human works design - building meaningful futures - Issue #20
The Age of Consciousness (Trust)
“The best way to help mankind is through the perfection of yourself.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti.
One of the worst things that came out about the Facebook saga this week is not only the broken trust created with its users but that the company issued a legal warning to the Guardian Media Group not to publish the exposé of the mass Facebook data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica. It shows, once again, how powerful companies try everything to stop the truth to be told to protect their profits and do not really care about the wellbeing of their users.
The social media giant lost over $60 billion in market value in the first two days of the week, that’s more than the entire market capitalisation of Tesla Inc. at around $52 billion. We cannot size the impact yet of Elon Musk deleting Space X and Tesla’s pages on the platform but its an important message to the rest of the world from another Silicon Valley mogul.
Creating trust is an expensive good in today’s economy but it’s essential and indispensable. With great power comes great responsibility. In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg said, “In every single thing we do, we always put people first.” By that, he said he meant that Facebook would give people “control over how they share their information.”
Facebook didn’t do that. A lack of true vision and leadership. Instead the company decided to focus on advertisers for more growth and profit, not respecting the private and data trust with its users.
If you want to know what true leadership is about, check this “how to be a great leader” lesson from Simon Sinek (must watch!)
The big lesson for responsible leaders is to take users seriously, create trust and respect their privacy - we all have a right what is happening with the data we share with corporations.
Tim Berners-Lee warns us about the two myths that currently limit our collective imagination: the myth that advertising is the only possible business model for online companies, and the myth that it’s too late to change the way platforms operate. On both points, we need to be a little more creative.
As human works design we believe the tool to revolutionise the system is designing conscious business models together with role model conscious leaders, not more control on the platforms, that’s against the evolution of technology. The problem is old century business models. Making profits can and should go hand in hand with maximising social good. Actually that’s the safest and the most sustainable model.
Contact us to innovate your business model with consciousness, with new value propositions, innovation metrics and exponential partnerships based on the values that matters to you and your communities most.
In this weeks newsletter more food for thought carefully curated by us: read about happy innovation, children first world design, the unbearable lightness of Facebook, learning from tribes, humans in the age of machines, positive parenting, sustainability, new visions for society and data design.
With love and gratitude.
Canay and Rudy.
Enjoy the reading!
human works design contributions
Happy Innovation
Does happiness cause innovation? Or is it the other way round: does innovation cause happiness? Or is there a third variable that causes both happiness and innovation? By human works design co-founder Canay Atalay.
Blue Planet or Plastic Planet?
Read our sustainability contributor Şeyda DAĞDEVİREN HILL’s experience and the way she started her plastic-free challenge. We have to realise that we are the last generation to change the planet in a better way. Get involved to stop plastic pollution before it is too late and it becomes a plastic planet.“
human works design activities
and& summit & festival 2018
human works design co-founders, Canay and Rudy will be talking at the and& summit & festival in Leuven, May 2-5. Canay will talk at the opening night about “Children First World Design”. Rudy will be covering “The Age of Consciousness” on the following opening day. We are really looking forward to this well-selected worldwide collage of +100 thinkers, inventors, entrepreneurs & artists of all backgrounds to explore the impact of health, tech & creativity on future city life including 4 days & nights of inspiring talks, avant-garde music acts, a start-up & scale-up forum, a tech expedition & art interventions in public space. We hope to see you there!
Children first
Iceland Fixed Its Teen Substance-Abuse Problem By Giving Them Something Better To Do
As it turns out, drugs and alcohol are most appealing for teens who are bored or stressed–less so for those who have outlets.
The Bias Against Creativity
Sir Ken Robinson argues that the problem is that from an early age, kids are being taught to fear making mistakes, but without learning to play with different solutions and ways of thinking (which will inevitably lead to incorrect answers), they won’t be prepared for the uncertainty and the new challenges of the changing world. As Robinson puts it, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
Children notice what adults miss, study finds: While adults focus their attention, children see everything
Although adults can beat children at most cognitive tasks, new research shows that children’s limitations can sometimes be their strength. In two studies, researchers found that adults were very good at remembering information they were told to focus on, and ignoring the rest. In contrast, 4- to 5-year-olds tended to pay attention to all the information that was presented to them - even when they were told to focus on one particular item.
The unbearable lightness of Facebook
Facebook has turned into a beast in Myanmar
UN investigators have said the use of Facebook played a “determining role” in stirring up hatred against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
Apply Magic Sauce
Check for yourself how easy it is to create a psycho-demographic profile from digital footprints of your behaviour. It reveals how you might be perceived by others online and provides detailed insights on your personality, intelligence, political and religious preferences, life satisfaction and more. From the University of Cambridge.
Let's Talk About Facebook (video)
Democracy is dying in the full light of day. Who will step in and lead when it matters? Check Scott Galloway’s view on Facebook in this video.
