Building meaningful futures - Issue #6
2016 was definitely the year that the worst aspects of the Internet began to outweigh its best aspects. And when the merely non-diverse Silicon Valley tech heads are joining a Trump family getting together, missing a unique opportunity to make a strong public joint statement on key values and issues important to them and their employees, we know things aren’t really going to get better from here.
Worse, Silicon Valley darlings, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are now offering their expertise to Trump (duh). And what to think that only Twitter says it would refuse to help build muslim registry for the new president elect, out of nine tech companies!
The normalisation of improper morality is slipping back into our daily lives, and few seem to really care or notice.
The wrong discourse
Trump is not going to bring the manufacturing jobs back to the US. It’s great Tesla cars are manufactured nearly entirely in Nevada and California but the company will create at best a couple of thousand of jobs, peanuts compared to the approximate 5.6 million manufacturing jobs the US did lose between 2000 and 2010 attributable to technological change - largely automation - rather than international trade. Trade protectionism, is unlikely to override the larger forces of automation and the transition to a digital economy.
Any repetitive job tasks will loose out the next couple of years through further automation, digital assistant and chatbot disruption, let’s not fool ourselves. Make sure we use technology for good and be aware of its consequences.
A different way
We also need to think differently. A new type of parallel economy based on uniquely human skills and abilities is emergent as technology keeps growing exponentially in its own pace towards its own obsoleteness.
The world is going to look very different by the end of next year, so make sure you reflect well these days on who you are, what do you want for yourself (know thyself!), your children and family, your friends and beloved ones. Where do you want to go? What is the future you want to build? Will others drive it or will you design your own future? How to design a good life amidst this on-going chaos?
In this regard, it’s refreshing to read the 10 Learnings from 10 Years of Brain Pickings by founder Maria Popova.
“Because I believe that our becoming, like the synthesis of meaning itself, is an on-going and dynamic process, I’ve been reluctant to stultify it and flatten its on-going expansiveness in static opinions and fixed personal tenets of living. But I do find myself continually discovering, then returning to, certain core values. While they may be refined and enriched in the act of living, their elemental substance remains a centre of gravity for what I experience as myself.”
In this issue lots of links on next year’s technology trends, the future of work, fake news, ai, iot, chatbots, mixed reality, drone delivery, the supermarkets of the future, …
I also included a list of powerful books to read during the holidays instead of your Facebook Newsfeed :)
I’d like to send a special thanks to Azeem Azhar, Canay Atalay, Gerd Leonhard, Humberto Schwab, Justine Kolata, Laurent Haug, Raimo van der Klein, Renata McGriff and Yuri Van Geest for their ongoing inspiration this year.
I wish you all relaxing and reflective holidays and a wonderful start of 2017, take good care of your children and your beloved ones, together we are the change!
Mobile Sunday at #MWC17
After the successful event I organised together with Tech.eu earlier this year, we’re bringing back Mobile Sunday to Barcelona during the Mobile World Congress. The event will take place on February 26, 2017 in the beautiful Fabrica Estrella Damm. Early Bird tickets are available here.
At Mobile Sunday 2016, we had a fantastic line-up featuring speakers like Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, Andreessen Horowitz partner Ben Evans, Twitter’s director of bizdev EMEA Brenda O’Connell, Microsoft Ventures’ Zack Weisfeld, Jaunt (and former Flipboard) CTO Arthur van Hoff and plenty more.
We would be delighted to hear from you who we should have on stage at the next Mobile Sunday. And we are actively seeking partnerships with global companies for the event - we had the pleasure of working with NASDAQ, IBM/SoftLayer and Intercede last time around.
Please contact helen@tech.eu for more information on this opportunity.
Trends 2017
Fjord Trends 2017
Twelve months of research, 1000+ cups of coffee, and probably an entire forest worth of Post-its. That’s what it took for Fjord to compile their Trends 2017 report.
Future Today Institute 2017 Trends
The Future Today Institute published its annual report showcasing the most disruptive technologies that will affect consumer behaviour and impact business strategy in the coming year.
The official Ogilvy Key Digital Trends for 2017
A yearly trend report outlining both where we believe the digital and social landscape is headed and what brands and agency partners should do about it. By Marshall Manson and James Whatley.
Koru wearable trends 2017
Bmf reader Christian Lindholm and the Koru team just published its wearable trends now in the fifth year. Koru merges design and technology and the beauty for wearables.
Ericsson ConsumerLab Consumer Trends 2017
Consumer trends come to light due to digital emmersion. The Ericsson ConsumerLab research gives you an insight in 10 hot consumer trends for 2017.
