Oculus Rift

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pages: 561 words: 163,916

The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality by Blake J. Harris

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, airport security, Anne Wojcicki, Apollo 11, Asian financial crisis, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, call centre, Carl Icahn, company town, computer vision, cryptocurrency, data science, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, financial independence, game design, Grace Hopper, hype cycle, illegal immigration, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Minecraft, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, QR code, sensor fusion, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, SimCity, skunkworks, Skype, slashdot, Snapchat, Snow Crash, software patent, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, unpaid internship, white picket fence

“The Traveler’s Guide to Quakecon.” Kotaku, August 2, 2011. 3.Pinsof, Allistair. “This Is (Was) QuakeCon.” Destructoid. August 10, 2011. 4.Luckey, Palmer, and Nate Mitchell. “Oculus Rift: Step into the Game.” Kickstarter, August 1, 2012. 5.Sheridan, Conor. “VR Headset Oculus Rift Kickstarter Successful on First Day.” GameSpot, August 1, 2012. 6.Orland, Kyle. “Oculus Rift Head-Mounted Display Finds Funding from Developers.” Ars Technica, August 1, 2012. 7.“Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset Gets Kickstarter Cash.” BBC, August 1, 2012. CHAPTER 12 1.Boychuk, Ben. “Review: Chess with Friends for iPhone.” Macworld, December 17, 2008. 2.Hodapp, Eli.

“Oculus Rift Review: This Shit Is Legit.” Gizmodo, March 28, 2016. 2.Rubin, Peter. “Review: Oculus Rift.” WIRED, March 28, 2016. 3.Robertson, Adi. “Oculus Rift Review.” The Verge, March 28, 2016. 4.Halfacree, Gareth. “Total Recall’s suit against Oculus VR, Luckey dismissed.” Bit-tech, March 13, 2017. 5.King, Hope. “Oculus Rift totally messed up its launch.” CNN, April 12, 2016. 6.Cannata, Jeff (@jeffcannata). “Order processed 12 mins after Oculus went on sale. My new estimated ship date: 5/16-5/26 . . .” Twitter. April 11, 2016. 7.Klepek, Patrick. “The Oculus Rift that I pre-ordered has been bumped from shipping in April to June.”

Granted, a big difference here was that most people already owned, or had access to, a computer sophisticated enough to run iTunes, but even that distinction was somewhat moot. “So this is the Oculus Rift,” Topolsky told Fallon, as the late-night host slipped the headset onto his face. And as the moment of truth approached—so much to gain, so much to lose—Iribe instinctively inched forward and . . . WITHOUT LOOKING AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER MONITOR AT HIS APARTMENT IN Finland, Steve LaValle reached beside him and felt for the hand of his wife, Anna Yershova, to share this moment with him, to share the good and the bad as they always have. The roboticists awaited Jimmy Fallon’s reaction to the Oculus Rift. JIMMY FALLON (blown away) Whaaaaaaat is going on?!


pages: 292 words: 85,151

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It) by Salim Ismail, Yuri van Geest

23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, anti-fragile, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, bike sharing, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, book value, Burning Man, business intelligence, business process, call centre, chief data officer, Chris Wanstrath, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fail fast, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, gravity well, hiring and firing, holacracy, Hyperloop, industrial robot, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, Internet of things, Iridium satellite, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, lifelogging, loose coupling, loss aversion, low earth orbit, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Max Levchin, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, prediction markets, profit motive, publish or perish, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, software is eating the world, SpaceShipOne, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, the long tail, Tony Hsieh, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, urban planning, Virgin Galactic, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, X Prize, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Although Second Life didn’t fully meet customer (or investor) expectations and stopped growing after a few years, it has remained consistent, with one million people online every month and an economy of $600 million in transactions. To enable a fully immersive virtual world, Rosedale’s new High Fidelity platform is leveraging hardware such as Oculus Rift, the PrimeSense depth camera and the Leap Motion gesture controller. The High Fidelity environment has reduced the time lag between gesture and system response to almost the speed of human perception, resulting in a truly real-time experience. Emotional sensing, the last key element of social technology, makes use of sensors—such as health sensors and neurotechnology—within a team or group to create Quantified Employees and a Quantified Workforce.

As we stated in Chapter Five, disruption is the new norm. Throughout every industry, the democratization of accelerating technologies is allowing hundreds of startups to attack and disrupt traditional markets: Bitcoin, Uber, Twitch, Tesla, Hired, Clinkle, Modern Meadow, Beyond Verbal, Vayable, GitHub, WhatsApp, Oculus Rift, Hampton Creek, Airbnb, Matternet, Snapchat, Jaunt VR, Homejoy, Waze, Quirky, Tongal, BuzzFeed—the list of disruptors is virtually endless. And while of course many newcomers won’t succeed, their sheer number means that plenty will be around long enough to create a revolution. Large companies must identify and track disruptive ExOs with the aim of observing, partnering with, investing in and/or acquiring them.

Implications: Algorithms driving more and more business decisions; AIs replacing a large percentage of knowledge workers; AIs looking for patterns in organizational data; algorithms embedded into products. Virtual/augmented reality Description: Avatar-quality VR available on desktop in 2-3 years. Oculus Rift, High Fidelity and Google Glass drive new applications. Implications: Remote viewing; centrally located experts serving more areas; new practice areas; remote medicine. Bitcoin and block chain Description: Trustless, ultra-low-cost secure transactions enabled by distributed ledgers that log everything.


pages: 313 words: 92,053

Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life by Colin Ellard

Apollo 11, augmented reality, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Broken windows theory, Buckminster Fuller, carbon footprint, classic study, cognitive load, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, Dunbar number, Frank Gehry, gentrification, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, Howard Rheingold, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Lewis Mumford, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, mass immigration, megastructure, mirror neurons, Mondo 2000, more computing power than Apollo, Oculus Rift, overview effect, Peter Eisenman, RFID, Richard Florida, risk tolerance, sentiment analysis, Skinner box, smart cities, starchitect, TED Talk, the built environment, theory of mind, time dilation, urban decay, urban planning, urban sprawl, Victor Gruen

London, 1969). 6Mel Slater and colleagues’ description of bystander responses in virtual reality was published in an article titled “Bystander Responses to a Violent Incident in an Immersive Virtual Environment,” in the journal PLOS One (2014, Volume 8, article e52766). 7Blascovitch describes this study and many others in his book with Jeremy Bailenson titled Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Worlds, and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution (William Morrow, New York, 2011). 8An article by my student, Kevin Barton, describing his work on wayfinding in virtual environments titled “Seeing Beyond Your Visual Field: The Influence of Spatial Topology and Visual Field on Navigation Performance,” can be found in the journal Environment and Behavior (2012, Volume 46, Pages 507–529). 9An entertaining and informative description of the Palmer Luckey story by Taylor Clark titled “How Palmer Luckey Created Oculus Rift” can be found in the issue of Smithsonian Magazine (November, 2014). Available at: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-palmer-luckey-created-oculus-rift-180953049/?no-ist 10Much illuminating information about the video game industry can be found at the website of the Entertainment Software Rating Board. Available at: http://www.esrb.org/about/video-game-industry-statistics.jsp 11An early and entertaining account of teledildonics titled “Teledildonics: Reach Out and Touch Someone” was written by Howard Rheingold in the journal Mondo 2000 (Summer, 1990).

In 2011, a precocious eighteen-year-old Californian named Palmer Luckey, frustrated with the lack of availability of good-quality head-worn displays for virtual reality, put together an ingenious set of inexpensive components, along with a healthy amount of duct tape, to produce a prototype of a headset, called the Oculus Rift, that seems destined to outstrip the capabilities of many much more expensive headsets, including the $30,000 models that I use in my laboratory. After several design iterations, and a spectacularly successful Crowdstarter campaign, Luckey parlayed his initial successes into a product that is poised to see commercial release sometime in 2015.

After several design iterations, and a spectacularly successful Crowdstarter campaign, Luckey parlayed his initial successes into a product that is poised to see commercial release sometime in 2015. It will probably cost consumers about $300. As one indication of the momentous anticipation of the impact that this device will have on the world of virtual reality immersion, Luckey sold the company that produces the Rift to Facebook for an amount in excess of $2 billion.9 If the Oculus Rift lives up to the hype, and early users insist that it will, it will place into the hands of ordinary consumers the tools to immerse themselves in compelling immersive virtual environments on an everyday basis. While wearing a lightweight headpiece, we will be able to transport ourselves from our living rooms to essentially anywhere that can be photographed or modeled in full stereoscopic, high-resolution glory.


pages: 302 words: 90,215

Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do by Jeremy Bailenson

Apollo 11, Apple II, augmented reality, computer vision, deliberate practice, experimental subject, fake news, game design, Google Glasses, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), iterative process, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, low earth orbit, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, Neal Stephenson, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, Oculus Rift, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, overview effect, pill mill, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skinner box, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, telepresence, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury

At the time of the purchase, Oculus, founded by a 21-year-old self-taught engineer who had been mentored by the genius HMD maker Mark Bolas, had already reignited interest in VR among techies and gamers a few years earlier by making a lightweight and effective HMD prototype, the Oculus Rift, jury-rigged with smartphone screens and some clever programming. “I’ve seen a handful of technology demos in my life that made me feel like I was glimpsing into the future,” wrote Chris Dixon, an investor at the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreesen-Horowitz. “Apple II, the Macintosh, Netscape, Google, the iPhone, and—most recently—the Oculus Rift.”1 While the performance of this new consumer VR equipment was not quite as good as that of the state-of-the-art hardware in labs like mine, it was good enough to avoid the major performance problem that had bedeviled previous attempts at consumer VR—nausea-inducing lag.

I suspect this is the final sign that VR is officially mainstream. At the higher end, more expensive VR systems (costing about $2,000, including the powerful computer required to run them), aimed at hard-core tech enthusiasts and videogamers, were just starting to be released. The HTC Vive and the long-awaited Oculus Rift are leading this charge. Unlike the more passive VR systems enabled by Cardboard and Gear, these higher-end systems are more immersive and are closer to the experience that can be produced in a lab like the one I run at Stanford. Combined with haptic devices, which provide touch and game controllers, they allow interactive engagement within digitally created worlds.

Almost everyone, upon trying it for the first time, can feel the significance and sheer magnitude of the technology. And yet we’re still trying to figure out what it does best. My 91-year-old grandfather summed up the challenge well. After years of working with VR, I finally convinced him to put on the Oculus Rift and do a few demos. After a few minutes, only moderately impressed, he took it off, shrugged, and said, “What am I supposed to do in here?” He didn’t say it in a pejorative way, but was clearly trying to understand the point of this amazing technology. Consumer VR is coming like a freight train.


pages: 331 words: 96,989

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam L. Alter

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bluma Zeigarnik, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Sedaris, death from overwork, drug harm reduction, easy for humans, difficult for computers, en.wikipedia.org, experimental subject, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Ian Bogost, IKEA effect, Inbox Zero, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kickstarter, language acquisition, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Oculus Rift, Richard Thaler, Robert Durst, side project, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, telemarketer, three-martini lunch

“Instead of sitting through forty-five seconds on the news of someone walking around and explaining how terrible it is, you are actively becoming a participant in the story that you are viewing,” said Christian Stephen, a producer of one of the VR documentaries. But the Google Cardboard pales next to the Oculus Rift. According to Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus VR, “Google Cardboard is muddy water compared with the fancy wine of Oculus Rift.” Of course, for the moment, Google Cardboard has the advantage of costing around $10 online, while the Oculus Rift sells for $599. Despite the promise of VR, it also poses great risks. Jeremy Bailenson, a professor of communication at Stanford’s Virtual Reality Interaction Lab, worries that the Oculus Rift will damage how people interact with the world. “Am I terrified of the world where anyone can create really horrible experiences?

In 2013, a VR company called Oculus VR raised $2.5 million on Kickstarter. Oculus VR was promoting a headset for video games called the Rift. Until recently, most people thought of VR as a tool for gaming, but that changed when Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion in 2014. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg had big ideas for the Oculus Rift that went far beyond games. “This is just the start,” Zuckerberg said. “After games, we’re going to make Oculus a platform for many other experiences. Imagine enjoying a court side seat at a game, studying in a classroom of students and teachers all over the world or consulting with a doctor face-to-face—just by putting goggles in your home.”

I spoke to several: These clinical psychologists agreed to speak on condition that I refrained from using their names. They were concerned their patients might recognize the anecdotes they relayed anonymously. Writing for Time: John Patrick Pullen, “I Finally Tried Virtual Reality and It Brought Me to Tears,” Time, January 8, 2016, www.time.com/4172998/virtual-reality-oculus-rift-htc-vive-ces/. CHAPTER 1: THE RISE OF BEHAVIORAL ADDICTION On the Moment: The Moment website: inthemoment.io/; Holesh’s blog: inthemoment.io/blog. Other pieces on Holesh and his app include: Conor Dougherty, “Addicted to Your Phone? There’s Help for That,” New York Times, July 11, 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/sunday-review/addicted-to-your-phone-theres-help-for-that.html; Seth Fiegerman, “‘You’ve Been on Your Phone for 160 Minutes Today,’” Mashable, August 14, 2014, mashable.com/2014/08/19/mobile-addiction/; Sarah Perez, “A New App Called Moment Shows You How Addicted You Are to Your iPhone,” TechCrunch, June 27, 2014, techcrunch.com/2014/06/27/a-new-app-called-moment-shows-you-how-addicted-you-are-to-your-iphone/; Jiaxi Lu, “This App Tells You How Much Time You Are Spending, or Wasting, on Your Smartphone,” Washington Post, August 21, 2014, www.washingtonpost.com/news/technology/wp/2014/08/21/this-app-tells-you-how-much-time-you-are-spending-or-wasting-on-your-smartphone/.


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Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane by Brett King

23andMe, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apollo 11, Apollo Guidance Computer, Apple II, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, business intelligence, business process, call centre, chief data officer, Chris Urmson, Clayton Christensen, clean water, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, congestion charging, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, deskilling, different worldview, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, distributed ledger, double helix, drone strike, electricity market, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fellow of the Royal Society, fiat currency, financial exclusion, Flash crash, Flynn Effect, Ford Model T, future of work, gamification, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, gigafactory, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hans Lippershey, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, income inequality, industrial robot, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invention of the telephone, invention of the wheel, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job-hopping, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kiva Systems, Kodak vs Instagram, Leonard Kleinrock, lifelogging, low earth orbit, low skilled workers, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, Metcalfe’s law, Minecraft, mobile money, money market fund, more computing power than Apollo, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off grid, off-the-grid, packet switching, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, Ray Kurzweil, retail therapy, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart transportation, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social graph, software as a service, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, synthetic biology, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, TED Talk, telemarketer, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Travis Kalanick, TSMC, Turing complete, Turing test, Twitter Arab Spring, uber lyft, undersea cable, urban sprawl, V2 rocket, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, white picket fence, WikiLeaks, yottabyte

Virtual reality has some equally as promising applications that could be released commercially well before those designed by Magic Leap. If you want to check out some of the available games already optimised for Oculus Rift, I’d recommend PewDiePie’s feed or similar. Unquestionably, one amazing innovation of VR will be simulated environments that allow you to experience the world in a way an AR headset never could do. For example, Somniacs, a company based in Zurich, Switzerland, has created a flying simulator called Birdly. Birdly simulates the experience of flying like a bird by marrying a Oculus Rift VR headset with a rig you lie on that allows you to flap your arms and basically feel like a bird. “Ever dreamed of flying like a bird?

Newer technologies can get higher resolution and clearer images via either see-through displays or organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays with microlenses in front or via laser or some other projection directly onto the eye’s surface. All of these technologies are designed for augmenting reality largely. In contrast, virtual reality (VR) headsets like the Oculus Rift have a 1080-pixel x 1200-pixel resolution liquid-crystal display (LCD) or OLED panels embedded in a wrap-around viewer/headset. Typical VR headsets feature per-eye displays running at 90 Hz, 360-degree positional tracking, integrated audio, positional tracking volume and a designed focused on wearability and aesthetics.

• Augmented reality is the sort of technology we’re talking about in a PHUD, or more immediately through technologies like Magic Leap and Microsoft HoloLens. • Virtual reality is an immersive experience that puts you in a totally virtual world, and through processing improvements and better screen resolution, VR headsets are rapidly being commercialised in the form of Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR and others. • Augmented virtuality (AV), however, is augmenting a virtual world with real-world artefacts; a merging of the real world into VR. Augmented virtuality might encompass, for example, projecting your body into a virtual environment so that you can see your hands turn a virtual door handle or look down at your virtual feet as you walk through a virtual environment.


pages: 330 words: 91,805

Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism by Robin Chase

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Kessler, Anthropocene, Apollo 13, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, business climate, call centre, car-free, carbon tax, circular economy, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commoditize, congestion charging, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deal flow, decarbonisation, different worldview, do-ocracy, don't be evil, Donald Shoup, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eyjafjallajökull, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, frictionless, Gini coefficient, GPS: selective availability, high-speed rail, hive mind, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Kinder Surprise, language acquisition, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, machine readable, means of production, megacity, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, openstreetmap, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, Post-Keynesian economics, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Turing test, turn-by-turn navigation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, vertical integration, Zipcar

Using no-equity crowdfunding to understand market demand or create a pilot that is then followed by equity funding or a successful acquisition has raised moral outrage in some circumstances. Oculus Rift, the company producing a virtual-reality headset, raised $2.4 million on Kickstarter. A year and a half later, Google bought the company for $2 billion. The headline of an article from Verge, an online magazine, asks: “If you back a Kickstarter project that sells for $2 billion, do you deserve to get rich?”10 Had a $300 “gift” to Oculus Rift been a typical Series A investment, it would have resulted in a return of $43,500.11 Sure, the people who backed the project did so with eyes wide open.

Its purpose was to give individual creators “an agile, low-overhead and low-cost copyright-management regime, profiting both copyright owners and licensees.”14 With CC, you can allow anyone to use your material for any purpose, or to add some restrictions (for example, “If you are going to use this commercially, you need to tell me and license the use from me”). If we go back to the Oculus Rift story, the application of these kinds of licenses might have prevented the donors from feeling that they had been abused (and might also have caused Oculus founders to choose a different source of financing). Kickstarter and other donation funding sites might consider creating some simple rules, like GPL and CC, that could quickly and easily cover these low-likelihood financial windfalls.

Accenture, “The ‘Greater’ Wealth Transfer: Capitalizing on the Intergenerational Shift in Wealth,” 2012, www.accenture.com/us-en/Pages/insight-capitalizing-intergenerational-shift-wealth-capital-markets-summary.aspx. 10. Adrianne Jeffries, “If You Back a Kickstarter Project That Sells for $2 Billion, Do You Deserve to Get Rich?” TheVerge.com, March 28, 2014, www.theverge.com/2014/3/28/5557120/what-if-oculus-rift-kickstarter-backers-had-gotten-equity. 11. Greg Belote, “What If Oculus Crowdfunded for Equity? A 145x Return,” WeFunder, March 26, 2014, https://wefunder.me/post/42-what-if-oculus-crowdfunded-for-equity. 12. “Top 20 Open Source Licenses,” BlackDuckSoftware.com, www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-open-source-licenses. 13.


pages: 168 words: 50,647

The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-To-5 by Taylor Pearson

Airbnb, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Black Swan, call centre, cloud computing, commoditize, content marketing, creative destruction, David Heinemeier Hansson, drop ship, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, Google Hangouts, Hacker Conference 1984, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fragmentation, means of production, Oculus Rift, passive income, passive investing, Peter Thiel, power law, remote working, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, scientific management, sharing economy, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, software as a service, software is eating the world, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, TED Talk, telemarketer, the long tail, Thomas Malthus, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, Whole Earth Catalog

The multiples that are commanded by entrepreneurial companies when they’re acquired by corporations are seemingly absurd, and yet steadily rising. Entrepreneurial companies that were acquired in the last five years like Mint, WhatsApp, and Oculus Rift all got multiples far higher than what any traditional business valuation would have yielded because they positioned themselves to be strategically acquired. Less than two years after it was founded, Oculus Rift was bought by Facebook for $2 billion. WhatsApp was also acquired by Facebook for $21.8 billion, 2000× the annual revenue. Financial tracking company Mint was bought by Intuit two years after it was founded for $170 million.

