10th November 2017
‘Perhaps with the tools of this new technological revolution, we will be able to undo some of the damage done to the natural world by the last one, industrialisation. We will aim to finally eradicate disease and poverty. Every aspect of our lives will be transformed.’ Stephen Hawking on how AI can make the world a better place, if we are prepared.
‘Someone or something, or some combination of people and things is using YouTube to systematically frighten, traumatise, and abuse children, automatically and at scale, and it forces me to question my own beliefs about the internet, at every level.’ This is really worth a read, especially if you are a parent with younger children. Something is wrong on the internet.
Great ‘old meets new’ article from Aeon. ‘This piece is on “prodigies” and the preternatural — long-held ideas that something existed between nature and God, which many people used to try to make sense of natural disasters and other seemingly-random tragedies. A perspective on contextualizing modern ideas within their historical antecedents.
Love this from canscorpianssmoke.com , pertaining to the tragic decline in ‘practices’ and the inexorable rise of ‘tools.’ ‘Tools are very appealing to human beings as they allow us to do things that our bodies alone cannot do. Over thousands of years our species has achieved great things (and some abhorrent things) through the use of a variety of human-made implements. However, in modern times it seems that our perception has become rather distorted and we have become somewhat addicted to tools. A symptom of this..is the discounting of experiences that are potentially rich in learning because we feel we haven’t discovered a shiny new implement….in my experience we only begin to change when we develop and commit to ongoing personal practices.’
From Arstechnica. ‘A researcher has documented almost 2,500 sites that are actively running cryptocurrency mining code in the browsers of unsuspecting visitors, a finding that suggests the unethical and possibly illegal practice has only picked up steam since it came to light a few weeks ago. This Cryptojacking craze that drains your CPU, is now done by 2,500 sites.‘
The decline of Snap continues. Its problems include, expenses, user growth, average revenue per user, and of course Instagram.
How the KKK shaped modern comic book superheroes. ‘Masked crime fighters differ from the Ku Klux Klan only in that they are usually afforded socially acceptable status on a large scale. As masked men who take the law into their own hands the superhero comes dangerously close to some of the great evils in American history.’
Uh oh, looks like Rosé Wine is over…. ‘This is how capitalism works: Consumers enjoy something, brands notice demand and turn the product into a lifestyle, and consumers dutifully recoil. But instead of being angry at the free market, the ire toward #rosé is directed at the population widely believed to be responsible for its downfall: women. It’s “lady petrol,” according to Jeremy Clarkson. It’s “exhausting,” according to Eater. It’s unsophisticated. It’s over. From Taste – ‘Women are not ruining food’.
From @wired_uk. Why uploading all your nudes to Facebook, isn’t such a bad idea.
A guy makes a commercial for his girlfriend’s $499 used ’96 Honda – 141,095 miles on the clock.