Not all those who wander are lost
There’s no way online classes will be as bad in 2025 as they are today.
I expect Google, Apple, Amazon to be amongst the companies disrupting the current expensive American College system. Taking their money.
But it’s this organization — Outlier — that won a Time magazine BEST inventions of 2020 award.
At least they are trying to improve the experience.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Roger McNamee was early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg. And an early investor.
A big Facebook promoter.
ZUCKED is McNamee’s intimate reckoning with the catastrophic failure of the head of one of the world’s most powerful companies to face up to the damage he is doing.
I’ve not heard any other critic as astute, nor as fair, as to exactly why Facebook is harming and even killing some of their customers around the world.
As Facebook is unable to police itself, governments should step in.
The Inevitable is a 2016 nonfiction book by Kevin Kelly that forecasts the twelve technological forces that will shape the next thirty years:
Though it might sound scary, the book is surprisingly upbeat and optimistic about the future.
Kevin Kelly (born 1952) is the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, and a former editor/publisher of the Whole Earth Review.
Nick Bilton is a British-American journalist and author. He is currently a special correspondent at Vanity Fair. …
His reporting is credited with helping to lead the United States Federal Aviation Administration to overturn their longtime ban on using cell phones, Kindles and iPads on airplanes. …
Bilton’s most recent book, American Kingpin, tells the story of the Silk Road marketplace, its founder Ross Ulbricht (who went by “Dread Pirate Roberts“), and how U.S. law enforcement arrested him.
… In June 2017, The Hollywood Reporter reported that the Coen brothers and Steven Zaillian were adapting the book into a movie.
Rocco recommended this book.
Sometimes the truth is more unbelievable than fiction.
Ross Ulbricht (born March 27, 1984) is an American convict best known for creating and operating the darknet market website Silk Road from 2011 until his arrest in 2013. …
Ulbricht’s online pseudonym was “Dread Pirate Roberts” …
In May 2015, he was sentenced to a double life sentence plus forty years without the possibility of parole.
Silk Road used Tor and bitcoin.
In March 2013, the site had 10,000 products for sale by vendors, 70% of which were drugs.
Ulbricht was charged with money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht had paid $730,000 in murder-for-hire deals targeting at least five people, allegedly because they threatened to reveal Ulbricht’s Silk Road enterprise.
It’s possible that none were actually killed. Ulbricht might have been scammed for that money.
People died using Silk Road drugs.
Ulbricht justified his crimes with a B.S. personal philosophy that he was doing more good for the world than bad. He wasn’t.
There are still more questions than answers about Silk Road.
Deep Web is a 2015 documentary film chronicling the events.
Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.
Back in the 1990s I was completely convinced that Google and the internet would make the world a much better place.
If people had more information, they’d be able to make better decisions.
It turned out to be mixed. Smart people make better decisions.
But many are overwhelmed, disinterested and easily confused.
Radicalized is a collection of 4 novellas released on March 19, 2019 as a reaction to Trump government chaos.
The issues discussed are very current.
It’s one of the books contending in the Canada Reads 2020 contest. I’m slightly surprised at that as one of the four is a rant against the American non-health care system.
I recommend it IF you are interested in these themes:
… explores such issues as digital rights management, police brutality, radicalization in internet communities, and doomsday preppers. …
… American medical care, immigration, white male rage and technological monopolies …
Those who did not like the book consider it too preachy.
I quite liked the first story, “Unauthorized Bread“ – A refugee, Salima, confronts the software controlling installed in her kitchen appliances after the companies who created those appliances suddenly cease operations.
Cory Doctorow is one of the Tech gurus I’ve been following as long as I’ve been following Boing Boing, which won the Bloggies for Weblog of the Year, in 2004 and 2005. The web version launched January 2000, a “directory of wonderful things“.
In February 2020, Cory Doctorow left Boing Boing to start Pluralistic.net, a blog that brands itself as having “No trackers, no ads.” Of course I’m now following it too.
Cory is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.
Roedean School, South Africa.
Choir master and project director Ralf Schmitt.
It’s part of a fund-raiser for the COVID-19 Solidarity Fund.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Misinformation is me telling you to go down the WRONG alley by mistake.
Disinformation is me telling you to go down the WRONG alley on purpose.
… So the difference between the two comes down to intent.
To further confuse the issue, is the fact that a piece of disinformation can ultimately become misinformation. It all depends on who’s sharing it and why.
One MUST LISTEN for me twice a week is Pivot.
That’s Tech guru Kara Swisher and my business guru Scott Galloway.
Galloway is hilariously cynical and critical. 😀 And smart.
Preview or subscribe on iTunes.
… a sharp, unfiltered look at the technology industry, with provocations, predictions and insights from two leading voices in the worlds of journalism and marketing.
Scott Galloway just launched his own podcast called the Prof G Show.
Unfortunately the first episode coincided with the pending economic collapse of the world. Galloway opted to bring in as his first guest one of the most respected Finance experts in the world Aswath Damodaran.
I came away feeling much more optimistic about the other side of this crisis.
IF corporations (and we individuals) have enough liquidity to last out the shut down, the economy could boom again.