Mike and Kimberly, two early readers of this book alerted me to the creation of the game walkthrough market, also known as “Let’s Players,” because the videos originally boasted titles like “Let’s Play Legend of Zelda.” Using $20 screen recorder software, a $30 webcam, and a $60 microphone, Let’s Players play video games and offer commentary to prospective gamers. PewDiePie, a Swedish Let’s Player, has generated $12 million dollars from his videos. The Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset first sent its market feelers out through Let’s Players, who tested out games with the headset. Now the headset is rapidly on its way to being commonly available to the masses. As more and more platforms are built, there are more and more distribution channels opening up every day.


pages: 501 words: 114,888

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, call centre, cashless society, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, digital twin, disruptive innovation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental economics, fake news, food miles, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, game design, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, gigafactory, Google X / Alphabet X, gravity well, hive mind, housing crisis, Hyperloop, impact investing, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, initial coin offering, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late fees, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, loss aversion, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mary Lou Jepsen, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, microdosing, mobile money, multiplanetary species, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, QR code, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robo advisor, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, smart grid, Snapchat, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, urban planning, Vision Fund, VTOL, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, X Prize

But as the 2000s progressed, the convergence of increasingly powerful game engines and AI image-rendering software turned deceptive into disruptive and the VR universe opened for business. Startups started starting up. And being acquired. In 2012, Facebook made waves when they spent $2 billion to acquire the VR company Oculus Rift. By 2015, Venture Beat reported that a market which typically saw only ten new entrants a year, suddenly had 234. The year 2017 was a banner one for Samsung, when they sold 3.65 million headsets and turned enough heads that everyone from Apple and Google to Cisco and Microsoft decided to investigate VR.

Yet the biggest development isn’t in the amount of cash involved; rather, it’s who gets access to that cash. Peer-to-peer microlending sites like Kiva have brought available capital to parts of the world where investors have long turned a blind eye, while reward-based programs have given us everything from difficult to fund ocean cleanup technologies to pie-in-the-sky breakthroughs such as Oculus Rift. By democratizing access to capital, crowdfunding allows anyone, anywhere, with a good idea and access to a smartphone, to seek the cash they need to get going. It’s why Goldman Sachs described crowdfunding as “potentially the most disruptive of all the new models of finance.” If crowdfunding is the new way for entrepreneurs to raise capital, then venture funding, our next category, represents the old.

Virtual reality will significantly increase that percentage. “Facebook is an addictive technological drug that, like every drug, gives people temporary pleasure and, ultimately, causes people to become psychiatrically ill,” psychiatrist Keith Ablow recently explained in an article for Fox News. “Oculus Rift will make matters worse.” Yet dopamine is merely one of the brain’s major reward chemicals. There’s also norepinephrine, endorphins, serotonin, anandamide, and oxytocin to consider. All are massively pleasurable. Digital media isn’t incredibly effective at producing any beyond dopamine, but the immersive nature of VR makes it able to trigger all six.


pages: 370 words: 97,138

Beyond: Our Future in Space by Chris Impey

3D printing, Admiral Zheng, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, AltaVista, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Berlin Wall, Biosphere 2, Buckminster Fuller, built by the lowest bidder, butterfly effect, California gold rush, carbon-based life, Charles Lindbergh, Colonization of Mars, cosmic abundance, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Dennis Tito, discovery of DNA, Doomsday Clock, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Eratosthenes, Great Leap Forward, Haight Ashbury, Hans Moravec, Hyperloop, I think there is a world market for maybe five computers, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Late Heavy Bombardment, life extension, low earth orbit, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mars Rover, Mars Society, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, Oculus Rift, operation paperclip, out of africa, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, phenotype, private spaceflight, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk tolerance, Rubik’s Cube, Scaled Composites, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Searching for Interstellar Communications, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snow Crash, space junk, SpaceShipOne, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, supervolcano, technological singularity, telepresence, telerobotics, the medium is the message, the scientific method, theory of mind, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Virgin Galactic, VTOL, wikimedia commons, world market for maybe five computers, X Prize, Yogi Berra

Robinson 1993 covers colonization; the quote in the following paragraph is from p. 171. Green Mars by K. S. Robinson 1994 covers terraforming. Blue Mars by K. S. Robinson 1995 covers the long-term future of human habitation. All are published by Random House (New York). 10: Remote Sensing 1. “Why Oculus Rift Is the Future of Gaming,” online at http://www.gizmoworld.org/why-oculus-rift-is-the-future-in-gaming/. 2. Intriguingly, telepresence doesn’t have to convey the remote scene with perfect fidelity, because the brain has a tendency to “fill in the blanks” and “smooth out the rough edges” of any representation that is familiar. See “Another Look at ‘Being There’ Experiences in Digital Media: Exploring Connections of Telepresence with Mental Imagery” by I.

The Sims sold more than 150 million copies worldwide. If we think of how far video games came in twenty years, from the primitive graphics of Pac-Man to the cartoonish but quasi-realistic 3-D graphics of The Sims, imagine what another twenty years will bring. A hint of that came in 2014 with the release of the Oculus Rift, a gaming helmet that immerses a player in 3-D virtual reality.1 The best sense of the experience is the dramatic opening sequence of the 3-D movie Gravity. The future of Solar System exploration may lie in telepresence, a set of technologies that allow a person to feel that he or she is in a remote location.

., 239 Los Angeles Times, 71 Losing My Virginity (Branson), 86, 87 Louis IX, king of France, 23 Louis XVI, king of France, 68 Lovelock, James, 286 Lowell, Percival, 163–64 Lucian of Samosata, 20 Lucretius, 18–19 Luna program, 50–51 Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, 156 Lunokhod rover, 143 Lynx rocket plane, 101 M5 fiber, 161 McAuliffe, Christa, 55, 74 Mack 3 Blackbird, 69 McKay, Chris, 173 McLellan, William, 283 magnetic implants, 207 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 190 magnetic sails, 186, 223 magnitude of time, 248–50, 249 Manhattan Project, 36, 221 Manifest Destiny, applied to space, 146–47, 199 Manned Habitat Unit, 169 many worlds concept, 17–20, 17, 49, 267 Mao Zedong, 141 Marconi, Guglielmo, 237 Mariner 2, 51 Mariner 4, 164 Marino, Lori, 190 Marriott hotels, 145 Mars, 28, 237, 270 challenges of travel to, 166–70 distance from Earth to, 50, 148, 166 Earth compared to, 171–72, 216 establishing a colony on, 166–71, 169, 192, 195, 200–201, 203, 214, 248 evidence of water on, 124–25, 163–66, 165, 173 fly-bys of, 51, 170 imaginative perceptions of, 163–65 latency on, 178 map of, 163 obstacles to exploration of, 66–67, 148 one-way journey to, 166, 170–71, 200 as potentially habitable, 124–25, 163, 165–66, 171, 172–74, 234, 278 privately funded missions to, 170–71 probes to, 40, 51, 52, 164–65, 176, 246 projected exploration of, 94–98, 101, 104, 115, 119, 157, 161, 163–74, 178, 181, 182 property rights on, 145, 198–99 sex and reproduction on, 200 simulated journey to, 169–70 soil of, 170 staging points for, 161 terraforming of, 172–74, 182, 216, 227 tests for life on, 52 Mars Direct, 169 Mars500 mission, 169 Mars One, 170–71, 198–201 Mars Society, 166 Mars 3 lander, 51 Masai people, 120 Massachusetts General Hospital, 250 Masson-Zwaan, Tanja, 199 mathematics, 19 as universal language, 236–37 Matrix, The, 260 matter, manipulation of, 258 matter-antimatter annihilation, 220, 220, 221–22 Mavroidis, Constantinos, 182 Max-Q (maximum aerodynamic stress), 46 Maxwell, James Clerk, 183 Mayor, Michel, 126–28, 133 medicine: challenges and innovation in, 92–93, 263 cyborgs in, 205 medicine (continued) as lacking in space, 200 in life extension, 259 nanotechnology in, 225, 259 robots in, 180, 181, 182, 205 mediocrity, principle of, 261 Mendez, Abel, 278 mental models, 13–17, 18–19 Mercury: orbit of, 126, 215 property rights on, 145 as uninhabitable, 124 mercury poisoning, 118 Mercury program, 41, 42, 71, 74, 272 meta-intelligence, 94 meteorites, 152, 160, 160, 164, 195 methane, 52–53, 125, 132, 278 as biomarker, 217–18 methanogens, 217 “Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes, A” (Goddard), 30, 31 Methuselah, 131 mice, in scientific research, 48–49, 250–51 microbes, microbial life, 97–98, 173, 174, 217, 241, 246, 286 habitable environments for, 122–25, 165–66, 186 microcephaly, 203 microgravity, 115 microsatellites, 90 Microsoft, 84, 188 microwaves: beaming of, 223–24 signals, 187 Microwave Sciences, 223 Middle East, population dispersion into, 8, 118 migration: early human population dispersion through, 5–9, 9, 15, 19 motivation for, 9–12, 11 military: covert projects of, 69–72 Eisenhower’s caveat about, 79 in Internet development, 77, 78–79 nanotechnology in, 180–81, 225 in rocket development, 30, 32–39, 55–56, 71 in space programs, 73, 76, 79, 144, 153 Milky Way galaxy, 227, 240, 253, 263, 270 ancient Greek concept of, 18 Drake equation for detectable life in, 188, 233–35 Earth-like exoplanets in, 129–33, 233, 291 formation and age of, 235 size of, 242 Millis, Marc, 290 mind control, 245 mind uploading, 259 miniaturization, see nanotechnology minimum viable population, 201, 251 mining: of asteroids, 155–56, 182, 214 of Enceladus, 227 on Moon, 214 by robots, 178, 182 Minsky, Marvin, 177, 179 MirCorp, 75 mirrors, 173 Mir Space Station, 75, 115, 167–68 Miss Baker (monkey), 47–48, 48 Mission Control, 43, 100, 158, 269 MIT, 38, 77, 90, 141, 226, 257 mitochondrial DNA, 6, 9 Mittelwerk factory, 33, 35 Mojave Desert, 71, 82, 83 population adaptation to heat in, 118–19 molecules, in nanotechnology, 151 Mongols, 23, 24 monkeys, in space research, 47–48, 48 Montgolfier brothers, 68 Moon: age of, 50 ancient Greek concept of, 18 in asteroid capture, 156 distance from Earth to, 49–50, 150, 166, 267 first animals on, 49 first man on, 71, 158 latency on, 178 lunar base proposed for, 157–63, 158, 160, 195, 214, 248 manned landings on, 44–45, 49–50, 54, 56, 63, 71, 84, 99, 104, 108, 143, 157, 158, 176, 219, 270, 272 obstacles to exploration of, 66 orbit of, 25 probes to, 40, 51, 129, 140, 143 projected missions to, 92, 143, 157–63, 166, 214, 275 property rights on, 145–47, 198–99 proposed commercial flights to, 102 in science fiction, 20, 26 soil of, 159, 160, 162 as staging point for Mars, 161 staging points for, 148 telescopic views of, 31, 49–50 as uninhabitable, 124, 166 US commitment to reach, 41–45 Moon Treaty (1979), 146 Moon Treaty, UN (1984), 279 Moore, John, 203 Moravec, 259–60 Morgan, Barbara, 74 Morrison, Philip, 187, 239 Mosaic web browser, 79 Moses, 148 motion, Newton’s laws of, 25, 67–68 multistage rockets, 29 multiverse, 252–57, 255 Musk, Elon, 94–98, 97, 100–101, 112–13, 148, 205 mutation, 6–7 cosmic rays and, 204 7R, 10–12, 11, 15 mutually assured destruction, 42 Mylar, 184, 225 N1/L3 rocket, 44, 54 nanobots, 179–82, 181, 224–28 NanoSail-D, 184, 185 nanosponges, 180 nanotechnology, 151–52, 179–82, 208, 214, 245, 280, 283 projected future of, 257–59 see also nanobots National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 83, 90, 96, 97–98, 114, 116–17, 128, 144, 153, 156, 176, 178, 182, 184–85, 185, 195, 200, 205, 206, 216, 224, 226, 271, 275, 280, 290 and Air Force, 71 artistic depiction of space colonies by, 196, 196 budget of, 39, 42, 43, 49, 54, 64, 75, 99, 104, 140, 144, 158, 166, 188, 238, 270, 272, 284 cut back of, 45, 49, 54, 188 formation of, 38–39, 145, 269 private and commercial collaboration with, 99–102, 104 revival of, 103–5 space program of, 51, 55–56, 71–76, 92, 157–58, 285–86 stagnation of, 63–67, 141, 147, 166 National Geographic Society, 7, 265 National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 187–88 National Science Foundation (NSF), 78–79 Native Americans, 118 naturalness, 256 natural selection, 6, 16, 123, 164, 251, 291 Nature, 187 Naval Research lab, 37 Navy, US: Bureau of Aeronautics, 30 in rocket development, 36–37 Nayr, Ernst, 238 Nazis, 48 Propaganda Ministry of, 32 von Braun and, 32–34, 141, 269 NBC, 75 Nedelin, Mitrofan, 43 “needle in a haystack” problem, 188–89, 242–43 “Nell” (rocket), 29 Neptune, 127, 131, 225 as uninhabitable, 125 Nergal, 163 Netscape, 80 New Mexico, 88, 88, 105 Newton, Isaac, 24–25, 25, 30, 67–68, 110, 262, 267 New York Times, 30, 94 Nicholas, Henry, 214 Niven, Larry, 198, 253 Nixon, Richard, 108, 167 Nobel Prize, 126, 180, 214 nomad planets, 128 Noonan, James, 266 nuclear fission, 220, 220, 221 nuclear fusion, 110, 161–62, 220, 221, 221, 222 nuclear reactors, 224 nuclear weapons, 36, 42, 78, 129, 146, 197–98, 222, 234–35, 244, 245, 246, 286 Nuremberg Chronicles, 17 Nyberg, Karen, 200 Obama, Barack, 104 Oberth, Hermann, 28, 31–32, 36, 268 oceans: acidification of, 195 sealed ecosystem proposed for, 197 Oculus Rift, 176 Ohio, astronauts from, 74 Okuda, Michael, 228 Olsen, Ken, 213 100 Year Starship project, 224 100 Year Starship Symposium, 229 101955 Bennu (asteroid), 156 O’Neill, Gerard, 196, 251–52 Opportunity rover, 165 optical SETI, 190, 243 Orbital Sciences Corporation, 100–101, 275 orbits: concept of, 25 geostationary, 149–50, 150 legislation on, 146 low Earth, 49, 54, 63, 70–71, 70, 74–75, 97, 100, 110, 113–14, 151, 155, 184 manned, 40–41, 141–42 staging points from, 148 orcas, 190 Orion spacecraft, 104 Orteig, Raymond, 90 Orteig Prize, 90–91 Orwell, George, 35 OSIRIS-REx, 156 Outer Space Treaty (1967), 145–47, 198–99 “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking” (Clarke), 201 oxygen, 156, 159, 161, 170, 172, 173–74, 182, 193–95, 214 Oymyakon, Siberia, population adaptation to cold in, 119–20 ozone, as biomarker, 217 Pacific Ocean, 9, 224 Pac-Man, 175 Page, Larry, 92 Paine, Thomas, 167 Pale Blue Dot (Sagan), 121 “Pale Blue Dot,” Earth as, 53, 118–22, 121, 130 Paperclip, Operation, 141 parabolic flight, 93 paradox, as term, 241 Paratrechina longicornis (crazy ant), 193 Parkinson’s disease, 202–3 particle physics, standard model of, 256 Pascal, Blaise, 120 Pauley, Phil, 196–97 PayPal, 95, 97 Pensées (Pascal), 120 People’s Daily, 162 People’s Liberation Army, 144 Pericles, 18 Pettit, Don, 100, 273 phenotype, 6 philanthropy, 95 PhoneSat, 185 photons, 183, 186 in teleportation, 229, 230, 231 photosynthesis, as biomarker, 217 pigs, 250 Pinker, Steven, 16 Pioneer probes, 50, 51–52 piracy, 24 Pitcairn Island, 202 planetary engineering, 172 Planetary Resources, 156 planetary science, 51–52, 176 Planetary Society, 184 planets: exploration of, 49–53 formation of, 156 plate techtonics, 132, 241 play, imagination in, 10, 14 pluralism, 17–20, 17, 49 plutonium, 66 poetry, space, 272–73 politics, space exploration and, 63–64, 104, 141, 214, 238 Polyakov, Valeri, 115, 167–68 population bottleneck, 201–2, 287 Poynter, Jane, 193 Princess of Mars, A (Burroughs), 164 Principia (Newton), 25 Project Orion, 221, 221 Project Ozma, 187–88, 237, 253 prokaryotes, 172 property rights, in space, 145–47, 198 Proton rockets, 65, 113 proton scoop, 222–23 Proxmire, William, 238 Puerto Rico, 239, 243 pulsar, 131 Pythagorean Theorem, 238 Qian Xuesen, 141 Qi Jiguang, 24 Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, 92 quantum entanglement, 230–32, 230 quantum genesis, 255 quantum mechanics, 258 quantum teleportation, 230–32, 230 quantum theory, 189 qubits, 230 Queloz, Didier, 126–28, 133 R-7 rocket, 37 R-16 rocket, 43 radiation, infrared, 109, 253–54, 254 radioactivity, as energy source, 124, 181 radio waves, 66, 187, 189, 242 ramjets, 222–23 RAND Corporation, 222 Rare Earth hypothesis, 241 RCS Energia, 106 RD-180 engine, 72 Reagan, Ronald, administration of, 167, 271 reality TV, 75, 171, 214, 282 “Realm of Fear,” 229 reasoning, human capacity for, 13–17, 18–19 red dwarfs, 131 Red Mars (Stanley), 174 Red Scare, 141 Redstone rocket, 36–37, 71 reindeer, 119–20 remote sensing, 175–91, 224 RepRap Project, 227 reproduction, sexual, 6, 172 Ride, Sally, 74 “Right Stuff,” as term, 71, 114 Right Stuff, The (Wolfe), 272 Ringworld series (Niven), 253 risk: as basic to human nature, 9, 262 genetic factor in, 10–12 of living on Mars, 167–70 in pushing human limits, 120 of space tourism, 102, 105–9, 155 of space travel, 42–43, 55–56, 56, 106–9, 152–53 Robinson, Kim Stanley, 174 robonaut project, 179 robots, robotics: as aids to humans, 249, 250 in asteroid redirection, 104 commercial, 178 ethical issues of, 179 nanotechnology in, 179–82, 181 remote control of, 177–78 remote sensing through, 176 self-assembly and self-replication by, 226–28, 258, 259 in spacecraft, 50, 100, 100 space exploration by, 53–57, 66, 98, 133, 161, 177–79, 179, 208, 224–28 see also cyborgs; nanobots Rocketdyne, 112 rocket equation, 27, 53, 72–73, 110–11, 111, 148, 220, 268 rocket fuel, 110–13, 148, 156, 159, 161 comparison of efficiency of, 219–24 Rocket Performance Calculator, 222 rockets: alternatives to, 148–53 “bible” of, 267 challenges in launching of, 43–44, 46–49, 106, 107, 111–12, 148 comparison of US and Soviet, 44 cost of, 112–13, 113 developing technology of, 21–39, 43, 101, 103, 112–13, 183, 262 fuel for, 110–13, 148, 156, 159, 161, 220–21 launched from planes, 84 liquid-fueled, 28–29, 29 physics and function of, 110–14 proposed energy technologies for, 220–24 reusable, 101, 103, 111, 112, 113 solar sails compared to, 183 as term, 23 visionaries in development of, 26–30, 94 in warfare, 22–24, 30, 32–34 see also specific rockets “Rockets to the Planets in Space, The” (Oberth), 28 Rogers Commission, 271 Rohrabacher, Dana, 284 Rome, ancient, 18, 67, 163 Rovekamp, Roger, 207 rovers, 66–67, 92, 125, 140, 143, 158, 165, 167 nanotechnology in, 181–82 remote sensing through, 176 Rozier, Jean-François de, 68 RP-1 kerosine, 110 RS-25 rocket, 112 Russia, 23, 26–27, 149, 178 space program of, 37, 65–66, 72, 75, 84, 91, 104, 106, 107–8, 113, 114, 140, 143, 168, 184, 195, 200, 271 space tourism by, 75, 102 tensions between US and, 72 see also Soviet Union Russian Revolution, 27, 47 Russian Space Agency, 102 Rutan, Burt, 72, 82–86, 85, 88, 88, 89, 91, 97–98, 105–6, 214 Rutan, Dick, 83–84 Rutan Aircraft Factory, 83 Saberhagen, Fred, 177, 259 Sagan, Carl, 53, 121–22, 121, 176–77, 184, 198, 234–35, 238, 240 Sahakian, Barbara, 98 Sahara Desert, 238 sails: solar, 183–86, 185 wind-driven, 67–68, 183, 262 Salyut space station, 54, 108 satellites: artificial Earth, 36–39, 37, 40, 65, 71, 106 commercial, 96, 105 communications, 101, 142, 153 in energy capture, 253 geostationary, 149 GPS, 144 launching of, 154, 154 miniature, 90, 184–85 Saturn: moon of, 125, 227 probes to, 52–53 as uninhabitable, 125 Saturn V rocket, 43, 44, 46, 54, 83, 104, 111, 113, 113, 166 Scaled Composites, 83, 89 science fiction, 192, 196, 222, 223, 239, 250, 253 aliens in, 186–87 in film, 28, 204 Mars in, 164, 174 roots of, 20 technologies of, 228–32, 259 see also specific authors and works scientific method, 213 Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), 187–90, 234, 239, 254 evolution and technology of, 237–39, 242–43, 242 lack of signals detected by, 236–37, 240–44 new paradigms for, 258 “Searching for Interstellar Communications” (Cocconi and Morrison), 187 sea travel: early human migration through, 8, 9 exploration by, 109, 262 propulsion in, 67–68 self-replication, 226–28, 258, 259 Senate, US, Armed Services Preparedness Committee of, 39 SETI Institute, 188 78–6 (pig), 250 sex: promiscuous, 12 in reproduction, 6, 172 in space, 200, 214 Shackleton Energy Company, 161 Shane, Scott, 98 Shatner, William, 88–89 Shelley, Mary, 206 Shenlong (“Divine Dragon”), 145 Shenzhou 10, 142–43 Shepard, Alan, 41, 84 Shostak, Seth, 243 Siberia, 65, 119–20, 238 population dispersion into, 8, 118, 218 Sidereal Messenger, The (Galileo), 270 Siemienowicz, Kazimierz, 267 Simonyi, Charles, 75 Sims, 175 simulation: infinite regression in, 261 living in, 257–62 simulation hypothesis, 261 Sinatra, Frank, 45 singularity, 207 in origin of cosmos, 255 and simulation, 257–62 technological, 258–59 Singularity University, 94, 259 Skylab space station, 54, 116 Skype video, 176 smart motes, 181, 225 smartphones, 92, 185 Smithsonian Institution, 30, 81 Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 85, 91, 271 Snow Crash (Stephenson), 103 Snowden, Edward, 178 social media, 195 Sojourner rover, 165 SolarCity, 96–97 solar flares, 167 solar power, 96, 181, 183–86 solar sails, solar sailing, 183–86, 185, 223, 225, 227 Solar System: discovery of first planet beyond, 126–27 edge of, 50, 53, 121 formation of, 156 habitability potential in, 122, 124–26 latency variations in, 178 probes into, 51–52, 66, 177, 185–86, 208, 270 projected travel within, 248–49, 263 property rights in, 145–47, 198 worlds beyond, 126–29, 156, 208, 215, 250, 263 solar wind, 162, 223 sound barrier, breaking of, 69, 71 South America, 11, 202, 218 Soviet Union, 30, 34, 37, 141 fall of, 47, 65, 75, 197, 271–72 rocket development in, 35–39 space program failures and losses of, 43, 47, 50–51, 54, 269 space program of, 37–39, 40–43, 141, 149, 237, 271 Soyuz spacecraft, 43, 55, 75, 84, 91, 102, 106, 113, 143 crash of, 107–8 space: civilians in, 55, 74 civilian vs. military control of, 37–39, 69–71, 79, 153 commercialization of, 55, 63, 73–76, 79–80, 88–89, 92, 97, 99–109, 100, 110, 147, 153–56, 154, 199, 214, 249, 275 debris in, 144, 152 first American in, 41 first man in, 40–41, 41 first women in, 40, 74 as infinite, 18, 19, 22 as inhospitable to human beings, 53–54, 114–17, 121 legislation on, 39, 78, 90, 144, 145–47, 198–200 living in, 192–208 “living off the land” in, 166, 200 peaceful exploration of, 39 potential for human habitabilty in, 123 prototype for sealed ecosystem in, 192–97 Space Act (1958), 39, 90 Space Adventures, 102, 275 space colonization: challenges of, 197–201 cyborgs in, 204–8 evolutionary diversion in, 201–4 legal issues in, 198–200 of Mars, 166–71, 169, 192, 195, 203 off-Earth human beings in, 215, 250–51 prototype experiments for, 192–97 space elevators, 27, 148–53, 150, 160–61, 185, 280 “Space Exploration via Telepresence,” 178 Spaceflight Society, 28 space hotels, 102–3 Space Launch System (SLS), 104 space mining, 155–56, 161–62 “Space Oddity,” 142 spaceplanes, 71–72, 85, 144 Spaceport America, 1–6, 105 Space Race, 35–39, 37, 40–43, 50, 55, 139 SpaceShipOne, 72, 85, 85, 88–89, 88, 91 SpaceShipTwo, 88, 101, 105 Space Shuttle, 45, 46, 49, 64, 72, 84, 85, 111–13, 112, 159, 167, 194, 219–20, 222, 275 disasters of, 55–56, 56, 74–75, 107, 111–13 final flight of, 271 limitations of, 55–56, 64–65 as reusable vehicle, 54–55 space sickness, 114 spacesuits, 89, 182, 195–96 space-time, 255, 255 manipulation of, 258 space tourism, 63, 73, 75–76, 79–80, 88–89, 91, 101–3, 154, 170, 214 celebrities in, 88, 101–2 revenue from, 154–55, 155 risks of, 102, 105–9, 155 rules for, 105 space travel: beyond Solar System, see interstellar travel bureaucracy of, 105–10, 271 cost of, 39, 42, 45, 49, 54, 55, 66, 75, 81–82, 91, 112–14, 113, 139–49, 153, 155–56, 158–59, 161, 166, 179, 183, 198, 214, 217, 222, 224–26, 252, 270, 275, 284 early attempts at, 21–22, 22 effect of rocket equation in, see rocket equation entrepreneurs of, 81–98 erroneous predictions about, 214 failures and disasters in, 21–22, 22, 38, 43, 47, 50–51, 54–56, 56, 63–64, 68, 72, 74–75, 101, 102, 107, 142, 184, 269, 271, 275 fatality rate of, 107–9 fictional vignettes of, 1–4, 59–62, 135–38, 209–12 Internet compared to, 76–80, 77, 80 life extension for, 250–51 lifetimes lived in, 251 living conditions in, 114–17 new business model for, 99–105 Newton’s theories as basis of, 25 obstacles to, 21, 63, 66–67, 105–109 space travel (continued) as part of simulation, 261–62 public engagement in, 45, 73, 85, 93, 162, 177, 217 remote sensing vs., 175–91 risks of, 43–44, 83, 89, 93, 105–9 speculation on future of, 76–80, 133, 213–32, 248–52 suborbital, 84 telescopic observation vs., 49–50 visionaries of, 26–39, 80, 94, 109 SpaceX, 96, 97, 100–103, 113–14, 275 SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, 96, 100, 100, 102, 170 special theory of relativity, 228, 231 specific impulse, 220 spectroscopy, 127, 165, 176 spectrum analyzer, 237 Speer, Albert, 34 Spielberg, Steven, 238 Spirit of St.


