Fulcra

→ Researchers largely agree that medicine has only increased average life expectancy by a few years Sep 14, 2018 highlights Researchers largely agree that medicine has only increased average life expectancy by a few years. Most gains in life expectancy over the last 100 years have instead occurred due to better nutrition, improved sanitation, increased wealth, and other factors.Doctors are only one part of the medical system, which also relies on nurses and hospital staff, as well as overhead and equipment. The impact of medical interventions is shared between all of these elements.Most importantly, there are already a lot of doctors in the developed world, so if you don’t become a doctor, someone else will be available to perform the most critical procedures. Additional doctors therefore only enable us to carry out procedures that deliver less significant and less certain results. — https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-much-difference-can-one-person-make/

→ Using a standard conversion rate (used by the World Bank among other institutions) of 30 extra years of healthy life to one “life saved,” 140 years of healthy life is equivalent to 5 lives saved Sep 14, 2018 highlights Using a standard conversion rate (used by the World Bank among other institutions) of 30 extra years of healthy life to one “life saved,” 140 years of healthy life is equivalent to 5 lives saved. This is clearly a significant impact, however it’s less of an impact than many people expect doctors to have. — https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-much-difference-can-one-person-make/

→ Many people who want to help others become doctors Sep 14, 2018 highlights Many people who want to help others become doctors. One of our early readers, Dr. Greg Lewis, did exactly that. “I want to study medicine because of a desire I have to help others,” he wrote on his university application, “and so the chance of spending a career doing something worthwhile I can’t resist.”So, we wondered: how much difference does becoming a doctor really make? In 2012, we teamed up with Greg to find out, and this work is now being reviewed for publication.Since a doctor’s main purpose is to improve health, we tried to figure out how much extra “health” one doctor actually adds to humanity. We found that, on average in the course of their career, a doctor in the UK will enable their patients to live an extra combined 140 years of healthy life, either by extending their lifespans or by improving their overall health. There is, of course, a huge amount of uncertainty in this figure, but the real figure is unlikely to be more than ten times higher than 140.1 — https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-much-difference-can-one-person-make/

→ one of the first questions we asked was “how much difference can one person really make?”We learned that while many common ways to do good, such as becoming a doctor, have less impact than you might first think; others have allowed certain people to achieve an extraordinary impact Sep 13, 2018 highlights one of the first questions we asked was “how much difference can one person really make?”We learned that while many common ways to do good, such as becoming a doctor, have less impact than you might first think; others have allowed certain people to achieve an extraordinary impact.In other words, one person can make a difference, but you might have to do something a little unconventional. — https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-much-difference-can-one-person-make/

→ There’s an argument to be made, from Apple’s perspective, that if most people aren’t using the audio dongle, putting one in the box with every iPhone is environmentally and economically wasteful Sep 13, 2018 highlights There’s an argument to be made, from Apple’s perspective, that if most people aren’t using the audio dongle, putting one in the box with every iPhone is environmentally and economically wasteful. Fair enough. So put a voucher code in the box for a free dongle, should the user actively want one. As a matter of fact, since so many iPhone buyers are repeat customers, Apple can also start doing the same with the charger. It’s not like the company ships a suitable fast charger in the box. While Apple advertises fast and wireless charging support with its new iPhones, you’ll have to buy separate accessories for both. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/13/17852184/iphone-xs-headphone-jack-adapter-apple-event-2018

→ We are cyborgs. Sep 12, 2018 highlights & People

“On one hand, especially after last year’s price increase for the flagship model, the iPhone is a luxury item. People save up to buy it, and they measure their social and economic standing with it. In a sea of smartphones that do roughly the same thing, Apple’s particular smartphone commands a prestige premium. This is a familiar description for fashion or jewelry brands and products, but it finds few parallels in the tech industry.
The other side of the iPhone coin is that we keep replacing it like it’s a basic consumption good. If I buy a luxury watch for $1,000, I’d expect to have it for a decade or longer, whereas Apple somehow keeps enticing people to buy a pricey new iPhone every two or three years. It’s like the company is selling sneakers but charging the price of dress shoes.”

- Vlad Savov has written an excellent reflection on our relationship with iPhones.

We are cyborgs.

→ If they want to convince people they are serious about WIL and not just go through the motions for a year or two to placate politicians who are temporarily hot for the idea because it’s the “new thing”, they need to do a lot more than write a letter. Sep 11, 2018 highlights If they want to convince people they are serious about WIL and not just go through the motions for a year or two to placate politicians who are temporarily hot for the idea because it’s the “new thing”, they need to do a lot more than write a letter. Writing a letter is easy and cheap. Actually going out and creating change on the ground is hard. If the PSE and business community want to be taken seriously, why not put their own money behind it? Why not develop their own strategic plan, and invite the feds to either get on board (PCO permitting) or get the hell out of the way.

