lifelogging

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pages: 371 words: 108,317

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly

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There is an equally important domain of tracking that is not conscious or active. This passive type of tracking is sometimes called lifelogging. The idea is to simply, mechanically, automatically, mindlessly, completely track everything all the time. Record everything that is recordable without prejudice, and for all your life. You only pay attention to it in the future when you may need it. Lifelogging is a hugely wasteful and inefficient process since most of what you lifelog is never used. But like many inefficient processes (such as evolution), it also contains genius. Lifelogging is possible now only because computation and storage and sensors have become so cheap that we can waste them with little cost.

He also scanned all his incoming pieces of paper into digital files and transcribed every phone conversation (with permission). Part of the intent of this experiment was to find out what kind of lifelogging tools Microsoft might want to invent to help workers manage the ocean of data this lifelogging generates—because making sense of all this data is a far bigger challenge than merely recording it. The point of lifelogging is to create total recall. If a lifelog records everything in your life, then it could recover anything you experienced even if your meaty mind may have forgotten it. It would be like being able to google your life, if in fact your life were being indexed and fully saved.

Lifelogging is possible now only because computation and storage and sensors have become so cheap that we can waste them with little cost. But creative “wasting” of computation has been the recipe for many of the most successful digital products and companies, and the benefits of lifelogging also lie in its extravagant use of computation. Among the very first to lifelog was Ted Nelson in the mid-1980s (although he didn’t call it that). Nelson, who invented hypertext, recorded every conversation he had with anyone on audio or videotape, no matter where or of what importance. He met and spoke to thousands of people, so he had a large rental storage container full of tapes.


pages: 606 words: 157,120

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov

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But wearing a gadget like a SenseCam around your neck may also help you find the greatest keys of all: those to your inner self. Thus, in Your Life, Uploaded, his book-length manifesto on the benefits of lifelogging, Bell assures us that it will yield “enhanced self-insight, the ability to relive one’s own life story in Proustian detail, the freedom to memorize less and think creatively more, and even a measure of earthly immortality by being cyberized.” Armed with a SenseCam, Proust would be a sure viral hit on Instagram. Bell has little use for terms like “self-tracking” and “quantified self”; instead, he describes his hobby as “lifelogging.” Numbers play a minor role in his quest; it’s not so much about generating statistics as about taming the inefficiency and unfaithfulness of human memory.

We shouldn’t mistake the easy availability of quick technological fixes for their moral desirability; the latter is anything but assured, and the seemingly uncontroversial moral truths that underpin both lifelogging and file-expiration technologies cannot be taken for granted. The cheap and artificial models of human memory peddled by technologists like Bell ought to be recognized for what they are: cheaper and faster ways of storing data. The Nutritional Aspects of Jerry Springer Where lifeloggers like Gordon Bell try to recruit new converts by invoking our civic duty to remember, another nascent geek movement reminds us that we have a responsibility to consume information conscientiously and think about its nutritional value. This is an outgrowth of the Quantified Self movement, but with an unusual civic streak.

NEA Kindle e-reader Kitcher, Philip Knowledge and information reductionism production of Kodakers Kony 2012 campaign Krugman, Paul Kuhn, Thomas Kurzweil, Ray Land records Last Great Thing project Latour, Bruno Law, mass disregard for Laws revision of, and technological enforcement unjust Leaders, and networks Learning, online Lei, Jinna Lerner, Jennifer Lessig, Lawrence and digital preemption and the Internet, permanence of and regulation and transparency Lessing, Theodor Levy, Steven Liberalism, and technology Licensing effect Lifelogging example of See also Quantified Self movement; Self-tracking LinkedIn Lippman, Walter Liquid democracy LiquidFeedback Lohmann, Susanne London, Jack Longo, Justin Lullaby MacKinnon, Rebecca Macroscopism Madison, James Magnet, Shoshana Amielle Maher, Ahmed Malraux, André Manjoo, Farhad Marconi, Guglielmo Margalit, Avishai Maris, Bill Mayer, Marissa Maynaud, Jean McGonigal, Jane McGonigal, Kate McLuhan, Marshall Meal Snap Mechanical objectivity Mechanical Turk (Amazon) Media industry Megaupload Memes and Amazon and filters and algorithms and manipulation vs. authenticity Memory, human vs. computer Mendacity Mendeley Mendelsohn, Daniel Microsoft PhotoDNA Miller, James Minow, Martha Mirror imagery Mitchell, David Molnar, Thomas Monitorial democracy Monopolies Moore, Gordon Moore’s law Morality and authenticity and citizenship revision of, and technological enforcement and situational crime prevention and technology and willpower Motivation and gamification Mubarak, Hosni Music critics Music industry Music Xray MyLifeBits MySpace Narrative imagination Narrative Science National Crime Information Center, FBI National Endowment for Democracy National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Natural Fuse Nature, and technology Naughton, John NEA.


pages: 397 words: 110,130

Smarter Than You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better by Clive Thompson

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Andy Carvin, augmented reality, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Benjamin Mako Hill, butterfly effect, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, compensation consultant, conceptual framework, context collapse, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, Deng Xiaoping, digital rights, discovery of penicillin, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, drone strike, Edward Glaeser, Edward Thorp, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, experimental subject, Filter Bubble, folksonomy, Freestyle chess, Galaxy Zoo, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Gunnar Myrdal, guns versus butter model, Henri Poincaré, hindsight bias, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, Ian Bogost, information retrieval, iterative process, James Bridle, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge worker, language acquisition, lifelogging, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Netflix Prize, Nicholas Carr, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, patent troll, pattern recognition, pre–internet, public intellectual, Richard Feynman, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Socratic dialogue, spaced repetition, superconnector, telepresence, telepresence robot, The future is already here, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, Two Sigma, Vannevar Bush, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, X Prize, éminence grise

Google’s famous PageRank system looks at social rankings: If a Web page has been linked to by hundreds of other sites, Google guesses that that page is important in some way. But lifelogs don’t have that sort of social data; unlike blogs or online social networks, they’re a private record used only by you. Without a way to find or make sense of the material, a lifelog’s greatest strength—its byzantine, brain-busting level of detail—becomes, paradoxically, its greatest flaw. Sure, go ahead and archive your every waking moment, but how do you parse it? Review it? Inspect it? Nobody has another life in which to relive their previous one. The lifelogs remind me of Jorge Luis Borges’s story “On Exactitude in Science,” in which a group of cartographers decide to draw a map of their empire with a 1:1 ratio: it is the exact size of the actual empire, with the exact same detail.

The app Evernote has already become popular because of its ability to search for text, even bent or sideways, within photos and documents. • • • Yet the weird truth is that searching a lifelog may not, in the end, be the way we take advantage of our rapidly expanding artificial memory. That’s because, ironically, searching for something leaves our imperfect, gray-matter brain in control. Bell and Gurrin and other lifeloggers have superb records, but they don’t search them unless, while using their own brains, they realize there’s something to look for. And of course, our organic brains are riddled with memory flaws. Bell’s lifelog could well contain the details of a great business idea he had in 1992; but if he’s forgotten he ever had that idea, he’s unlikely to search for it.

