Fulcra

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Limits to (personal) growth Jan 30, 2017 systems sketching, systemics & procrastination

I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to reading articles. I have 211 in a to-do list as I write this, and the larger that grows the more untenable ▵ →

This is why I’m here. Jan 23, 2017 systems sketching, systemics & practice

Why sketch systems? Partially as a way to productively vent my sarcasm, and partially as a way to practice systems thinking. Also, maybe my ▵ →

Last night: “the snowfall looks so nice!”; this morning: “grumble.” Jan 16, 2017 systems sketching & systemics

Shovelling as a “fix that fails”: it enables us to keep living here, when here means moving solidified rain from one side of the driveway to the ▵ →

New year, new you Jan 3, 2017 Systems Sketching, habits, productivity & systemics

Could New Year’s resolutions be doomed to fail? Driven by New Year’s culture, we commit to actions, call them resolutions, and set off to become ▵ →

→ The huge triumph of [deep learning] has been figuring out that as long as you can pose a problem in a differentiable way and you can obtain a sufficient amount of data, you can efficiently tackle it with a function approximator that can be optimized with first order methods - from that, flows everything Jun 20, 2016 learning & highlights The huge triumph of [deep learning] has been figuring out that as long as you can pose a problem in a differentiable way and you can obtain a sufficient amount of data, you can efficiently tackle it with a function approximator that can be optimized with first order methods - from that, flows everything. — Great concise description of what deep learning actually is from Fede_V on Hacker News (e.g., not a catch-all big-data-will-save-the-world thing).

Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers of Innovation and Economic Development: Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers Jun 18, 2016 innovation

The National Youth Leadership & Innovation Summit Apr 28, 2016 Articles, leadership, innovation & systems

On April 29 & 30, ~300 Canadian youth and youth-serving leaders will convene at MaRS Discovery District in Toronto to explore a strategy for ▵ →

→ The urgency for action is clear and growing Apr 16, 2016 highlights The urgency for action is clear and growing. Over the past 18 months, the U.S. government has required that we maintain secrecy regarding 2,576 legal demands, effectively silencing Microsoft from speaking to customers about warrants or other legal process seeking their data. Notably and even surprisingly, 1,752 of these secrecy orders, or 68 percent of the total, contained no fixed end date at all. This means that we effectively are prohibited forever from telling our customers that the government has obtained their data. — Microsoft sues the US government for customers’ right to know – “Keeping secrecy the exception, not the rule: An issue for both consumers and businesses”

→ We can build software to eat the world, or software to feed it Mar 21, 2016 Design & Science & systems & design & highlights We can build software to eat the world, or software to feed it. And if we are going to feed it, it will require a different approach to design, one which optimizes for a different type of growth, and one that draws upon – and rewards – the humility of the designers who participate within it. — Kevin Slavin, Design as Participation. MIT’s Journal of Design and Science.

→ When designers center around the user, where do the needs and desires of the other actors in the system go? Mar 20, 2016 design & systems & highlights

When designers center around the user, where do the needs and desires of the other actors in the system go? The lens of the user obscures the view of the ecosystems it affects.

’[…] The experience for a Sprig customer is super convenient, almost magical; the experience for a chef or courier…? We don’t know. We don’t get to know. We’re just here to press the button.’

For users, this is what it means to be at the center: to be unaware of anything outside it. User-Centric Design means obscuring more than it surfaces.

— Kevin Slavin, Design as Participation. From the shiny new MIT Journal of Design and Science.

→ Twitter is a powerful publishing platform that has become the de facto official medium for famous people to make public statements about what is going on right now. Mar 8, 2016 social & highlights

Twitter is a powerful publishing platform that has become the de facto official medium for famous people to make public statements about what is going on right now.

The problem is, that’s not the description of a social network. It’s a description of a publishing platform. Twitter’s trouble is that it’s being viewed by investors as a social network.

—

John Gruber of Daring Fireball.

Cogent.

→ Warren Buffett manages to entertain and inform in his 2015 letter to shareholders. Feb 27, 2016 innovation & highlights (I'm not ready for Tinder, however.) —

Warren Buffett manages to entertain and inform in his 2015 letter to shareholders.

(This quote comes from Mr. Buffett’s discussion on the unpredictable but beneficial technologies that come from market-driven innovation.)

Twitter’s missing manual / fuzzy notepad Feb 25, 2016

New job posting: RECODE Social Innovation Fellow Feb 18, 2016 social, innovation & education

→ Loren Grush writing for The Verge on the potential impact of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)’s gravitational wave discovery on research and innovation in science. Feb 17, 2016 science & highlights If LIGO's measurements hold up, the collaboration could start its own ripple effect — one within the scientific community. —

Loren Grush writing for The Verge on the potential impact of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)’s gravitational wave discovery on research and innovation in science.

It’s the simple things in writing.

→ Umair Haque on one of the modern Web’s most important problems. Feb 16, 2016 social & highlights But today, the business of most businesses isn't just mass-manufacturing product (industrial age), plastering slightly slicker stickers on it (branding age), or even gleaning vital intelligence faster than rivals (information age). The business of most businesses is interaction. […] Today, we live in a world of strikingly dismally low-quality interactions. […] Here's the rule that we must remember: High quality interactions expand human potential. Low quality interactions reduce, diminish, and shrink it. Thus, learning to produce high versus settling for low quality interactions is one of the great challenges of competence for institutions today. —

Umair Haque on one of the modern Web’s most important problems.

I could’ve quoted many other sentences from this article. Great points, as always — and powerful parallels with Seth Godin’s The Icarus Deception.

LABS | InVision Feb 6, 2016 design

→ The residential university she hopes to create would differ radically from what’s been done traditionally. Jan 31, 2016 education & highlights

The residential university she hopes to create would differ radically from what’s been done traditionally. Project-based learning is the cornerstone of her vision.

“I’m looking at a new model, where the whole sort of vocabulary is different,” she said. “The distinction between undergrad and grad goes away.”

—

Dean for graduate education to take leave, start new university

So neat. I hope this project gets off the ground — the distinction between different levels of study in the post-secondary universe needs to be tested in the 21st century.

The winners of our TNW Hack Battle challenge! Jan 30, 2016 - Todoist Blog ▵ →

Creating Economic Opportunity for Workers in the Digital Era Jan 29, 2016 futures & innovation