2nd September 2016
Wired Magazine’s Top 100 Individuals, ‘Shaping The Digital World’. Any guesses on the top 5?…Well we have Larry Page, Ma Huateng (WeChat), Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg. Number one is perhaps a bit of a surprise – Elon Musk.
The world’s first indoor training ground for drones was opened in Seoul. ‘Drone Schools’ are a thing. There are more than 40 training institutes for wannabe-drone pilots in China, and a Japanese school just launched its first 3-year course on drones. ‘Drone pilot’ is one of the jobs of the future.
From FT.com – On big data, Google and the end of free will. ‘Now, a fresh shift is taking place. Just as divine authority was legitimised by religious mythologies, and human authority was legitimised by humanist ideologies, so high-tech gurus and Silicon Valley prophets are creating a new universal narrative that legitimises the authority of algorithms and Big Data.‘ (subscription may be needed)
According to adage.com the Creative Director role (as we know it) will not exist in 10 years. ‘The Creative Director role is growing more indebted to technology every day. I predict that in ten years, we’ll still have people who technically have the Creative Director title, but the job itself will look entirely different.‘
Looking for some sources of inspiration? Here is what what inspires Hans Ulrich Obrist and seven other cultural tastemakers.
Tyler Cowen in Bloomberg posits that nations who get unshackled from previous rulers or constraints tend to show many of the characteristics of startups.
Really interesting series from The Long and The Short on how and why creativity can become derailed. This piece on the impact of paranoia. ‘Even the 20th century’s most vaunted inventors, the Wright brothers, stand accused of excessive paranoia. Prior to 1908 they were famously reluctant to demonstrate their flying machines; this didn’t endear them to the media at a time when French aviators were proudly showing off to large crowds.’ “Either the Wrights have flown or they have not,” read one report.“They are either flyers or liars.”
Forget about the Internet. Here is the ‘Library of Things’ and a potential answer to our ‘peak stuff’ problem. ‘The carpet is filthy. Guests are about to arrive. You have several choices: buy a carpet cleaning machine (around £130 upwards), pay for a professional cleaning company (about £40), or rent a machine from a private hire firm (around £29 for two days). Or, if you live in West Norwood, just pop down the road and borrow one for £9.‘
A perfect story for a social media world – A woman on the run offers the media a more flattering photo to replace mugshots after a Sydney jailbreak. “Can you use this photo, please and thank you 😇 “Yours Truly, Amy Sharp xx”
Although from the end of last year, I love the ‘close to unbelievable’ nature of Danny MacAskill’s bike ride over the roofs of Gran Canaria. This is the vertigo inducing – ‘Cascadia’.