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→ This is about where I start to get worried/skeptical about WIL. Sep 11, 2018 highlights This is about where I start to get worried/skeptical about WIL. I don’t think most universities actually want WIL to be about curriculum. I see a lot of universities talking about WIL. I see them setting up conferences so they can talk amongst themselves about it (though I note that students — the alleged beneficiaries of these programs — tend not to get invited to these affairs). I don’t see them taking many new steps to really think deeply about how WIL integrates into the curriculum. Sure, in some fields (like Engineering) they don’t need to do that because it’s already been thought through. But Humanities? Fine Arts? Science? What I see is a lot of universities attempting to re-classify stuff they already do as WIL and in some cases making attempts to add some short-term internships to their roster of student services. But I see almost nothing of scale which genuinely attempts to integrate these learning experiences into curriculum because that would require institutions to have curriculum in these areas (as opposed to a bunch of buckets which students must fill up with credits).

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→ Azeem’s end note Sep 9, 2018 highlights

Azeem’s end note

I am spending a bit of time over the coming months thinking about data in the context of the new information age. I’m particularly curious about the full spectrum of issues from what personal rights around data usage should be, how those rights should be expressed and protected, especially in the context of derived attributes or characteristics the emerge from aggregated or population level data. I’m curious about collective data institutions like data exchanges, data trusts and data commons. I wonder about how business strategies might evolve beyond data network effects. And I’m intrigued by how data might be used in political & deliberative processes. And I want to understand better how we describe and unleash the economic value of data.

— https://mailchi.mp/exponentialview/ev181

→ What if a society wants to embed bias in algorithms? Reportedly, Google plans to launch a censored search engine in China that will blacklist search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest Sep 9, 2018 highlights What if a society wants to embed bias in algorithms? Reportedly, Google plans to launch a censored search engine in China that will blacklist search terms about human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest. Google employees object. Would a code of ethics for data scientists help formalise the responsibility of those who create algorithms to think and act ethically? — https://mailchi.mp/exponentialview/ev181

→ Education is delivery; learning is discovery. Sep 8, 2018 highlights & Education & Learning

Education is delivery; learning is discovery.

Apple Executive John Couch on Rewiring Education (from the Getting Smart podcast):

Getting Smart Podcast: 164 - Apple Executive, John Couch, on Rewiring Education

→ Meme warfare, a term coined by Andrew Boyd in 2002, is real, and it’s an important component of any great marketing or public relations campaign — even if not referred to in those specific terms Sep 8, 2018 highlights Meme warfare, a term coined by Andrew Boyd in 2002, is real, and it’s an important component of any great marketing or public relations campaign — even if not referred to in those specific terms. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/7/17832250/jack-dorsey-beard-jokes-tweets-memes-political-dissent

→ Natasha Noy, a research scientist at Google AI who helped created Dataset Search, says the aim is to unify the tens of thousands of different repositories for datasets online Sep 6, 2018 highlights Natasha Noy, a research scientist at Google AI who helped created Dataset Search, says the aim is to unify the tens of thousands of different repositories for datasets online. “We want to make that data discoverable, but keep it where it is,” says Noy. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/5/17822562/google-dataset-search-service-scholar-scientific-journal-open-data-access

→ Google’s goal has always been to organize the world’s information, and its first target was the commercial web Sep 6, 2018 highlights Google’s goal has always been to organize the world’s information, and its first target was the commercial web. Now, it wants to do the same for the scientific community with a new search engine for datasets.
The service, called Dataset Search, launches today — https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/5/17822562/google-dataset-search-service-scholar-scientific-journal-open-data-access

→ Can you tell me a little bit about the qualities that you look for in coaches, what you think makes a good coach and what, their qualities are well? Nicolas: The 4 dimensions that we have in mind for an intrapreneurs’ coach profile correspond to the 4 activities previsously descrive: innovation skills, networking within Orange, human relationship abilities, and the being ready to work Sep 6, 2018 highlights Can you tell me a little bit about the qualities that you look for in coaches, what you think makes a good coach and what, their qualities are well?
Nicolas: The 4 dimensions that we have in mind for an intrapreneurs’ coach profile correspond to the 4 activities previsously descrive: innovation skills, networking within Orange, human relationship abilities, and the being ready to work. — http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2018/09/02/the-importance-of-coaching-intrapreneurs/

→ During the application stage, the intrapreneur fulfills 10 questions from an online file, and based on this file, we select some of them for what we call pre-coaching, where we help them to enrich their application. Sep 5, 2018 highlights & People

