion). I’m now testing it myself: Saying out loud to my smartphone that I really want a new Espresso Machine. I don’t drink Espresso and don’t interact with coffee content, so technically I should never be targeted with an Espresso Machine ad. However, particularly on Instagram, I get targeted with all kinds of irrelevant ads. So even if I should notice an ad for an Espresso Machine over the next days or weeks, this wouldn’t be a sufficient proof.
• The Jeff Bezos Way: How to Design Your Ideal Future (medium.com, 2)
  
  Interesting read on how Jeff Bezos makes decisions about a future that he (like anyone) doesn’t fully understand.
• YouTube’s top creators are burning out (polygon.com, 2)
  
  Being an influencer/YouTuber isn’t easy, and one becomes a slave to the algorithm.
• “The Scale Is Just Unfathomable” (logicmag.io, 2)
  
  For large-scale tech platforms, moderation is industrial, not artisanal. Interesting perspective on how reality of content moderation differs from people’s imagination.
• The Real Scandal of AI: Awful Stock Photos (medium.com, 1)
  
  Brave to bring this up.
• A Glass of Ice Water in the Desert (500ish.com, 2)
  
  I wouldn’t usually recommend someone’s thoughts on a developer conference in this weekly link selection, but MG Siegler’s take on Apple’s WWDC 2018 is highly entertaining and comes with the right (small) dose of snark.
• How do Apple’s Screen Time and Google Digital Wellbeing stack up? (theverge.com, 2)
  
  Both Apple and Google want to (or feel they have to in the light of current debates) discourage smartphone overuse.
• Behind the Messy, Expensive Split Between Facebook and WhatsApp’s Founders (wsj.com, 3)
  
  If you don’t have paid access to the WSJ, here is a summary: After Facebook acquired WhatsApp, there was a slow but steady built-up of tension between the WhatsApp founders as well as their team and Facebook’s management, mostly related to philosophy about privacy and monetization. The WhatsApp people didn’t want to adopt Facebook’s proven but invasive ad-based business model, but once it got clear that there was no escape, the founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum decided to leave, walking away from about $1.3 billion in unvested shares (but when you already have billions, maybe that’s not that much of a sacrifice).
• Useful Hacks (collaborativefund.com, 2)
  
  There are no shortcuts for being successful. These “hacks” are pretty great.
• Want More Time? Get Rid of the Easiest Way to Spend It (raptitude.com, 2)
  
  Social media. Of course. It really is that simple.
• Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore (theatlantic.com, 2)
  
  95 % of the calls I receive are from sales people. So I don’t usually answer anymore either.
• Software is Eating the World-Tesla Edition (marginalrevolution.com, 1)
  
  “The larger economic issue is that every durable good is becoming a service.”
• Visualizing the Books That Bill Gates Loves and Recommends (visualcapitalist.com, 2)
  
  Over the years, Bill Gates has recommended 190 books on his blog.
• The Amazing Psychology of Japanese Train Stations (citylab.com, 2)
  
  How to nudge people into behavior which makes tight train operations possible and more efficient.

Podcast episode of the week:

• The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish: The Truth About Lies
  
  Thought-provoking interview with Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics, about decision making, irrationality, dishonesty and more.

Thanks for reading! If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection in the future, sign up for free for the weekly email.

Here is this week’s issue of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with interesting analyses and essays, significant yet under-reported information bits as well as thoughtful opinion pieces from the digital and technology world. Usually published every Wednesday/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, sign up for free for the weekly email. Here is an archive of previous issues.

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Reading time indicator: 1 = up to 3 minutes, 2 = 4 to 9 minutes, 3 = 10 to 29 minutes , 3+ = 30 minutes or more

Note: Some of the publications may use “soft” paywalls. If you are denied access, open the URL in your browser’s incognito/private mode (or subscribe if you find yourself reading a lot of the content on a specific site and want to support it).