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Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone by Satya Nadella, Greg Shaw, Jill Tracie Nichols

3D printing, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, anti-globalists, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bretton Woods, business process, cashless society, charter city, cloud computing, complexity theory, computer age, computer vision, corporate social responsibility, crowdsourcing, data science, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, fault tolerance, fulfillment center, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Grace Hopper, growth hacking, hype cycle, industrial robot, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, late capitalism, Mars Rover, Minecraft, Mother of all demos, Neal Stephenson, NP-complete, Oculus Rift, pattern recognition, place-making, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Snow Crash, special economic zone, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, subscription business, TED Talk, telepresence, telerobotics, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Soul of a New Machine, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, two-sided market, universal basic income, Wall-E, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, young professional, zero-sum game

Sometimes that means working with old rivals and sometimes it means forging surprising new partnerships. We work with Google, for example, to make it possible for Office to work on their Android platform. We partner with Facebook to make all of their applications work universally across Windows products and, likewise, to help them make our Minecraft gaming applications work on their Oculus Rift, a virtual reality device that competes for attention with our own HoloLens. Similarly, we’re working with Apple to enable customers to better manage their iPhones within an enterprise. And we’re working with Red Hat, a Linux platform that competes with Windows, so that enterprises built on Red Hat can use our Azure cloud to scale up globally by taking advantage of investments we’ve made in local data centers around the world.

Will there one day be mixed reality natives—young people who expect all of their computer experiences to be immersive blends of the real and the virtual—just as today we recognize digital natives, those for whom the Internet has always been there? Companies are taking different approaches with head-mounted computers. Virtual reality, as provided by our Windows 10 MR devices or Facebook’s Oculus Rift, largely blocks out the real world, immersing the user in a completely digital world. Google Glass, for example, projects information onto your eyeglasses. Snapchat Spectacles let you augment what you see with relevant content and filters. HoloLens provides access to mixed reality in which the users can navigate both their current location—interact with people in the same room—and a remote environment while also manipulating holograms and other digital objects.

See also smartphones; and specific products mobility, 42, 43, 54, 58, 70, 73, 88, 108, 216, 225 Mojang, 106–8 Moore, Gordon, 161 Moore’s Law, 140, 161 motion-sensing, 145 Motorola, 72 Mount Rainier, 19 mouse, 142 movable type, 152 Mulally, Alan, 64 multiculturalism, 19 multinational corporations, role of, 12, 235–39 Mundie, Craig, 30, 163 Musk, Elon, 203 Muslims, 19 Myerson, Terry, 3, 82, 105, 109 Myhrvold, Nathan, 30 Nadella, Anu, 7–8, 14, 27, 30–33, 41, 86, 92–93, 114 Nadella, father, 16–18, 20–21, 36, 56 Nadella, mother, 16–18, 20, 22, 86, 114, 181 nano-machines, 228 Nanyuki, Kenya, 99 Napoleonic Wars, 188 Narayen, Shantanu, 20, 136 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 144, 146 National Football League (NFL), 10–11 National ICT for Development Policy (Malawi), 216 national security, 174–75, 228 National Security Agency (NSA), 172, 174–75, 181 Native Americans, 156 natural language, 151 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 16 Nepal, 44 Netflix, 30, 126 Netherland (O’Neill), 18 .Net, 58 networking, 45, 49, 213 Neuborne, Burt, 190 New Yorker, 233 New York Times, 24, 80, 176, 195, 209 New Zealand, 78 Nichols, Jill Tracie, 66–67, 95 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 79, 147 Nilekani, Nandan, 222 Nokia, 64, 71–73, 106, 133 nondeterministic polynomial time (NP-complete), 25 North, Douglass, 184 North Dakota, 47 North Korea, 169–70 Novell, 26 Numoto, Takeshi, 59 Obama, Barack, 3, 81, 175–76, 211–12, 214 Obama, Michelle, 211 Oculus Rift, 125, 144 Office, 2, 47, 53–54, 59, 68, 73, 81, 85, 123–25, 137, 203 Office 365, 44–45, 61, 62, 85, 123–25, 152, 233 OneDrive, 121 O’Neill, Joseph, 18 One Microsoft, 102, 108 OneNote, 103, 121 OneWeek growth hack, 103–5 online services, 46–47, 51 open-source, 62, 102 opportunity, 79, 238 Oracle, 3, 26, 81 Orlando nightclub massacre, 117 Osmania University, 36 Outlook, 104, 121 Ozzie, Ray, 46, 52–53 Parthasarathy, Sanjay, 115–16 Partnership on AI, 200 partnerships, 76, 78, 120–38 passion, 92, 94, 100, 103, 242 Pataudi, Tiger, 37 pattern recognition, 54, 150, 152, 201 pay equity, 113–14 PC Revolution, 1, 28, 45, 71, 89, 108, 139, 213 decline of, 66, 70, 79 perception, 150, 152, 154 pharmacies, 218, 223 Phillips, James, 58 PhotoShop, 136 photosynthesis, 160 Pichai, Sundar, 131 pivot tables, 143 Pixar, 13 platform shifts, 76, 142 point-of-sales devices, 128–29 Poland, 223 policymaking, 82, 182, 189–92, 214, 223–28, 235 poverty, 99, 237 Power BI, 121 Powerpoint, 121 Practo, 222 predictive power, 42, 88 Predix platform, 127 printing press, 152 PRISM, 172–73 Prism Skylabs, 153 privacy, 170, 172–80, 186–91, 193–94, 202, 205, 224, 230, 238 probabilistic decision making, 54 productivity, 76, 79, 88, 124, 126, 226–28 product launches, 98–100 public health, 237 public-private partnerships, 225–26 public sector, 222, 228, 237–38 Qatar, 225 Qi Lu, Dr., 51–52 Qualcomm, 3, 80, 131–32 quantum computing, 11, 110, 140–42, 159–67, 209, 212, 239 qubits, 160–61, 164, 166–67 logical, 167 topological, 162, 166 radiation monitoring, 44 railroads, 215 Ramakrishnan, Raghu, 58–59 Ranji Trophy, 38, 40 Rashid, Rick, 30 Reagan, Ronald, 181 Real Madrid, 71 Red Dog, 52–53, 58 Red Hat, 125 Reform Government Surveillance alliance, 174 refugees, 218 regulatory systems, 130, 186–90, 215, 227–28 relational algebra, 26 respect, 135, 202 retailers, 128–29, 153 rice production, 44 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 12 Rise and Fall of American Growth (Gordon), 234 risk-taking, 111, 220 River Runs Through It, A (Maclean), 56 Roberts, John, 185–86 robotics, 13, 145, 149–50, 202–4, 208–9, 228, 231–32, 239 Rochester Institute of Technology, 146 Rocky movies, 44–45 Rogan, Seth, 169 Rolling Stones, 98 Rolls-Royce, 127 Romer, Paul, 229 root-cause analysis, 61 RSA-2048 encryption, 162 Rubinstein, Ira, 32–33 run times, 203 rural areas, connecting, 99 Russia, 172 Russinovich, Mark, 58 Rwanda Vision 2020, 216 safety, 153, 172, 176–80, 182, 185, 188, 194, 228 sales conference, 86–95, 100, 118 Salesforce, 121 Samsung, 132–34 San Bernardino attacks, 177, 179, 189 Sanders, Bernie, 230 Sanskrit, 16, 181 Saudi Arabia, 225 scale, 50, 161 Schiller, Phil, 124 Schmidt, Eric, 26 Scott, Kevin, 82 search and seizure, 185–86 Search Checkpoint #1, 51 search engines, 46–52.


pages: 477 words: 75,408

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism by Calum Chace

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Robotics, Andy Rubin, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, bread and circuses, call centre, Chris Urmson, congestion charging, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital divide, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, Flynn Effect, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, gender pay gap, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, income inequality, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, lifelogging, lump of labour, Lyft, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Milgram experiment, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, PageRank, pattern recognition, post scarcity, post-industrial society, post-work, precariat, prediction markets, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Rodney Brooks, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, TED Talk, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, working-age population, Y Combinator, young professional

When the sense data being received by the brain become sufficiently realistic, the brain “flips”, and decides that the illusion being presented is the reality. Google is not giving up on smartphone-based VR. Having sold more than 5m of the cardboard units, it plans to launch a more robust plastic version in 2016, with better sensors and lenses. It will remain considerably cheaper than the Oculus Rift, which will cost hundreds of dollars.[clx] Augmented reality (AR) is similar to VR except that it is overlaid on your perception of the real world rather than replacing it. It can make elephants swim through the air in front of you, or plant a skyscraper in your back garden. This is handy if you want to remain alert to the threat from dogs and potholes while you are hallucinating swimming elephants.

Enquiry handling that was offshored to India and then repatriated to home countries is now being offshored again - this time to machines housed in cold climates where the cost of keeping the servers cool are lower. 10. Media and the arts. The market for virtual reality apps and shows is booming as Oculus Rift, Meta, and their competitors create demand for latency-free, high resolution content. As usual, porn and sport look like being the killer apps, but there are unexpected hits too, such as “how-to” shows about parenting and relationship enhancement. 11. Management. Little change. 12. Professions.

In that case, who will decide what the cut-off point is between a house which people can carry on living in, and one which is too nice to be private property? VR to the rescue? At the time of writing, Palmer Luckey and John Carmack are hardly household names, but by the time this book is published they may well be. (In case they’re not, they are the key executives of Oculus Rift, which looks set to be the first commercially-available VR equipment to offer a convincingly immersive user experience.) They talk about a “moral imperative” to make virtual reality available to us all.[cccxxxiii] Luckey puts it like this: “Everyone wants to have a happy life, but it’s going to be impossible to give everyone everything they want....


pages: 366 words: 94,209

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity by Douglas Rushkoff

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, business process, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, centralized clearinghouse, citizen journalism, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate personhood, corporate raider, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, Flash crash, full employment, future of work, gamification, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global village, Google bus, Howard Rheingold, IBM and the Holocaust, impulse control, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, loss aversion, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, medical bankruptcy, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, power law, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, reserve currency, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social graph, software patent, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TaskRabbit, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Future of Employment, the long tail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transportation-network company, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, Y Combinator, young professional, zero-sum game, Zipcar

From the funder’s perspective, Kickstarter and its peers count as “investment” only in the grander sense. The platforms don’t let backers reap financial rewards, no matter how well the comics, movies, and products they have funded end up doing in the marketplace. For example, when the Kickstarter community provided Oculus Rift with $2.4 million to develop an immersive virtual-reality headset for video games, the crowdfunders didn’t share in the payoff, or the jubilation, when the company was acquired a year later by Facebook for an astounding $2 billion. Sure, those who paid $250 or more got the VR kit they purchased, but the thousand or so people who gave less than $250 didn’t even get an unassembled prototype kit—just commemorative T-shirts and posters, the sorts of premiums they’d get if they were subscribing to a public radio station.

Mike Masnick, “Larry Lessig Launches Crowdfunded SuperPAC to Try to End SuperPACs,” techdirt.com, May 1, 2014. 58. Jeremy Parish, “How Star Citizen Became the Most Successful Crowd Funded Game of All Time,” wdc.com, January 13, 2015. 59. Rory Carroll, “Silicon Valley’s Culture of Failure . . . and ‘the Walking Dead’ It Leaves Behind,” theguardian.com, June 28, 2014. 60. Steven Poole, “What Does the Oculus Rift Backlash Tell Us? Facebook Just Isn’t Cool,” theguardian.com, March 27, 2014. 61. Nicholas Carson, “The Good, Bad, and Ugly of AngelList Syndicates,” inc.com, September 30, 2013. 62. MicroVentures, “The 5 Keys to Becoming a MicroVentures Angel Investor” (sponsored content), venturebeat.com, January 1, 2014. 63.

