human works design - building meaningful futures - Issue #13
Human Innovation
While we witness technological innovation everyday around us, we think it’s time to start focusing on human innovation, in the sense we need to start questioning more what is happening around us and how we can design a good life, what do we dream our life in the future can be, for ourselves and our children, and what needs to be done to turn those dreams into a reality.
Technological innovation can bring us lots of great things in many areas, but where do we go from when countries like Saoudi Arabia start giving citizenship to robots? This one is more of a PR stunt for the country but these type of announcements and actions will become more and more frequent as the frenetic business society is pushing us further and further into a technological dystopia.
Kabat-Zinn argues that people are losing their minds. That is what we need to wake up to.
“People talk about artificial intelligence and machine learning, but we haven’t scratched the surface of what human intelligence is really all about.”
It is urgent we investigate our true values as human beings and how we want to live with technology in the future instead of submitting ourselves to the intelligence created by just a few technology companies.
While neuroscientists argue that the architecture of consciousness in the human brain can help create artificial consciousness, Robert Epstein states that “We are organisms, not computers. Get over it. Let’s get on with the business of trying to understand ourselves, but without being encumbered by unnecessary intellectual baggage. The IP metaphor has had a half-century run, producing few, if any, insights along the way. The time has come to hit the DELETE key.”
There are a couple of examples online out there mentioning human innovation, like how to anticipate what consumers cannot articulate or have not yet imagined, or in other examples, about how to augment humans with technology.
These examples are not really addressing the real need of human innovation we need to look at, which is examining what we really want instead of submitting ourselves to further technological innovation without true value or ethical evaluation.
There is no real innovation without human innovation as we are the ones who are designing and creating our world systems. The main lack in the world today is collaboration instead of competition, and learning as a humanity, these can be the answers to all the world problems. Personal transformation will become the biggest disruption for current industrialised systems.
At human works design, we are tired of the old ego-driven societies, we want to co-create a new world based on the values we believe in and walk that talk. Step away from the ego-driven society and greed for personal sake and start serving humanity.
Do you really know what makes you happy?
Do you want to live in a society like China is preparing for with its social credit system for its 1.3 billion citizens?
“If we are not vigilant, distributed trust could become networked shame. Life will become an endless popularity contest, with us all vying for the highest rating that only a few can attain.”
And this relates not only to China. What we need to understand is how the powerful might use Artificial Intelligence to control us - and what we can do in response. Check out Zeynep Tufekci’s TED talk on “We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads” in which she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organise your access to political and social information.
Read the full article on Human Innovation on our website.
Check also our introduction video to our new human works design services.
With our bi-weekly newsletter we want to give you a context in which you can learn and think. To think about your life, how you live it and how you can improve it towards creating a better world, for yourself, your family, your friends, and together as a community.
In this newsletter a lot of links to articles on humanism, children’s first world design, post-capitalism, conscious cities, tech for good, conscious consumerism, the future of work, food tech, blockchain and its latest hype on hashgraph, universal basic income and genomics.
Please send us your comments and feedback and don’t hesitate to send us your contribution towards conscious business and real human innovation.
Enjoy the reading!
Future of humanism
Resisting Reduction - Designing our Complex Future with Machines
“I hope and believe that a new awakening will happen and that a new sensibility will cause a nonlinear change in our behavior through a cultural transformation. While we can and should continue to work at every layer of the system to create a more resilient world, I believe the cultural layer is the layer with the most potential for a fundamental correction away from the self-destructive path that we are currently on. I think that it will yet again be about the music and the arts of the young people reflecting and amplifying a new sensibility: a turn away from greed to a world where “more than enough is too much,” and we can flourish in harmony with Nature rather than through the control of it.” Must read by Joi Ito.
In our focus on the digital, have we lost our sense of what being human means?
We have a moral obligation to start talking about our future and the role of technology in it. We are more than just intelligence and data. By Genevieve Bell.
‘Nations are lines in the sand, tomorrow they may not be there … why would you give up your life for that?
“Nations are lines in the sand. Today they’re here; tomorrow they may not be there. Why would you give up your life for that? Most tribes were mobile; there was no concept of staying tied territorially. That’s not human nature. We are fluid and we base our life on relationships with each other. Language is the basis of society.” - Professor Rajani Kanth, economist and philosopher.