Bell’s lifelog could well contain the details of a great business idea he had in 1992; but if he’s forgotten he ever had that idea, he’s unlikely to search for it. It remains as remote and unused as if he’d never recorded it at all. The real promise of artificial memory isn’t its use as a passive storage device, like a pen-and-paper diary. Instead, future lifelogs are liable to be active—trying to remember things for us. Lifelogs will be far more useful when they harness what computers are uniquely good at: brute-force pattern finding. They can help us make sense of our archives by finding connections and reminding us of what we’ve forgotten. Like the hybrid chess-playing centaurs, the solution is to let the computers do what they do best while letting humans do what they do best.


pages: 254 words: 69,276

The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social by Steffen Mau

Airbnb, cognitive bias, cognitive load, collaborative consumption, connected car, crowdsourcing, digital capitalism, double entry bookkeeping, future of work, gamification, income inequality, informal economy, invisible hand, knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, lifelogging, Mark Zuckerberg, meritocracy, mittelstand, moral hazard, personalized medicine, positional goods, principal–agent problem, profit motive, QR code, reserve currency, school choice, selection bias, sharing economy, smart cities, subprime mortgage crisis, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, Uber for X, vertical integration, web of trust, Wolfgang Streeck

In this case, the data readout is no longer performed at special measuring stations such as the doctor's surgery or fitness centre, but on an ongoing basis as part of our everyday life. In its extreme form, this can be described as ‘life logged in full’ (Han 2015: 102), or ‘lifelogging’ (Selke 2016), meaning that everything that can be is measured and stored. Gary Wolf, a journalist and one of the co-founders of the network Quantified Self, argues that our insecurities surrounding body image can only be overcome by referring to measurable data. In the New York Times, he published a kind of founding manifesto of the new zeitgeist: We tolerate the pathologies of quantification – a dry, abstract, mechanical type of knowledge – because the results are so powerful.

Which road we crossed, where we stopped – all such information generally disappears like footprints in the sand, surviving only in the memory of those directly concerned, if at all. Not so in the case of the quantified self: nowadays, data are stored for longer periods or even indefinitely. Thanks to these tracking technologies, it is now possible to record not just a momentary snapshot, but whole sequences of internal and external physical, activational and emotional states in a process which comes very close to lifelogging. As with the transition from the still camera to the video camera, the dynamics of change can now be made visible. All these data have the potential to become part of a ‘total memory space’ (Welzer 2016: 125), from where they can be retrieved and recombined at any time, so that the recorded past becomes inescapable.

Scott, James (1999) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Seibt, Philipp, Fabian Reinbold and Florian Müller (2016) ‘Daten her, Geld zurück’, Spiegel Online (7 April), www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/daten-tarif-bei-der-versicherung-daten-her-geld-zurueck-a-1083021.html. Selke, Stefan (2016) Lifelogging: Digital Self-tracking and Lifelogging – between Disruptive Technology and Cultural Transformation, Wiesbaden: Springer. Siler, Kyle, Kirby Lee and Lisa Bero (2015) ‘Measuring the effectiveness of scientific gatekeeping’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112/2 (pp. 360-5). Silva, Kathleen M., Francisco J.


pages: 291 words: 77,596

Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything by Gordon Bell, Jim Gemmell

airport security, Albert Einstein, book scanning, cloud computing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, Douglas Engelbart, full text search, information retrieval, invention of writing, inventory management, Isaac Newton, Ivan Sutherland, John Markoff, language acquisition, lifelogging, Menlo Park, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, performance metric, RAND corporation, RFID, semantic web, Silicon Valley, Skype, social web, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Ted Nelson, telepresence, Turing test, Vannevar Bush, web application

There was enough public outcry over the possible abuses of TIA for it be officially scrapped a few months later. The stink over LifeLog seemed to rest on the fear-driven belief that it amounted to the same thing as TIA. But there was nothing about LifeLog that would have required people to entrust all their personal data to a central server farm in the bowels of the National Security Agency. There was nothing about LifeLog that even implied people would be required to do lifelogging at all. This effort was aimed at helping the individual soldier or officer in a state of information overload. I keep my nose out of partisan politics.

Too many works have relied on secondary sources in the past. And the scope of original sources is about to explode as lifelogging increases. We shall have to see how society evolves to deal with the legacy of e-memories, but I presume that eventually many lifelogs will be opened to a trusted historian to excerpt, if not entirely released to the public. Suppose someone were to release even a quarter of their lifelog posthumously: It would still confront the historians with a corpus vastly larger than they have ever experienced before. As more people lifelog, historians will also have to delve into the e-memories of other related figures as part of their study.

Those who put their lives up on the Web for others to view are called life bloggers (blog being short for “Web log”). I am a lifelog ger, not a life blogger. That is, I log my life into my e-memory. I may be old-fashioned, but it strikes me as foolish to publish too much, especially to an unrestricted audience. There’s too much risk and too little benefit. My lifelogging is personal and private. I do it for the very pragmatic value that it gives back to me. Unlike those making the effort to create blog entries and YouTube clips, most of my lifelogging is automatic. When I share, I do it cautiously, considering the trustworthiness of the individual recipients.


pages: 598 words: 134,339

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier

23andMe, Airbnb, airport security, AltaVista, Anne Wojcicki, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Benjamin Mako Hill, Black Swan, Boris Johnson, Brewster Kahle, Brian Krebs, call centre, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, congestion charging, data science, digital rights, disintermediation, drone strike, Eben Moglen, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, experimental subject, failed state, fault tolerance, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, Firefox, friendly fire, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, heat death of the universe, hindsight bias, informal economy, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, lifelogging, linked data, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, moral panic, Nash equilibrium, Nate Silver, national security letter, Network effects, Occupy movement, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, payday loans, pre–internet, price discrimination, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, real-name policy, recommendation engine, RFID, Ross Ulbricht, satellite internet, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, Snapchat, social graph, software as a service, South China Sea, sparse data, stealth mode startup, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, telemarketer, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, undersea cable, unit 8200, urban planning, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, workplace surveillance , Yochai Benkler, yottabyte, zero day

They’re also talking about personalized marketing, and insurance companies may someday buy their data to make business decisions. Perhaps the extreme in the data-generating-self trend is lifelogging: continuously capturing personal data. Already you can install lifelogging apps that record your activities on your smartphone, such as when you talk to friends, play games, watch movies, and so on. But this is just a shadow of what lifelogging will become. In the future, it will include a video record. Google Glass is the first wearable device that has this potential, but others are not far behind. These are examples of the Internet of Things.

insurance companies may someday buy: Rebecca Greenfield (25 Nov 2013), “Why 23andMe terrifies health insurance companies,” Fast Company, http://www.fastcompany.com/3022224/innovation-agents/why-23andme-terrifies-health-insurance-companies. lifelogging apps: Leo Kelion (6 Jan 2014), “CES 2014: Sony shows off life logging app and kit,” BBC News, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25633647. it will include a video record: Alec Wilkinson (28 May 2007), “Remember this? A project to record everything we do in life,” New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/05/28/070528fa_fact_wilkinson. Google Glass is the first wearable device: Jenna Wortham (8 Mar 2013), “Meet Memoto, the lifelogging camera,” New York Times Blogs, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/meet-memoto-the-lifelogging-camera. Internet of Things: Ken Hess (10 Jan 2014), “The Internet of Things outlook for 2014: Everything connected and communicating,” ZDNet, http://www.zdnet.com/the-internet-of-things-outlook-for-2014-everything-connected-and-communicating-7000024930.