Clean Magic Eraser, 107 music industry, 100 positive reinforcement feedback loop and, 28 power-law dynamics and, 26–27 360 deals and, 34 Musk, Elon, 121 Myspace, 31 Nakamoto, Satoshi, 143, 145 National Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress, 52–53 negative income tax, 64 Neilsen Soundscan, 26–27 Nelson, Jonathan, 26 Nelson, Matthew, 25, 26 Netflix, 29, 48 New Deal, 99 New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), 182 New York Times,37–38, 87, 177 99designs, 200 Nixon, Richard, 63 not-for-profits (NFPs), 121–23 obsolescence Amazon business model and, 89–90 corporations and, 70–71, 73 employment opportunities, technology as replacing and obsolescing, 51–54 Occupy Wall Street movement, 100, 152, 153 Oculus Rift, 201 offshoring, 78–79 Olen, Helaine, 170 OMGPop, 192, 193 online trading platforms, 176–78 open-source corporate strategies, 106–7 Open Source Ecology project, 217 Organic, Inc., 26 Ostrom, Elinor, 216 Pacific Lumber Company, 117 Palmer, Amanda, 38–39, 199 PandoDaily, 197–98 Pandora, 34, 218 Parker, Sean, 191–92 PayPal, 140–41 paywalls, 37–38 peer-to-peer economy/marketplaces, 16–17, 18 alternative corporate models for fostering, 93–97 Bandcamp and, 29–30 central currency as means of shutting down, 128–29 digital transaction networks and, 141 distribution of ability to create and exchange value by, 29–30 eBay and, 29 Known business model versus Blackboard’s in fostering, 95–97 obsolescence of, as effect of corporations, 70–71, 73 Sidecar business model versus Uber’s in fostering, 93–94 pensions, 170–71 Perez, Carlota, 98, 99 personhood, of corporations, 72, 73–74 Amazon and, 90 artificial intelligence and, 91 perspective painting, 235 Piketty, Thomas, 53–54, 131 Pitbull, 36 Pius X, Pope, 228–29, 230 platform cooperatives, 220–23 platform monopolies, 82–93, 101 acceleration in extraction of value and opportunity from economy and, 92–93 Amazon (publishing industry) and, 87–90 becoming entire environment and, 87 creative destruction and, 83–87 distributive alternatives to, 93–97 Uber (transportation industry) and, 85–87 Plum Organics, 119 Poole, Steven, 201 populists, 99–100 positive reinforcement, 28 Pound Foolish (Olen), 170 power-law distribution, 26–29, 30 precious metals currencies, 128 present shock, 6 price gouging, 86 privatization, 114–16 Proctor & Gamble, 107–8 productivity gains corporations failure to capitalize on, 77 great decoupling and, 53 income disparity and, 53–54 sharing of, with employees, 60–62 Prosper Marketplace, 203, 204 publishing industry, 87–89 Publix Super Markets, 117–18 quantitative easing, 137 Quirky, 199 Reagan, Ronald, 64 Real Pickles, 205–6 Renaissance, 45, 71, 230, 235–37 repatriation of jobs, 80 retirement savings plans, 170–75 fees and commissions charged for, 173–74 financial services industry and, 171–73, 175 401(k) plans and, 171–74 individual retirement accounts (IRAs), 171 pension accounts and, 170–71 performance of, 173–75 retrieval, 71–72, 73 return on assets (ROA), 76–77 Rifkin, Jeremy, 62 Roaring Twenties, 99 robotic ad-viewing programs, 37 Rolling Jubilee, 153 Rosenberg, Dan, 205–6 Rothschild, Lynn Forester de, 111 Ryan, Paul, 138 Ryan, William F., 63 Santa Barbara Missions, 156 scarcity, 62 Scholz, Trebor, 50, 223 Schor, Juliet, 58 Schumpeter, Joseph, 83, 84, 85 Second Machine Age, The (Brynjolfsson & McAfee), 23 secrecy, 106–7 seed-sharing networks, 217 self-help cooperatives, 159 Series A round of investment, 188–89 shareholder.


pages: 285 words: 58,517

The Network Imperative: How to Survive and Grow in the Age of Digital Business Models by Barry Libert, Megan Beck

active measures, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, asset allocation, asset light, autonomous vehicles, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, business intelligence, call centre, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, disintermediation, diversification, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, future of work, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, independent contractor, Infrastructure as a Service, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of writing, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, late fees, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Oculus Rift, pirate software, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, software as a service, software patent, Steve Jobs, subscription business, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, Wall-E, women in the workforce, Zipcar

Matthew Brunwasser, “A 21st-Century Migrant’s Essentials: Food, Shelter, Smartphone,” New York Times, August 25, 2015, http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/26/world/europe/a-21st-century-migrants-checklist-water-shelter-smartphone.html?_r=0. 2. Yegge’s comments have been reposted with permission on Google+, https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX. 3. This and the following remarks are Simon Parkin, “What Zuckerberg Sees in Oculus Rift,” MIT Technology Review, March 26, 2014, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/525881/what-zuckerberg-sees-in-oculus-rift/. 4. Julie Bort, “Cisco Chairman John Chambers Has an Idea for How the US Can Create Another 1 Million Jobs,” Business Insider, September 30, 2015, http://www.businessinsider.com/cisco-chairman-john-chambers-has-idea-to-create-1-million-us-jobs-a-year-2015-9.


pages: 236 words: 62,158

Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle by Jamie Woodcock

4chan, Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris, anti-work, antiwork, augmented reality, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Boris Johnson, Build a better mousetrap, butterfly effect, call centre, capitalist realism, collective bargaining, Columbine, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, emotional labour, game design, gamification, gentrification, gig economy, glass ceiling, global supply chain, global value chain, Hacker Ethic, Howard Zinn, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, Jeremy Corbyn, John Conway, Kickstarter, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, microaggression, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Oculus Rift, pink-collar, planned obsolescence, scientific management, sexual politics, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Steve Bannon, systems thinking, tech worker, union organizing, unpaid internship, V2 rocket, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War

The independently developed (indie) game Minecraft sold an astonishing 144 million copies (across multiple platforms, with a high of 74 million monthly players), and the developer was purchased by Microsoft for $2.5 billion.84 The crowdfunding platform Kickstarter provided a new way for developers to raise money for games, shifting the business model of many titles. In addition to games, hardware like the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift were also funded this way. A growing number of games—including Gone Home, The Last of Us, and Papers, Please— began dealing with ethics and more mature themes. Today, many games offer regular downloadable content (DLC), extending or expanding the game for additional cost. Massively successful games like Dota 2, League of Legends, CrossFire, Clash of Clans, and World of Tanks are built on a so-called free-to-play model, in which the game itself is offered for free, but the consumer can purchase cosmetic in-game items (and sometimes things like “experience boosts”) for much less than the cost of a typical game, in what are known as “microtransactions.”

., 153 Minecraft, 32, 47 MIT, 20–21 Modular One, 24 Molleindustria, 13, 140, 141, 142 Monopoly, 137–38 Monument Valley, 40 Mortal Kombat, 28 Mouse in the Maze, 20 MS-DOS, 1, 105, 106 Muncy, Julie, 117 N Namco, 25 NASA, 42 National Health Service, 42, 145 NATO, 19 Navy SEALs, 56 Nazis, 115 Nearing, Scott, 138 NetEase, 47 New Left, 21 New York, 18, 137, 139 Nexon/Tencent, 38 Ngai, Pun, 73 Niantic, 147 Nicaragua, 119 Nieborg, David, 48, 51 Night in the Wood, 96 Nim, 18, 23 Nimatron, 18 Nintendo, 25–28, 30, 32, 47, 101, 147, 152 Nintendo 64, 28, 32, 115–16 Nintendo Classic Mini Entertainment System, 27 Nintendo Classic Mini Super Nintendo Entertainment System, 28 Nintendo DS, 30 Nintendo Entertainment System, 27 Nintendo Game Boy, 2 North America, 38–39 North, Oliver, 119 Notes from Below, 69, 86, 92, 97, 160 O Oculus Rift, 32 Odyssey, 22 Ollman, Bertell, 137–40 Oregon Trail, The, 22 Origin (EA), 51 Osborne, George, 42 Overwatch, 39 Owen, Wilfred, 117 P Pac-Man, 25 Pajitnov, Alexey, 28 Pakistan, 140 Palestine, 122 Papers, Please, 32, 143 Parkin, Simon, 56 Patterson, Jimmy, 116 Payne, Matthew, 119–20 Pedercini, Paolo, 140, 142 Perfect World Games, 53 de Peuter, Greig, 15–16, 19, 21, 29, 46, 86, 106, 160 Philippines, 41 Phone Story, 140–41 Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, 38–39 PlayStation, 2, 28, 30, 31, 50, 116, 152 PlayStation 2, 30 PlayStation 3, 30 PlayStation 4, 31, 50 PlayStation Portable, 30 Pokémon GO, 147 Pong, 20, 22 Populous, 31, 127 Prado, Jason, 92 Price, Jessica, 155 Probst, Larry, 83 PS4 Pro, 31 Punch the Trump, 145 Q Quake 2, 70 Quinn, Zoë, 154 R Raytheon, 20–21 Ready at Dawn, 82 Riot Games / Tencent, 38 Roarem Castle, 138 Rockefeller, Nelson, 139 Rockstar, 39, 71 Rockstar North, 40 Rocksteady Studios, 40 Royal Ulster Constabulary, 57 Russell, Steve, 21, 22 Russia, 115, 118–19, 132 Ryse, 86 S SAG-AFTRA, 91, 93, 94, 99 Salen, Katie, 15 Samuel, Arthur, 20 San Francisco, 95 Sarkeesian, Anita, 154 Saving Private Ryan, 116 Scientific American, 22 Screen Actors Guild, 91 Sears Roebuck, 22 Seattle, 91 Second World War, 27, 116–18 Sega, 27, 28, 30 Sega Genesis, 31 Senate, 29 Shannon, Claude, 18–19, 29 Shaw, Carol, 151–52 A Short History of the Gaze, 142 Short, Tanya, 85–86 Silicon Valley, 23, 99 SimCity, 2, 31, 128–29 SimCopter, 2 Sims, The, 31, 127–28 Smilegate/Tencent, 38 Solitaire, 28 Sonic, 2, 27 Sonic the Hedgehog, 28, 97 Sony, 27, 28, 30–32, 39, 46, 82, 152 Sony Online Entertainment, 30 South Armagh Brigade, 57 South Korea, 27 Soviet Union, 19–21, 28 Space Invaders, 24–25 Spacewar!


pages: 472 words: 117,093

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future by Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Airbnb, airline deregulation, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, asset light, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, backtesting, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, British Empire, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Chris Urmson, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, complexity theory, computer age, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, discovery of DNA, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial innovation, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, hive mind, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, law of one price, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Lyft, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Mitch Kapor, moral hazard, multi-sided market, Mustafa Suleyman, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, PageRank, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, plutocrats, precision agriculture, prediction markets, pre–internet, price stability, principal–agent problem, Project Xanadu, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Snapchat, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Davenport, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, transaction costs, transportation-network company, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, Two Sigma, two-sided market, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, yield management, zero day

The indoor cycling company Peloton sells a $1,995 stationary bike that has a Wi-Fi-enabled twenty-two-inch screen enabling riders to remotely stream live spin classes (there are least ten every day) with real instructors, as well as a back catalog of on-demand sessions, from their own home. In February 2016, Peloton announced it was working with Oculus Rift on a virtual reality headset that could replace the need for the screen. Mark Prigg, “Now You Can Track Your Gym Sessions Too: Peloton Teams Up with Strava App to Monitor Spin Classes—and Says It Is Also Working on Oculus Rift VR Workouts,” DailyMail.com, February 18, 2016, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3452996/Now-track-gym-sessions-Peleton-teams-Strava-app-monitor-spin-classes-says-working-Oculus-Rift-VR-workouts.html. † The US Civil Aeronautics Board was established in 1938 to regulate the airline industry.


pages: 480 words: 123,979

Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters With Reality and Virtual Reality by Jaron Lanier

4chan, air gap, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, carbon footprint, cloud computing, collaborative editing, commoditize, Computer Lib, cosmological constant, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deep learning, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Hofstadter, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, game design, general-purpose programming language, gig economy, Google Glasses, Grace Hopper, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hacker Ethic, Hans Moravec, Howard Rheingold, hype cycle, impulse control, information asymmetry, intentional community, invisible hand, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kuiper Belt, lifelogging, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, Mitch Kapor, Mondo 2000, Mother of all demos, Murray Gell-Mann, Neal Stephenson, Netflix Prize, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, peak TV, Plato's cave, profit motive, Project Xanadu, quantum cryptography, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skinner box, Skype, Snapchat, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, systems thinking, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, telepresence, telepresence robot, Thorstein Veblen, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks, wikimedia commons

It was also the first color, head-supported VR headset, even counting ones from research labs, so far as I know. EyePhones were great! I can still remember the glow of anticipation I used to experience every time I was about to put one of them on. As objects, the earliest ones looked a little like the present-day Oculus Rift. They were black, had Velcro bands, and stuck out a fair amount. Subjectively the visual experience was most like the present-day Sony PlayStation VR headset. EyePhones revealed the virtual world with a similar diffused visual quality. The worst problem with the early EyePhones was probably the weight.

•  Texture, timing, distribution, and other qualities of pixels should either be imperceptible or pleasant. •  Inexpensive enough for practical use. The above list is only for classical, occlusive headsets where all you see is virtual stuff. Examples include the original VPL EyePhones and more recent products like the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive. If we’re talking about headsets for mixed reality, like HoloLens, then the wish list grows longer and the requirements shift. Mixed-reality headsets are much, much harder to design. Chapter 16 1.   Valve is one of the companies that leapt into VR in the twenty-teens revival.

See phenotropic programming neuroscience Neven, Hartmut New Age philosophy New Economy New Mexico New Mexico State Fair New Mexico State University (NMSU) news, real vs. online and “fake” New York New York City New York Times Nintendo NIST agency Nonesuch label noninteractive VR experiences nonviolent action noosphere Normcore look North Indian classical raga Nostrildamus Notwellian talk nuclear power Oakland high schools Oberheim, Tom octopus. See also cephalopods Octopus Butler Robot Oculus Oculus Rift oil exploration olfaction Olympics Ono, Yoko open-source movement operating system, first commercial optical bench optical sensors optic nerve optimizing compiler options for action, biasing Oracle Organ Mountains organomania origami oscillators oscilloscope pain management Palestine, Charlemagne Palo Alto Paracomp paralyzed bodies paranoia Parrish, Maxfield Pascal’s Wager patents Patricof, Alan pattern recognition Patterson, Penny Pauline, Mark Pausch, Randy Pavlov, Ivan PDP-11 computer Peace Prize of the German Book Trade Pentland, Sandy perception pereiopods perfection peripheral vision Perlin, Ken Perry, Commodore personal computers personal data, commerce and personal thinking Pfizer Phantom device phantom limbs phenotropic programming Philco photography photons physical reality physical therapy physics Piaget, Jean piano Piestrup, Ann McCormick pinnae Pixar Pixel Planes pixels Plants as Inventors (book) Platonic images Platonic sizzle Platonic Solids Pleiades Pluto Pocket Big Brain pointing and selecting on screen Polhemus Porras Luraschi, Javier postsymbolic communication poverty Power Glove power relationships Prime Directive printers Prisoner’s Dilemma privacy productivity software Programmers at Work (book) programming.


pages: 294 words: 80,084

Tomorrowland: Our Journey From Science Fiction to Science Fact by Steven Kotler

adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, Alexander Shulgin, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Biosphere 2, Burning Man, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Colonization of Mars, crowdsourcing, Dean Kamen, Dennis Tito, epigenetics, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, haute couture, Helicobacter pylori, interchangeable parts, Kevin Kelly, life extension, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, North Sea oil, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, personalized medicine, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, private spaceflight, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, theory of mind, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

But if the physicist had been hooked up to the Soul Catcher — which would record his life — and the Soul Catcher was further connected to some sort of total experience playback device, this might make his A + B = Z intuition not just knowable, but experienceable — meaning teachable. Of course, it would have to be a really powerful playback device like, say, the virtual reality systems that are now hitting the market. Cochrane envisions a Tomorrowland version of the Oculus Rift, meaning not the VR system that Facebook just bought for a billion dollars, but the one that’s going to emerge after they spend another billion developing the technology. But the larger point is that the playback device completes the picture. With a robust brain-computer interface, a chip capable of capturing experience, and a damn powerful playback device, the system is in place.

., 111–12 safety of, 111–12, 116–17, 118, 121, 122–23 Small Scale Nuclear Reactors, 119, 121 traveling wave reactors, 121 waste from, 114–15, 119 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 122 nuclear weapons, 115, 119 nuns, oneness with the universe of, 45–47 NuScale Power, 121 Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 120 Obama, Barack on asteroid exploration, 149 DNA of protected, 224 on nuclear energy, 111, 122 threats against, 238 obesity, 56 O’Brochta, David, 137 obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), 162, 163 Oculus Rift, 30 Ohme, Chloe, 259 oil resources, 111, 113, 148 Oncos Therapeutics, 225 optic nerve, in near-death experiences, 41–42 organized crime, 235–36 Ortiz, Deborah, 212 Osmond, Humphry, 169 Ossur, 15 out-of-body experiences. See extreme states Pacala, Stephen, 114 Page, Larry, 145 paranormal, 36.


pages: 308 words: 84,713

The Glass Cage: Automation and Us by Nicholas Carr

Airbnb, Airbus A320, Andy Kessler, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, Bernard Ziegler, business process, call centre, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Charles Lindbergh, Checklist Manifesto, cloud computing, cognitive load, computerized trading, David Brooks, deep learning, deliberate practice, deskilling, digital map, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Flash crash, Frank Gehry, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, gamification, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, High speed trading, human-factors engineering, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, Internet of things, Ivan Sutherland, Jacquard loom, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, low interest rates, Lyft, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, natural language processing, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, place-making, plutocrats, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, software is eating the world, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, turn-by-turn navigation, Tyler Cowen, US Airways Flight 1549, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, William Langewiesche

As for the audio signals that announce incoming alerts and messages—sent, as Brin boasted in his TED talk, “right through the bones in your cranium”—they hardly seem less intrusive than the beeps and buzzes of a phone. However emasculating a smartphone may be, metaphorically speaking, a computer attached to your forehead promises to be worse. Wearable computers, whether sported on the head like Google’s Glass and Facebook’s Oculus Rift or on the wrist like the Pebble smartwatch, are new, and their appeal remains unproven. They’ll have to overcome some big obstacles if they’re to gain wide popularity. Their features are at this point sparse, they look dorky—London’s Guardian newspaper refers to Glass as “those dreadful specs”25—and their tiny built-in cameras make a lot of people nervous.

., 189 Nazi Germany, 35, 157 nervous system, 9–10, 36, 220–21 Networks of Power (Hughes), 196 neural networks, 113–14 neural processing, 119n neuroergonomic systems, 165 neurological studies, 9 neuromorphic microchips, 114, 119n neurons, 57, 133–34, 150, 219 neuroscience, neuroscientists, 74, 133–37, 140, 149 New Division of Labor, The (Levy and Murnane), 9 Nimwegen, Christof van, 75–76, 180 Noble, David, 173–74 Norman, Donald, 161 Noyes, Jan, 54–55 NSA, 120, 198 numerical control, 174–75 Oakeshott, Michael, 124 Obama, Barack, 94 Observer, 78–79 Oculus Rift, 201 Office of the Inspector General, 99 offices, 28, 108–9, 112, 222 automation complacency and, 69 Ofri, Danielle, 102 O’Keefe, John, 133–34 Old Dominion University, 91 “On Things Relating to the Surgery” (Hippocrates), 158 oracle machine, 119–20 “Outsourced Brain, The” (Brooks), 128 Pallasmaa, Juhani, 145 Parameswaran, Ashwin, 115 Parameters, 191 parametric design, 140–41 parametricism, 140–41 “Parametricism Manifesto” (Schumacher), 141 Parasuraman, Raja, 54, 67, 71, 166, 176 Parry, William Edward, 125 pattern recognition, 57, 58, 81, 83, 113 Pavlov, Ivan, 88 Pebble, 201 Pediatrics, 97 perception, 8, 121, 130, 131, 132, 133, 144, 148–51, 201, 214–18, 220, 226, 230 performance, Yerkes-Dodson law and, 96 Phenomenology of Perception (Merleau-Ponty), 216 philosophers, 119, 143, 144, 148–51, 186, 224 photography, film vs. digital, 230 Piano, Renzo, 138, 141–42 pilots, 1, 2, 32, 43–63, 91, 153 attentional tunneling and, 200–201 capability of the plane vs., 60–61, 154 death of, 53 erosion of expertise of, 54–58, 62–63 human- vs. technology-centered automation and, 168–70, 172–73 income of, 59–60 see also autopilot place, 131–34, 137, 251n place cells, 133–34, 136, 219 Plato, 148 Player Piano (Vonnegut), 39 poetry, 211–16, 218, 221–22 Poirier, Richard, 214, 215 Politics (Aristotle), 224 Popular Science, 48 Post, Wiley, 48, 50, 53, 57, 62, 82, 169 power, 21, 37, 65, 151, 175, 204, 217 practice, 82–83 Predator drone, 188 premature fixation, 145 presence, power of, 200 Priestley, Joseph, 160 Prius, 6, 13, 154–55 privacy, 206 probability, 113–24 procedural (tacit) knowledge, 9–11, 83, 105, 113, 144 productivity, 18, 22, 29, 30, 37, 106, 160, 173, 175, 181, 218 professional work, incursion of computers into, 115 profit motive, 17 profits, 18, 22, 28, 30, 33, 95, 159, 171, 172–73, 175 progress, 21, 26, 29, 37, 40, 65, 196, 214 acceleration of, 26 scientific, 31, 123 social, 159–60, 228 progress (continued) technological, 29, 31, 34, 35, 48–49, 108–9, 159, 160, 161, 173, 174, 222, 223–24, 226, 228, 230 utopian vision of, 25, 26 prosperity, 20, 21, 107 proximal cues, 219–20 psychologists, psychology, 9, 11, 15, 54, 103, 119, 149, 158–59 animal studies, 87–92 cognitive, 72–76, 81, 129–30 psychomotor skills, 56, 57–58, 81, 120 quality of experience, 14–15 Race against the Machine (Brynjolfsson and McAfee), 28–29 RAND Corporation, 93–98 “Rationalism in Politics” (Oakeshott), 124 Rattner, Justin, 203 reading, learning of, 82 Reaper drone, 188 reasoning, reason, 120, 121, 124, 151 recession, 27, 28, 30, 32 Red Dead Redemption, 177–78 “Relation of Strength of Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit-Formation, The” (Yerkes and Dodson), 89 Renslow, Marvin, 43–44 Revit, 146, 147 Rifkin, Jeremy, 28 Robert, David, 45, 169–70 Robert Frost (Poirier), 214 Roberts, J.


How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight by Julian Guthrie

Albert Einstein, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Charles Lindbergh, cosmic microwave background, crowdsourcing, Dennis Tito, Doomsday Book, Easter island, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, fixed-gear, Frank Gehry, Gene Kranz, gravity well, Herman Kahn, high net worth, Iridium satellite, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, Jacquard loom, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, Larry Ellison, Leonard Kleinrock, life extension, low earth orbit, Mark Shuttleworth, Mars Society, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Murray Gell-Mann, Neil Armstrong, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, packet switching, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, pets.com, private spaceflight, punch-card reader, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Ronald Reagan, Scaled Composites, side project, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, SpaceShipOne, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Strategic Defense Initiative, urban planning, Virgin Galactic

He explained, “Once it became people’s jobs, they had other hobbies—go-karts and model airplanes and other distractions. When it was two days a week, everyone was much more focused on really getting things done. We started doing work with NASA and there were blueprints and diagrams and technical reviews. It slowed the team down.” Carmack, who is now the CTO of Oculus Rift, says, “There are still aerospace ideas that interest me, so there is a decent chance that I will return to try again after virtual reality is all sorted out. I don’t regret any of the work. We didn’t achieve all the goals we wanted, but we took a good shot at it.” —When the XPRIZE was won and entrepreneurs including Branson, Musk, and Bezos were starting private space companies, Argentinian Pablo de León looked around and realized there would be a need for spacesuits for the private sector.