Why we need a 21st-century Martin Luther to challenge the church of tech
It’s 500 years since Martin Luther defied the authority of the Catholic church. It’s time for a similar revolt against the hypocrisy of the religion of technology
Children First World Design
Kids Design The House Of The Future, And It’s Chilling
Made.com invited children between the ages of 4 and 12 to imagine the house of the future. The results were surprising; children display a clear concern for the environment, even at such an early age. They also mirror what many progressive architects are thinking about today. Don’t you agree that it is time to design cities, homes, and schools together with children?
Family Business: Raising the Business Case
Patagonia is a Family Business, focusing on families and children first, providing on-site childcare to working families is at the heart of responsible business. Offering on-site childcare is the right thing to do for employees, working parents, and the workplace. It’s expensive to offer quality care and subsidise tuition, but the benefits—financial and otherwise—pay for themselves every year.
Possibly Elon Musk's Biggest Idea Yet - Revolutionizing Education
Who can scale transformative technology solutions that foster child-driven learning and provide a world-class education for all? What about the very same founder who is planning to send rockets to Mars?
Post-capitalism
Post-capitalism & Beautiful Alternatives: A brief introduction to The Rules
“If human imagination and potential are boundless, why must we believe, when it comes to our economic model, that ‘there is no alternative’? Is this really the best we can do – continue to wait for wealth to trickle down?”
What Mongolian Nomads Teach Us About the Digital Future
“There is a lesson here about our collective digital future. Obviously we aren’t headed to a time when we sleep on the floor of a tent under hand-wrung felt blankets (except at Burning Man), but we are headed to a future where we may own and carry less while depending on the environment to provide more.” - Kevin Kelly
(Why) The English-Speaking World is the New Soviet Union
“Yet on the Anglo world goes, impotent but still monogamously wedded to capitalism, so now you can get same-day drone delivery of anything at all from Amazon, recommended by your Fakebook friends — but you can die for lack of basic medicine, you don’t have savings, and you’ll never retire, while everyone else knows that trying to use capitalism alone to build, say, working healthcare or educational or financial systems is like trying to water a garden with napalm.” - Umair Haque
It's Time for a "Participatory" Democracy Instead of our "Consumer" One
How can democracies use technologies to strengthen themselves? Answers are emerging around the world, with the central theme being that technology can make politics more engaging, successful and legitimate by enabling people to become active producers of political outcomes instead of passive consumers.
The new Luddites: why former digital prophets are turning against tech
“Luddite laughter is a start. But there’s a long way to go before the technology beast is tamed. For the moment, you still may lose your job to a machine; but at least you can go down feeling and thinking – computers can’t do either.”
Own everything! Together!
“We live in times of high political turbulence. Surveying flailing governments from Spain to the United States, it seems a good moment to face up to the evidence of system failures that face us. Millions going to food banks or unable to afford decent housing in the richest countries in the world reveals a systems failure. An epidemic of mental health problems reveals a systems failure. An inability to deal with climate change reveals a systems failure. A constant anger at government and at the institutions of government, channelled - largely ineffectually - through ballot boxes, reveals a systems failure.”
Conscious cities
Designing Streets for Self-Driving Cars: Parks Instead of Parking Meters
“This blueprint is for building the safer future streets that cities need, where speeding is no longer an option, where cars are designed to yield and stop for pedestrians and bicyclists by default, and where people are free to cross the streets where it makes sense, rather than trek a mile to the nearest stoplight. Autonomous vehicles don’t have to destroy the American city—they’re a shiny opportunity to rebuild it for the better. Cities just need to get to work. Right now.”
Tech for good
Number of European “tech for good” projects doubles in two years
Across Europe, a range of organisations are using technology for healthcare, to improve public services, drive political engagement and strengthen communities — a trend we call digital social innovation (DSI).
Conscious consumerism
Our Consumption Model Is Broken. Here’s How To Build A New One.
Imagining a better consumption model is key to a good future.
Becoming a conscious consumer
human works design contributor Seyda Dagdeviren Hill in her 2nd article on how to become a conscious consumer.
“Humanity is diverse and complicated, lifestyles are too. We are living in an age of technology. When you start to change your patterns, share your knowledge and the positive impact of your sustainable living with others, you never know you may inspire someone somewhere in the world. As a conscious consumer, you can learn and teach people so much because sustainable living is an exciting journey.”
The unbearable lightness of Silicon Valley
Inside Silicon Valley's new non-religion: consciousness hacking
“I saw spiritual attainment and I thought, ‘That does not need to be religious. That can be scientific.’”