Books to read instead of your Facebook Newsfeed :)
The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly
How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality by Luciano Floridi
Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari
Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream by Andy Stern
Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street by Tomas Sedlacek
One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society by Herbert Marcuse
The Social Organism: A Radical Understanding of Social Media to Transform Your Business and Life by Oliver Luckett
On Dialogue by David Bohm
Experiments in Ethics by Kwame Anthony Appiah
Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness by Alva Noe
The Neo-Generalist: Where You Go is Who You Are by Richard Martin and bmf reader Kenneth Mikkelsen.
Must read articles
The State of Technology at the End of 2016 – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
That is why we need more companies like those above, ones that work for everyone, enabling the application of human creativity and ingenuity to the creation of a new world order. I know at this moment in history that seems optimistic, but the truth is that a new world order is inevitable; the question now is who will shape it.
Mobile is eating the world — Benedict Evans
As we pass 2.5bn smartphones on earth and head towards 5bn, and mobile
moves from creation to deployment, the questions change. What’s the state
of the smartphone, machine learning and ‘GAFA’, and what can we build as we
stand on the shoulders of giants?
Data populists must seize our information – for the benefit of us all
Data populism, in other words, is one issue on which the populist left does have a genuine advantage, but only if it understands that the traditional progressive agenda, like everything else these days, has been utterly disrupted by digital technology.
How Google's search algorithm spreads false information with a rightwing bias
SHOCKING - Search and autocomplete algorithms prioritise sites with rightwing bias, and far-right groups trick it to boost propaganda and misinformation in search rankings.
Google (GOOG) has no intention of removing a Holocaust-denier from the top of its “Did the Holocaust happen?” search result — Quartz
The reality of the Holocaust, one of the world’s worst historical cases of racial genocide, is not up for debate. Except, there are a handful of people that to this day continue deny the Nazi execution of Jews during World War II and perpetuate anti-semitic stereotypes by blaming Jews for fabricating or exaggerating the traumatic event. Unfortunately, these groups have a larger voice that you might imagine—in part thanks to Google.
The scientists who make apps addictive
Silicon Valley’s most successful tech companies use the insights of behaviour design to pump us with dopamine and keep us returning to their products. But some of the psychologists who developed the science of persuasion are worried about how it is being used.
How to Fix the Internet's Anonymity Problem
We have to fix the internet. After 40 years, it has begun to corrode, both itself and us. It is still a marvelous and miraculous invention, but now there are bugs in the foundation, bats in the belfry, and trolls in the basement.
The Fading American Dream
Children’s prospects of achieving the “American Dream” of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century. This decline has occurred throughout the parental income distribution, for children from both low and high income families.
The Broken Age – umair haque
So here is my story. We are seeing the beginnings of genuine rupture. Cities and states are likely to separate from nations who restrain their possibility. Nations are fracturing into tribes, and these tribes may go their separate ways.
Why Ethical People Make Unethical Choices
In an age of corporate mistrust, creating ethical workplaces takes more than compliance programs. It requires ongoing intensified effort to make the highest ethical standards the norm, and ruthless intolerance of anything less.
Why exponential technological change will need ‘exponential humanity‘
In a world of global synchronicity with infinite variety and inevitable abundance (see music, films, travel, and very soon, banking and energy), creativity becomes a Must. As the arts have withered and started to mimic science, the rich irony of our new century is that organisations need to learn to think and act like artists in order to survive.
The most disruptive phase of globalisation is just beginning
A better understanding of globalisation is more urgent than ever, Baldwin says, because the third and most disruptive phrase is still to come. Technology will bring globalisation to the people-centric service sector, upending far more jobs in rich countries than the decline in manufacturing has in recent decades.
Must watch
Denzel Washington Destroys the Liberal Media over "Fake News"
Academy Award winning actor Denzel Washington put the media on blast for their hypocrisy at the premiere of his new film, “Fences.”
‘I am utterly disgusted’: Legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki takes AI down a peg
“I am utterly disgusted,” he says. “If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all.”
Is religion good or bad? Kwame Anthony Appiah
Plenty of good things are done in the name of religion, and plenty of bad things too. But what is religion, exactly — is it good or bad, in and of itself? Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah offers a generous, surprising view.
AR/VR/Mixed Reality
Mixed Reality Will Be Most Important Tech of 2017!
Before we jump into the mind-blowing future Mixed Reality is set to usher in over the course of 2017, let’s first discuss the distinctions between Virtual & Augmented Reality – Their technologies are very similar but have some fundamental differences.
This Is the Holographic AI Servant of Your Dreams...or Maybe Your Nightmares
Azuma Hikari is a 58-cm hologram and virtual assistant created by Japanese tech company Gatebox that comes with a $2,600 price tag. Azuma is built with a machine learning algorithm that helps her recognize her “master’s” voice, learn his sleeping habits, and send him messages through Gatebox’s native chat app.
