Fulcra

→ think of the tech industry as being built on an ever-increasing number of assumptions: that you know what a computer is, that saying “enter your Wi-Fi password” means something to you, that you understand what an app is, that you have the desire to manage your Bluetooth device list, that you’ll figure out what USB-C dongles you need, and on and on Jan 6, 2019 highlights think of the tech industry as being built on an ever-increasing number of assumptions: that you know what a computer is, that saying “enter your Wi-Fi password” means something to you, that you understand what an app is, that you have the desire to manage your Bluetooth device list, that you’ll figure out what USB-C dongles you need, and on and on.
Lately, the tech industry is starting to make these assumptions faster than anyone can be expected to keep up. And after waves of privacy-related scandals in tech, the misconceptions and confusion about how things works are both greater and more reasonable than ever. — https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/6/18170272/everything-is-too-complicated-2019

→ The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook had begun working on a feature that would encourage users of opposing political beliefs to interact in a more positive way Dec 24, 2018 highlights The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook had begun working on a feature that would encourage users of opposing political beliefs to interact in a more positive way. But the project — known as “Common Ground” — was reportedly halted after Facebook’s global head of policy raised concerns that it could lead to accusations that the site was biased against conservatives.
Sources told the WSJ that the Common Ground project would have brought together several different projects “meant to minimize toxic content and encourage more civil discussion,” which included changes to how the News Feed was ranked, and to de-emphasize “hateful” comments. Kaplan — along with other executives — worried that conservative users would be disproportionately impacted by the changes, and noted that the term “‘common ground’ was patronizing.” — https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/23/18154111/facebook-common-grounds-feature-conservative-bias-concerns-shelved-joel-kaplan

→ Enter Elowan, a cybernetic plant unveiled this month by Sareen and his team Dec 17, 2018 highlights Enter Elowan, a cybernetic plant unveiled this month by Sareen and his team. Tethered by a few wires and silver electrodes, the plant-robot hybrid moves in response to the plant’s light demands. When light shines on its leaves, the plant elicits bioelectrochemical signals, which the electrodes detect and transmit to the wheeled robot below. The robot then moves towards the light.
Elowan is more than just a plant on wheels. Sareen and his colleagues claim their project is an example of part-organic, part-artificial entities that may become more common in the future. Many of the functions we find in electronics — for example, the ability to sense surroundings and display data — first existed in nature. And they’re often more efficient and resilient in the natural world, less prone to wear, tear, and environmental damage. By identifying and interpreting the way plants function, the researchers hope to turn them into biohybrids that power, monitor, and converge with their technological surroundings.
This isn’t the first plant-robot partnership we’ve encountered. Vincross CEO Sun Tianqi created a robot tasked with keeping a succulent alive by monitoring its surrounding. But Elowan might be the most interesting. It takes the partnership one step further by directly connecting the plant with the machine. — https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/elowan-is-a-cyborg-plant-that-can-move-towards-the-light/

→ Amrute joins the institute’s leadership at the culmination of a strategic planning process to strengthen Data & Society’s unique dual focus on convention-challenging research and targeted field engagement Dec 7, 2018 highlights & Leadership & Society Amrute joins the institute’s leadership at the culmination of a strategic planning process to strengthen Data & Society’s unique dual focus on convention-challenging research and targeted field engagement. As Director of Research, Amrute will mentor Data & Society’s growing research team and determine pathways for critical engagement with interlocutor and collaborator networks.
“Sareeta brings exciting new talent to Data & Society,” enthused Data & Society Founder and President danah boyd. “Sareeta has extensive experience as a rigorous empirical scholar examining the complex ways in which technology and society intertwine. Through her leadership and mentorship, we can help grow the field of scholars whose insights can help address some of society’s greatest challenges.”
Amrute will work closely with boyd to continue to hone a broader vision for new knowledge that helps decision-makers grapple with complex societal challenges arising around data and automation. — https://datasociety.net/blog/2018/12/05/data-society-welcomes-sareeta-amrute/