How to Fix Facebook? We Asked 9 Experts - The New York Times
“The cloud over Facebook extends far beyond Russia. Critics say the company’s central role in modern communication has undermined the news business, split Americans into partisan echo chambers and “hijacked” our minds with a product designed to keep us addicted to the social network. Of course, criticism of Facebook and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is easy to come by; solutions aren’t as clear. We asked nine technologists, academics, politicians and journalists to propose the steps they would take to improve Facebook — as a product, a company or both.”
Future of work
SMart — Making Europe work
SMart is a cooperative dedicated to the needs of all freelancers. Without creating their own legal structure, freelancers can work within our legally secured framework, stay autonomous, focus on their core activity and on the customer relationships, while accessing the best social protection possible. As a platform coop, SMart aims to make sure that individual entrepreneurship does not mean isolation and precariousness.
Food tech
Why This Cardiologist Is Betting That His Lab-Grown Meat Startup Can Solve the Global Food Crisis
Memphis Meats co-founder Uma Valeti is a trained cardiologist. His work with stem cells at the Mayo Clinic led him to the idea for his lab-grown-meat startup.
Universal Basic Income (UBI)
Can Basic Income Plus The Blockchain Build A New Economic System?
To stop society’s unsustainable demand for ever-more resources, we need to decentralize and localize our economy. Combining the new ledger technology with UBI may be the way to make that happen.
A basic income for everyone? Yes, Finland shows it really can work
Trials suggest it can liberate jobless people, says the Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty. Mark Zuckerberg, Bernie Sanders and Elon Musk back the idea. And trials suggest it can liberate jobless people from a life of humiliation.
Blockchain
Blockchain Just Became Obsolete. The Future is Hashgraph
Swirlds is a software platform that has developed the hashgraph consensus algorithm: an entirely new distributed ledger technology that is much more cost-effective (no proof-of-work), 50,000 times the speed, safer (Byzantine), more efficient (no stale blocks) and mathematically fairer than the blockchain.
Corrupt Politicians, Beware: This Blockchain Start-up is Set to Disrupt The Way People Vote
Horizon State seeks to revolutionize the elections by using blockchain technology to create a secure digital ballot
Blockchain Market Map: 135 Blockchain Startups That Have Launched ICOs
CB Insights identified 135 blockchain startups that have closed significant initial coin offering rounds for their tokens since 2014 and organized them into sixteen categories, from healthcare to computing to gambling.
Understand why Ethereum exists, and you’ll get why it’s a big deal
Understand why Ethereum exists, and you’ll get why it’s a big deal. The world’s second-most-valuable cryptocurrency is also its most interesting — but in order to understand it, you must first understand its origins.
impactChoice Earth Token
The Natural Asset Exchange blockchain platform and Earth Token cryptocurrency initial coin offering (ICO) token sale provides a unique opportunity to truly transform the Natural Capital Asset market, by creating a Natural Asset Marketplace that allows all stakeholders in the climate value chain to participate.
The list of things blockchain will revolutionize, according to the tech industry
We made a list of all the ridiculousness.
Bitcoin, blockchains and Ethereum: Ancient stones explain money's future
Quartz created a great video series on the What Happens Next. The Future of Money, Work, Food, Fact and Home have already been added to the series
Health
Was Natural Medicine Destroyed in 1910?
“Pharmacological drugs for treatment of illness have their place for treating certain conditions. Antibiotics revolutionized health care. Anaesthetics made surgery painless. Alternative health approaches have merit and dietary approaches can sometimes even cure the disease, preventing the need for treatment! These alternatives need to co-exist with pharmacological medicines as options that healers can recommend.”
Genomics
CRISPR 2.0 Is Here, and It’s Way More Precise
You’ve probably heard of the molecular scalpel CRISPR-Cas9, which can edit or delete whole genes. Now, scientists have developed a more precise version of the DNA-editing tool that can repair even smaller segments of a person’s genome.
Fun
Town in Iceland Paints 3D Zebra Crosswalk To Slow Down Speeding Cars
In the small fishing town of Ísafjörður, Iceland, an exciting development in road safety has just popped up – almost literally. A new pedestrian crossing has been painted that appears to be 3D by way of a cleverly-detailed optical illusion.
Art
How artists and designers are “materialising the Internet”
We have transferred almost every single aspect of our daily life onto the internet. Our heartbeats, our bank payments, our musical taste and even our family memories. A group show curated by Nadine Roestenburg and Angelique Spaninks at MU artspace in Eindhoven invites us to do the opposite journey and explore the physical manifestations of the Web. By Regine Debatty.