During the application stage, the intrapreneur fulfills 10 questions from an online file, and based on this file, we select some of them for what we call pre-coaching, where we help them to enrich their application. Basically we work with them on two aspects:

One is to help them to move from the solution to the user problem: identify who is their target, and how painful is the problem for the target;
And second element, we connect them with other entities within Orange. Orange is a huge company (150,000 employees over 30 countries), and very often there are people working on a similar aspect of the intrapreneur project or people who could be interested in commercializing, distributing the intrapreneurs idea. So we connect people and sometimes it’s a match, sometimes it doesn’t match, but it’s another way to make the application progress;

We start very often with online coaching where we connect by phone, and we exchange on the project: we share with them some contacts, and they make the appointments, meet the people, and enrich the project. For us it’s a very important way to test if the intrapreneur is able to be self-starter, to take initiative, and to iterate on his project . Iteration is really a key skill for the intrapreneur;
Besides, each intrapreneur has to find out a business unit sponsor for his project: this networking is a fine way to meet this sponsoring demand;
When the project goes to Qualification, and then to Incubation, he usually keeps the same coach.

— http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2018/09/02/the-importance-of-coaching-intrapreneurs/

→ Evan Burton is a UX Designer, Usability Engineer, Data Science Enthusiast, finishing a master’s degree in Usability Engineering. Sep 5, 2018 highlights

Evan Burton is a UX Designer, Usability Engineer, Data Science Enthusiast, finishing a master’s degree in Usability Engineering.
He’s currently writing his masters thesis on corporate intrapreneurship and innovation, with a focus on corporate acceleration and incubation, and how to best support intrapreneurs in the process of defining and developing their ideas into products or services for their company.

Evan claims that ‘one of his core research findings was that the role of coaching in these programs is very impactful. Research shows that coaches serve not only as an experienced guide, helping intrapreneurs to embrace a new way of working, but also as a crucial link to a network of experienced professionals both inside and outside the corporation. ’

— http://innovationexcellence.com/blog/2018/09/02/the-importance-of-coaching-intrapreneurs/

→ What silence looks like online is hard to describe, because it’s necessarily individual: I have a different threshold than you, for example, for dealing with Twitter trolls or rogue Instagram commenters Sep 5, 2018 highlights What silence looks like online is hard to describe, because it’s necessarily individual: I have a different threshold than you, for example, for dealing with Twitter trolls or rogue Instagram commenters. But I do think there are a few rules. First, quiet is found in considered spaces — think @everycolorbot or #cloudtwitter. Second, if silence is found through listening, then peaceful places online are more generative (like Glitch or Codecademy, or one of my favorites, Twine) and, generally, focused on maintaining small, healthy communities (like Metafilter). Silence pools like the tides. It’s hard to find at high tide, and immediately obvious where the pools are when the tide are out. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/2/17805138/finding-silence-online-is-difficult-but-the-pursuit-is-worthwhile

→ Learning how to live sustainably in an always-online society is mostly about learning where your limits are, and learning how much connection you can handle before it’s time to withdraw Sep 5, 2018 highlights & Learning Learning how to live sustainably in an always-online society is mostly about learning where your limits are, and learning how much connection you can handle before it’s time to withdraw. Knowing when to log off is the main skill to master — and this applies IRL, too, because while it’s easy to understand why you feel drained after random accounts brigade your Twitter mentions, it’s harder to recognize when the people around you become draining themselves. But more often it’s simpler than that: the fact that there’s a society-wide expectation to be constantly available means there’s no escape from the insistent pings and buzzes that accompany human connection, from friends to enemies to lovers and everything in between. And now we have more — and more persistent — friendships than ever, mediated by Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, which means that the alerts come more frequently than ever. The human brain has not evolved as quickly as its technology has; we are not built for this much connection, though we have, by and large, adapted. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/2/17805138/finding-silence-online-is-difficult-but-the-pursuit-is-worthwhile

→ Despite the achievements of ubiquitous computing, this discipline is still overlooked in business process management Sep 4, 2018 highlights Despite the achievements of ubiquitous computing, this discipline is still overlooked in business process management. This is surprising, since many of today’s challenges, in this domain, can be addressed by methods and techniques from ubiquitous computing, for instance user context and dynamic aspects of resource locations. This paper takes a first step to integrate methods and techniques from ubiquitous computing in business process management. To do so, we propose discovering commute patterns via process mining. Through our proposition, we can deduce the users’ significant locations, routes, travel times and travel modes. This information can be a stepping-stone toward helping the business process management community embrace the latest achievements in ubiquitous computing, mainly in location-based service. — http://rd.springer.com/10.1007/s10115-018-1255-1