The answer machine
TL;DR #152 – 6/01/2018
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This week I posted the following:
- Identifying what we can control in our own lives – This post provides some guidance from Stoic philosophies about your locus of control.
- Blogging, small-b, Big B – This post digs into my thinking about why I blog, and is motivated by this post from Aaron Davis…among others.
TANK (short film by Stu Maschwitz (2:44)
This short film from Red Giant’s Chief Creative Officer, Stu Maschwitz is a visual homage to the vector arcade games of the 80’s.
I also recommend watching this behind the scenes video to look at the hundreds of hours of coding, math, and animation went into this video. This might be the sort of content that inspires a future digital content creator.
Mary Meeker’s 2018 internet trends report: All the slides, plus analysis
Each year, Mary Meeker, a former Morgan Stanley internet analyst and now partner at venture-capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, delivers her annual internet trends report. This is valuable as it showcases possible future trends.
My top takeaways:
- Global smartphone shipment growth has fallen to effectively nil.
- Growth in the world’s number of internet users has also slowed to about 7% in 2016, down from 12% in 2016.
- Roughly 50% of the world, about 3.6 billion people, now have some access to the internet.
- The average adult spends about 6 hours per day with a digital device.
- Wifi is everywhere: There are around 450 million wifi networks in the world, up from about 100 million five years ago.
You can review all of her slides here.
You don’t have a right to believe whatever you want to
This long read from philosophy professor Dan DeNicola in Aeon digs in to the supposed rights that we have to believe whatever we want.
The mind is closed, not open for learning. They might be ‘true believers’, but they are not believers in the truth.
Google’s astounding new search tool will answer any question by reading thousands of books
For a long period of time, we heard a lot about the ambitious project from Google to scan all of the world’s books. This was back in 2007, and Google encountered a lot of battles along the way. But, strangely this story has gone very quiet as of late.
Well, amazing things happen when you dump that repository of info into one of the world’s best machine learning engines. 🙂
How technology affects the way our brain works
This is the sort of webpage that would be a staple if I were still developing assessments for critical evaluation of online information. The website looks reputable and would pass all of the “checklist approaches” we have for critically evaluating online content. But, if you dig a bit deeper, you should have questions about the authority of the author, the references for this post, and the links connecting this work to other content online.
The subject matter is also a frequent subject of technopanic as we’re still trying to decide what these devices are doing to our brains. Take a look and let me know what you think.
As a side note…I’ll have some interesting research starting up in this area that I’ll look forward to having you join.
What’s in a food truck?
As a foodie, food trucks are a common staple of my life. We’re the family that regularly tracks down food trucks online, or frequents food truck competitions.
This post from the Washington Post details all of the parts and pieces that make up this miracle on wheels. Also, the interactive content in this post is amazing.
Over 20 easy to copy Bullet Journal weekly spread ideas
I’ve been interested in Bullet Journaling for some time now. The challenge is that I need to have an offline tool…and actually follow through with it. 🙂
For now, I continue to use a system of Trello and other tools for my “to-do” list. But, I’m always looking for a better system. What do you use?
THNX to Todd Finley, and the great Inside Todd’s Brain newsletter for this link.
The wise man doesn’t give the right answers, he poses the right questions.
Claude Levi-Strauss
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I find all these seemingly incidental combinations intriguing for lack of a better word. When Google hit the books, is this what they had in mind? I was reading today about the move away from ‘research’ to ‘AI’. I wonder what the consequences of Sidewalk Labs on military surveillance?
Hey Aaron. i definitely agree. One of the things that we need to remember is that Google is primarily a machine learning company. The search engine was just an initial front for this entity. And, in machine learning, you scoop up as much info as you can to teach the machine. Add in all of the info from all books…of course. Add in photo, video from the real world…of course.