Tag: algorithms

Technology, Humanity, and the Existential Test

I’m still digging through some of the pieces I posted at the now defunct NewCo Shift, and found this piece, adapted from a talk I gave at the Thrival Humans X Tech conference in Pittsburgh back in September of 2018. I was alarmed by trends that I saw intensifying – a push by the tech industry to deregulate their power, the growing influence of private company algorithms on public domains, the rise of autocratic politics and “technocapitalism.” Six years later, it feels like I could give this talk again today, nearly word for word – and it’d be even more relevant. 

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It’s Time For Twitter To Filter Our Feeds. But How?

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“We don’t put an algorithm between you and your feed.” – Twitter exec Adam Bain, March 2013

“Please do.” Me, today

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Else 6.23.14: Questioning Valley Idols

A fascinating week of links, starting with a blast from the past (see above), but the real meat of the week came in the debates around some of the Valley’s most scared cows. For more, read on….

Tech Time Warp of the Week: Watch IBM Warn Us About Glassholes 10 Years Ago- Wired I am particularly enamored with “Park Bench” – if I saw a guy doing what this guy is doing in public, I’d throw something at him. I recall seeing this way back when it first came out, and I hated him then. Now it’s insufferable.

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Else 3.24.14: “In front of us are two roads – which way are we going to go?”

Back in the saddle after missing a week of Else (sorry about that). The best stories from the past two weeks are below, and you’ll note a bit of TED, which ran last week, as well as a fair amount of Google, which is hard to avoid given the focus of this newsletter: If you’re going to cover “becoming data” it’s best you get used to hearing about Google.

Larry Page: Where’s Google going next? – TED

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else 9.30: The “Monkeys with Typewriter” Algorithm

This week, the blind see with data, algorithms are uncovered, networks are analyzed, and data remains siloed. As always, if you want to keep up with what we’re reading/thinking about on a weekly basis the best way is to subscribe to the “else” feed either as an email newsletter or through RSS.

Disruptions: Visually Impaired Turn to Smartphones to See Their World – NYTimes
Assistive technologies in smart phones help the blind read the world as data.

Eulogy for a Horse – Dan Sinker
Susan Orlean broke that the @horse_ebooks twitter account that tweeted seemingly random selections from books is not a bot, but performance art. The internet got up in arms about the revelation, mostly because it disrupted our desire to believe that there was beauty in algorithms and randomness. Dan Sinker (of @MayorEmanuel parody twitter account fame) offers some final thoughts for his “monkey Shakespeare.”

Goodbye, dear programmatic poet. We believed in you.
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else 9.3: Staring at the Tiny Screens

This week: Gartner’s latest hype cycle addresses the relationship between humans and machines, moral panics about our attention and time resurface, UPS optimizes drop offs around the happiness of drivers, Bitcoin’s regulatory environment gets messy, and data brokers take steps towards improved consumer transparency. As always, if you want to keep up with what we’re reading/thinking about on a weekly basis, the best way is to subscribe to the “else” feed, either as an email newsletter or through RSS.

Gartner’s 2013 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Maps Out Evolving Relationship Between Humans and Machines – Gartner
Gartner’s latest hype cycle on emerging technologies focuses on the relationship between humans and machines. Any one of these technologies stand as examples of how data is shaping our world, and how our world is becoming data.

Google Glass and a Futuristic Vision of Fashion – Vogue
Wearable tech gets the haute couture treatment in the September issue of Vogue. The spread mixes retrofuturist aesthetic with modernist architecture. This isn’t the first time Google Glass has gone high-fashion.

Vogue Goes Back to the Future. Don’t expect enlightenment here. 
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