• Where Humans Meet Machines: Intuition, Expertise and Learning (medium.com, 2)
  
  What Daniel Kahneman, behavioral economist, psychologist and Nobel Prize winner, thinks about algorithms making decisions. Probably unsurprisingly for those who have read his book “Thinking, fast and slow”, he worries more about human decision making than algorithmic one. (medium.com, 2)
• Fascism is back. Blame the Internet. (washingtonpost.com, 2)
  
  Heavy headline, but an opinion piece which resonated with me. Currently I see a 20 % probability that the internet (or rather what it does to and with people) eventually will lead to a turning away from the principles of the enlightenment, a collapse of modern civilization and a time akin to the Middle Ages. Notably, this also means that I consider it still more likely that humanity will find ways to constructively deal with the networked age. I hope. Yet, it’s very clear that on an aggregate level, the consequences of the internet are posing quite a challenge to humanity and the still pretty primitive and easily mislead (collective, tribal) human mind.
• How a Pentagon Contract Became an Identity Crisis for Google (nytimes.com, 2)
  
  Google wants to work with the Pentagon in the field of AI and considers this type of partnership necessary for competitive reasons, but a significant number of Google employees hate the idea. According to this article, the internal debates are even more heated than those following the infamous “Google memo” last year.
• AI winter is well on its way (blog.piekniewski.info, 3)
  
  Whether there will be another AI winter or not: Currently, an increasing number of experts in the field of artificial intelligence appear to become disappointed with the pace of progress within the field.
• Machine learning is helping computers spot arguments online before they happen (theverge.com, 2)
  
  I want this technology for real conversations. As a locally run app (for privacy reasons) on a phone or smartwatch which alerts people if a conversation that they are having is turning tense. This could help save many relationships and marriages.
• Spotify’s Censorship Crisis is About Social Responsibility (musicindustryblog.wordpress.com, 2)
  
  How should music streaming services and other content platforms deal with editorial choices in regards to social responsbility? It’s not easy, as shown by Spotify’s recent controversy surrounding the removal of artists such as R. Kelly from its playlists.
• Would You Have Hired Steve Jobs? (medium.com, 2)
  
  Thought-provoking question. Many probably would not have. But maybe even rightly so. Some people are not made to be employees.
• The Beginning of the Future (howwegettonext.com, 2)
  
  A delightful collection of visual art created over the past couple of centuries depicting the future.
• The Birth And Death Of Privacy: 3,000 Years of History Told Through 46 Images (medium.com, 3)
  
  Another historical visual trip, equally enlightening. At the end of it, it’s hard not to see how privacy probably will turn out to have been a very temporary phenomenon (at least for the masses).
• Indistractable: How to Focus In and Tune Out Digital Distraction (medium.com, 2)
  
  Nir Eyal has performed quite an impressive personal pivot: From the guy who taught app developers how to make users “hooked” to the guy who teaches users how to stop being so hooked. Like the drug dealer who later opens a rehab clinic.
• Why Startup Timing is Everything (medium.com, 2)
  
  On the importance of the right timing to be successful with a startup.
• The Rise of the Muslim Woman Tech Entrepreneur (nytimes.com, 2)
  
  Some interesting numbers in this piece detailing the unusual high number of women in traditionally male tech sectors in some Muslim-majority countries.
• Go Ahead, Skip that Networking Event (hbr.org, 2)
  
  The author reviewed dozens of studies on networking and the overall implications are that networking events don’t live up to their billing.
• Unquantified (nomasters.io, 2)
  
  Not quantifying anything is my default state (ok sometimes I check how many kilometers I walked during a day, but it’s not essential – one can always make a fairly accurate guess), and I am happy with it. But maybe the older I get, the more I’ll be realizing the benefits of monitoring certain body data. I am not ruling that out.
• Desperate for jobs, Venezuelan immigrants turn to ride-hailing services across Latin America (techcrunch.com, 2)
  
  How on-demand ride-hailing services benefit from the Venezuelan crisis. I’m currently in Colombia and here, most Uber drivers seem to be locals. But according to the article, it’s different in other countries of the region.
• Why The Heck Is Bird Potentially Worth $1B? (news.crunchbase.com, 2)
  
  The latest tech fad in the U.S. are electric scooters. Investors seem to love this new smart mobility niche, but so far, the economic performance of the leading startup in that field, Bird, looks rather modest.
• Estonia plans to become a free public transport nation (popupcity.net, 1)
  
  Certainly “free” public transport is not really free, it’s paid for through taxes. Still, it’s great to see that this seems to work out well for Tallinn (and Estonia).