., 237 Hoover’s attempted intimidation of, 98, 102–3 Kinsey, Alfred, database of, 44 Klein, Mark, 250, 288 Kunstler, James, 206 Kurds, 76 Lanier, Jaron, 201 Lavabit, 83–84, 209 law enforcement, state and local: abuse of power by, 135, 160 IMSI-catchers used by, 68 location data and, 2, 243 militarization of, 184 predictive algorithms used by, 98–99, 100, 137, 159 racism in, 184 secrecy of, 100, 160 transparency and, 170 lawyers, government surveillance and, 96 legal system: as based on human judgment, 98–99 government surveillance and, 168, 169 secrecy and, 100 Lenddo, 111, 113 Level 3 Communications, 85 Levison, Ladar, 84 liberty: commons and, 189 as core American value, 230 social norms and, 227 liberty, government surveillance and, 6, 91–107, 184 abuses of power in, 101–5, 160, 234–35 anonymity and, 133 censorship and, 94–95, 106–7, 187–88 and changing definition of “wrong,” 92–93, 97–98 discrimination and, 103–4 fear and, 4, 7, 95–97, 135, 156–57, 171, 182–83, 222, 226, 227–30 Internet freedom and, 106–7, 188 political discourse and, 97–99 secrecy and, 99–101 security and, 135, 157–59, 361–62 ubiquitous surveillance and, 92, 97 Library of Congress, 199 Libya, 81 license plate scanners, 26–27, 40 storage of data from, 36 lifelogging, 16 Lincoln, Abraham, 229 Little Brother (Doctorow), 217 location data, 1–3, 28, 39, 62, 243, 339 advertising and, 39–40 de-anonymizing with, 44 embedded in digital photos, 14–15, 42–43 selling of, 2 Locke, John, 210 Los Angeles Police Department, 160 LOVEINT, 102, 177 Lower Merion School District, 104 LulzSec hacker movement, 42 MAC addresses, 29 MacKinnon, Rachel, 210, 212 Madrid Privacy Declaration (2009), 211–12 Magna Carta, information age version of, 210–12 manipulation, surveillance-based, 113–16 Manning, Chelsea, 101 marijuana use, 97 MARINA, 36 Mask, The, 72 Massachusetts Group Insurance Commission, 263 mass surveillance: algorithmic-based, 129–31, 159, 196 as automated process, 5, 129–31 dangers of, 4–5, 6 economic harms from, 6–7, 121–22, 151 false positives in, 137, 138, 140, 323–24 fatalism and, 224–25 lack of consent in, 5, 20, 51 metadata in, 20–23 minimum necessary, 158–59, 176, 211 moratorium urged on new technologies of, 211 noticing, 223 security harmed by, 7, 146–50 social norms and, 226–38 society’s bargains with, 4, 8–9, 47, 49–51, 58–59, 60–61, 158, 226, 235–38 speaking out about, 223–24 targeted surveillance vs., 5, 26, 139–40, 174, 179–80, 184, 186 transparency and, 159–61, 169, 170–71, 176 ubiquity of, 5, 26–28, 32, 40, 53, 92, 97, 224, 233 urgency of fight against, 233–35 see also data collection; data mining mass surveillance, corporate, 46–61, 86–87 advertising and, see advertising, personalized business competitiveness and, 119–24 cost of, to US businesses, 123–24 customers as products in, 53, 58 customer service and, 47 data brokers and, see data brokers discrimination and, 109–13 error rates in, 54 feudal nature of, 58–59, 61, 210–12 free services and convenience exchanged for, 4, 49–51, 58–59, 60–61, 226, 235–36 growth of, 23–24 harms from, 108–18 lobbying and, 233 manipulation and, 113–16 manipulation through, 6 market research and, 47 privacy breaches and, 116–18, 142, 192, 193–95 secrecy and, 194 see also mass surveillance, public-private partnership in mass surveillance, corporate, solutions for, 7, 190–212 accountability and liability in, 192, 193–95, 196–97, 202 data quality assurance and, 181, 192, 194, 202 government regulation in, 192, 196–99, 210 individual participation and, 192 and limits on data collection, 191, 192, 199–200, 202, 206 and limits on data use, 191, 192, 194, 195–97, 206 lobbying and, 209, 222–23 and resistance to government surveillance, 207–10 and respect for data context, 202 rights of individuals and, 192, 200–203, 211 salience and, 203–4 security safeguards and, 192, 193–95, 202, 211 specification of purpose and, 192 transparency and, 192, 194, 196, 202, 204, 207–8 mass surveillance, government, 5–6, 62–77 chilling effects of, 95–97 in China, 70, 86, 140, 209 cloud computing and, 122 corporate nondisclosure agreements and, 100 corporate resistance to, 207–10 cost of, 91 cost of, to US businesses, 121–23 democracy and, 6, 95, 97–99 discrimination and, 4, 6, 93 encryption technology and, 119–23 fear-based justification for, 4, 7, 95–97, 135, 156–57, 171, 182–83, 222, 226, 227–30, 246 fishing expeditions in, 92, 93 in France, 79 fusion centers in, 69, 104 gag orders in, 100, 122 geopolitical conflicts and, 219–20 global, 69–71 growth of, 24–25 hacking in, 71–74 as harmful to US global interests, 151 as ineffective counterterrorism tool, 137–40, 228 international partnerships in, 76–77, 169 lack of trust in US companies resulting from, 122–23, 181–83 liberty and, see liberty, government surveillance and location data used in intimidation and control by, 2 mission creep and, 104–5 oversight and accountability in, 161–63, 169 in Russia, 70, 187, 188, 237 mass surveillance, government ( continued) secrecy of, 99–101, 121, 122 subversion of commercial systems in, 82–87 in UK, 69, 79 US hypocrisy about, 106 see also mass surveillance, public-private partnership in; specific agencies mass surveillance, government, solutions for, 7, 168–89 adequacy and, 168 and breakup of NSA, 186–87 due process and, 168, 184 illegitimate access and, 169, 177 integrity of systems and, 169, 181–82 international cooperation and, 169, 180, 184 judicial authority and, 168, 179–80 legality and, 168, 169 legitimacy and, 168 limitation of military role in, 185–86 lobbying and, 222 “Necessary and Proportionate” principles of, 167, 168–69 necessity and, 168 oversight and, 169, 172–78 proportionality and, 168 separation of espionage from surveillance in, 183–84 targeted surveillance and, 179–80, 184, 186 transparency and, 169, 170–71, 176 trust and, 181–83 user notification and, 168 whistleblowers and, 169, 178–79 mass surveillance, individual defenses against, 7, 213–25 avoidance in, 214 blocking technologies in, 214–17 breaking surveillance technologies, 218–19 distortion in, 217–18 fatalism as enemy of, 224–25 political action and, 213, 222–24, 237–38 mass surveillance, public-private partnership in, 6, 25, 78–87, 207 government subversion of commercial systems in, 82–87 nondisclosure agreements and, 100 privately-made technology in, 81–82, 100 sale of government data in, 79–80 and value neutrality of technology, 82 material witness laws, 92 McCarthyism, 92–93, 229, 234 McConnell, Mike, 80 McNealy, Scott, 4 media: fear and, 229 pre-Internet, 15 medical devices, Internet-enabled, 16 medical research, collection of data and, 8 Medtronic, 200 memory, fallibility of, 128, 320 Merkel, Angela, 151, 160–61, 183, 184 metadata, 216 from cell phones, see cell phone metadata data vs., 17, 23, 35, 251 from Internet searches, 22–23 in mass surveillance, 20–23, 67 from tweets, 23 Michigan, 2, 39 Microsoft, 49, 59–60, 84, 148, 221, 272, 359 customer loyalty to, 58 government demands for data from, 208, 359 increased encryption by, 208 transparency reports of, 207 Mijangos, Luis, 117 military, US: ban on domestic security role of, 185–86 Chinese cyberattacks against, 73 “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy of, 197 drone strikes by, 94 see also Army, US; Cyber Command, US; Defense Department, US MINARET, 175 Minority Report (film), 98 mission creep, 104–5, 163 Mitnick, Kevin, 116 Moglen, Eben, 95, 318 money transfer laws, 35–36 Monsegur, Hector, 42 Mori, Masahiro, 55 MS Office, 60 Multiprogram Research Facility, 144 Muslim Americans, government surveillance of, 103–4 MYSTIC, 36 Napolitano, Janet, 163 Narent, 182 narrative fallacy, 136 Nash equilibrium, 237 