→ That’s why, starting on January 14th, we’ll be publishing Better Worlds: 10 original fiction stories, five animated adaptations, and five audio adaptations by a diverse roster of science fiction authors who take a more optimistic view of what lies ahead in ways both large and small, fantastical and everyday Dec 5, 2018 highlights & Science & Social That’s why, starting on January 14th, we’ll be publishing Better Worlds: 10 original fiction stories, five animated adaptations, and five audio adaptations by a diverse roster of science fiction authors who take a more optimistic view of what lies ahead in ways both large and small, fantastical and everyday.
Growing up, I was surrounded by optimistic science fiction — not only the idealism of television shows like Star Trek, but also the pulpy, thrilling adventures of golden age science fiction comics. They imagined worlds where the lot of humanity had been improved by our innovations, both technological and social. Stories like these are more than just fantasy and fabulism; they are articulations of hope. We need only look at how many tech leaders were inspired to pursue careers in technology because of Star Trek to see the tangible effect of inspirational fiction. (Conversely, Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson once linked the increasing scarcity of optimistic science fiction to “innovation starvation.”)
Better Worlds is partly inspired by Stephenson’s fiction anthology Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future as well as Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, a 2015 “visionary fiction” anthology that is written by a diverse array of social activists and edited by Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown. Their premise was simple: whenever we imagine a more equitable, sustainable, or humane world, we are producing speculative fiction, and this creates a “vital space” that is essential to forward progress. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/5/18055980/better-worlds-science-fiction-short-stories-video

→ The point here is simple: if Canadian universities want to contribute to economic growth, they need to start actually paying attention to how their curriculum and pedagogy is improving skills. Dec 3, 2018 highlights The point here is simple: if Canadian universities want to contribute to economic growth, they need to start actually paying attention to how their curriculum and pedagogy is improving skills. That’s the play. Not research. We’ve gone as far as we can go down that road for the time being. The game is now teaching, learning and outcomes. I know, it’s difficult, not least because its tough to focus on curriculum when some faculties punted the entire notion of curriculum in favour of a smorgasbord credit approach 50 years ago. But guess what? That’s the stuff that actually matters.

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→ what are the scaling challenges tech companies have that do relate to post-secondary? Dec 3, 2018 highlights

what are the scaling challenges tech companies have that do relate to post-secondary? Here’s the key quote:

“More assets than STEM skills are required for productivity growth. Additional skills such as business and management such as customer-facing skills (i.e. skills and marketing); higher order cognitive skills such as creative problem solving and critical thinking…there is a mismatch between what companies need and what local labour markets can offer. In particular, Canada is lacking a supply of business management or customer-facing talent, such as sales and marketing.”

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→ Scientist He Jian Kui allegedly used the gene-editing tool CRISPR cas-9 to disable the CCR5 gene in 31 embryos with the goal of making children who were more resistant to HIV Nov 30, 2018 highlights & Science Scientist He Jian Kui allegedly used the gene-editing tool CRISPR cas-9 to disable the CCR5 gene in 31 embryos with the goal of making children who were more resistant to HIV. He claims that two of the embryos were implanted, resulting in the female babies “Lulu” and “Nana.” (His work has since been halted by the Chinese government, reports The Associated Press.) — https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/29/18116830/crispr-baby-he-jiankui-genetics-ethics-science-health-mutation

→ Zen practices refer to a “beginner’s mind Nov 30, 2018 highlights Zen practices refer to a “beginner’s mind.” The ready state for enlightenment is a consciousness devoid of preconceptions. Much of the training in the esoteric spiritual disciplines is concerned with de-conditioning the psyche, allowing the full experience and awareness of what’s fundamentally true in the present, without the illusory colorings brought on by interpretations from the past or projections into the future.
That’s the best place to come from—mentally, emotionally, and psychologically—if you’re developing the agenda for the staff meeting, formulating the best way to approach your boss about the delay in a major project, restructuring your board of directors, or planning the family vacation. — https://gettingthingsdone.com/2018/11/the-strategic-value-of-clear-space/

→ There’s an event, a problem, an opportunity coming toward me I can’t see yet Nov 30, 2018 highlights There’s an event, a problem, an opportunity coming toward me I can’t see yet. Something will emerge that I will need to focus and work on, coming from the outside or from my own inspiration. When that happens, I want to be ready. Things will get messy, but they will neither start nor end that way. — https://gettingthingsdone.com/2018/11/the-strategic-value-of-clear-space/

→ But if you’re already in a mess, you’re not free to make one Nov 29, 2018 highlights But if you’re already in a mess, you’re not free to make one. If you have a desk piled with unfinished, unclear work; if you’re trying to repair something in your garage with tools and incomplete projects strewn everywhere; if you’ve got thousands of unprocessed emails in your inbox; or if you’ve just got a lot of issues and situations in your life and work on your mind—you’re going to be laboring under a serious handicap.
That’s why, when I’m not doing anything else, I’m cleaning up. — https://gettingthingsdone.com/2018/11/the-strategic-value-of-clear-space/