There are many others I interviewed for this book, from Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Paul Allen to NASA’s Dan Goldin and the FAA’s Marion Blakey. I did well over one hundred interviews and many of these people put up with my returning again and again with seemingly infinite questions. I traveled to Dallas to meet with Oculus Rift CTO John Carmack, who was both considerate and exceedingly smart. I met with Russell Blink and the team from Armadillo Aerospace, driving to remote corners of the Lone Star State to find these persistent rocket makers and to see the remnants of their XPRIZE vehicle. I visited Seattle to meet Erik Lindbergh.

Louis, 285–91 New York Times, 19, 123 Nicklaus, Jack, 333 9/11 attacks (2001), 280–81, 291 Nitrogen triiodide, 22–23 Nitrous oxide, 1, 3, 308–9, 358–59, 377 Niven, Larry, 227 Nixon, Richard, 20 Nocera, Joe, 237 Noctilucent clouds, 335n North American Aviation, 12 North American X-15, 4–5, 118, 248, 249, 253, 316, 317 Northrop Grumman, 12, 214, 247–48, 408 Noteboom, Bob, 95, 98 Nova 1, 266–69 Nova 2, 370–71 November, Michael, 28–29, 31 Noyce, Robert, 31 Nozette, Stu, 204 Nungesser, Charles, 171 Oberth, Hermann, 24–25, 91, 365 O’Brien, Miles, 381, 382 Oculus Rift, 410 Oman, Chuck, 47–48 Omni (magazine), 34–35, 42–43 O’Neill, Gerry, 41, 91, 104–5, 105n, 122, 126, 212 Orbital Sciences Corporation, 107, 117, 230 Orbital velocity, 13n, 129–30 Orient Express, 120 O-rings, 63, 128 Orteig, Raymond, 123–25, 150, 171 Orteig Prize, 113, 123–24, 140, 144, 169, 171 Pacific American Launch Systems, 130 Pallotta, Dan, 374 Pan Am Airlines, 210 Panlasigui, Angel, 237 Parabolic arc, 4, 4n Paramount Pictures, 292 Parkes Radio Astronomy Observatory, 13 Pascal, Blaise, 90 Pathfinder, 119–20 PayPal, 238 P effect, 162, 162n Pegasus, 107, 108, 117 Pelton, Joe, 75 Pelz, Danny, 21 Petersen, Kevin, 315 Phased orbit, 231, 231n Philippines, 83–84 Piccard, Bertrand, 195, 195n Pickens, Tim, 305–6, 307–10, 352n Piper Cherokees, 91–92 Piper Clubs, 55 Pitch, 198, 198n Planetary Resources, Inc., 406 Planetary Society, 47 Pogue, William, 71 Popescu, Dumitru, 180–81, 276–79, 295, 363–67, 371, 410–11 Popescu, Elena Simona, 276–77, 363–67 Popular Science, 23 Population Bomb, The (O’Neill), 104 Portland Trail Blazers, 201 Potassium perchlorate, 25–26 Pressure suits, 24, 197–98, 198n Price, Frank, 35–37 Princeton Airport, 101, 103 Princeton University, 41–42, 126, 211, 212, 325 Space Studies Institute, 41, 104, 105 Processor Technology, 22 Project Gemini, 11, 48, 118, 168, 314 Project Mercury, 117, 133n, 143, 200 Proteus, 154, 162–63, 196–201, 246 Prunariu, Dumitru, 277–78, 364–65 Purdue University, 324–25 Quark Expeditions, 208 Quarks, 29, 29n Raburn, Vern, 199–201 Radar, 28, 57 Raptor (Responsive Aircraft Program for Theater OpeRations), 159–61, 160n Ray, E.


pages: 375 words: 88,306

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism by Arun Sundararajan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, asset light, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Burning Man, call centre, Carl Icahn, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commoditize, commons-based peer production, corporate social responsibility, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, distributed ledger, driverless car, Eben Moglen, employer provided health coverage, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, future of work, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, gig economy, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, job automation, job-hopping, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kula ring, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mary Meeker, megacity, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, moral panic, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, peer-to-peer rental, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, Ross Ulbricht, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, supply-chain management, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transportation-network company, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, WeWork, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

Marketplaces that enable the rental of expensive equipment owned by people who aren’t very wealthy might represent a new pocket of opportunity. For example, KitSplit, funded in 2014 by NYU students Lisbeth Kaufman and Katrina Budelis, is a peer-to-peer rental marketplace for independent filmmakers to get cameras, lenses, Oculus Rift headsets, and other professional equipment from each other. But as of late 2015, other success stories that have scaled are hard to find, and peer-to-peer rental activity is often conducted through bulletin-board-esque services like Alan Berger’s NeighborGoods. Many others have successfully facilitated household asset rental using a different, more traditional form of organizing short-term borrowing: the library.

For example, independent filmmakers may often own expensive filmmaking and photography equipment that represents a very high percentage of their income. Similarly, early adopters of “creative equipment” who spend a lot of their money on new and “cool” products may purchase products like the 2013 Oculus Rift. As I discussed in the introduction, KitSplit is a peer-to-peer rental market for this kind of equipment. Additionally, most items, even those with status appeal, transmit worth through what I refer to as “consumption value”—you get value by using your iPhone, for instance, or by wearing a Rolex.


pages: 360 words: 100,991

Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence by Richard Yonck

3D printing, AI winter, AlphaGo, Apollo 11, artificial general intelligence, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, backpropagation, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, brain emulation, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, crowdsourcing, deep learning, DeepMind, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Fairchild Semiconductor, friendly AI, Geoffrey Hinton, ghettoisation, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of writing, Jacques de Vaucanson, job automation, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, Loebner Prize, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, mirror neurons, Neil Armstrong, neurotypical, Nick Bostrom, Oculus Rift, old age dependency ratio, pattern recognition, planned obsolescence, pneumatic tube, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Rodney Brooks, self-driving car, Skype, social intelligence, SoftBank, software as a service, SQL injection, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, technological singularity, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, theory of mind, Turing test, twin studies, Two Sigma, undersea cable, Vernor Vinge, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Whole Earth Review, working-age population, zero day

Many different technologies are being enlisted to extend the growing universe of sexual activities. Virtual reality (VR) offers the potential for experiencing fantasies in a reasonably safe and unthreatening environment. VR can be incredibly immersive, particularly when using head-mounted displays such as Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. VR worlds are already rife with opportunities for sexual activities, including prostitution of a sort. Users have been able to engage in virtual sex in online brothels for years, such as those found throughout Linden Labs’ virtual world, Second Life. Whether this can truly be categorized as sex, and therefore prostitution, remains a blurry line, but as time passes and these experiences become increasingly realistic, it seems likely this distinction could diminish.

See massive open online courses (MOOCs) Moodies, 72 Moore, Gordon, 38 Moore’s law, 38–40, 147 Mor, Yuval, 72, 76–77 Mori, Masahiro, 96–98 Moss, Frank, 62 MP3, 210 Mukai, Toshiharu, 152 Musk, Elon, 263–264 My Real Baby, 200 Myriad Genetics, 75 N Nadine, 87 Nanyang Technological University, 87 NAO, 112–113, 152 Napster, 210 NASA Ames Research Center, 256 NASA Space Technology 5 (ST5) antennas, 256 Nass, Clifford, 28, 50 National Center on Elder Abuse, 155–156 National Science Foundation, 60 NDR-113 (Andrew), 232 Negroponte, Nicholas, 52 Nemesysco, 73 neural networks, 67–68 NeuroSky, 213 neurotransmitters, 186, 187, 190, 216, 220, 221 “New Strategy for Robots,” 151 Nexi - MDS(mobile-dexterous-social) robot, 85 Next-Generation Identification, 144 1984, 229 Noldus, 72 nonverbal communication, 25–26 North Carolina State University study (2013), 114 Norvig, Peter, 39 O objectophilia, 186–188 Objectùm-Sexuality Internationale, 187 Oculus Rift, 189 Office Assistant, 51–52 Office for Windows, 51 Official Secrets Act, 37 online training systems, 120–121 Ono, 88 “Onslaught (Dove),” 69–70 open source EEG projects, 126 opsins, 213–214 optogenetics, 213–214, 218 On the Origin of Species (Darwin), 228 Orwell, George, 229 OS ONE, 195 “otherness,” 106 oxytocin, 16, 186, 196 P P-consciousness.


pages: 368 words: 96,825

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

3D printing, additive manufacturing, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Boston Dynamics, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, company town, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deal flow, deep learning, dematerialisation, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Exxon Valdez, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, Firefox, Galaxy Zoo, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, gravity well, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Jono Bacon, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, meta-analysis, microbiome, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Narrative Science, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, optical character recognition, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, performance metric, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, rolodex, Scaled Composites, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart grid, SpaceShipOne, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, superconnector, Susan Wojcicki, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Turing test, urban renewal, Virgin Galactic, Wayback Machine, web application, X Prize, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

In this case, a successful crowdfunding campaign has two advantages: providing non-dilutive capital to grow the company in the early days, and allowing the company to command a higher valuation in its venture round. Just look at the results achieved by the Pebble Watch team, raising $15 million in venture funding twelve months after their campaign. Even more impressive, Oculus Rift went from raising $2.4 million on Kickstarter to being acquired by Facebook for $2 billion in just eighteen months.19 • The development of a paying community of customers. There is enormous value in building and having access to a community of paying customers, yet this is very difficult to do in a normal marketplace, and almost impossible to accomplish before your product is released

., 258 loss aversion, 121 Louis Pasteur Université, 104 Lovins, Amory, 222 MacCready, Paul, 263 McDowell, Mike, 291n machine learning, 54–55, 58, 66, 85, 137, 167, 216 see also artificial intelligence (AI) Macintosh computer, 72 McKinsey & Company, 245 McLucas, John, 102 Macondo Prospect, 250 macrotasks, crowdsourcing of, 156, 157–58 Made in Space, 36–37 Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (Heath and Heath), 248 MakerBot printers, 39 Makers (Doctorow), 38 MakieLabs, 39 manufacturing, 33, 41 biological, 63–64 digital, 33 in DIY communities, 223–25 robotics in, 62 subtractive vs. additive, 29–30, 31 3–D printing’s impact on, 30, 31, 34–35 Marines, US, 222 Markoff, John, 56 Mars missions, 99, 118–19, 128 Mars Oasis project, 118 Maryland, University of, 74 Maryniak, Gregg, 244 Mashable, 238 massively transformative purpose (MTP), 215, 221, 230, 231, 233, 240, 242, 274 in incentive competitions, 249, 255, 263, 265, 270 mastery, 79, 80, 85, 87, 92 materials, in crowdfunding campaigns, 195 Maven Research, 145 Maxwell, John, 114n Mead, Margaret, 247 Mechanical Turk, 157 meet-ups, 237 Menlo Ventures, 174 message boards, 164 Mexican entrepreneurs, 257–58 Michigan, University of, 135, 136 microfactories, 224, 225 microlending, 172 microprocessors, 49, 49 Microsoft, 47, 50, 99 Microsoft Windows, 27 Microsoft Word, 11 microtasks, crowdsourcing of, 156–57, 166 Mightybell, 217, 233 Migicovsky, Eric, 175–78, 186, 191, 193, 198, 199, 200, 206, 209 Millington, Richard, 233 Mims, Christopher, 290n MIT, 27, 60, 100, 101, 103, 291n mobile devices, 14, 42, 42, 46, 46, 47, 49, 124, 125, 135, 146, 163, 176 see also smartphones Modernizing Medicine, 57 monetization: in incentive competitions, 263 of online communities, 241–42 Montessori education, 89 moonshot goals, 81–83, 93, 98, 103, 104, 110, 245, 248 Moore, Gordon, 7 Moore’s Law, 6–7, 9, 12, 31, 64 Mophie, 18 moral leadership, 274–76 Morgan Stanley, 122, 132 Mosaic, 27, 32, 33, 57 motivation, science of, 78–80, 85, 87, 92, 103 incentive competitions and, 148, 254, 255, 262–63 Murphy’s Law, 107–8 Museum of Flight (Seattle), 205 music industry, 11, 20, 124, 125, 127, 161 Musk, Elon, xiii, 73, 97, 111, 115, 117–23, 128, 134, 138, 139, 167, 223 thinking-at-scale strategies of, 119–23, 127 Mycoskie, Blake, 80 Mycroft, Frank, 180 MySQL, 163 Napoléon I, Emperor of France, 245 Napster, 11 Narrative Science, 56 narrow framing, 121 NASA, 96, 97, 100, 102, 110, 123, 221, 228, 244 Ames Research Center of, 58 Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of, 99 Mars missions of, 99, 118 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), 226 National Institutes of Health, 64, 227 National Press Club, 251 navigation, in online communities, 232 Navteq, 47 Navy Department, US, 72 NEAR Shoemaker mission, 97 Netflix, 254, 255 Netflix Prize, 254–56 Netscape, 117, 143 networks and sensors, x, 14, 21, 24, 41–48, 42, 45, 46, 66, 275 information garnered by, 42–43, 44, 47, 256 in robotics, 60, 61 newcomer rituals, 234 Newman, Tom, 268 New York Times, xii, 56, 108, 133, 145, 150, 155, 220 Nickell, Jake, 143, 144 99designs, 145, 158, 166, 195 Nivi, Babak, 174 Nokia, 47 Nordstrom, 72 Nye, Bill, 180, 200, 207 “Oatmeal, the” (web comic), 178, 179, 193, 196, 200 Oculus Rift, 182 O’Dell, Jolie, 238–39 oil-cleanup projects, 247, 250–53, 262, 263, 264 Olguin, Carlos, 65 1Qbit, 59 operational assets, crowdsourcing of, 158–60 Orteig Prize, 244, 245, 259, 260, 263 Oxford Martin School, 62 Page, Carl, 135 Page, Gloria, 135 Page, Larry, xiii, 53, 74, 81, 84, 99, 100, 115, 126, 128, 134–39, 146 thinking-at-scale strategies of, 136–38 PageRank algorithm, 135 parabolic flights, 110–12, 123 Paramount Pictures, 151 Parliament, British, 245 passion, importance of, 106–7, 113, 116, 119–20, 122, 125, 134, 174, 180, 183, 184, 248, 249 in online communities, 224, 225, 228, 231, 258 PayPal, 97, 117–18, 167, 201 PC Tools, 150 Pebble Watch campaign, 174, 175–78, 179, 182, 186, 187, 191, 200, 206, 208, 209, 210 pitch video in, 177, 198, 199 peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, 172 Pelton, Joseph, 102 personal computers (PCs), 26, 76 Peter’s Laws, 108–14 PHD Comics, 200 philanthropic prizes, 267 photography, 3–6, 10, 15 demonetization of, 12, 15 see also digital cameras; Kodak Corporation Pink, Daniel, 79 Pishevar, Shervin, 174 pitch videos, 177, 180, 192, 193, 195, 198–99, 203, 212 Pivot Power, 19 Pixar, 89, 111 Planetary Resources, Inc., 34, 95, 96, 99, 109, 172, 175, 179, 180, 186, 189–90, 193, 195, 201–3, 221, 228, 230 Planetary Society, 190, 200 Planetary Vanguards, 180, 201–3, 212, 230 PlanetLabs, 286n +Pool, 171 Polaroid, 5 Polymath Project, 145 Potter, Gavin, 255–56 premium memberships, 242 PricewaterhouseCoopers, 146 Prime Movers, The (Locke), 23 Princeton University, 128–29, 222 Prius, 221 probabilistic thinking, 116, 121–22, 129 process optimization, 48 Project Cyborg, 65 psychological tools, of entrepreneurs, 67, 115, 274 goal setting in, 74–75, 78, 79, 80, 82–83, 84, 85, 87, 89–90, 92, 93, 103–4, 112, 137, 185–87 importance of, 73 line of super-credibility and, 96, 98–99, 98, 100, 101–2, 107, 190, 203, 266, 272 passion as important in, 106–7, 113, 116, 119–20, 122, 125, 134, 174, 249, 258 Peter’s Laws in, 108–14 and power of constraints, 248–49 rapid iteration and, 76, 77, 78, 79–80, 83–84, 85, 86, 120, 126, 133–34, 236 risk management and, see risk management science of motivation and, 78–80, 85, 87, 92, 103, 254, 255 in skunk methodology, 71–87, 88; see also skunk methodology staging of bold ideas and, 103–4, 107 for thinking at scale, see scale, thinking at triggering flow and, 85–94, 109 public relations managers, in crowdfunding campaigns, 193–94 purpose, 79, 85, 87, 116, 119–20 in DIY communities, see massively transformative purpose (MTP) Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, 253 Quirky, 18–20, 21, 66, 161 Rackspace, 50, 257 Rally Fighter, 224, 225 rapid iteration, 76, 77, 78, 79–80, 83–84, 85, 86, 236 feedback loops in, 77, 83, 84, 86, 87, 90–91, 92, 120 in thinking at scale, 116, 126, 133–34 rating systems, 226, 232, 236–37, 240 rationally optimistic thinking, 116, 136–37 Ravikant, Naval, 174 Raytheon, 72 re:Invent 2012, 76–77 reCAPTCHA, 154–55, 156, 157 registration, in online communities, 232 Reichental, Avi, 30–32, 35 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 4 reputation economics, 217–19, 230, 232, 236–37 Ressi, Adeo, 118 ReverbNation, 161 reward-based crowdfunding, 173, 174–80, 183, 185, 186–87, 195, 205, 207 case studies in, 174–80 designing right incentives for affiliates in, 200 early donor engagement in, 203–5 fundraising targets in, 186–87, 191 setting of incentives in, 189–91, 189 telling meaningful story in, 196–98 trend surfing in, 208 upselling in, 207, 208–9 see also crowdfunding, crowdfunding campaigns rewards, extrinsic vs. intrinsic, 78–79 Rhodin, Michael, 56 Richards, Bob, 100, 101–2, 103, 104 Ridley, Matt, 137 risk management, 76–77, 82, 83, 84, 86, 103, 109, 116, 121 Branson’s strategies for, 126–27 flow and, 87, 88, 92, 93 incentive competitions and, 247, 248–49, 261, 270 in thinking at scale, 116, 121–22, 126–27, 137 Robinson, Mark, 144 Robot Garden, 62 robotics, x, 22, 24, 35, 41, 59–62, 63, 66, 81, 135, 139 entrepreneurial opportunities in, 60, 61, 62 user interfaces in, 60–61 Robot Launchpad, 62 RocketHub, 173, 175, 184 Rogers, John “Jay,” 33, 38, 222–25, 231, 238, 240 Roomba, 60, 66 Rose, Geordie, 58 Rose, Kevin, 120 Rosedale, Philip, 144 Russian Federal Space Agency, 102 Rutan, Burt, 76, 96, 112, 127, 269 San Antonio Mix Challenge, 257–58 Sandberg, Sheryl, 217, 237 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 3 Sasson, Steven, 4–5, 5, 6, 9 satellite technology, 14, 36–37, 44, 100, 127, 275, 286n scale, thinking at, xiii, 20–21, 116, 119, 125–28, 148, 225, 228, 243, 257 Bezos’s strategies for, 128, 129, 130–33 Branson’s strategies for, 125–27 in building online communities, 232–33 customer-centric approach in, 116, 126, 128, 130, 131–32, 133 first principles in, 116, 120–21, 122, 126, 138 long-term thinking and, 116, 128, 130–31, 132–33, 138 Musk’s strategies for, 119–23, 127 Page’s strategies for, 136–38 passion and purpose in, 116, 119–20, 122, 125, 134 probabilistic thinking and, 116, 121–22, 129 rapid iteration in, 116, 126, 133–34 rationally optimistic thinking and, 116, 136–37 risk management in, 116, 121–22, 126–27, 137 Scaled Composites, 262 Schawinski, Kevin, 219–21 Schmidt, Eric, 99, 128, 251 Schmidt, Wendy, 251, 253 Schmidt Family Foundation, 251 science of motivation, 78–80, 85, 87, 92, 103 incentive competitions and, 148, 254, 255, 262–63 Screw It, Let’s Do It (Branson), 125 Scriptlance, 149 Sealed Air Corporation, 30–31 Second Life, 144 SecondMarket, 174 “secrets of skunk,” see skunk methodology Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), US, 172 security-related sensors, 43 sensors, see networks and sensors Shapeways.com, 38 Shingles, Marcus, 159, 245, 274–75 Shirky, Clay, 215 ShotSpotter, 43 Simply Music, 258 Singh, Narinder, 228 Singularity University (SU), xi, xii, xiv, 15, 35, 37, 53, 61, 73, 81, 85, 136, 169, 278, 279 Six Ds of Exponentials, 7–15, 8, 17, 20, 25 deception phase in, 8, 9, 10, 24, 25–26, 29, 30, 31, 41, 59, 60 dematerialization in, 8, 10, 11–13, 14, 15, 20–21, 66 democratization in, 8, 10, 13–15, 21, 33, 51–52, 59, 64–65, 276 demonetization in, 8, 10–11, 14, 15, 52, 64–65, 138, 163, 167, 223 digitalization in, 8–9, 10 disruption phase in, 8, 9–10, 20, 24, 25, 29, 32, 33–35, 37, 38, 39, 256; see also disruption, exponential Skonk Works, 71, 72 skunk methodology, 71–87, 88 goal setting in, 74–75, 78, 79, 80, 82–83, 84, 85, 87, 103 Google’s use of, 81–84 isolation in, 72, 76, 78, 79, 81–82, 257 “Kelly’s rules” in, 74, 75–76, 77, 81, 84, 247 rapid iteration approach in, 76, 77, 78, 79–80, 83–84, 85, 86 risk management in, 76–77, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88 science of motivation and, 78–80, 85, 87, 92 triggering flow with, 86, 87 Skunk Works, 72, 75 Skybox, 286n Skype, 11, 13, 167 Sloan Digital Sky Survey, 219–20 Small Business Association, US, 169 smartphones, x, 7, 12, 14, 15, 42, 135, 283n apps for, 13, 13, 15, 16, 28, 47, 176 information gathering with, 47 SmartThings, 48 smartwatches, 176–77, 178, 191, 208 software development, 77, 144, 158, 159, 161, 236 in exponential communities, 225–28 SolarCity, 111, 117, 119, 120, 122 Space Adventures Limited, 96, 291n space exploration, 81, 96, 97–100, 115, 118, 119, 122, 123, 134, 139, 230, 244 asteroid mining in, 95–96, 97–99, 107, 109, 179, 221, 276 classifying of galaxies and, 219–21, 228 commercial tourism projects in, 96–97, 109, 115, 119, 125, 127, 244, 246, 261, 268 crowdfunding campaigns for, see ARKYD Space Telescope campaign incentive competitions in, 76, 96, 109, 112, 115, 127, 134, 139, 246, 248–49, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 269 International Space University and, 96, 100–104, 107–8 Mars missions in, 99, 118–19, 128 see also aerospace industry Space Fair, 291n “space selfie,” 180, 189–90, 196, 208 SpaceShipOne, 96, 97, 127, 269 SpaceShipTwo, 96–97 SpaceX, 34, 111, 117, 119, 122, 123 Speed Stick, 152, 154 Spiner, Brent, 180, 200, 207 Spirit of St.