Natanz nuclear facility, Iran, 75 National Academies, 344 National Counterterrorism Center, 68 National Health Service, UK, 79 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), proposed takeover of cryptography and computer security programs by, 186–87 National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), 67 National Security Agency, US (NSA): backdoors inserted into software and hardware by, 147–48 Bermuda phone conversations recorded by, 23 “Black Budget” of, 65 cell phone metadata collected by, 20–21, 36, 37, 62, 138, 339 “collect” as defined by, 129, 320 “collect it all” mentality of, 64–65, 138 COMSEC (communications security) mission of, 164–65, 346 congressional oversight of, 172–76 “connect-the-dots” metaphor of, 136, 139 cost to US businesses of surveillance by, 121–22, 151 counterterrorism mission of, 63, 65–66, 184, 222 counterterrorism successes claimed by, 325 cryptanalysis by, 144 cyberattacks by, 149–50 drug smugglers surveilled by, 105 economic espionage by, 73 encryption programs and, 85–86, 120–21 encryption standards deliberately undermined by, 148–49 expanding role of, 24, 165 FISA Amendments Act and, 174–75, 273 foreign eavesdropping (SIGINT) by, 62–63, 76, 77, 122–23, 164–65, 186, 220 Germany surveilled by, 76, 77, 122–23, 151, 160–61, 183, 184 Gmail user data collected by, 62 historical data stored by, 36 history of, 62–63 inadequate internal auditing of, 303 innocent people surveilled by, 66–67 insecure Internet deliberately fostered by, 146–50, 182 international partnerships of, 76–77 Internet surveillance by, 22, 62, 64–65, 78, 86–87, 122–23, 149–50, 188, 207 keyword searches by, 38, 261 legal authority for, 65–66 location data used by, 3, 339 Multiprogram Research Facility of, 144 Muslim Americans surveilled by, 103 parallel construction and, 105, 305 Presidential Policy Directives of, 99–100 PRISM program of, 78, 84–85, 121, 208 proposed breakup of, 186–87 QUANTUM program of, 149–50, 329–30 relationship mapping by, 37–38 remote activation of cell phones by, 30 secrecy of, 99–100, 121, 122 SIGINT Enabling Project of, 147–49 Snowden leaks and, see Snowden, Edward SOMALGET program of, 65 Syria’s Internet infrastructure penetrated by, 74, 150 Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group of, 72, 85, 144, 149, 187 UN communications surveilled by, 102, 183 National Security Agency, US (NSA) ( continued) Unitarian Church lawsuit against, 91 US citizens surveilled by, 64, 66, 175 US global standing undermined by, 151 Utah Data Center of, 18, 36 vulnerabilities stockpiled by, 146–47 National Security Letters (NSLs), 67, 84, 100, 207–8 Naval Criminal Investigative Service, 69 Naval Research Laboratory, US, 158 Nest, 15–16 Netcom, 116 Netflix, 43 Netsweeper, 82 New Digital Age, The (Schmidt and Cohen), 4 newsgroups, 119 New York City Police Department, 103–4 New York State, license plate scanning data stored by, 36 New York Times, Chinese cyberattack on, 73, 132, 142 New Zealand, in international intelligence partnerships, 76 Nigeria, 81 9/11 Commission Report, 139, 176 Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell), 59, 225 NinthDecimal, 39–40 NIST, see National Institute of Standards and Technology Nixon, Richard, 230 NOBUS (nobody but us) vulnerabilities, 147, 181 Nokia, 81 nondisclosure agreements, 100 North, Oliver, 127–28 Norway, 2011 massacre in, 229–30 NSA, see National Security Agency, US Oak Ridge, Tenn., 144 Obama, Barack, 33, 175 NSA review group appointed by, 176–77, 181 Obama administration: Internet freedom and, 107 NSA and, 122 whistleblowers prosecuted by, 100–101, 179 obfuscation, 217–18 Occupy movement, 104 Ochoa, Higinio (w0rmer), 42–43 OECD Privacy Framework, 191–92, 197 Office of Foreign Assets Control, 36 Office of Personnel Management, US, 73 Off the Record, 83, 215 Olympics (2014), 70, 77 Onionshare, 216 openness, see transparency opt-in vs. opt-out consent, 198 Orange, 79 Orbitz, 111 Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, 69 Orwell, George, 59, 225 oversight, of corporate surveillance, see mass surveillance, corporate, solutions for, government regulation in oversight, of government surveillance, 161–63, 169, 172–78 Oyster cards, 40, 262 packet injection, 149–50 PageRank algorithm, 196 Palmer Raids, 234 Panetta, Leon, 133 panopticon, 32, 97, 227 panoptic sort, 111 parallel construction, 105, 305 Pariser, Eli, 114–15 Parker, Theodore, 365 PATRIOT Act, see USA PATRIOT Act pen registers, 27 Peoria, Ill., 101 personalized advertising, see advertising, personalized personally identifying information (PII), 45 Petraeus, David, 42 Petrobras, 73 Pew Research Center, 96 PGP encryption, 215, 216 photographs, digital, data embedded in, 14–15, 42–43 Pirate Party, Iceland, 333 Placecast, 39 police, see law enforcement, state and local police states, as risk-averse, 229 political action, 7, 213, 222–24, 237–38 political campaigns: data mining and, 33, 54 personalized marketing in, 54, 115–16, 233 political discourse, government surveillance and, 97–99 politics, politicians: and fear of blame, 222, 228 technology undermined by, 213 Posse Comitatus Act (1878), 186 Postal Service, US, Isolation Control and Tracking program of, 29 Presidential Policy Directives, 99–100 prices, discrimination in, 109–10 PRISM, 78, 84–85, 121, 208 privacy, 125–33 algorithmic surveillance and, 129–31, 204 as basic human need, 7, 126–27 breaches of, 116–18, 192, 193–95 as fundamental right, 67, 92, 126, 201, 232, 238, 318, 333, 363–64 of healthcare data, 193 Internet and, 203–4, 230–31 loss of, 4, 7, 50–51, 96, 126 and loss of ephemerality, 127–29 “nothing to hide” fallacy and, 125 and proposed Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, 201, 202 security and, 155–57 social norms and, 227, 230–33 third-party doctrine and, 67–68, 180 as trumped by fear, 228 undervaluing of, 7–8, 50, 156, 194, 203–4 Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, 176, 177 privacy enhancing technologies (PETs), 215–16, 217 Privacy Impact Notices, 198, 211 probable cause, 184 Protect America Act (2007), 275 public-private partnership, see mass surveillance, public-private partnership in Qualcomm, 122 QUANTUM packet injection program, 149–50, 329–30 radar, high-frequency, 30 “ratters,” 117 Reagan, Ronald, 230 redlining, 109 Red October, 72 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (UK; 2000), 175 relationships, mapping of, 37–38 remote access Trojans (RATs), 117 resilience, systemic imperfections and, 163–64 retailers, data collected by, 14, 24, 51–52 revenge porn, 231 RFID chips, 29, 211 Richelieu, Cardinal, 92 rights, of consumers, see consumer rights risk, police states as averse to, 229 risk management, 141–42 Robbins, Blake, 104 robotics, 54–55 Rogers, Michael, 75 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 229, 230 Rousseff, Dilma, 151 RSA Security, 73, 84 rule of law, 210, 212 Russia: cyberwarfare and, 180 mandatory registration of bloggers in, 95 mass surveillance by, 70, 187, 188, 237 salience, 203–4 San Diego Police Department, 160 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 96 Saudi Arabia, 76, 187, 209 Saudi Aramco, 75 Schmidt, Eric, 4, 22, 57, 86, 125 schools, surveillance abuse in, 104 Schrems, Max, 19, 200 search engines, business model of, 113–14, 206 secrecy: corporate surveillance and, 194 of government surveillance, 99–101, 121, 122, 170–71 legitimate, transparency vs., 332–33 security, 135–51 airplane, 93, 158 attack vs. defense in, 140–43 balance between civil liberties and, 135 complexity as enemy of, 141 cost of, 142 data mining as unsuitable tool for, 136–40 and deliberate insecurity of Internet, 146–50 encryption