Computers using digital footprints are better judges of personality than friends and family
Researchers have found that, based on enough Facebook Likes, computers can judge your personality traits better than your friends, family and even your partner. Using a new algorithm, researchers have calculated the average number of Likes artificial intelligence (AI) needs to draw personality inferences about you as accurately as your partner or parents.
How to manipulate Facebook and Twitter instead of letting them manipulate you
Twitter and Facebook have vast control over our online lives. Here are six ways to take it back.
Delete Facebook? That’s as hard as giving up sugar
Many are declaring they plan to delete Facebook. That’s easier said than done, says Dean Burnett, a doctor of neuroscience and author
Why Leaving Facebook Doesn’t Always Mean Quitting (video)
In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, many Facebook users have decided to delete their accounts — but untangling yourself from a site like Facebook is not as easy as pressing “delete.”
Learning from tribes - going tribal
How Hunter-Gatherers Maintained Their Egalitarian Ways
If we truly believe in the values of equality and peace and want them to reign once again as the norm for human beings, then we need to (a) find ways to deflate the egos, rather than support the egos, of the despots, bullies, and braggarts among us; (b) make our ways of life more playful; and © raise our children in kindly, trusting ways.
Nixiwaka Yawanawá
When we were first contacted by ‘white people’ many Yawanawá people died from common colds and other diseases to which they had no immunity. Our shamans couldn’t cure them. After contact, the ‘white people’ forced their opinions on us. We were made to change the way we prayed, the way we dressed, the languages we spoke and even the way we saw the world. They criticised our lifestyle and told us that their way of living was better than ours. Today, there is still racism towards Indians in Brazil today. People think that we ‘live in the Stone Age’. The truth is that we are constantly adapting to the world around us. We aren’t living in the past, we are just different.
Humans in the age of machines
The Greek mythology of Prometheus and our future with AI
Watch Stephen Fry using the Greek mythology of Prometheus and the rise of the internet to predict our future with AI. Only one man can do this. (via Jasper de Vries)
Creativity in the Age of Machines
It is a mistake to try to understand machines on the basis of how we understand humans. Machines are silicon-based life forms and so are alien to us. Their products will entertain us as well as their brethren, as we continue to merge with them. As to whether machines can help us understand our own creative processes – by working in collaboration with human beings they can help us understand our creative abilities better, aid us in analysing our own thinking, how we solve problems, and how we draw connections between apparently disparate concepts.
Positive parenting
Music Lessons Were the Best Thing Your Parents Ever Did for You, According to Science
If your parents ever submitted you to regular music lessons as a kid, you probably got in a fight with them once or twice about it. Maybe you didn’t want to go; maybe you didn’t like practicing. But we have some bad news: They were right. It turns out that all those endless major scale exercises and repetitions of “Chopsticks” had some incredible effects on our minds.
Sustainability
‘We have the greatest opportunity to replace conventional, unsustainable systems with innovative and sustainable ones’
Open-sourcing new ideas will fuel sustainable innovation and create business value. It is also essential to educate the next generation entering the fashion industry. They will be tomorrow’s leaders who will drive change and embed these new frontiers of sustainability that we are only just discovering today. We have choices like never before and it is clear to me that we, as an industry and as individuals, need to move forward and contribute with creativity, ingenuity and innovation for a truly sustainable future.
WHO launches health review after microplastics found in 90% of bottled water
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced a review into the potential risks of plastic in drinking water after a new analysis of some of the world’s most popular bottled water brands found that more than 90% contained tiny pieces of plastic.
'Catastrophe' as France's bird population collapses due to pesticides
Dozens of species have seen their numbers decline, in some cases by two-thirds, because insects they feed on have disappeared.
New visions for society
Peer-to-peer production and the partner state
What would it mean to go beyond the traditional models of the state, including the redistributionist welfare state, to a state that could create the conditions for the creative autonomy of citizens to play a far greater role in their collective flourishing? The social knowledge economy, rooted in an already-existing socio-economic practice – that of commons-based peer production – could be one model.
Loconomics Gives Gig Workers an Alternative to Investor-Owned Platforms
Loconomics is a platform cooperative that allows service professionals to connect and offer their services on a platform that they own.
How knowledge about different cultures is shaking the foundations of psychology
Psychological phenomena have long been thought of as universal. But it turns out scientists may have been blinded by their own culture.
Founders for Change
“I believe in a more diverse and inclusive tech industry. I am dedicated to having a diverse team and board, and when I have a choice of investment partners in the future, the diversity of their firms will be an important consideration.” #FoundersForChange
Data design
Data Humanism, the Revolution will be Visualized.
We’ve reached Peak Infographics. Are you ready for what comes next? Big Data doesn’t belong to a distant dystopian future; it’s a commodity and an intrinsic and iconic feature of our present. And visual design is going to be even more central to this silent but inevitable revolution.
Closing quote
“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.” - Stephen Hawking