pages: 116 words: 31,356

Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Big Tech, Californian Ideology, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, data science, deindustrialization, deskilling, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, digital divide, disintermediation, driverless car, Ford Model T, future of work, gig economy, independent contractor, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, liquidity trap, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, mittelstand, multi-sided market, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, platform as a service, quantitative easing, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, software as a service, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, the built environment, total factor productivity, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, unconventional monetary instruments, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, warehouse robotics, Zipcar

With consumer IoT, our everyday behaviours start to be recorded: how we drive, how many steps we take, how active we are, what we say, where we go, and so on. This is simply an expression of an innate tendency within platforms. It is therefore no surprise that one of Facebook’s most recent acquisitions, the Oculus Rift VR system, is able to collect all sorts of data on its users and uses this information as part of the sales pitch to advertisers.14 The fact that the information platform requires an extension of sensors means that it is countering the tendency towards a lean platform. These are not asset-less companies – far from it; they spend billions of dollars to purchase fixed capital and take other companies over.


pages: 363 words: 109,077

The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future by Alec Ross

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, clean water, collective bargaining, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, COVID-19, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, dumpster diving, employer provided health coverage, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, general purpose technology, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, income inequality, independent contractor, information security, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, late capitalism, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, mass immigration, megacity, military-industrial complex, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, mortgage tax deduction, natural language processing, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open economy, OpenAI, Parag Khanna, Paris climate accords, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, special economic zone, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, working poor

Google may have seen it as its own line in the sand. But as Lynch saw it, Google gave up an opportunity to directly influence how the Pentagon uses artificial intelligence. Instead, the contract went to Anduril Industries, a defense technology company founded by Palmer Luckey, a controversial libertarian in his twenties who helped invent the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Anduril was contracted to build an AI-powered sensor network that would provide troops with a virtual view of the front lines. The sensors would be mounted on drones, fixed towers, and troops themselves, and used to identify potential targets and direct autonomous military vehicles into combat.

See also Gulf States; specific countries migration Miliband, David military power, traditional minimum wage Minnesota minority groups MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Mittelstand Molson Coors Monaghan, Paul Mongolia monopolies Montserrat Mook, Nate Morehouse College Moscow Narodny Bank Mounk, Yascha Mountaire Farms Mugabe, Robert Mussolini, Benito Namibia NASA National Guard National People’s Congress National Science Foundation Native Americans Nazism Nelson, Gaylord Netherlands New Deal New Jersey Newmark, Craig New Zealand Nigeria Nike Nixon, Richard Nordic countries. See also specific countries Nordic model. See also Nordic countries; specific countries Nordstrom Normans North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) North Carolina North Korea Northrop Grumman Norway Novo Nordisk NSA (National Security Agency) Oculus Rift oil companies open vs. closed systems China developing world and Nordic model Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) organized crime organized labor attitudes toward central and northern European model demise of future of gig economy and globalization and golden age of Great Depression and history of Industrial Revolution and inequality and Mediterranean model of union peak of power of revolutionary politics and technology and today World War II and Oxfam International Oxford University Palantir Panama pandemics.


pages: 359 words: 105,248

Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing by Rachel Plotnick

augmented reality, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, Google Glasses, Internet Archive, invisible hand, means of production, Milgram experiment, Oculus Rift, scientific management, Shoshana Zuboff, software studies, Steve Jobs

Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, “Towards Touch-Free Spaces: Sensors, Software and the Automatic Production of Shared Public Toilet,” in Touching Space, Placing Touch, ed. Mark Paterson and M. Dodge (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012). 58. Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001). 59. Will Greenwald, “Hands on with the Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch Controllers,” PC Magazine, January 7, 2016, https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2497577,00.asp. 60. Tim Wu, “The Problem with Easy Technology,” New Yorker, February 21, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-problem-with-easy-technology/. 61. Quoted in Ramin Setoodeh and Elizabeth Wagmeister, “Matt Lauer Accused of Harassment by Multiple Women,” Variety, November 29, 2017, http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/matt-lauer-accused-sexual-harassment-multiple-women-1202625959/. 62. 

Robinson, President of the Board of Trade, and Treasurer of the Navy, on the Plague and Contagion with Reference to the Quarantine Laws. London: Burgess and Hill, 1819. Gray, Elisha. Nature’s Miracles: Familiar Talks on Science. Vol. 2. New York: Baker & Taylor, 1900. Greeley, E. S. “Electricity Applied to Household Affairs.” Independent: A Weekly Journal of Free Opinion 45 (1893): 7–8. Greenwald, Will. “Hands on with the Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch Controllers.” PC Magazine, January 7, 2016. https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2497577,00.asp. Gregory, John Milton. A New Political Economy. Cincinnati, OH: Bragg & Co., 1882. Grint, Keith. “Introduction.” In The Sociology of Work. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005. Grint, Keith, and Steve Woolgar.


pages: 484 words: 114,613

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Benchmark Capital, blockchain, Blue Bottle Coffee, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cryptocurrency, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Frank Gehry, growth hacking, Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Minecraft, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, Peter Thiel, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, TikTok, Tony Hsieh, Travis Kalanick, ubercab, Zipcar

He’d seen Zuckerberg fight with other, more headstrong leaders at Facebook, especially from acquired companies WhatsApp and Oculus, the virtual reality arm, and knew how it could end. For example, after Zuckerberg bought Oculus in 2014, he wanted to change the name of their virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift, to the Facebook Rift. Brendan Iribe, a cofounder of Oculus and then CEO of that division, argued that it was a bad idea because Facebook had lost trust with game developers. Over a series of uncomfortable meetings, they settled on “Oculus Rift from Facebook.” In December 2016, after a number of similar disagreements, Zuckerberg pushed Iribe out of his CEO position. When someone is having an emotional reaction, you don’t poke at it, Systrom thought.


System Error by Rob Reich

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, AI winter, Airbnb, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deplatforming, digital rights, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, financial innovation, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information security, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Lean Startup, linear programming, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, NP-complete, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, Philippa Foot, premature optimization, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, spectrum auction, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, strong AI, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trolley problem, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, union organizing, universal basic income, washing machines reduced drudgery, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, When a measure becomes a target, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, you are the product

You could plug into this machine and be guaranteed to feel the experience of happiness forever. To create the experience machine, Nozick imagined using “super-duper neurophysicists.” Today, we need not imagine a brain scientist but the actual computer scientists behind virtual reality devices. Instead of the hypothetical example of the experience machine, imagine the Oculus Rift—the powerful VR goggles manufactured by Facebook—on steroids. This is not quite as preposterous or unimaginable as it may sound. Palmer Luckey, a cocreator of Oculus, had in mind a set of gaming experiences in VR, but in interviews he also expressed a far grander aspiration. He spoke of a “moral imperative” to bring VR to the masses so that they, too, and not only the wealthy or geographically privileged, could experience the good things in life such as a sunset over the Aegean Sea, the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, the Great Migration on the Serengeti, or a Bruce Springsteen concert in New Jersey.

See data mining Mosaic browser, 30 multi-use technology, 16–17 Myron’s Law, 59 Nadella, Satya, 33–34 National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, 245–46 Nelson, Alondra, 261 net neutrality, 49, 61–62, 228 Netflix, 5–6 Netherlands Office of Technology Assessment (NOTA), 259 Netscape Communications, 30 Ng, Andrew, 171 Nichols, Tom, 68 Notice and Choice/Consent doctrine overview, 118–19, 120, 133–34, 137–40, 148 EPIC on companies’ privacy policies, 150–51 GDPR compared to, 144 Nozick, Robert, 167, 168 NP-complete problems, 13 nudges, 149 Nuremberg Code, 244–45 O’Neil, Cathy, 98 Obama, Barack, 200, 252 Obama administration’s consumer-privacy bill of rights, 146, 148 Oculus Rift VR goggles, 167 Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), 258–60, 261 Ohm, Paul, 130 OKRs (objectives and key results), 27–28, 31–34 On Liberty (Mill), 198–99 on-device intelligence, 134 Only the Paranoid Survive (Grove), 51 Open Government Partnership, xv Open Letter to the Internet (Berners-Lee), 126 OpenAI, 233–37 OpenSocial specification, 256 optimization mindset, 3–23 overview, xxix, 6 at Amazon, 4–5 corporate growth and, 33–37 deficiency of efficiency, 15–17 education of engineers, 10–15 focus on methods vs. goals, 15 measurable does not equal meaningful, 18–19 multiple valuable goals compete, 19–21 and multi-use technology, 16–17 at Netflix, 5–6 as orientation to life, 13–14 and profit motive leads to libertarianism, 52 and representational adequacy, 13 speculation on optimizing science, 22–23 of technologists, illustrated by Soylent, 9 technologists’ challenges when in government, 261 optimize, usage of term, 14 Ordóñez, Lisa, 34–37 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 174 Oversight Board of Facebook, 213–16 Oxford University, 174 Page, Larry, 27–28 Panopti-Cam, 124 panopticon, digital, 113–14, 121–26 “Panopticon” (Bentham), 121–22 parking tickets, social harm or social benefit, xix–xxi Perkins, Frances, 54, 55 personal computing industry, 26 personal ethics, xxix–xxx Plato, 65–66, 67, 75 politicians effect of regulations, or lack of, on digital tech, 53–59, 60–63 lobbying by big tech, 146–47, 253, 261 power of a newswire monopoly, 57 power of economists and political philosophers, 10 power through lobbying, 46, 47–49 stepping up if their jobs depend on it, 262–63 technical ignorance of, 71–72 See also winner-take-all, disruption vs. democracy politics, xxxii–xxxiii, 25, 52, 67, 75–76 Popper, Karl, xxxii–xxxiii, 75–76 Postal Service Act (1792), 3 poverty, escaping from, 170–71 prison panopticon, 123 privacy, 111–51 overview, 114–15 anonymization, 129–30 Apple’s privacy by design, 134–35 beyond GDPR, 145–47 consumer privacy, 125, 126 data mining vs., 84–87, 115–20 differential privacy, 130–33 digital blackout, 127–29 digital panopticon, 121–26 digital trustmediary, 149 effect of COVID-19 pandemic, 139 FTC regulation role, 150–51 GDPR data protection, 142–45 harm from lack of, 120, 124–25 and HIPAA, anonymization, 129–30 marketplace of different providers, 133–36 privacy paradox, 113–15, 137–40 protection as a benefit of society, 140–42 public support for regulations, 148 security vs., 71, 166 Stanford panel discussion on, 119–20 technology and biomedical research, 129–33 See also facial recognition technology private right of action in California, 147 procedural fairness, 92–93 professional ethics, xxx–xxxi, 244 ProPublica investigation of racism in Florida’s criminal court, 97 Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER), xxiii public health vs. factory farms, 20–21 Putin, Vladimir, 84 quantitative hedge funds using AI, 163–64 Rabois, Keith, 191–92 racial discrimination in machine-based recruiting system, 80–81 Rahwan, Iyad, 179 random “noise” in data, 131–32 randomized response survey design, 131–32 Rawls, John, 93–94 Reagan, Ronald, 258–59 Really Simple Syndication (RSS) specification, xxii recruiting system with gender bias, 81–82, 83 Reddit, xxii, 44 regret minimization framework, 30 regulations overview, 53 antitrust-based, 55–59, 227–28 based on OTA nonpartisan information, 258 constrain market dominance of big tech companies, 256–57 for creating healthy market competition, 229–30 government’s complicity in absence of, 59–63 matching tech sector innovation with appropriate regulatory structures, 261 medical research and education regulations, 244–51 policy-makers’ dilemma, 56–57 and politicians’ limited tech knowledge, 52–53 on tech start-ups, 45 technical ignorance of lawmakers, 71–72 technology companies lobby for autonomy, 46 when social consequences become intolerable, 55 Reich, Rob, xvi, 22–23 Renaissance Technologies, 163–64 representational adequacy, 13 Republic, The (Plato), 65–66 résumés and algorithmic decision-making, 82–87, 109 revenue optimization process, 43–45 Rhinehart, Rob, 7–9, 20 road safety, 154–55, 239 role of citizens in a democracy, xiv Romer, Paul M., 58–59, 176 Rush, Benjamin, 3 safety, 53–54, 55, 133–34, 154–55, 239 Sahami, Mehran, xv, 27, 38 Samuel, Arthur, 84, 156 San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack, 72, 134–35 Sanger, Larry, 195 Schatz, Brian, 240 Scholes, Myron, 59 search engine optimization (SEO), 196 Section 230, Communications Decency Act (CDA 230), 62, 221–23, 225 security, 20, 56, 71–72, 111–14, 116–17, 121–25, 128–29, 134–35, 141, 156, 166, 258 self-driving vehicles DARPA Grand Challenge, 153–54 effect on truck drivers and trucking industry, 175 human nature vs., 155–56 human pleasure from driving, 172 safety of, 154–55 in Silicon Valley, 186 society’s response to, 175 Sen, Amartya, 74, 172–73 separations regime, 229 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 116 Sherman, John, 228 Sherman, Rob, 119–20 Shklar, Judith, 76 Siebel, Michael, 40 Sifton, Sam, 9 Silicon Valley, xiv, xxv–xxvi, 28, 40–41, 73 Silverberg, Nicole, 188 Simplex algorithm, 12 smart machines and humans, 153–86 overview, 160–65 autonomous weapons, 177–78 benefits for people whose jobs are changed or lost, 182–86 choice of human flourishing or greater productivity, 169 deep learning concept, 161–62 ethics and AI, 165–66 jobs lost and other costs of adjustment, 174–76 keeping humans in the loop, 178–82 livelihood destroying potential, 170–71 overcoming poverty to promote human flourishing, 170–71 value of freedom, 172–73 virtual reality, the experience machine, 167–69 Snowden, Edward, 116, 126, 139, 143–45 social and political ethics, xxxi–xxxiii Social Dilemma, The (documentary), 238–39 “Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, The” (Friedman), 37–38 social safety nets, Europe and US compared, 185–86 social science, xv–xvii, xxvi, 137–40 Software Engineering Code of Ethics, 248 Solove, Daniel, 140 Soylent, 6–9, 20 Soylent Green (film), 7–8 Spliddit’s “provably fair solutions,” 88–89 Stanford University, Stanford, California overview, xiv, xv, xvi hate speech or hateful protected speech, 191–92 panel discussion on privacy concerns, 119–20 study of libertarian attitudes of tech leaders, 52 teaching computer science with social science and ethics, 251 VCs showcasing their new companies, 42–45 start-up accelerators, 44.


pages: 677 words: 206,548

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It by Marc Goodman

23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, Brian Krebs, business process, butterfly effect, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, cognitive dissonance, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, don't be evil, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, future of work, game design, gamification, global pandemic, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, Hacker News, high net worth, High speed trading, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, hypertext link, illegal immigration, impulse control, industrial robot, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, Large Hadron Collider, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, license plate recognition, lifelogging, litecoin, low earth orbit, M-Pesa, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mobile money, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, national security letter, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, operational security, optical character recognition, Parag Khanna, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, personalized medicine, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, printed gun, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, Ross Ulbricht, Russell Brand, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, security theater, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, Stuxnet, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tech worker, technological singularity, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, uranium enrichment, Virgin Galactic, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wave and Pay, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, you are the product, zero day

Even the sense of touch can be re-created as haptic or tactile feedback technologies apply “force, vibration or motions” to the user. As Mark Zuckerberg commented upon Facebook’s $2 billion acquisition of Oculus Rift, a highly responsive virtual reality head-mounted display, in early 2014, “Strategically we want to start building the next major computing platform that will come after mobile.” Tools like the Oculus Rift headset can transport us in an instant to immersively experience a beautiful Tuscan villa, a courtside seat at an NBA game, or an imagined but realistic battle with Klingons and Romulans. One of the earliest virtual worlds was Second Life, which was launched by Philip Rosedale of Linden Lab in 2003 and allowed users to represent themselves in the form of highly customized avatars.

The McKinsey Global Institute predicts that the innovation enabled across multiple sectors by the Internet of Things is expected to drive as much as an additional $6.2 trillion in value to the global economy by 2025. The IoT may very well be where the next Google, Facebook, or Apple is found, and the number of sensors, consumer devices, and industrial control systems online has already surpassed the number of mobile phones. Early entrants to the IoT such as Fitbit, Jawbone, Oculus Rift, Withings, Estimote, and Sonos have generated significant buzz and market valuation. Indeed, one such firm, the smartthermostat company Nest Labs, was acquired in 2014 for an astounding $3.2 billion just 854 days after the launch of its first product. And while there is undoubtedly big money to be made in the IoT, its social implications may even outstrip its economic impact.


pages: 410 words: 119,823

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield

3D printing, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, basic income, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, business intelligence, business process, Californian Ideology, call centre, cellular automata, centralized clearinghouse, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, circular economy, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, collective bargaining, combinatorial explosion, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, Conway's Game of Life, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, digital map, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fiat currency, fulfillment center, gentrification, global supply chain, global village, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Herman Kahn, Ian Bogost, IBM and the Holocaust, industrial robot, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet of things, Jacob Silverman, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, jobs below the API, John Conway, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, Leo Hollis, license plate recognition, lifelogging, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, megacity, megastructure, minimum viable product, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, natural language processing, Network effects, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, PalmPilot, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Pearl River Delta, performance metric, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, post scarcity, post-work, printed gun, proprietary trading, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, RFID, rolodex, Rutger Bregman, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social intelligence, sorting algorithm, special economic zone, speech recognition, stakhanovite, statistical model, stem cell, technoutopianism, Tesla Model S, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Uber for X, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, When a measure becomes a target, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

This is conscious, if not in the AR community itself then at least on the part of some of the most prominent developers of commercial virtual-reality gear.20 One of the primary functions these enthusiasts imagine for VR is to camouflage the inequities and insults of an unjust world, by offering the multitude high-fidelity simulations of the things their betters get to experience for real. This is Oculus Rift developer John Carmack: “Some fraction of the desirable experiences of the wealthy can be synthesized and replicated for a much broader range of people.” Here we see articulated—in so many words, and by someone at the center of VR development for many years—the idea that all of the vertiginous inequity we live with is so entrenched and so unchallengeable that all we can do is accede to it, and that the best thing we can do with our technology is use it as a palliative and a pacifier.