and, see encryption fear and, 4, 7, 95–97, 135, 156–57, 171, 182–83, 222, 226, 227–30 hindsight and, 136 mass surveillance as harmful to, 7, 146–50 and misguided focus on spectacular events, 135 narrative fallacy in, 136 privacy and, 155–57 random vs. targeted attacks and, 142–43 risk management and, 141–42 social norms and, 227 surveillance and, 157–59 vulnerabilities and, 145–46 security cameras, see surveillance technology self-censorship, 95 Senate, US, Intelligence Committee of, 102, 172, 339 Sensenbrenner, Jim, 174 Sense Networks, 2, 40 September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, 63, 65, 136, 156, 169, 184, 207, 227, 229 SHAMROCK, 175 Shirky, Clay, 228, 231 Shutterfly, 269 Siemens, 81 SIGINT (signals intelligence), see National Security Agency, US, foreign eavesdropping by SIGINT Enabling Project, 147–49 Silk Road, 105 Skype, 84, 148 SmartFilter, 82 smartphones: app-based surveillance on, 48 cameras on, 41 as computers, 14 GPS tracking in, 3, 14, 216–17 MAC addresses and Bluetooth IDs in, 29 Smith, Michael Lee, 67–68 Snowden, Edward, 177, 178, 217 e-mail of, 94 Espionage Act and, 101 EU Parliament testimony of, 76 NSA and GCHQ documents released by, 6, 20, 40–41, 62, 65, 66, 67, 72, 74, 78, 96, 99–100, 121, 129, 144, 149, 150, 160–61, 172, 175, 182, 207, 223, 234, 238 Sochi Olympics, 70, 77 Socialists, Socialism, 92–93 social networking: apps for, 51 customer scores and, 111 customer tracking and, 123 data collected in, 200–201 government surveillance of, 295–96 see also specific companies social norms: fear and, 227–30 liberty and, 227 mass surveillance and, 226–38 privacy and, 227, 230–33 security and, 227 software: security of, 141, 146 subscription vs. purchase models for, 60 Solove, Daniel, 93 SOMALGET, 65 Sophos, 82 Sotomayor, Sonia, 95, 342 South Korea, cyberattack on, 75 spy gadgets, 25–26 SSL encryption, 85–86 SSL (TLS) protocol, 215 Standard Chartered Bank, 35–36 Staples, 110 Stasi, 23 Steinhafel, Gregg, 142 strategic oversight, 162, 172–77 StingRay surveillance system, 100, 165 Stross, Charles, 128 Stuxnet, 75, 132, 146 collateral damage from, 150 Supreme Court, US, 26, 180, 361–62 third-party doctrine and, 68 surveillance: automatic, 31–32 benefits of, 8, 190 as business model, 50, 56, 113–14, 206 cell phones as devices for, 1–3, 14, 28, 39, 46–47, 62, 100, 216–17, 219, 339 constant, negative health effects of, 127 cost of, 23–26 espionage vs., 170, 183–84 government abuses of, 101–5 government-on-government, 63, 73, 74, 75, 76, 158 hidden, 28–30 legitimate needs for, 219–20 as loaded term, 4 mass, see mass surveillance oversight and accountability in, 161–63, 169, 172–78 overt, 28, 30 perception of, 7–8 personal computers as devices for, 3–4, 5 politics and, 213 pre-Internet, 64, 71 principles of, 155–66 targeted, see targeted surveillance transparency and, 159–61, 169, 170–71, 176 surveillance technology: cameras, 14, 17, 31–32 cost of, 25–26 shrinking size of, 29 Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR), 138 Sweeney, Latanya, 44, 263–64 SWIFT banking system, 73 Swire, Peter, 160 Syria, 81 NSA penetration of Internet infrastructure in, 74, 150 System for Operative Investigative Measures (SORM; Russia), 70 tactical oversight, 162, 177–79 Tailored Access Operations group (TAO), 72, 85, 144, 149, 187 Taleb, Nassim, 136 Target, 33, 34, 55 security breach of, 142, 193 targeted advertising, see advertising, personalized targeted surveillance: mass surveillance vs., 5, 26, 139–40, 174, 179–80, 184, 186 PATRIOT Act and, 174 tax fraud, data mining and, 137 technology: benefits of, 8, 190–91 political undermining of, 213 privacy enhancing (PETs), 215–16, 217 see also surveillance technology telephone companies: FBI demands for databases of, 27, 67 historical data stored by, 37, 67 NSA surveillance and, 122 transparency reports of, 207–8 see also cell phone metadata; specific companies Teletrack, 53 TEMPORA, 79 Terrorism Identities Datamart Environment, 68, 136 terrorists, terrorism: civil liberties vs., 135 government databases of, 68–69 as justification for mass surveillance, 4, 7, 170–71, 226, 246 mass surveillance as ineffective tool for detection of, 137–40, 228 and NSA’s expanded mission, 63, 65–66 terrorists, terrorism ( continued) overly broad definition of, 92 relative risk of, 332 Uighur, 219, 287 uniqueness of, 138 see also counterterrorism; security; September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks thermostats, smart, 15 third-party doctrine, 67–68, 180 TLS (SSL) protocol, 215 TOM-Skype, 70 Tor browser, 158, 216, 217 Torch Concepts, 79 trade secrets, algorithms as, 196 transparency: algorithmic surveillance and, 196 corporate surveillance and, 192, 194, 196, 202, 207–8 legitimate secrecy vs., 332–33 surveillance and, 159–61, 169, 170–71, 176 Transparent Society, The (Brin), 231 Transportation Security Administration, US (TSA), screening by, 136, 137, 159, 231, 321 Treasury, US, 36 Truman, Harry, 62, 230 trust, government surveillance and, 181–83 truth in lending laws, 196 Tsarnaev, Tamerlan, 69, 77, 139 Turkey, 76 Turla, 72 Twitter, 42, 58, 199, 208–9 metadata collected by, 23 Uber, 57 Uighur terrorists, 219, 287 Ukraine, 2, 39 Ulbricht, Ross (Dread Pirate Roberts), 105 “uncanny valley” phenomenon, 54–55 Underwear Bomber, 136, 139 UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, 96 Unit 8200, 77 United Kingdom: anti-discrimination laws in, 93 data retention law in, 222 GCHQ of, see Government Communications Headquarters in international intelligence partnerships, 76 Internet censorship in, 95 license plate scanners in, 27 mission creep in, 105 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) of, 175 United Nations: digital privacy resolution of, 232, 363–64 NSA surveillance of, 102, 183 United States: data protection laws as absent from, 200 economic espionage by, 73 Germany’s relations with, 151, 234 intelligence budget of, 64–65, 80 NSA surveillance as undermining global stature of, 151 Stuxnet cyberattack by, 75, 132, 146, 150 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 232 USA PATRIOT Act (2001), 105, 221, 227 Section 215 of, 65, 173–74, 208 Section 505 of, 67 US Cellular, 177 Usenet, 189 VASTech, 81 Verint, 2–3, 182 Verizon, 49, 67, 122 transparency reports of, 207–8 Veterans for Peace, 104 Vigilant Solutions, 26, 40 Vodafone, 79 voiceprints, 30 vulnerabilities, 145–46 fixing of, 180–81 NSA stockpiling of, 146–47 w0rmer (Higinio Ochoa), 42–43 Wall Street Journal, 110 Wanamaker, John, 53 “warrant canaries,” 208, 354 warrant process, 92, 165, 169, 177, 180, 183, 184, 342 Constitution and, 92, 179, 184 FBI and, 26, 67–68 NSA evasion of, 175, 177, 179 third-party doctrine and, 67–68, 180 Watson, Sara M., 55 Watts, Peter, 126–27 Waze, 27–28, 199 weapons of mass destruction, overly broad definition of, 92, 295 weblining, 109 WebMD, 29 whistleblowers: as essential to democracy, 178 legal protections for, 162, 169, 178–79, 342 prosecution of, 100–101, 178, 179, 222 Wickr, 124 Wi-Fi networks, location data and, 3 Wi-Fi passwords, 31 Wilson, Woodrow, 229 Windows 8, 59–60 Wired, 119 workplace surveillance, 112 World War I, 229 World War II, 229 World Wide Web, 119, 210 writers, government surveillance and, 96 “wrong,” changing definition of, 92–93 Wyden, Ron, 172, 339 XKEYSCORE, 36 Yahoo, 84, 207 Chinese surveillance and, 209 government demands for data from, 208 increased encryption by, 208 NSA hacking of, 85 Yosemite (OS), 59–60 YouTube, 50 Zappa, Frank, 98 zero-day vulnerabilities, 145–46 NSA stockpiling of, 146–47, 180–81 ZTE, 81 Zuckerberg, Mark, 107, 125, 126 Praise for DATA AND GOLIATH “Data and Goliath is sorely needed.


