Overview: Science&Technology

this couple will seal their union not before a priest or a judge, but on the almighty blockchain, a distributed global computing and data storage technology. BitNation... has established itself as the first virtual nation... has been building a set of tools and services that together may one day allow people to replace their national identity w…

true artificial intelligence, if it is realized, might pose a danger that exceeds every previous threat from technology—even nuclear weapons—and that if its development is not managed carefully humanity risks engineering its own extinction... Bostrom is arguably the leading transhumanist philosopher today... bringing order to ideas that might o…

The GDS was set up to improve online public services but disagreements with the top brass over its ambitions have seen four leaders abruptly resign - Why are senior staff fleeing the Government Digital Service? | Public Leaders Network | The Guardian

Just as you’re about to publish your draft, we’ll suggest a couple tags for you to use based on what you’ve writte... to increase the number of tagged posts on Medium, but also to help users discover the right tags to use... In our algorithm, we use what is called a nearest neighbors approach... to compare posts... representing posts as vector…

FarmShare is a decentralized platform for community-supported agriculture (CSA) organizations, using the blockchain to tokenize shares and enable community governance... enable communities to buy, sell and trade cryptographic tokens that can be exchanged for weekly deliveries of locally produced organic food... an evolution of the CSA model ...…

Mark Zuckerberg proves not to be a fan of links... On Facebook, he doesn’t encourage you to link. On Instagram, he has simply forbidden them. He is quashing the hyperlink, thereby killing the interconnected, decentralized, outward network of text known as the World Wide Web. Facebook likes you to stay within it. Videos are now embedded in Faceb…

a new 300-page report ... looks at the likely effects of a robot revolution... huge numbers of jobs being wiped out: up to 35% of all workers in the UK and 47% of those in the US, including white-collar jobs... The longer you look, the more you find computers displacing simple work... while some jobs are replaced, new ones spring up that focu…

In this week’s edition, a months’ reading - some 30 posts - on social media, digital transformation, content/system design and EuroPCom2015. But first some news from me

Blog posts take hours to write, those great images need to be found or created and those social networks need to be managed and nurtured. It is often not done or persisted with because there are no apparent quick rewards. This is where the tortoise can beat the hare by slow persistence. It is a marathon and a journey not a sprint... you are bui…

it will be quite unusual to see cars that don’t have full autonomy – let say for new car production in the 15 to 20 years timeframe… for Tesla a lot sooner... at the point which cars are being made that have full autonomy, any cars that are being made that don’t have full autonomy will have negative value - Elon Musk says owning a non-autonomo…

Facebook and Apple... have chosen to focus on a future that takes the shape of an article... largely developed in response to the constraints of print ... a great opportunity for news organizations themselves to rethink those assumptions... considering the time scales of our reporting in much more innovative ways. Information should accumulate …

true digital transformation requires the courage to challenge entrenched beliefs within one’s organization. .. Digital transformation is probably about as big a deal as the invention of credit. It changes the way we do everything. - Digital Transformation: Becoming a ‘Forgetting Organization’ (Wharton)

each Model S owners as an “expert trainer” ... each driver will train the autonomous features of the system to feed the collective network intelligence of the fleet by simply driving the electric vehicle on Autopilot... Model S owners are already taking to the Tesla Motors Club forum to describe how the Autopilot is improving... - The Autopi…

This should be an exciting time. After all this is what we have wanted for so long. But it could prove dangerous if we do not handle it well... Instead of getting strong, clear direction about becoming digital first there is a vague vision... One danger is that the digital first vision fades before it can take root.... The second danger is it g…

There is no shortage of content aggregators and aggregators of aggregators... give us a better overview of all the sources of information we have subscribed to and found ourselves now depending on... Constantly checking our feeds for new information, we seem to be hoping to discover something of interest, something that we can share with our ne…

The code behind the effort is all available on Github... the fact that it uses an open repository doesn’t mean that Google isn’t running the project, or deciding what gets included and what doesn’t... publishers have another option ... simply take the best parts of the specification from the publicly available documentation and implement those …

the Google standard gives publishers a streamlined page-loading script they can use that takes advantage of smart caching of content—either on their own servers or on Google’s servers—to make the various elements load faster...an order of magnitude faster than the typical mobile page... a completely open standard that any publisher can implemen…

Media Cloud... is an open source, open data platform that allows researchers to answer complex quantitative and qualitative questions about the content of online media... by collecting and analyzing the news stream of tens of thousands of online sources.... academic researchers, journalism critics, policy advocates, media scholars, and others c…

an ongoing conflict between artificial intelligence and the linked but divergent project of intelligence augmentation... the difference between a future in which human capabilities are enhanced by technology and one in which humans are made effectively obsolete, versioned out by the consequences of our own ingenuity... we might be “in for an in…

In many fields of research right now, scientists collect data until they see a pattern that appears statistically significant, and then they use that tightly selected data to publish a paper ... this p-hacking ... uses a quiver of little methodological tricks that can inflate the statistical significance of a finding ... a significant problem …

For the purpose of media pluralism, an emerging concern is how to ensure that the activities of these powerful platforms do not lead to a reduction in the quantity and quality of content actually available to consumers, and/or do not undermine democratic communication (e.g. through the suppression or arbitrary selection of information). Their …

the concerns and questions new information intermediaries bring to the table are explored, particularly in regards to the effect they have on media diversity. Additionally, Helberger looks into the regulatory options for safeguarding media pluralism and regulating these new gatekeepers, who are increasingly in control of consumer data. This art…

each and every one of Google robot cars has experienced the totality of everything all its siblings have experienced. Google’s cars have driven a total of 1.2 million miles on the roads.... effectively every single car has driven that distance, has experienced it. [plus] ... 3 million miles every day running scenarios This is a machine that lea…

In trying to access the federal programs which will allow her to afford college, Joanne must navigate the websites of multiple agencies. She finds dozens of government websites which all seem relevant to what she’s looking for. Joanne is confused. Are these programs related to each other? Are they even all a part of the federal government? Are any…

Get with the community; The death and rebirth of comments: The death of the open web?

...with iOS 9 and content blockers, what you're seeing is Apple's attempt to fully drive the knife into Google's revenue platform.... So it's Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook, all with their own revenue platforms. Google has the web, Facebook has its app, and Apple has the iPhone. This is the newest and biggest war in tech going today. And the …

"It's a discussion that's been running for a long time, but has kicked into overdrive because of Apple's release of a new operating system for iPhones and the launch of new services like Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News. And it's something you'll be hearing more and more about if you read things online..." Good observation: "if content …

Blogging has never been easier but getting read has never been harder... The problem isn't freedom or openness but distribution... you might post it on Facebook or Google Plus. Your friends might see it ... (though this is largely random) and they might share it ... You might post it on LinkedIn and your network might see it ... and LinkedIn migh…

You have nothing to fear but fear itself. Fear, and algorithms... It has never been easier for designers and non-designers to create great websites that even five years ago would have cost a fortune to build... design is dead. There is more to design than the pixel-pushing of visual design... The real designers, problem solvers... able to co…

The four phases of self-driving car development suggest we’re 5-10 years out. - Self-Driving Cars Disrupt the Crowd | Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Digital Business