30th April 2016

Welcome to a New Age of Feudalism. ‘…it’s quite likely that Google, Facebook and the rest will eventually run the basic infrastructure on which the world functions. They would be thrilled to do this, given the ensuing data rainfall….The political task ahead, then, is to deploy the data to maximise social welfare rather than let Silicon Valley usher in a new form of feudalism that would make the unhinged privatisation of the last few decades look like socialism.’

In the Future, will Big Data, make voting obsolete? ‘ On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is incredibly easy and 10 is incredibly hard, how easy do you think it would be for Google to tabulate (a) who is planning to vote on election day and (b) whom they are planning to vote for? If you said “1,” raise your hand again,because that is how easy it would be‘

Digiday is such an advanced tech company, they have just launched a magazine. The catch is, they are only printing 1,000 copies.

Could Adblocking be the best thing to happen to the Advertising Industry? ‘Looking back in a few years’ time, we will be amazed that we let our attention become the default way to pay for content and we will be amazed how cheaply it traded. We’ll see that after paying too little respect to consumers, in an age of abundant content, there was no other way for things to go.’

The very,very smart Russell Davies (@undermanager) on Bots and Humans and the new interactive tools that could help creatives.

Of the existing billion-dollar industries, women are in control of none of them. Could legal cannabis be the first? The people at the Women Grow conference in Denver, certainly think so.Token Women to Tokin’ Women?

It is the King of distributed content, but what Networks does Buzzed actually use? ‘BuzzFeed’s distribution strategy is most interesting when considered in the context of this broader shift that media is experiencing. Publishers must look beyond the traditional bounds of their websites and give equal priority to the distributed parts of their audiences.‘

There are some ‘classics’ here. Why do brands continue to make stupid social media decisions?Apparently common sense still isn’t so common in social media. 

The apogee of navel gazing? This City embedded traffic lights in the sidewalks so that smartphone users don’t have to look up. 

An unusual and lovely view of New York City from above. Beware the barrenness of a busy life .(Socrates)