Thanks for reading! If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection in the future, sign up for free for the weekly email.

Here is this week’s issue of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with interesting analyses and essays, significant yet under-reported information bits as well as thoughtful opinion pieces from the digital and technology world. Usually published every Wednesday/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, sign up for free for the weekly email. Here is an archive of previous issues.

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Reading time indicator: 1 = up to 3 minutes, 2 = 4 to 9 minutes, 3 = 10 to 29 minutes , 3+ = 30 minutes or more

Note: Some of the publications may use “soft” paywalls. If you are denied access, open the URL in your browser’s incognito/private mode (or subscribe if you find yourself reading a lot of the content on a specific site and want to support it).

• After Authenticity (subpixel.space, 3)
  
  Thought-provoking analysis of our current “post authenticity” era in which no one complains about “sellouts” anymore and in which the value of a thing does not decrease if more people use/know it. A favorite remark from the text: “For the hipster, being released on an independent label was privileged over signing to a major label. Better yet was being self-released and only discoverable through blogs. Best was having zero promotion and being downright unknown—something only you had heard of.“
• How the Internet gets inside us (newyorker.com, 3)
  
  An illuminating critic of the three types of common viewpoints taken by books about the internet era, creatively dubbed by the author the “Never-Betters”, the “Better-Nevers” and the “Ever-Wasers”.
• AI trust and AI fears: A media debate that could divide society (mindthismagazine.com, 2)
  
  At the heart of this piece is the question why many people have a hard time trusting AI, and what would have to be done in order to change that.
• Leapfrogging Tech Is Changing Millions of Lives. Here’s How (singularityhub.com, 2)
  
  A year ago I also wrote about technological leapfrogging, which is an exciting phenomenon that can lead to outbursts of innovation in regions of the world previously not known for market leadership in technology.
• This Man Is the Godfather the AI Community Wants to Forget (bloomberg.com, 3)
  
  An insightful and entertaining profile of the Germany-born, Switzerland-based AI pioneer Jürgen Schmidhuber.
• A Platform Strategy Won’t Work Unless You’re Good at Machine Learning (hbr.org, 2)
  
  Good point: Without proper machine learning technology (aka AI), it’s impossible to run a large digital platform these days.
• Airbnb’s War on Porn Stars (thedailybeast.com, 2)
  
  We are seeing the rise of a new type of prudishness, and it’s in part fueled by big tech platforms (and by some new legislation in the U.S.).
• Facebook is full of could-be CEOs — but no one ever leaves (recode.net, 2)
  
  Like a religious cult. But in this case, the reason why so few leave is probably not due to force. To put my growing discomfort with Facebook aside for a second, this is an astonishing achievement.
• Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Has Reinvented Research (daily.jstor.org, 2)
  
  Where do researchers in 2018 go to collect answers for surveys? To Amazon’s crowdsourced “clickworking” platform Mechanical Turk.
• Waymo. G Suite. YouTube Red. Why Is Google So Bad at Naming Its Products? (slate.com, 2)
  
  I agree, Google’s name choices for its products often are horrible.
• In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need? (nytimes.com, 2)
  
  The answer to this question is still in progress, but it looks as if consciousness might not be overly dependent on the physical body.
• How Apple Pay Works Under the Hood (medium.freecodecamp.org, 2)
  
  A slightly technical overview.
• Do you think Elon Musk takes up too many new ventures simultaneously? (saastr.com, 1)
  
  A good question. Even Musk’s capacity has its limits.
• Is Starbucks is a Coworking & Toilet Operator? (rethinking.re, 1)
  
  An interesting idea about how Starbucks could turn “non-customers” into paying customers.
• The Cult of the Root Cause (reinertsenassociates.com, 2)
  
  “Don’t assume you will only encounter problems that can be reduced to a simple single chain of causality where the best intervention lies at the start of the chain.”
• How to critically dissect a success story (invertedpassion.com, 2)
  
  A useful guide for critically assessing success stories, which is a worthy thing to do considering that, as the author notes, good storytellers can convince you of anything.
• Window for learning second language may remain open longer than thought (bold.expert, 2)
  
  According to latest research, achieving fluency like a native speaker in a foreign language requires starting to speak the language by 10 years old, and the ability to learn the grammar of a new language fades around 17 years old. I still plan to keep learning and practicing additional languages other than my native German for the rest of my life.