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Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy by Melanie Swan

23andMe, Airbnb, altcoin, Amazon Web Services, asset allocation, banking crisis, basic income, bioinformatics, bitcoin, blockchain, capital controls, cellular automata, central bank independence, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative editing, Conway's Game of Life, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, digital divide, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial innovation, Firefox, friendly AI, Hernando de Soto, information security, intangible asset, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, lifelogging, litecoin, Lyft, M-Pesa, microbiome, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, operational security, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, personalized medicine, post scarcity, power law, prediction markets, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, sharing economy, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, smart grid, Snow Crash, software as a service, synthetic biology, technological singularity, the long tail, Turing complete, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, web application, WikiLeaks

Personal Thinking Blockchains More speculatively for the farther future, the notion of blockchain technology as the automated accounting ledger, the quantized-level tracking device, could be extensible to yet another category of record keeping and administration. There could be “personal thinking chains” as a life-logging storage and backup mechanism. The concept is “blockchain technology + in vivo personal connectome” to encode and make useful in a standardized compressed data format all of a person’s thinking. The data could be captured via intracortical recordings, consumer EEGs, brain/computer interfaces, cognitive nanorobots, and other methodologies.

Again perhaps speculatively verging on science fiction, ultimately the whole of a society’s history might include not just a public records and document repository, and an Internet archive of all digital activity, but also the mindfiles of individuals. Mindfiles could include the recording of every “transaction” in the sense of capturing every thought and emotion of every entity, human and machine, encoding and archiving this activity into life-logging blockchains. Blockchain Government Another important application developing as part of Blockchain 3.0 is blockchain government; that is, the idea of using blockchain technology to provide services traditionally provided by nation-states in a decentralized, cheaper, more efficient, personalized manner.

HL7 Standards, September 8, 2014. http://www.hl7standards.com/blog/2014/09/08/20hit-5/. 151 Zimmerman, J. “DNA Block Chain Project Boosts Research, Preserves Patient Anonymity.” CoinDesk, June 27, 2014. http://www.coindesk.com/israels-dna-bits-moves-beyond-currency-with-genes-blockchain/. 152 Swan, M. “Quantified Self Ideology: Personal Data Becomes Big Data.” Slideshare, February 6, 2014. http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/quantified-self-ideology-personal-data-becomes-big-data. 153 Levine, A.B. “Let’s Talk Bitcoin! #158: Ebola and the Body Blockchain with Kevin J. McKernan.” Let’s Talk Bitcoin podcast, November 1, 2014. http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-158-ebola-and-the-body-blockchain. 154 McKernan, K.


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Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer

Albert Einstein, Asperger Syndrome, Berlin Wall, conceptual framework, deliberate practice, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ford Model T, Frank Gehry, lifelogging, mental accounting, Neil Armstrong, patient HM, pattern recognition, Rubik’s Cube, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, the long tail, W. E. B. Du Bois, zero-sum game

But why should any memory fade when there are technological solutions that can preserve it? In 1998, with the help of his assistant Vicki Rozyki, Bell began backfilling his lifelog by systematically scanning every document in the dozens of banker boxes he’d amassed since the 1950s. All of his old photos, engineering notebooks, and papers were digitized. Even the logos on his T-shirts couldn’t escape the scanner bed. Bell, who had always been a meticulous preservationist, figures he’s probably scanned and thrown away three quarters of all the stuff he’s ever owned. Today his lifelog takes up 170 gigabytes, and is growing at the rate of about a gigabyte each month. It includes over 100,000 e-mails, 65,000 photos, 100,000 documents, and 2,000 phone calls.