., 269 Machii, Isao, 266–7 machine learning, 8, 16, 60, 185, 192, 194, 209–57, 308 maker spaces, 93 MakerBot, 85, 88, 101, 104–5, 107 mapping, 22–5, 275, 278 Mann, Steve, 77–8 Marx, Karl, 70, 305 MasterCard, 120 Mason, Paul, 88 Mauthausen, 61 McDonald’s restaurant chain, 194–5 McDonough, William, 96 McNamara, Robert, 57 Merkle roots, 123 Metropolitan Police Service, London, 231 Microsoft, 38–9, 262, 275 minimal techno (music genre), 221 Minority Report (movie), 227, 230 MIT Technology Review (journal), 243 Mitte, Berlin neighborhood, 71–2 Monobloc chair, 106 Monroe, Rodney, 230 Moore’s Law, 88, 93 Morris, David, 256–7 Mountain View, California, 284 M–Pesa digital currency, 117 Music Genome Project, 220 Musk, Elon, 222 National Institute of Justice, 233 National Public Radio, 41, 192 National September 11th Memorial, 65 National Technical University of Athens, 173 NAVSTAR Global Positioning System, 21 NBC Universal, 220 neural networks, 214–16, 219, 264, 266 Nevada, 192 New York City, 51, 56–8, 136, 238 New York Times (newspaper), 177 Next Rembrandt project, 262–3, 265 near-field communication standard (NFC), 17, 117 Niantic Labs, 65 Niemeyer, Oscar, 261 Nieuwenhuys, Constant, 190 Niigata, Japan, 301–2 niqab, 295 Nixon Administration, 204 nonvolatile memory, 15 North Dakota, 192 Norwegian black metal (music genre), 221 Nuit Debout protests, 3 Occupy movement, 167, 169 Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, 82 O’Neil, Cathy, 249 open source hardware, 102 OpenTable, 39–40, 46 Osborne, Michael A., 195 Ostrom, Elinor, 171 output neuron, 215 overtransparency, 240–1, 243 Pai, Sidhant, 98 Pandora music service, 220 Panmunjom Truce Village, 65 Pareto optimality, 55, 59 Paris, 1–6, 292 Pasquale, Frank, 244, 253 path dependence, 232, 299 PayPal, 120, 136, 220 PCWorld, 45 People Analytics, 198, 226, 232 perceptron, 214 Père Lachaise cemetery, 2, 5, 26 persoonskaart, Dutch identity card, 60 Pew Research Center, 41, 193 Pinellas County, Florida, 256 Placemeter, 51 polylactic acid plastic filament (PLA), 94, 98, 101 Pokémon Go, 63–5, 76, 79 Polari, 311 policy network, 264 Pollock, Jackson, 261 Pony Express, 256 porosity, 28, 173 POSIWID, 155, 302 Postcapitalism (Paul Mason), 88 power/knowledge, 62 predictive policing, 227, 230, 232, 235 PredPol, 229, 231, 236, 244, 254 proof-of-work, 128–30, 140–1, 143, 290 prosopagnosia.


pages: 199 words: 43,653

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

Airbnb, AltaVista, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, dark pattern, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, framing effect, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, growth hacking, Ian Bogost, IKEA effect, Inbox Zero, invention of the telephone, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Lean Startup, lock screen, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Oculus Rift, Paradox of Choice, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, QWERTY keyboard, reality distortion field, Richard Thaler, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social bookmarking, TaskRabbit, telemarketer, the new new thing, Toyota Production System, Y Combinator

Likewise, the fast ascent of mobile devices, including tablets, has spawned a new revolution in interface changes—and a new generation of start-up products and services designed around mobile user needs and behaviors. To uncover where interfaces are changing, Paul Buchheit, a partner at Y Combinator, encourages entrepreneurs to “live in the future.”10 A profusion of interface changes are just a few years away. Wearable technologies like Google Glass, the Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles, and the Pebble smartwatch promise to change how users interact with the real and digital worlds. By looking forward to anticipate where interfaces will change, the enterprising designer can uncover new ways to form user habits. REMEMBER & SHARE The Hook Model helps the product designer generate an initial prototype for a habit-forming technology.


pages: 200 words: 47,378

The Internet of Money by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

AltaVista, altcoin, bitcoin, blockchain, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cryptocurrency, disruptive innovation, Dogecoin, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, financial exclusion, global reserve currency, information security, litecoin, London Interbank Offered Rate, Marc Andreessen, Oculus Rift, packet switching, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, QR code, ransomware, reserve currency, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, skeuomorphism, Skype, smart contracts, the medium is the message, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, underbanked, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

Because, clearly, if we had Netflix in 1992, a single video stream to a single user would melt down the entire internet. Yet, here we are today. By the way, the internet is failing to scale for Netflix and all of the other companies that are doing live video. It will continue to fail to scale incrementally and gracefully. Soon, we’ll be doing Oculus Rift holographic 3D, 4K, VR. Then, it will really fail to scale. People will still write Ph.D. theses on why the internet is about to melt down. 11.2. Scaling is a Moving Target Scaling is a moving target. Scale defines the edge of today’s capabilities. As it moves forward, capability increases.


pages: 254 words: 61,387

This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World by Yancey Strickler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, accelerated depreciation, Adam Curtis, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, big-box store, business logic, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dutch auction, effective altruism, Elon Musk, financial independence, gender pay gap, gentrification, global supply chain, Hacker News, housing crisis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Nash: game theory, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Larry Ellison, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, medical bankruptcy, Mr. Money Mustache, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, offshore financial centre, Parker Conrad, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Solyndra, stem cell, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, white flight, Zenefits

Kickstarter and others established a new possibility for funding creative projects and ideas that’s now accepted and mainstream. Many Kickstarter projects underwent a similar transition from new and unproven idea to mainstream acceptance. The tabletop game Cards Against Humanity started as a Kickstarter project backed by several hundred people. So did Oculus Rift, which was a prototype in a garage when its Kickstarter launched. Pebble invented smartwatches with its string of Kickstarter projects. Hundreds of restaurants, movie theaters, galleries, and other public spaces are open today thanks to their backers and the platform. All these projects began as ideas just like Kickstarter itself.


pages: 205 words: 61,903

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, buy low sell high, Californian Ideology, carbon credits, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, Demis Hassabis, deplatforming, digital capitalism, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Extinction Rebellion, Fairphone, fake news, Filter Bubble, game design, gamification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haight Ashbury, hockey-stick growth, Howard Rheingold, if you build it, they will come, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megaproject, meme stock, mental accounting, Michael Milken, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mirror neurons, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), operational security, Patri Friedman, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, QAnon, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SimCity, Singularitarianism, Skinner box, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the medium is the message, theory of mind, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , working poor

“The real world will seem flat, colorless, blurry compared to the experiences you’ll be able to create in people’s brains.” This will be especially valuable as the real world continues to degrade. VR developers even make an economic justice case for throwing us all into a simulation. “It is not possible , on Earth, to give everyone all that they would want,” Oculus Rift Chief Technol ogy Officer John Carmack explained on the Joe Rogan podcast. “Not everyone can have Richard Branson’s private island.” VR is the new solution to climate change—or maybe the ultimate surrender to its inevitability. As resources vanish and economic conditions worsen, technological simulations can fill in where real wealth has disappeared.


pages: 533

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech by Jamie Susskind

3D printing, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Robotics, Andrew Keen, Apollo Guidance Computer, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, automated trading system, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business process, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Cass Sunstein, cellular automata, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, computer age, computer vision, continuation of politics by other means, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, digital divide, digital map, disinformation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of work, Future Shock, Gabriella Coleman, Google bus, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, industrial robot, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, machine translation, Metcalfe’s law, mittelstand, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, night-watchman state, Oculus Rift, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, payday loans, Philippa Foot, post-truth, power law, price discrimination, price mechanism, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, selection bias, self-driving car, sexual politics, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, smart contracts, Snapchat, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, tech bro, technological determinism, technological singularity, technological solutionism, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, universal basic income, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, work culture , working-age population, Yochai Benkler

Touch controllers bring your hands in with you as well.132 ‘Haptic’ clothing gives you sensual feedback through tiny vibrating motors spread over your body— you really don’t want to get stabbed or shot.133 Once inside, you’re free to see, feel, explore, and interact with a new dimension of existence. While AR technologies operate within the real world, VR technologies create an entirely new one. Technology giants including Facebook (Oculus Rift), Microsoft (HoloLens), Samsung (Gear VR), Google (Daydream), and Playstation (Playstation VR) are already in fierce competition to develop the best VR ­hardware. Virtual reality feels remarkably real. After a few moments of adjustment, even resistance, users’ senses begin to adapt to the new universe around them.

S. 57 Elster, Jon 304, 425 EMC 386, 387 Emerging Technology from the arXiv 422 emotions affective computing 52–3 perception-control 148–9 Enchassi, Nadia Judith 370, 420 encryption 182–4 Engels, Friedrich 310, 326–7, 362, 426, 429, 436 England Levellers 215–16 Luddites 13 Revolution 77, 167–8 Entous, Adam 433 entrenchment, rule-based injustice 284 Epicenter 51 epidermal electronics 44 Epstein, Robert 398 equality 10 Data Democracy 247 Deliberative Democracy 234 democracy 223, 225–6 Direct Democracy 240 distributive justice 262–3 human nature 364–5 and justice, difference between 259 of opportunity 260, 261, 263, 270, 294 Esteva, Andre 372 Estonia 47, 220 Ethereum 47 ethics Data Deal 339 human enhancement 363 see also morality European Convention on Human Rights 326 European Court of Human Rights 31, 109 European Court of Justice 138 European Parliament 184 European Union (EU) Brexit 4, 233, 239 competition law 357 General Data Protection Regulation 138, 433 Google fine 357 personal data laws 138 right to explanation 354 taxation 328 everyware see smart devices Executive Office of the President 421, 422 exploitation 273 Eyefluence 319 Facebook acceptable/unacceptable posts 190 acquisitions 318, 319–20 artificial intelligence 116 ban on far-right groups 236 commercial value 66 concentration of tech industry 318, 319, 320, 321 democracy 359 embarrassing photographs 137 fake news 230 fragmented reality 230 friends 284 job applicants 267 Kurds 236 ‘Likes’ 132, 149, 221, 248 machine learning 35 Messenger 318 new media 77 news platform 147 Newsroom 406 Oculus Rift 59 personal data about users 64–5 photograph upload numbers 63 power 350 rules 116 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Index user emotions 148–9 user-generated content 315 user numbers 45, 65 users as unpaid workforce 338 US presidential election (2016) 354 Faception 173 facial analysis 52 facial recognition 30, 51 data-based injustice 282 machine learning 36 rule-based injustice 285–6 totalitarianism 178 fact-checking 234 Fairfield, Joshua A.


pages: 271 words: 62,538

The Best Interface Is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology (Voices That Matter) by Golden Krishna

Airbnb, Bear Stearns, computer vision, crossover SUV, data science, en.wikipedia.org, fear of failure, impulse control, Inbox Zero, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, lock screen, Mark Zuckerberg, microdosing, new economy, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, QR code, RFID, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, tech worker, technoutopianism, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Y Combinator, Y2K

Those figures have and will fluctuate, but the current ad-based businesses—sometimes masked in PR with buzz terms like data businesses, or aligned with the old guard as media companies—dictate that the lion’s share of their revenue will remain focused on the ads that pollute their otherwise valued content. Hopefully buyouts or valuable new product creation—such as Google’s acquisition of the hardware company Nest, or Facebook’s purchase of the virtual reality device Oculus Rift—will alter course by having other profitability far surpass ad revenue, but for now this is our reality: Google at launch Google now “Got the girl. Got the money. Now I’m ready to live a disgusting, frivolous life.” 5 Those are words of Stephan Paternot on CNN. On Friday the 13th, in November 1998, he watched the stock price of theGlobe.com—the web-site he cofounded in 1995 while a student at Cornell—increase by 606 percent in a Bear Stearns IPO that was Wall Street’s largest first-day gain.


pages: 254 words: 76,064

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future by Joi Ito, Jeff Howe

3D printing, air gap, Albert Michelson, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Burning Man, business logic, buy low sell high, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, Computer Numeric Control, conceptual framework, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital rights, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ferguson, Missouri, fiat currency, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, frictionless, game design, Gerolamo Cardano, informal economy, information security, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, move 37, Nate Silver, Network effects, neurotypical, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), PalmPilot, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, pirate software, power law, pre–internet, prisoner's dilemma, Productivity paradox, quantum cryptography, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Ronald Coase, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, SETI@home, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Singh, Singularitarianism, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, the strength of weak ties, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Two Sigma, universal basic income, unpaid internship, uranium enrichment, urban planning, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

The Internet is simply a way to disassemble information and reassemble it somewhere else. What technology actually does, the real impact it will eventually have on society, is often that which we least expect. By the time you read this sentence, Oculus VR will have released a consumer version of its Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset. How will we put it to use? Developers are already at work on video games that will take advantage of the intense immersion the Rift provides. Porn, that $100 billion industry, will not be far behind. It could allow doctors to perform remote surgical operations, or simply provide checkups for patients unable to get to a doctor’s office.


pages: 268 words: 76,702

The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, cryptocurrency, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, financial engineering, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, Leonard Kleinrock, lock screen, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, packet switching, patent troll, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, ransomware, RFC: Request For Comment, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Crocker, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, The Chicago School, the long tail, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, yield management, zero day

We’re in New York’s fashionable Meatpacking District, surrounded by designer shops, restaurants and bars, and just yards from the Hudson River. As you walk into the building you’re greeted with a wall of some of the biggest successes of the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, in which betaworks invested. There is a prototype Oculus Rift VR headset ($2.4 million raised), Hickies no-tie shoelaces ($580,000 raised), the Light Phone, an ultra-minimalist mobile phone ($415,000), and Sammy Screamer, a mobile alarm to ‘keep an eye on your stuff’ ($90,840), all on show as I visit. In the reception to the huge open-plan space, replete with the expected kitchens, chill-out areas, ultra-modern seating and more, you can catch snippets of conversation which also sound exactly like a tech investment company should.


pages: 305 words: 79,303

The Four: How Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google Divided and Conquered the World by Scott Galloway

"Susan Fowler" uber, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Bob Noyce, Brewster Kahle, business intelligence, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, Comet Ping Pong, commoditize, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, Didi Chuxing, digital divide, disintermediation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, follow your passion, fulfillment center, future of journalism, future of work, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker Conference 1984, Internet Archive, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jony Ive, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, longitudinal study, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, passive income, Peter Thiel, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Mercer, Robert Shiller, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, Tesla Model S, the long tail, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, undersea cable, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, working poor, you are the product, young professional

In 2016, the two firms accounted for 103 percent of all digital media revenue growth.27 This means that, sans Facebook and Google, digital media now joins newspapers, radio, and broadcast TV as sectors that are in decline. Head Fake As they fight for market dominance, both Facebook and Google can be expected to make bold bets on the future. One especially expensive route leads to virtual reality, and that’s where Facebook stole the march on the industry. In 2014, Zuck paid $2 billion for Oculus Rift, the leading VR headset company.28 Following that acquisition, he raved, “VR will open up new worlds.” Spoiler alert: it hasn’t. People were envisioned strapping on headsets to attend virtual work meetings. Surgeons in New York and Tokyo could operate in the same virtual theater. Grandparents would spend virtual time with their far-flung grandkids.


pages: 286 words: 87,401

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman, Chris Yeh

"Susan Fowler" uber, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, autonomous vehicles, Benchmark Capital, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, Bob Noyce, business intelligence, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, database schema, DeepMind, Didi Chuxing, discounted cash flows, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, fulfillment center, Future Shock, George Gilder, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, growth hacking, high-speed rail, hockey-stick growth, hydraulic fracturing, Hyperloop, initial coin offering, inventory management, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, late fees, Lean Startup, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, oil shale / tar sands, PalmPilot, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Quicken Loans, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, subscription business, synthetic biology, Tesla Model S, thinkpad, three-martini lunch, transaction costs, transport as a service, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, uber lyft, web application, winner-take-all economy, work culture , Y Combinator, yellow journalism

Large companies can (if they have patient shareholders) have longer time horizons than start-ups, which need to show immediate results to continue raising money. Google often plays this long game with technologies ranging from self-driving cars to a cure for aging. Facebook is also playing the long game with Oculus Rift and VR. The key is knowing when to scale up. Microsoft tried to scale smartphones too early with Windows CE; as it turns out, the modern smartphone only became practical once Moore’s Law made mobile CPUs powerful enough, and Apple combined software with capacitive touch screens, Corning’s damage-resistant Gorilla Glass, and high-volume Chinese manufacturing.


pages: 296 words: 86,610

The Bitcoin Guidebook: How to Obtain, Invest, and Spend the World's First Decentralized Cryptocurrency by Ian Demartino

3D printing, AltaVista, altcoin, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, buy low sell high, capital controls, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, decentralized internet, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, forensic accounting, global village, GnuPG, Google Earth, Haight Ashbury, initial coin offering, Jacob Appelbaum, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, litecoin, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Oculus Rift, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, printed gun, QR code, ransomware, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, Skype, smart contracts, Steven Levy, the medium is the message, underbanked, WikiLeaks, Zimmermann PGP

There is also equity-based crowdfunding, which is like normal crowdfunding except the funders receive shares of the company rather than a product or one of the rewards typical in crowdfunding campaigns. Although not feasible in the US due to stringent regulations, companies elsewhere have been crowdfunding projects and companies by selling off parts of the company to the crowdfunders. Essentially, it is crowdfunded investment capital. The funders of the Oculus Rift would have stood to gain a pretty penny had that company offered equity, rather than development kits that were quickly made obsolete, to their backers. (Oculus later announced early backers will receive a consumer-version virtual reality headset when it launches.) Uphold, which has been mentioned a few times already, ran an equity crowdfunding campaign and raised more than $9 million without being open to US customers.1 But those are the fiat world’s solutions.


pages: 324 words: 80,217

The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success by Ross Douthat

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, Apollo 13, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 747, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, centre right, Charlie Hebdo massacre, charter city, crack epidemic, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Graeber, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, Donald Trump, driverless car, East Village, Easter island, Elon Musk, fake news, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, ghettoisation, gig economy, Golden age of television, green new deal, Haight Ashbury, helicopter parent, hive mind, Hyperloop, immigration reform, informal economy, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Islamic Golden Age, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Joan Didion, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, life extension, low interest rates, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, megacity, meritocracy, microaggression, move fast and break things, multiplanetary species, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, Norman Mailer, obamacare, Oculus Rift, open borders, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, out of africa, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paris climate accords, peak TV, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, pre–internet, private spaceflight, QAnon, quantitative easing, radical life extension, rent-seeking, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Snapchat, Snow Crash, Social Justice Warrior, social web, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, wage slave, WeWork, women in the workforce, Y2K

And the drugs pair with the virtual entertainments in the same way that soma pairs naturally with other features of the Brave New World World State. Huxley’s perfectly stabilized society had the “feelies”—essentially VR sex. We are not so far away from something similar, at the place where sex robots and Oculus Rift converge. Our society doesn’t repress youthful lust and aggression so much as it stimulates them safely through video games and smut; his dystopia had the mandatory Violent Passion Surrogate, administered “regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It’s the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage.


pages: 322 words: 88,197

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", Ada Lovelace, adjacent possible, Alfred Russel Wallace, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Book of Ingenious Devices, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, colonial exploitation, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, cotton gin, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Drosophila, Edward Thorp, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, game design, global village, Great Leap Forward, Hedy Lamarr / George Antheil, HyperCard, invention of air conditioning, invention of the printing press, invention of the telegraph, Islamic Golden Age, Jacquard loom, Jacques de Vaucanson, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, Lewis Mumford, lone genius, mass immigration, megacity, Minecraft, moral panic, Murano, Venice glass, music of the spheres, Necker cube, New Urbanism, Oculus Rift, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, pets.com, placebo effect, pneumatic tube, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, profit motive, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Oldenburg, SimCity, spice trade, spinning jenny, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, talking drums, the built environment, The Great Good Place, the scientific method, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trade route, Turing machine, Turing test, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, vertical integration, Victor Gruen, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, white flight, white picket fence, Whole Earth Catalog, working poor, Wunderkammern

Unlike his earlier kaleidoscope invention, Brewster managed to build a successful business selling his contraption, properly branded as a “Brewster Stereoscope.” Queen Victoria famously marveled at one during the Great Exhibition of 1851. The stereoscope lives on to this day in the form of the popular View-Master toy, and the fundamental illusion the stereoscope relies on is also central to virtual reality goggles like Oculus Rift. Optical illusions can be employed for more serious pursuits. Until the late nineteenth century, the most famous and influential “trick of the eye” was the invention of linear perspective, generally credited to the architect Filippo Brunelleschi, though the fundamental rules that governed the technique were first outlined in the book On Painting by Leon Battista Alberti.