Thanks for reading! If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection in the future, sign up for free for the weekly email.

Here is this week’s issue of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with interesting analyses and essays, significant yet under-reported information bits as well as thoughtful opinion pieces from the digital and technology world. Usually published every Wednesday/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, sign up for free for the weekly email. Here is an archive of previous issues.

======

Reading time indicator: 1 = up to 3 minutes, 2 = 4 to 9 minutes, 3 = 10 to 29 minutes , 3+ = 30 minutes or more

Note: Some of the publications may use “soft” paywalls. If you are denied access, open the URL in your browser’s incognito/private mode (or subscribe if you find yourself reading a lot of the content on a specific site and want to support it).

• Why Winners Keep Winning (ofdollarsanddata.com, 2)
  
  Great piece! On cumulative advantage and how to think about luck.
• How to Run a Blockchain on a Deserted Island with Pen and Paper (hackernoon.com, 3)
  
  A fun and particularly comprehensive way to explain the basic principle of blockchain technology.
• Microsoft Turned Consumers Against the Beloved Skype Brand (bloomberg.com, 2)
  
  The demise of the Skype end user experience is definitely remarkable. I truly hate it. The only reason I still open it occasionally is to call actual phones or to receive calls on my German SkypeIn number. And every time I open it, I receive 1-2 messages from Skype contacts containing links to malware… For video calls, I nowadays prefer appear.in, which is great and simple. And then of course there is FaceTime, Slack or Google Hangouts (whatever this is called right now, you never know with Google).
• MoviePass has changed people’s moviegoing habits (vox.com, 3)
  
  The movie theater subscription service MoviePass is kind of a big deal in the U.S. and an intriguing experiment in changing a century-old industry. For now though, the economics are extremely shaky.
• The Entire Economy Is MoviePass Now. Enjoy It While You Can. (nytimes.com, 2)
  
  Kevin Roose on the rise of unprofitable companies.
• How can we make technology that frees us, rather than enslaves us? (torforgeblog.com, 2)
  
  Cory Doctorow criticizes the industry’s growing attempts of designing computers to treat their owners as untrustworthy adversaries.
• GDPR will pop the adtech bubble (blogs.harvard.edu, 3)
  
  Let’s hope so. This industry relies on too many questionable practices.
• The impact of Masayoshi Son’s $100bn tech fund will be profound (economist.com, 3)
  
  SoftBank’s Vision Fund is profoundly changing the tech and venture landscape with its unconventional (crazy?) approach: “Masayoshi Son then offers up to four or five times what the entrepreneur suggests. Any questions over what the firm would do with that much money and Mr Son threatens to put the cash into a rival, usually leading to capitulation. During talks with Uber, he threatened to invest in Lyft. SoFi, Didi, Grab and Brain Corp, which builds machine brains for robots, all got variations of the treatment.”
• Why the Luddites Matter (librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com, 3)
  
  An intelligent, balanced take on who the Luddites really were and what they really wanted to achieve.
• Deep learning with synthetic data will democratize the tech industry (techcrunch.com, 2)
  
  An exciting concept: Companies or organizations that want to train an AI but lack proper datasets could just create “synthetic” data through simulations. Might this approach help to even out the inequality between big tech and smaller players when it comes to access to AI training data? Meanwhile though, the big players are snatching up all the AI talent. So now we need “synthetic” AI engineers. But software that writes software is already in the making.
• How your mind, under stress, gets better at processing bad news (aeon.co, 2)
  
  Under psychological stress, the mind pays an outsized amount of attention to bad news. Relevant insight both in regards to individual as well as societal well-being.
• Finland offers free online Artificial Intelligence course to anyone, anywhere (yle.fi, 2)
  
  Not only useful but also a beneficial for the country’s brand perception.
• Apartment baiting with Facebook Ads (medium.com, 1)
  
