At the end of last year, I was asked to write a few thoughts on the most important, most disruptive technological milestones for each year of the last decade that will continue to have an impact in the future of the decade to come. Here follows the original version of that article, before it was edited … Continue reading Trend retrospective, a decade in the rearview mirror
I don't know about you, but I cannot live without a few secrets. Without secrets, without a private inner life, we lose our individuality and our sense of self. Today though, we are bombarded with messages telling us that privacy is worth sacrificing for the greater good; for the good of community security, for the … Continue reading Secrets and Lies
Alas. I do not have a lovely little image of this lovely little book. I live in South Africa and (due to a severe lack of foresight on the part of our esteemed leaders and holders of the public purse strings) we are in the midst of yet another cycle of what South Africans call … Continue reading Eat Your Greens
There is a problem with automated governance and outsourcing decision making to artificial intelligence. And that problem is probability. And the probable problem at hand is that the innocent are flagged as guilty, the right candidates flagged as wrong, at an unacceptably high probability. As we use - even highly reliable - automated systems such … Continue reading I don’t like the look of your face
In a world where this is possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmUC4m6w1wo Seeing is not believing. We can no longer trust our own eyes. Photographic evidence, of course, has been questionable since the distant days of the Cottingley Fairies scam which fooled countless Victorians over 100 years ago. Now, not even authentic video "evidence" can be trusted (as is so … Continue reading More Lies (A Field Guide to Lies and Statistics)
This book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz covers the lies we tell ourselves, our employers, our families and our countries; and about how the data crumb-trail we leave behind us all over the Internet through our search history and our social media likes and posts reveal who we really are. The case studies in this book cover … Continue reading Everybody Lies
This book, written by a PHD mathematician who has worked as a maths professor, Wall Street quant and data scientist (in other words someone who knows what she is talking about) is essential reading (in my opinion) for contemporary humans. The book explains the biases built into big data and the resulting inequality and damage … Continue reading Weapons of Math Destruction
They say that if you want to be a good futurist, you should read science fiction. It is hard to argue that forward thinkers like George Orwell and Margaret Atwood and called a lot of things right in Animal Farm, 1984 and the Handmaids Tale. The Tin Men was written in the mid-20th century and … Continue reading The Tin Men
If it feels like somebody is watching you, well, it's because they are. Who is this somebody? Pretty much anybody who wants to, that's who: Skynet Your insurance company and medical aid have already sold you respectively on the "benefits" of letting them track your driving habits, through your cellphone insurance app, and your lifestyle … Continue reading Somebody’s watching you…