Driverless: Intelligent Cars and the Road Ahead by Hod Lipson, Melba Kurman

AI winter, Air France Flight 447, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, cloud computing, computer vision, connected car, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, DARPA: Urban Challenge, deep learning, digital map, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, General Motors Futurama, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Earth, Google X / Alphabet X, Hans Moravec, high net worth, hive mind, ImageNet competition, income inequality, industrial robot, intermodal, Internet of things, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, lone genius, Lyft, megacity, Network effects, New Urbanism, Oculus Rift, pattern recognition, performance metric, Philippa Foot, precision agriculture, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, technoutopianism, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, Travis Kalanick, trolley problem, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Unsafe at Any Speed, warehouse robotics

Over the past few decades, the consumption of pornography has been an accelerating force in the development of technologies like the VHS video player, streaming video, and the internet. Driverless cars could offer a comfortable new viewing environment for fans of pornography to immerse themselves in, particularly as virtual-reality goggles like the Oculus Rift make the experience even more intense. The road ahead What lies ahead? Robotics technologies are reaching a critical tipping point and driverless cars are finally showing real promise in becoming a safe and viable mode of transportation. I sometimes find myself wondering what it will be like to someday explain to younger generations how the act of driving used to be equated with adulthood and freedom.


pages: 332 words: 93,672

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy by George Gilder

23andMe, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Asilomar, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bob Noyce, British Empire, Brownian motion, Burning Man, business process, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, cellular automata, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, computer age, computer vision, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, cryptocurrency, Danny Hillis, decentralized internet, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disintermediation, distributed ledger, don't be evil, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, fault tolerance, fiat currency, Firefox, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, George Gilder, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, index fund, inflation targeting, informal economy, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, means of production, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, OSI model, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, quantitative easing, random walk, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Ross Ulbricht, Ruby on Rails, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Snow Crash, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, South Sea Bubble, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, Susan Wojcicki, TED Talk, telepresence, Tesla Model S, The Soul of a New Machine, theory of mind, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, tulip mania, Turing complete, Turing machine, Vernor Vinge, Vitalik Buterin, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

At this conference, where Strivr is showing off its ingenious immersive training technology, Hillenmeyer is a bigger star than Manning. He points out that Moore’s Law has brought the price of virtual reality gear down to one-tenth or less of what it was in the heydays of Doug Trumbull and Jaron Lanier. Today, Facebook’s Oculus Rift headsets cost less than a thousand dollars—still prohibitively expensive for the consumer market but cheap compared with previous VR systems. “Learning by doing” is by far the most effective form of training, and Strivr has focused on the details of delivering a full experience of virtual learning.


pages: 326 words: 103,170

The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks by Joshua Cooper Ramo

air gap, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, British Empire, cloud computing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data science, deep learning, defense in depth, Deng Xiaoping, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Firefox, Google Chrome, growth hacking, Herman Kahn, income inequality, information security, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joi Ito, Laura Poitras, machine translation, market bubble, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Mitch Kapor, Morris worm, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, packet switching, paperclip maximiser, Paul Graham, power law, price stability, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Sand Hill Road, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social web, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, systems thinking, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, Vernor Vinge, zero day

Unfortunately, there’s not some switch we’ll hit and move from today to the Jetsons. Our future will look less like an isolated technological paradise than an intermingling of real and virtual. It will not be an age in which we disappear into a blacked-out virtual reality—marked by a life lived on the digital side of an Oculus Rift, say, or inside the subversive and dystopian world of novels such as Ready Player One. Rather, real and virtual worlds will combine. We will be augmented by our connections, as reality is augmented by the HoloLens or Magic Leap goggles. Think of Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson’s masterpiece novel, for instance, in which characters move effortlessly between net and city.


pages: 359 words: 96,019

How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story by Billy Gallagher

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Swan, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, computer vision, data science, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, Frank Gehry, gamification, gentrification, Google Glasses, Hyperloop, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, Justin.tv, Kevin Roose, Lean Startup, Long Term Capital Management, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, Nelson Mandela, Oculus Rift, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, power law, QR code, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skeuomorphism, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, sorting algorithm, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, TechCrunch disrupt, too big to fail, value engineering, Y Combinator, young professional

Then the entrant gets better (adding more features like video sharing and geofilters) and moves upmarket (adding Snapchat Stories and moving into the social network space), attracting a bigger share of the market (passing Twitter in daily active users) and better customers (older, more affluent users, and celebrities and media companies signing on as publishers). Mark Zuckerberg is hyper aware of this potentially lethal threat from startups; he builds separate teams at Facebook to create new apps and snatches up the best new companies by making aggressive offers for hot startups like Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus Rift. But Evan wouldn’t sell, so Snapchat became the one that got away. And Snapchat keeps moving up and up, attracting more users and stealing more photos and videos that users formerly posted to Facebook or Instagram. It’s tempting to think that whoever has the better team and better technology will win.


pages: 387 words: 106,753

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success by Tom Eisenmann

Airbnb, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, call centre, carbon footprint, Checklist Manifesto, clean tech, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Dean Kamen, drop ship, Elon Musk, fail fast, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, growth hacking, Hyperloop, income inequality, initial coin offering, inventory management, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, Network effects, nuclear winter, Oculus Rift, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, performance metric, Peter Pan Syndrome, Peter Thiel, reality distortion field, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk/return, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, software as a service, Solyndra, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, WeWork, Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

The idea was, if Jibo sat in the kitchen, he might spark conversation between, say, squabbling siblings, or surly teenagers and their harried parents. VCs with children could relate to this target consumer, and they were intrigued by cutting-edge consumer hardware in the wake of Facebook’s $2.3 billion acquisition of the virtual reality headset maker Oculus Rift—which, like Jibo, was a breakthrough fusion of hardware and software, targeted to consumer markets. And, having witnessed the explosive growth of platforms like Facebook, Amazon, and Salesforce.com, VCs liked that Jibo would be a platform, hosting applications from a wide array of third-party software developers and information services.


pages: 371 words: 107,141

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All by Adrian Hon

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", 4chan, Adam Curtis, Adrian Hon, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Astronomia nova, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, bread and circuses, British Empire, buy and hold, call centre, computer vision, conceptual framework, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, David Sedaris, deep learning, delayed gratification, democratizing finance, deplatforming, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, electronic logging device, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, fake news, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, Galaxy Zoo, game design, gamification, George Floyd, gig economy, GitHub removed activity streaks, Google Glasses, Hacker News, Hans Moravec, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, job automation, jobs below the API, Johannes Kepler, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, linked data, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, LuLaRoe, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, megaproject, meme stock, meta-analysis, Minecraft, moral panic, multilevel marketing, non-fungible token, Ocado, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Parler "social media", passive income, payment for order flow, prisoner's dilemma, QAnon, QR code, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, r/findbostonbombers, replication crisis, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Coase, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, shareholder value, sharing economy, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skinner box, spinning jenny, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, why are manhole covers round?, workplace surveillance

Nick Paumgarten, “Master of Play,” New Yorker, December 12, 2010, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/master-of-play; Robbie Collin, “Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto: ‘What Can Games Learn from Film? Nothing,’” Telegraph, November 10, 2014, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11201171/nintendo-super-mario-pikmin-tokyo-film-festival-mandarin-oriental-tokyo-sega-mario-kart-zelda-wii-oculus-rift.html. 61. Chris Kohler, “Q&A: Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto Talks Wii Fit,” Wired, May 19, 2008, www.wired.com/2008/05/miyamoto-wii-fi. 62. Nintendo, “Top Selling Title Sales Units: Wii Software.” 63. “Yearly Archives: 2007, page 3,” Quantified Self, accessed November 26, 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20170629220503/http://quantifiedself.com/2007/page/3. 64.


pages: 480 words: 119,407

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, Bernie Sanders, Cambridge Analytica, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, data science, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, falling living standards, first-past-the-post, gender pay gap, gig economy, glass ceiling, Grace Hopper, Hacker Ethic, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, lifelogging, low skilled workers, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, new economy, obamacare, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, phenotype, post-industrial society, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, speech recognition, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, tech bro, the built environment, urban planning, women in the workforce, work culture , zero-sum game

D. (2005), ‘Gender differences for non-fatal unintentional fall related injuries among older adults’, Injury Prevention, 11, 115–19 26 Ibid. 27 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4750302/ 28 Chang, Vicky C. and Minh, T. (2015), ‘Risk Factors for Falls Among Seniors: Implications of Gender’, American Journal of Epidemiology, 181:7, 521–31 29 Yin, Hujun et al eds. (2016) Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning, Proceedings of the 17th International Conference, Yangzhou China 30 https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/12/how-self-tracking-apps-exclude-women/383673/ 31 https://www.afdb.org/en/blogs/investing-in-gender-equality-for-africa%E2%80%99s-transformation/post/technology-women-and-africa-access-use-creation-and-leadership-13999/] 32 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016–06-23/artificial-intelligence-has-a-sea-of-dudes-problem 33 http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/january-february-2014/areyou-sure-your-software-is-gender-neutral 34 http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/16/women-vs-the-machine/ 35 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016–06-23/artificial-intelligence-has-a-sea-of-dudes-problem 36 https://www.ncwit.org/sites/default/files/resources/btn_03232017_web.pdf 37 https://www.ft.com/content/ca324dcc-dcb0-11e6-86ac-f253db7791c6 38 https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/11/10749932/vr-hardware-needs-to-fit-women-too 39 https://mic.com/articles/142579/virtual-reality-has-a-sexual-harassment-problem-what-can-we-do-to-stop-it#.ISQgjAanK 40 https://mic.com/articles/157415/my-first-virtual-reality-groping-sexual-assault-in-vr-harassment-in-tech-jordan-belamire#.5lnAqHFW1 41 http://uploadvr.com/dealing-with-harassment-in-vr/ 42 Ibid. 43 https://www.newscientist.com/article/2115648-posture-could-explain-why-women-get-more-vr-sickness-than-men/ 44 https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3628-women-need-widescreenfor-virtual-navigation 45 https://qz.com/192874/is-the-oculus-rift-designed-to-be-sexist/ 46 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/female-dummy-makes-her-mark-on-male-dominated-crash-tests/2012/03/07/gIQANBLjaS_story.html?utm_term=.5ec23738142a 47 ‘Gendered Innovations: How Gender Analysis Contributes to Research’ (2013), report of the Expert Group ‘Innovation Through Gender’ (chairperson: Londa Schiebinger, rapporteur: Ineke Klinge), Directorate General for Research and Innovation, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union 48 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811766 49 https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/female-dummy-makes-her-mark-on-male-dominated-crash-tests/2012/03/07/gIQANBLjaS_story.html?


pages: 468 words: 124,573

How to Build a Billion Dollar App: Discover the Secrets of the Most Successful Entrepreneurs of Our Time by George Berkowski

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, Black Swan, business intelligence, call centre, crowdsourcing, deal flow, Dennis Tito, disruptive innovation, Dunbar number, en.wikipedia.org, game design, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Jony Ive, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, minimum viable product, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, Paul Graham, QR code, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, TechCrunch disrupt, Travis Kalanick, two-pizza team, ubercab, Y Combinator

While Google Glass has received a lot of attention because of Google’s profile, another equally fascinating, and potentially even more disruptive, technology company has captured headline. It is called Oculus VR and it might just be the first company to bring virtual reality to the masses. The company’s founder Palmer Luckey is a self-proclaimed virtual reality enthusiast and hardware geek. He launched a campaign on crowd-funding website kickstarter back in 2012 to build the Oculus Rift – a groundbreaking virtual reality headset for immersive gaming. The campaign was beyond successful and raised not only $2.4 million in funding, but also won the support of three huge gaming companies: Valve, Epic Games and Unity. That success attracted some of the gaming world’s best talent, almost $100 million in venture capital funding and the acquisition of the company by Facebook in March 2014 for $2 billion.


pages: 515 words: 126,820

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World by Don Tapscott, Alex Tapscott

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, altcoin, Alvin Toffler, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, business logic, business process, buy and hold, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, commons-based peer production, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency risk, decentralized internet, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, failed state, fiat currency, financial innovation, Firefox, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, future of work, Future Shock, Galaxy Zoo, general purpose technology, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Google bus, GPS: selective availability, Hacker News, Hernando de Soto, Higgs boson, holacracy, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information asymmetry, information security, intangible asset, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, litecoin, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, microcredit, mobile money, money market fund, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, performance metric, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price mechanism, Productivity paradox, QR code, quantitative easing, radical decentralization, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, renewable energy credits, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, search costs, Second Machine Age, seigniorage, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, smart grid, Snow Crash, social graph, social intelligence, social software, standardized shipping container, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Nature of the Firm, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, wealth creators, X Prize, Y2K, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

The process of raising equity capital—through private placements, initial public offerings, secondary offerings, and private investments in public equities (PIPEs)—has not changed significantly since the 1930s.78 Thanks to new crowdfunding platforms, small companies can access capital using the Internet. The Oculus Rift and the Pebble Watch were early successes of this model. Still, participants couldn’t buy equity directly. Today, the U.S. Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act allows small investors to make direct investments in crowdfunding campaigns, but investors and entrepreneurs still need intermediaries such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo, and a conventional payment method, typically credit cards and PayPal, to participate.


pages: 499 words: 144,278

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "Susan Fowler" uber, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 4chan, 8-hour work day, Aaron Swartz, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, blue-collar work, Brewster Kahle, Brian Krebs, Broken windows theory, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, computer vision, Conway's Game of Life, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Danny Hillis, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, don't be evil, don't repeat yourself, Donald Trump, driverless car, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, false flag, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, growth hacking, Guido van Rossum, Hacker Ethic, hockey-stick growth, HyperCard, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, ImageNet competition, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, Larry Wall, lone genius, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Shuttleworth, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, microdosing, microservices, Minecraft, move 37, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Network effects, neurotypical, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, no silver bullet, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, OpenAI, operational security, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, PalmPilot, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, planetary scale, profit motive, ransomware, recommendation engine, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, techlash, TED Talk, the High Line, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban planning, Wall-E, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WeWork, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Zimmermann PGP, éminence grise

But nearly every one also described the daily fight of having to prove themselves over and over again to the wide swathe of industry peers who, tacitly or openly, assumed they didn’t have serious technical chops, that they couldn’t. One coder, Stephanie Hurlburt, was a classically nerdy math-head who’d cut her teeth doing deep work on graphics. “I love C++, the low-level stuff,” she tells me. She’d worked for a series of firms, including Unity (which makes a popular game-design tool), and then for Facebook on its Oculus Rift VR headset, cranking mad hours to release their first demo. Hurlburt was accustomed to shrugging off neg hits. There were many: She’d been told, including by many authority figures she admired, that girls weren’t wired for math. While working as a coder, if she expressed ignorance of nearly any niggling concept in graphics, some male colleagues would pounce.


Mastering Blockchain, Second Edition by Imran Bashir

3D printing, altcoin, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, business process, carbon footprint, centralized clearinghouse, cloud computing, connected car, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, Debian, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, domain-specific language, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fault tolerance, fiat currency, Firefox, full stack developer, general-purpose programming language, gravity well, information security, initial coin offering, interest rate swap, Internet of things, litecoin, loose coupling, machine readable, MITM: man-in-the-middle, MVC pattern, Network effects, new economy, node package manager, Oculus Rift, peer-to-peer, platform as a service, prediction markets, QR code, RAND corporation, Real Time Gross Settlement, reversible computing, RFC: Request For Comment, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Satoshi Nakamoto, seminal paper, single page application, smart cities, smart contracts, smart grid, smart meter, supply-chain management, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Vitalik Buterin, web application, x509 certificate

While it is true that many Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes are being used currently along with copyright laws, but none of them is enforceable in such a way as blockchain based DRM can be. Blockchain can provide DRM functionality in such a way that it can be enforced fully. There are famously broken DRM schemes which looked great in theory but were hacked due to one limitation or another. One example is Oculus hack (http://www.wired.co.uk/article/oculus-rift-drm-hacked). Another example is PS3 hack, also copyrighted digital music, films and e-books are routinely shared on the internet without any limitations. We have copyright protection in place for many years, but digital piracy refutes all attempts to fully enforce the law on a blockchain, however, if you own an asset, no one else can claim it unless you decide to transfer it.


pages: 595 words: 143,394

Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections by Mollie Hemingway

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, critical race theory, defund the police, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, George Floyd, global pandemic, illegal immigration, inventory management, lab leak, lockdown, machine readable, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, obamacare, Oculus Rift, Paris climate accords, Ponzi scheme, power law, QR code, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, statistical model, tech billionaire, TikTok

36 The witch hunts didn’t just take place online. You could get no more dramatic illustration of how intolerant and hostile Silicon Valley was to Trump supporters than the story of Palmer Luckey—a true tech visionary who brought virtual reality to the masses as the founder of Oculus VR, the company that created the popular Oculus Rift goggles. In 2014, Facebook bought Oculus for $3 billion and brought Luckey on board to work at the company. In September 2016, it was revealed that Luckey had donated $10,000 to a pro-Trump group.37 The company went into crisis mode and pressured Luckey to sign a letter stating that he would be voting for the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson.


pages: 561 words: 157,589

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us by Tim O'Reilly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Roth, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, book value, Bretton Woods, Brewster Kahle, British Empire, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer vision, congestion pricing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, DevOps, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, disinformation, do well by doing good, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, George Akerlof, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, gravity well, greed is good, Greyball, Guido van Rossum, High speed trading, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyperloop, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invisible hand, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job automation, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kaizen: continuous improvement, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Larry Wall, Lean Startup, Leonard Kleinrock, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, microbiome, microservices, minimum viable product, mortgage tax deduction, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, OSI model, Overton Window, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, school choice, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, SETI@home, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, social web, software as a service, software patent, spectrum auction, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strong AI, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, telepresence, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the map is not the territory, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Fadell, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, universal basic income, US Airways Flight 1549, VA Linux, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yellow journalism, zero-sum game, Zipcar

At various architectural firms, architects and their clients equipped with augmented or virtual reality are stepping into their own models, modifying them, and seeing what they wish to build before they actually create anything in the physical world. Despite the much-publicized failure of Google Glass and the premature hype around virtual reality platforms such as Oculus Rift, there is plenty of evidence that augmented reality and virtual reality will have a powerful impact in on-demand learning. Smartphones and tablets alone are already being used effectively in areas like telehealth and shop floor communications and on-the-job training, and with Microsoft’s investment in HoloLens, continued experiments like Snap’s Spectacles, and rumored new products from Apple, not to mention that a next generation of Google Glass is likely still under development, I’m confident that there will be plenty of news on this front.


pages: 706 words: 202,591

Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy

active measures, Airbnb, Airbus A320, Amazon Mechanical Turk, AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, blockchain, Burning Man, business intelligence, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, company town, computer vision, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, East Village, Edward Snowden, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Geoffrey Hinton, glass ceiling, GPS: selective availability, growth hacking, imposter syndrome, indoor plumbing, information security, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lock screen, Lyft, machine translation, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Network effects, Oculus Rift, operational security, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, post-work, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, rolodex, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skeuomorphism, slashdot, Snapchat, social contagion, social graph, social software, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, techlash, Tim Cook: Apple, Tragedy of the Commons, web application, WeWork, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, you are the product

In the meantime, Oculus was basically a game company selling hardware, an alien business to Facebook. Survival as a game company would require Facebook to toss in billions of dollars and compete in an industry it didn’t care much about. Oculus had a chicken-and-egg problem. Ideally there would be a wide library of great software that ran on its flagship product, Oculus Rift. But it was expensive: the $500 price tag did not include the supercharged computer required to run the software, which brought the total to $1,500, more than most people could afford. Because the user base remained tiny, the big game developers did not see the value of spending the million-plus dollars it would take to create a first-class title.


pages: 864 words: 272,918

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris

2021 United States Capitol attack, Aaron Swartz, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, back-to-the-land, bank run, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, Black Lives Matter, Bob Noyce, book scanning, British Empire, business climate, California gold rush, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, Charles Lindbergh, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, company town, computer age, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, digital map, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, estate planning, European colonialism, Fairchild Semiconductor, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global value chain, Golden Gate Park, Google bus, Google Glasses, greed is good, hiring and firing, housing crisis, hydraulic fracturing, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, immigration reform, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, land reform, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, legacy carrier, life extension, longitudinal study, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Mont Pelerin Society, moral panic, mortgage tax deduction, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, PageRank, PalmPilot, passive income, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, phenotype, pill mill, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, popular electronics, power law, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, semantic web, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, social web, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, Suez canal 1869, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech worker, Teledyne, telemarketer, the long tail, the new new thing, thinkpad, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, transcontinental railway, traumatic brain injury, Travis Kalanick, TSMC, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban renewal, value engineering, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Vision Fund, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Wargames Reagan, Washington Consensus, white picket fence, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, Yogi Berra, éminence grise

Eventually all these connections surfaced, but as Stanford Law professor Al Gidari told the New York Times regarding Clearview: “Absent a very strong federal privacy law, we’re all screwed.”85 The company claims a value of over $100 million. How far does this road go? Among the Trumpists with Clearview access was Palmer Luckey, the founder of the virtual reality start-up Oculus Rift, which he sold to Facebook for $3 billion.86 Like Thiel, he funded pro-Trump propaganda, and Luckey’s next firm came right out of the Thielverse: a defense contractor that builds physical electronics systems. He founded it with a handful of Palantir employees, and it got a Tolkien name, too: Anduril, the name of a Lord of the Rings sword.