  This makes you wonder for what other scenarios in one’s personal life a Facebook ad could be useful.
• How to change emotions with a word (economist.com, 1)
  
  As a “text” person (albeit not a wordsmith or anything near that), I get frustrated whenever I see people treat wording, copy writing and spoken/written communication in general as an afterthought. This piece is a powerful reminder of how greatly the impact of a message can differ if tiny changes to it are made.
• Great Things Take Time (ofdollarsanddata.com, 2)
  
  On the importance of long term thinking in a society that is dominated by instant gratification.
• What if everyone in the world lived on the same street? (gatesnotes.com, 1)
  
  Bill Gates comments on a website called Dollar Street which visualizes the distribution of wealth across the world using an intriguing idea.
• Pirate Radio Stations Explode on YouTube (nytimes.com, 2)
  
  Hundreds of independently run channels have begun to stream music nonstop, with videos that combine playlists with hundreds of songs and short, looped animations, often taken from anime films without copyright permission.
• I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore (nymag.com, 2)
  
  I do, even though I see the author’s point.

Recently on meshedsociety.com:

• Thank you for Duplex, Google

Podcast episode of the week:

• Future Thinkers Podcast: Ramez Naam – Reasons To Be Optimistic About the Future
  
  There is a lot to be discussed about and also questioned in regards to the direction certain technological trends are taking right now, but I also think that it is important to expose oneself to optimistic thinking on purpose, considering that the brain has a certain natural tendency towards pessimism.

Quotation of the week:

• “The Cambridge Analytica scandal was in some ways a sustained advertisement for the idea that targeted ads really work and that Facebook really is a space where people can be molded rather than persuaded.”
  
  Rob Horning in “Anxiety of Influence” (reallifemag.com, 2)

Thanks for reading! If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection in the future, sign up for free for the weekly email.

Here is this week’s issue of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with interesting analyses and essays, significant yet under-reported information bits as well as thoughtful opinion pieces from the digital and technology world. Usually published every Wednesday/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, sign up for free for the weekly email. Here is an archive of previous issues.

======

Reading time indicator: 1 = up to 3 minutes, 2 = 4 to 9 minutes, 3 = 10 to 29 minutes , 3+ = 30 minutes or more

Note: Some of the publications may use “soft” paywalls. If you are denied access, open the URL in your browser’s incognito/private mode (or subscribe if you find yourself reading a lot of the content on a specific site and want to support it).

• System Failures: Planned Obsolescence and Enforced Disposability (medium.com, 3)
  
  Our modern systems are designed to maximize waste, and it’s extremely easily to forget about it while constantly perpetuating it. Leyla Acaroglu does a great job of opening the readers’ eyes.
• The rise of the pointless job (theguardian.com, 3)
  
  This is far from the first essay by David Graeber on bullshit jobs – but in this one, he offers quite an informative classification of different types of bullshit jobs. You’ll read about “flunkies”, “goons”, “duct-tapers”, “box tickers” and more.
• The billion-dollar, Alibaba-backed AI company that’s quietly watching everyone in China (qz.com, 2)
  
  Interesting profile of China’s emerging AI giant SenseTime.
• Your Instagram #Dogs and #Cats Are Training Facebook’s AI (wired.com, 2)
  
  Accumulative advantage at its best. Outside of China, how will startups be able to compete with Facebook and other tech giants when it comes to improving AI, without access to comparable datasets? While some data might be available as open source, the companies will make sure not to give away more than necessary.
• There’s no clear evidence Autopilot saves lives (arstechnica.com, 3)
  
  This contradicts Elon Musk’s claims.
• The economics of artificial intelligence (mckinsey.com, 3)
  
  According to strategy professor Ajay Agrawal, AI serves a single, transformative economic purpose: It significantly lowers the cost of prediction.
• The Formula Behind San Francisco’s Startup Success (news.crunchbase.com, 2)
  
  It’s actually simple: Be able to sustain big losses, have investors who have done it before, pick a business model that relatives understand.
• How to Raise a Unicorn (medium.com, 3)
  
  The seven shared fundamentals of history’s most valuable companies.
• Cambridge Analytica: how did it turn clicks into votes? (theguardian.com, 3)
  