In order for him to access one of his stored external memories, he still has to find it on his computer and “re-input” it into his brain through his eyes and ears. His lifelog may be an extension of him, but it’s not yet a part of him. But is it so far-fetched to believe that at some point in the not-too-distant future the chasm between what Bell’s computer knows and what his mind knows may disappear entirely? Eventually, our brains may be connected directly and seamlessly to our lifelogs, so that our external memories will function and feel as if they are entirely internal. And of course, they will also be connected to the greatest external memory repository of all, the Internet.

At the least, most people assume that their self could not possibly extend beyond the boundaries of their epidermis into books, computers, a lifelog. But why should that be the case? Our memories, the essence of our selfhood, are actually bound up in a whole lot more than the neurons in our brain. At least as far back as Socrates’s diatribe against writing, our memories have always extended beyond our brains and into other storage containers. Bell’s lifelogging project simply brings that truth into focus. EIGHT THE OK PLATEAU If you visited my office in the fall of 2005, you would have seen a Post-it note—one of my external memories—stuck to the wall above my computer monitor.


pages: 527 words: 147,690

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection by Jacob Silverman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, airport security, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, basic income, Big Tech, Brian Krebs, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, context collapse, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, don't be evil, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, fake it until you make it, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, game design, global village, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, hive mind, Ian Bogost, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet of things, Jacob Silverman, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, life extension, lifelogging, lock screen, Lyft, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Minecraft, move fast and break things, national security letter, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, payday loans, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, postindustrial economy, prediction markets, pre–internet, price discrimination, price stability, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, real-name policy, recommendation engine, rent control, rent stabilization, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Snapchat, social bookmarking, social graph, social intelligence, social web, sorting algorithm, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telemarketer, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yottabyte, you are the product, Zipcar

The various fitness trackers that track joggers and then post their run times—Jacob just ran 2.2 miles in 30 minutes. He’s slow.—on Facebook are a prominent example, but committed quantified selfers go much further, following the belief of intelligence agencies and Facebook alike, that all data is potentially useful. The collection of data might be its own reward. By lifelogging, as the practice is also called, you can create a vast trove of data on your own life, one that both expands upon and substitutes for your own fallible human memory. In order to satisfy this need, a range of tools has appeared—fitness trackers, wearable cameras, diet apps, automatic check-ins, wearable computers.

Some of these devices operate independently of their operators, making the act of self-surveillance autonomous. The Memoto Mini Camera, for instance, clips onto a user’s shirt and automatically takes a photo every thirty seconds. When synced with a computer, the device pulls out what it thinks are the best photos. The strange logic of lifelogging is that devices such as Memoto are somehow empowering, even though they tend to take choices out of the hands of users. Instead of deciding when to take a photo, a device does it for you. Instead of choosing your favorite photos for safe-keeping, Memoto does. Memoto’s manufacturer describes its device a “searchable and shareable photographic memory.”

Data becomes something to be proud of, something to brag about, not only for what it shows about how one lives his life (look how often I exercise! look at the photos my Memoto took in Tahiti!) but also for the sense that one is being bold by exposing so much of himself for public consumption. Disclosure becomes seen as a good in and of itself, a potentially brave act of radical transparency. One pitfall of lifelogging is how the collection of this data can become normalized, even expected. That data can in turn be used against us by insurance providers or mortgage firms. A June 2012 story from the Economist recounts how Rigi Capital Partners, a Swiss insurance company, decided not to purchase the life insurance policy of an elderly woman with dementia.


The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures and Their Consequences by Rob Kitchin

Bayesian statistics, business intelligence, business process, cellular automata, Celtic Tiger, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, conceptual framework, congestion charging, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, data science, discrete time, disruptive innovation, George Gilder, Google Earth, hype cycle, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, late capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, longitudinal study, machine readable, Masdar, means of production, Nate Silver, natural language processing, openstreetmap, pattern recognition, platform as a service, recommendation engine, RFID, semantic web, sentiment analysis, SimCity, slashdot, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, smart grid, smart meter, software as a service, statistical model, supply-chain management, technological solutionism, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, transaction costs

The data generated are not necessarily shared with a wider public, though they can be, but they are shared with the service-providing companies, providing them with a rich seam of personalised data. Such technologies are in an initial phase of development and there are visions for much more comprehensive life-logs that would create a unified, digital record of an individual’s experiences, captured multimodally through digital sensors and stored permanently as a personal multimedia archive (Mann et al. 2003), with a number of research prototypes being developed. Life-logs aim to create a continuous, searchable, analysable record of the past that includes every action, every event, every conversation, every location visited, every material expression of an individual’s life, as well as physiological conditions inside the body and external conditions (e.g., orientation, temperature, levels of pollution) (Dodge and Kitchin 2007b) – ‘the totality of information that flows through a human life’ (Johnson 2003: 85).

Life-logs aim to create a continuous, searchable, analysable record of the past that includes every action, every event, every conversation, every location visited, every material expression of an individual’s life, as well as physiological conditions inside the body and external conditions (e.g., orientation, temperature, levels of pollution) (Dodge and Kitchin 2007b) – ‘the totality of information that flows through a human life’ (Johnson 2003: 85). Clearly the production of such life-logs raise a number of questions concerning privacy, the ownership of the data produced, and how such data are used (Dodge and Kitchin 2007b). Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing is the collective generation of media, ideas and data undertaken voluntarily by many people to solve a particular task. While social media content can be said to be crowdsourced in the sense that it is sourced from a large number of people, its purpose is diffuse and lacking in focus.

In contrast to surveillance, in which an individual is monitored from an external position by another entity, sousveillance is consciously employed and controlled by an individual for personal fulfilment, providing an interior, first-person perspective on their lives. Over the past decade, a sousveillance movement has developed of people who actively monitor and record their personal data (also known as the quantified self movement). In general, individuals are monitoring aspects of health and fitness, capturing data consumption (e.g., food/calorie intake), physical states (e.g., blood pressure, pulse) emotional states (e.g., mood, arousal) and performance (e.g., miles walked/run/cycled, hours slept and types of sleep), with a number of companies providing associated self-monitoring technologies and services.


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Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy by Robert Scoble, Shel Israel

Albert Einstein, Apple II, augmented reality, call centre, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, connected car, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, factory automation, Filter Bubble, G4S, gamification, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Internet of things, job automation, John Markoff, Kickstarter, lifelogging, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mars Rover, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, New Urbanism, PageRank, pattern recognition, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, sensor fusion, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, social graph, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, TSMC, ubercab, urban planning, Zipcar

In short, if you use it inappropriately in restrooms or elsewhere, you will likely get caught, and the response may be far worse than what Steve Mann experienced in Paris. It is far easier to take clandestine pictures or video with a smartphone or worse, with an almost undetectable Memoto wearable “lifelogging” camera that automatically and silently snaps a shot every 30 seconds. In our view, a great number of inaccurate reports are dramatically overstating legitimate concerns about illicit data collection and downright spying. Who Watches Whom? The biggest barrier to digital eyewear acceptance is neither competition nor fashion.

Nike says its + family of sensor-enabled gear, backed by a strong marketing campaign, had 6 million users in February 2012. The Quantified Self The very high end of these health-related wearable devices is the $199 Basis. Designed for “wellness and fitness,” Basis even tells time but, with five sensors inside, it does a lot more: It measures pulse, perspiration rate, activity, and body temperature as well as sleep quality. Basically, it provides enough data to satisfy an astrophysicist. The Basis site lets users drill deep down into personal data mines of stats, charts and graphs. It is a particular favorite of a growing movement, called the “Quantified Self,” which is composed of people who believe that the more personal data they have, the better they can understand their own bodies and thus become and stay healthier.