→ How easily you can make a mess is how truly productive you can be Nov 29, 2018 highlights How easily you can make a mess is how truly productive you can be. — https://gettingthingsdone.com/2018/11/the-strategic-value-of-clear-space/

→ Facebook built Watch Party after finding that live videos encouraged more social interactions than prerecorded ones Nov 27, 2018 highlights & People & Social Facebook built Watch Party after finding that live videos encouraged more social interactions than prerecorded ones. At the time of launch, Fidji Simo, vice president of product at Facebook, wrote: “As we think about video on Facebook, we’re focused on creating experiences that bring people closer together and inspire human connection instead of passive consumption.”
Encouraging people to tune into live viewing events could help people enjoy the platform more, or at least encourage positive interactions. The “creating experiences” idea also comes up with the company’s goal to get people to comment more on other peoples’ posts because it’s a healthier form of social networking. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18113462/facebook-watch-party-roll-out-page-profile-group

→ The Fall Economic Statement also included a commitment of up to $755 million over the next ten years to establish a Social Finance Fund, and $50 million over the next two years for an Investment and Readiness stream aimed at building capacity in organizations wanting to explore social finance opportunities Nov 26, 2018 highlights & Social The Fall Economic Statement also included a commitment of up to $755 million over the next ten years to establish a Social Finance Fund, and $50 million over the next two years for an Investment and Readiness stream aimed at building capacity in organizations wanting to explore social finance opportunities. The Economic Statement specifically cited the role of charities and nonprofits in social innovation, and the intent for them to benefit from the Social Finance Fund. These measures respond to recommendations made by the SISF Steering Group.
“We face a significant social deficit over the next decade– that is, the difference between the anticipated demand for charities’ and nonprofits’ services and the resources available to them through traditional funding mechanisms,” said MacDonald. “To the extent the Social Finance Fund helps organizations to avail themselves of new sources of revenue, it represents part of the solution. We hope to work closely with the government and with experts in the social finance realm as the details of the Fund are developed in the coming months.” — http://imaginecanada.ca/news-item/imagine-canada-pleased-fall-economic-statement-commitments

→ But what is it doing to us? I know my perception of time has been totally skewed; something that happened last week has flattened into things that happened in the past, a category that holds everything from that @horse_ebooks tweet to the screening of Black Panther I saw in February in Los Angeles Nov 26, 2018 highlights But what is it doing to us? I know my perception of time has been totally skewed; something that happened last week has flattened into things that happened in the past, a category that holds everything from that @horse_ebooks tweet to the screening of Black Panther I saw in February in Los Angeles. Flattening current events into a stream means living in a perpetual present, where events are disconnected from their antecedents and where history is counted in minutes and days rather than in months and years. It’s another way the rise of ambient, instant connectivity has warped our perceptions of the world — and indeed, our conception of what the world is. Push notifications have circumscribed the world.
This is also by design. Because social networks are built to maximize engagement, the global news economy — which has again moved to those same platforms — is just another product that boosts time spent online. The churn flattens and packages human lives and human misery into something that’s easy to parse and easy to become apathetic to. Time is different now, and so are we. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/25/18111179/facebook-twitter-global-news-engagement-perception-of-time

→ Last month, men in South Sudan engaged in a bidding war over a 17-year-old girl after they saw a post on Facebook advertising her for marriage Nov 24, 2018 highlights Last month, men in South Sudan engaged in a bidding war over a 17-year-old girl after they saw a post on Facebook advertising her for marriage. Just a few days after the post circulated online, she was purchased by a wealthy businessman to be his wife, according to Reuters.
It’s yet another example of how Facebook’s platform has been abused in developing countries in recent years. In Myanmar, over 700,000 members of the Rohingya community were forced to flee the country due to ethnic violence the UN has linked to racists posts spread on Facebook. Thousands more were killed. In Libya, Facebook has been used by rival militias to spread fake news and hate-filled messages which worked to multiply the violence in the country. Now, the platform has been used by people hoping to win big dowries by selling an underage girl. — https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104768/facebook-child-marriage-south-sudan-auction