  A comprehensive explainer on how to use data about user preferences for personalized, psychometric ad targeting and what could be done with it at least in theory (irrespective of whether Cambridge Analytica managed to use this method to sway the U.S. Presidential election).
• ‘Google go home’: the Berlin neighbourhood fighting off a tech giant (theguardian.com, 2)
  
  Berlin’s ethos, the perceived threat of gentrification and the (to some) scary outlook of becoming a prosperous, economically strong city – it’s complicated. The tension is understandable though: Over the past months, almost every person I’ve met outside of Germany had a very positive story to tell about their Berlin experience. The big question is if Berlin can maintain its cool if it would turn into a well-functioning, wealthy city like many others. However, the good news for those worried: The probability for this happening is tiny, with or without Google. There is so much structural/cultural debt that I don’t see my home town turning into yet another polished, organized and thereby common metropolis. At least not before the BER airport will be open. This is cool Berlin’s canary in the coal mine: As long as BER is “under construction”, Berlin is still what it used to be.
• Three-quarters Facebook users as active or more since privacy scandal (reuters.com, 1)
  
  This can be framed in different ways. The fact that one quarter has actually reduced its usage is not unremarkable.
• Facebook’s Gollum Will Never Give Up Its Data Ring (shift.newco.co, 2)
  
  Nails it. Facebook has no reason to “sell” data. Selling user data would not be nearly as profitable as leasing access to users, via advertising— over and over again.
• Snap Inc. again shows why it should not have become a public company (latimes.com, 2)
  
  Meanwhile, it doesn’t look good for Snap.
• Fail by design: Banking’s legacy of dark code (dw.com, 2)
  
  The big dilemma many banks are facing: They have to update their legacy code to ensure safety, but no one understands it anymore.
• On how to grow an idea (thecreativeindependent.com, 2)
  
  Intriguing text about the approach of “do-nothing farming”, natural intelligence in existing ecosystems, and about adapting the philosophy to the process of idea creation.
• Nobody Planned This, Nobody Expected It (collaborativefund.com, 2)
  
  On the importance of room for error. “Room for error doesn’t just protect you from risk you’ve experienced in the past; it guards against future risk you haven’t thought of.”
• The Subtle Art of Connecting With Anyone (medium.com, 2)
  
  Thought-provoking piece on the “culture” of individual relationships. It also comes with a brilliant quote by George Carlin: “I love individuals. I hate groups of people” (video here).
• People Who Have “Too Many Interests” Are More Likely To Be Successful According To Research (medium.com, 3)
  
  I guess there is little harm in trying to be interested in as many topics as possible, even if one doesn’t have world-changing ambitions. Well, except one thing maybe… (see next link).
• Judge the value of what you have by what you had to give up to get it (timharford.com, 2)
  
  …Opportunity costs! One often neglected mental model to evaluate the value of what one has or does. For people with an eclectic set of interests, the struggle is having to choose where to direct attention at any given moment.
• How much does Apple know about me? (usatoday.com, 2)
  
  Very little.

Service of the week:

• The GDPR Checklist
  
  Not very exciting, this topic, but possibly useful for some.

Quotation of the week:

• “In a loose sense, WeWork’s business model is getting SoftBank to buy beer for software workers.”
  
  Matt Levine in “WeWork Accounts for Consciousness” (bloomberg.com, 2)

Thanks for reading! If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection in the future, sign up for free for the weekly email.

Here is this week’s issue of meshedsociety.com weekly, loaded with interesting analyses and essays, significant yet under-reported information bits as well as thoughtful opinion pieces from the digital and technology world. Usually published every Wednesday/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, sign up for free for the weekly email. Here is an archive of previous issues.

======

Reading time indicator: 1 = up to 3 minutes, 2 = 4 to 9 minutes, 3 = 10 to 29 minutes , 3+ = 30 minutes or more

Note: Some of the publications may use “soft” paywalls. If you are denied access, open the URL in your browser’s incognito/private mode (or subscribe if you find yourself reading a lot of the content on a specific site and want to support it).