HTC Vive Exec Makes Predictions for the Next 2 Years of VR
Bmf reader and HTC’s China Regional President of Vive, Alvin Wang Graylin, took to the stage at the Unity Vision Summit in Asia this week and made a series of bold predictions for where we’ll see VR in the next two years.
Apple Considers Wearables Expansion With Digital Glasses
Apple Inc. is weighing an expansion into digital glasses, a risky but potentially lucrative area of wearable computing, according to people familiar with the matter.
I'm inside Tim Cook's head but I really...
Robert Scoble is looking inside Tim Cook’s head but he really wonders what’s going on inside Mark Zuckerberg’s head. A brilliant piece of analytical foresight on the future of Mixed Reality.
Fake News
Fake news and online harassment are more than social media byproducts — they’re powerful profit drivers
Banning fake-news sites doesn’t address the real problem: Social-media companies make big money off lies and hate.
Now you can fact-check Trump’s tweets — in the tweets themselves
The Washington Post made a tool that slips a bit more context into Trump’s tweets by using a extension for Google Chrome.
Will Facebook’s Fake News Warning Become a Badge of Honor?
In a world where some claim that there are no such things as facts, live fact-checking can be a contentious topic. By bringing on third-party reviewers rather than hiring its own checkers, Facebook hopes to offload the most difficult judgment calls onto reputable third parties.
500,000 euro fines for fake news on Facebook in Germany?
The SPD’s Thomas Oppermann has called for fines against social media platforms if fake reports are not quickly deleted. A new law to control fake news and hate messages is under consideration.
IoT
Ask the Futurists: 10 Bold Predictions for 2030
HP Entreprise spoke to a number of futurists from across industries who forecasted how the Internet of Things will help shape what many are calling the next Industrial Revolution. And be prepared, these predictions are sufficiently bold.
AI & Chatbots
The Great A.I. Awakening
How Google used artificial intelligence to transform Google Translate, one of its more popular services — and how machine learning is poised to reinvent computing itself.
Experience Design in the Machine Learning Era – Fabien Girardin
Bmf reader Fabien Girardin on the design implications of systems that learn from human behaviours.
Introducing the AI logo maker hoping to become the “world’s most experienced designer”
Watch out logo designers, AI is coming to get your job! Logojoy is a new website which allows businesses to design their own logos using an algorithm.
Artificial Intelligence May Change the Face of Business
Artificial Intelligence may be the single most disruptive technology since the Industrial Revolution. It could double economic growth rates, says Paul Daugherty, CTO at Accenture
How you can leverage chatbots in your marketing strategy
Should I really be posting any longer this type of links?
BMW to Start Research with IBM Watson
IBM has announced a new collaboration with the BMW Group, through which the companies will work together to explore the role of Watson cognitive computing in personalizing the driving experience and creating more intuitive driver support systems for cars of the future.
Microsoft’s AI Is Not Just About Being Smart
Microsoft created a new AI and research group of about 5,000 people under the leadership of Harry Shum and they have certainly been busy. Microsoft announced several different AI initiatives during an event this week.
Deep-Learning Machine Listens to Bach, Then Writes Its Own Music in the Same Style
Can you tell the difference between music composed by Bach and by a neural network?
Productivity
What's the Best Music to Listen to While Working?
Studies show that for most types of cognitively demanding tasks, anything but quiet hurts performance.
Robotics
Meet the World’s First Completely Soft Robot
Harvard researchers use an ingenious design to make a soft robot that moves on its own.
Drone delivery live in Cambridge, UK
Amazon Prime Air’s First Customer Delivery
Amazon Prime Air has begun private trials in England, and the first customer delivery by drone recently took place. Check it out!
Supermarket of the future
Carlo Ratti's supermarket of the future opens in milan
Last year, during the world expo 2015 in Milan, Carlo Ratti associati presented an award-winning technology that transforms supermarkets into user-friendly spaces equipped with interactive tables, smart shelves and real-time data visualisation that promote informed consumption. This week, the ‘supermarket of the future’ has opened its doors in Milan.
Art
The Year in Art 2016
As 2016 draws to a close, Artsy parsed the year in art to determine which artists, artworks, and moments had the greatest impact.
The 100 best photographs ever taken without photoshop
Bright Side collected works in which the combined efforts of mother nature and photographic artists have captured magic moments showing the wondrous diversity of modern life and the natural world.
And finally...
99 Reasons Why 2016 Was a Good Year
Our media feeds are echo chambers. And those echo chambers don’t just reflect our political beliefs; they reflect our feelings about human progress. Bad news can be a bubble too. Here’s what also happened in 2016 by Angus Hervey.