→ I actually have a specific anomaly that I saw the other day, where I’m hiring a new data scientist in Denver Nov 23, 2018 highlights & Science I actually have a specific anomaly that I saw the other day, where I’m hiring a new data scientist in Denver. Particularly wanted a senior data scientist in Denver, so I posted a job opening on LinkedIn for a Denver data scientist. I got something like 30 applications in a few days. 11 were from one company…. I ask some of my colleagues that are in Denver, saying “What’s wrong with company X? I just got 11 applications from data scientists from this company.” First of all I didn’t even know they had a lot of data scientists, and they said … because [they] are data scientists, and they [said] “Yeah, they’re job openings are all over the place. They hired a crazy number of … hundreds of data scientists over the past two years.” … now obviously they’re hemorrhaging, because they probably didn’t actually think about how to communicate. — https://blog.dominodatalab.com/collaboration-data-science-data-engineering-true-false/

→ the biggest problem here about this lack of process around management, around data engineering, the communication between data engineering and data science, this lack of management, if you want to specialize, you want to have a data liaison…do you want to have a data engineer specialist, because the earliest data science project, like the smallest one, data scientist is doing the data engineering work too Nov 23, 2018 highlights & People & Science the biggest problem here about this lack of process around management, around data engineering, the communication between data engineering and data science, this lack of management, if you want to specialize, you want to have a data liaison…do you want to have a data engineer specialist, because the earliest data science project, like the smallest one, data scientist is doing the data engineering work too. And probably the platform architecture work too, and the application development.
Once you start specializing, which is why we have data engineers and data scientists now, these two people need to have a process to communicate.
When you have an application developer, now they need a process to communicate and work together.
You have the platform architecture, you got management, you got the advisory liaison person, you got the rest of the business, all is about process and, honestly, I don’t think anybody really knows what they’re doing. I think the number one thing that’s holding us back in this industry, is building large data science teams and organization. The most successful data science teams I see right now are like three people… it could be a massive organization, but those three people are getting a lot of work done, and if they wanted to scale up to 20 people, 40 people, it’s not going to work. — https://blog.dominodatalab.com/collaboration-data-science-data-engineering-true-false/

→ When queried to unpack the idea of a “data liaison” more and provide additional clarity and whether this person could be a “project manager”, Miner indicated “…in a consulting construct, that both myself and Niels [co-founder] provides in some of our larger projects Nov 22, 2018 highlights & Science When queried to unpack the idea of a “data liaison” more and provide additional clarity and whether this person could be a “project manager”, Miner indicated
“…in a consulting construct, that both myself and Niels [co-founder] provides in some of our larger projects. And it’s a really necessary role and some of the other customers we work with, we’ve made this recommendation for them to do this, it’s actually two reasons. One is that, data science requires a lot of focus. When you’re working on data science problem and you’re fumbling with some machine learning thing, you’re messing with the data, an interruption can break down a house of cards in your head that you’ve been building for multiple hours and if you’re responsible for going around to random meetings to discuss use cases and things, you’re never going to get anything done…what you need to do, is you need to kind of pick somebody. I mean honestly, these are some personality types that are better than others, but really it needs to be somebody that could do it if they had to, that understands the real problems, that can represent the data scientists that are actually going to do the work in these meetings. But due to the focus requirement you kind of need to pick somebody to be the sacrificial person to do it, that’s okay going around and talking from experience so that the others can focus. It’s a really important role… in a large organization with a large team.” — https://blog.dominodatalab.com/collaboration-data-science-data-engineering-true-false/

→ I agree that in the beginning of the project it’s really good to get everybody in the room due to the amount of communication that needs to happen Nov 22, 2018 highlights I agree that in the beginning of the project it’s really good to get everybody in the room due to the amount of communication that needs to happen. But also, too, email feels almost too slow for these projects. Data scientists are kind of trickling in on insights, and data engineers too, are running into different problems in an ad hoc way as they’re actively working. So we use Slack a lot, I think a lot of people do right now and it’s been pretty successful, because you don’t have to bunch up a bunch of stuff to put into an email like, “Here’s my list of problems today.” Maybe you may have two data scientists talking about an issue and the data engineer is eavesdropping and saying, “Oh hey, by the way, this is how I designed it,” or like, “Oh hey, yeah I can fix that for you real quick. Not going to take me much time at all.” So this more real time communication is good, and I think also too, it’s almost better than in a physical office in some cases too. Even if you’re sitting at a desk, three desks away from the data engineer, you still have to get up and go bother that person. Here, I think I’m actually making the argument that I think Slack and other things like it, may actually be one of the best tools for this thing right now, as the project’s going on. — https://blog.dominodatalab.com/collaboration-data-science-data-engineering-true-false/