• How Uber Plans To Get Flying Taxis Off The Ground (fastcompany.com, 3)
  
  There is no way to predict the outcome of this extremely ambitious plan, and the obstacles are plentiful. But exciting it is. And traditional helicopters certainly don’t seem state of the art anymore in 2018.
• Can Humans Survive a Faster Future? (rand.org, 2)
  
  As you might expect, you won’t get an answer here to the question posed in the title. But it is a valid question nonetheless: How much acceleration can humans, our institutions and systems handle before breaking down?
• What tech calls “AI” isn’t really AI (salon.com, 2)
  
  This is a trenchant piece offering a bunch of arguments for why the type of super AI which many people are discussing about will most likely not become reality soon. I particularly like the proposed idea that it’s more probable that an algorithm will manage to lure humans into thinking that it is intelligent, than that it actually is. And of course, as emphasized by the author, the problem already starts with a definition of intelligence. Should really human-type intelligence be the benchmark, considering how flawed human thinking often is?
• Autonomous Weapons Would Take Warfare To A New Domain, Without Humans (nrp.com, 2)
  
  With the use autonomous weapons, it could go either way: It could be an improvement over wars between humans, or it could make things worse. Possibly it will do both at the same time. Hopefully, the net outcome will be positive.
• Why the “golden age” of newspapers was the exception, not the rule (niemanlab.org, 2)
  
  We are returning to a media landscape which resembles the time before the newspaper dominated news consumption.
• China’s Selfie Obsession (newyorker.com, 3)
  
  Very insightful essay. I recommend listening to it. The audio can be started right below the Mona Lisa picture on the right.
• The Media Narrative Around Amazon Is Out of Control (slate.com, 2)
  
  Sounds like a reasonable assumption: The media is hyping Amazon, which has a positive impact on its stock prize, which in turn causes an even more exaggerated media narrative. On the other hand, it’s hard to argue with the apparent exceptionalism of Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos – who actually even is good at writing, as Jean-Louis Gassée points out.
• Amazon’s Alexa is about to get a lot smarter – could it help teach? (donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com, 2)
  
  Alexa or other voice assistants as teachers? Why not, actually. Related: Alexa wants children to say please.
• Real People Are Turning Their Accounts into Bots on Instagram – And Cashing In (buzzfeed.com, 2)
  
  Does it feel to you as if every week there is a new article about yet another weird Instagram phenomenon? It’s true.
• Elon Musk and what’s wrong with Fiverr (a9t9.com, 1)
  
  Talking about weird phenomenon of our times: Extreme sub-contracting is another one.
• Netflix: The Merchandising of Justice and Liberty (quariety.com, 2)
  
  A critical look at a recurring theme in Netflix’s video catalogue and the site’s apparent attempt to be a platform for counterculture and protest, which do seem to be at odds with its commercial objectives and global scale.
• Apple’s podcasts just topped 50 billion all-time downloads and streams (fastcompany.com, 1)
  
  The remarkable thing: In 2014, the total number was only 7 billion. Meanwhile, Google is also doubling down on podcasts.
• Think about Equity (foundersatwork.posthaven.com, 2)
  
  Y Combinator founder and partner Jessica Livingston explains why joining a startup as employee – and joining the RIGHT startup – is an underestimated way to become wealthy.
• Banks are treating customers like product developers (tearsheet.co, 2)
  
  Asking customers for feedback during product development processes probably is a win for everyone involved, as long as security is ensured.
• The danger of absolute thinking is absolutely clear (aeon.co, 2)
  
  Research shows a connection between absolutist/binary thinking and worse mental health.
• The Culture Shock of Coming Home (nomadicmatt.com, 2)
  
  This is for the long-term travelers/location-independent workers/digital nomads among you or for those who want to understand the emotional state of people who come home after a longer, voluntary stay elsewhere. I totally recognized myself in the text.

Recently on meshedsociety.com:

• A message to WhatsApp founder Jan Koum
• Most people cannot leave Facebook

Podcast episode of the week:

• The Kevin Rose Show: Matthew Walker Ph.D – Author of “Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams”
  
  A very informative podcast interview about sleep.

Thanks for reading! If you want to make sure not to miss this link selection in the future, sign up for free for the weekly email.