I have been very quiet as of late on my pet subject “collaborability”, unfortunately. The subject asks for a serious amount of prolonged and heightened concentration to get back into [...]
I have always wondered when the moment would come that I could pick up a phone and speak in my mother-tongue that would instantly translate into Mandarin Chinese while emulating my own voice and vice versa! Microsoft demoed a Skype call translating a conversation form German to English and back in real time.
Reiterating on a current theme here at Red Planet Dust about our human abilities have a look at interview with Cass Sunstein, Professor at Harvard.
Since Moore minted his law on the doubling of processor speed in a given time interval people have been wondering when a computer would equal the power of the human brain. This moment is often referred to as “singularity”. The idea computers will surpass us at moment t= “singularity” is a fallacy.
A guy is driving his Rolls Royce (!) down a nice lightly bending lane with cars parked on his side of the road somewhere in England. He notices a car parked a little further ahead preparing to drive away. To warn the other driver he flashes his big lights several times and to his terror he sees the car pulling up to the driving lane were he hits the car midway.
Human nature and our abilities are intertwined with collaborability. My statements about them are scattered all over Red Planet Dust. I wondered if a consistent image would arise when I would collect my statements.
Very read worthy article by VOX's Ezra Klein about Yale Law professor Dan Kahan c.s. doing research to answer "Why isn’t good evidence more effective in resolving political debates?"
What if companies like Google, or banks, start throttling their services and pricing dependent on if you are positive or negative about them or if you accept their latest offering?
By clicking a link in a interesting article by Techcrunch I stumbled upon "Our Comrade The Electron" - Webstock Conference Talk by Maciej Ceglowski. Excellent presentation, intriguing narrative and great observations on our relation with technology.
Walking to the office this morning it struck me that the evolution of (physical) currency in relation to payments could show us the long term development of digital money as well: step by step the currency has been developing until at a certain moment in time the transaction will be done directly between the payer and the payee.
„Is our political system capable of managing rapid technological change?” When pressed I would be tempted to answer the question with a resounding YES! for I see abundant evidence around me we have done so very successfully. Actually it is one of the core abilities we humans have to adapt to changing conditions.
We, as individuals, are seldomly aware of the fact that we have difficulties in seeing the world around us neutrally. We are loaded with concepts and ideas that when looked [...]
The acceptance of Bitcoin protocol currencies and Ripple like networks is dependent on trust even if trust is said not to be necessary for the value to be transferred between two actors. Neglecting this will hamper adoption of the Bitcoin protocol by the masses.
Weer rake analyse van uber-linkblogger John Gruber @ Daring Fireball : "Open and Shut" The dogmatic assumption that openness correlates to success, evidence to the contrary be damned, overcomplicates the [...]