Loic Le Meur, producer of LeWeb, Europe’s largest tech conference, is an ardent fitness enthusiast and Quantified Self proponent. In August 2010, he suggested in a blog post that as people and mobile devices work together to provide highly personalized data, the human body itself becomes an Application Programming Interface (API), meaning that developers can now offer personalized mobile apps for each individual by letting their computer codes talk with each other. From that perspective, perhaps we are all becoming like The Terminal Man, but today’s picture looks far more positive than the one Crichton painted. As Le Meur demonstrated in his blog, Quantified Self data can build a personal anticipatory system.


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Halting State by Charles Stross

augmented reality, book value, Boris Johnson, call centre, forensic accounting, game design, Google Earth, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, impulse control, indoor plumbing, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, Ken Thompson, lifelogging, Necker cube, no-fly zone, operational security, Potemkin village, RFID, Schrödinger's Cat, Vernor Vinge, zero day

You shake your head and climb out of the car, tapping your ear-piece to tell your phone to listen up: “Arriving on SOC, time-stamp now. Start evidence log.” It’s logging anyway—everything you see on duty goes into the black box—but the voice marker is searchable. It saves the event from getting lost in your lifelog. Bob trails along like an eager puppy. Eight weeks out of police college, so help you. At least he’s house-broken. The door to the premises is a retrofitted slab of glossy green plastic that slides open automatically as you approach, revealing a reception room that’s very far from being a public toilet.

The latter is about a metre and a half long, and has a transparent face shield and sixteen evidence cameras hanging off it. While they’re doing that, Gavaghan drafts you to help with the duct tape and nylon sheeting, improvising a loose tent to cover the front door and keep particulates from escaping. “Everyone record full lifelog, please,” says Kavanaugh, standing at the back of the cocoonlike white tunnel. Even wearing a blue polythene bag, she manages to look coolly managerial. Jim glances at you as Rogers makes busy with the horizontal ram, jacking the uprights of the door-frame apart to help pop the lock’s tongue out of its groove.

“Are we looking to recover it?” you ask. “That’s for the proceeds of crime unit.” McMullen sniffs dismissively. “I’m sure they’ll find wherever he put it sooner or later. But first, there’s the small matter of the prosecution. Everything happened while CopSpace was compromised, so there’s a slight lack of visuals—and the lifelog transcripts for yourself and the inspector are going to be misplaced. On the other hand, we’ve got the hotel camera footage from the business in the Malmaison, so we’re going to have to run with that. If we can’t nail him for attempted murder and firearms possession in front of a jury on the basis of video evidence and witnesses, one of whom has holes, we’re idiots.


pages: 259 words: 73,193

The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection by Michael Harris

4chan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic management, AltaVista, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, Burning Man, Carrington event, cognitive dissonance, crowdsourcing, dematerialisation, disinformation, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Google Glasses, informal economy, information retrieval, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, Kevin Kelly, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, Loebner Prize, low earth orbit, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, moral panic, Nicholas Carr, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, Plato's cave, pre–internet, Republic of Letters, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social web, Steve Jobs, technological solutionism, TED Talk, the medium is the message, The Wisdom of Crowds, traumatic brain injury, Turing test

Only 2 to 3 percent of users made use of the text message software, and those who did, says Wegener, often hadn’t thought about whom they were texting one year ago: horrible ex-boyfriends and horrible ex-girlfriends. “People just weren’t comfortable with it,” he told me. “They’d contact us in a hurry and want the feature disconnected.” Wegener himself is deeply committed to lifelogging and feels that “at a deeper level it makes us feel we’re getting more out of life. We’re fighting mortality. If we write everything down, it’ll stay fresh, you know? I mean, we’re being pulled through time against our will toward death. But this can make us feel like we lived.” He also sees his creation as a potential bonding agent for friends and families.

Fourteen percent of users began checking in twice as often; 39 percent more users began adding comments and photos to their check-ins; check-ins overall bumped up 9 percent. The company’s conclusion: “Timehop makes users better.” When users understood that they were creating not just abstract records but fodder for future reminiscences that would be automatically retrieved in a year’s time, they became more involved and invested in the lifelogging process. Wegener had tapped into a major social media truth: We do it because we’re thinking of our own future as a bundle of anticipated memories. When he and I spoke about his own usage of Timehop, Wegener managed to boil things down to a simple core: “It reaffirms me.” Is there a nobler reason to reminisce?


pages: 361 words: 81,068

The Internet Is Not the Answer by Andrew Keen

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, AltaVista, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, Bob Geldof, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Colonization of Mars, computer age, connected car, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, data science, David Brooks, decentralized internet, DeepMind, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, Donald Davies, Downton Abbey, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, frictionless, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Google bus, Google Glasses, Hacker Ethic, happiness index / gross national happiness, holacracy, income inequality, index card, informal economy, information trail, Innovator's Dilemma, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, libertarian paternalism, lifelogging, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, Mary Meeker, Metcalfe’s law, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, nonsequential writing, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Occupy movement, packet switching, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer rental, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, Potemkin village, power law, precariat, pre–internet, printed gun, Project Xanadu, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Robert Solow, San Francisco homelessness, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, Ted Nelson, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, the medium is the message, the new new thing, Thomas L Friedman, Travis Kalanick, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, work culture , working poor, Y Combinator

Sony, Samsung, and many, many startups were all demonstrating products that wouldn’t have been out of place at that old East German Ministry for State Security in Berlin. Two of the most hyped companies producing so-called quantified self products at CES were Fitbit, the maker of a wrist device that tracks physical activity and sleep patterns, and Swedish-based Narrative, the manufacturer of a wearable tiny camera clip designed to be worn on a lapel that automatically takes photos every thirty seconds and is known as a “lifelogging” device for recording everything it sees. “What’s interesting about both companies is they make the invisible part of our lives visible, in an ambient ongoing fashion,” explained one venture capitalist who’d invested in Fitbit and Narrative.21 Thirty years ago, Mielke would have likely bought Narrative devices for the entire East German population.

Our growing concern with the pollution of “data exhaust” is becoming the equivalent of the environmental movement for the digital age. Web 2.0 companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram have reassembled the Bentham brothers’ eighteenth-century Panopticon as data factories. Bentham’s utilitarianism, that bizarre project to quantify every aspect of the human condition, has reappeared in the guise of the quantified-self movement. Even the nineteenth-century debate between Bentham’s utilitarianism and John Stuart Mill’s liberalism over individual rights has reappeared in what Harvard Law School’s Cass Sunstein calls “the politics of libertarian paternalism”—a struggle between “Millville” and “Benthamville” about the role of “nudge” in a world where the government, through partnerships with companies like Acxiom and Palantir, has more and more data on us all25 and Internet companies like Facebook and OkCupid run secretive experiments designed to control our mood.


pages: 588 words: 131,025

The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your Hands by Eric Topol

23andMe, 3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Anne Wojcicki, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, Big Tech, bioinformatics, call centre, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, conceptual framework, connected car, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, digital divide, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Firefox, gamification, global village, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, job automation, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, license plate recognition, lifelogging, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, microbiome, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, pattern recognition, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, quantum cryptography, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, Snapchat, social graph, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, traumatic brain injury, Turing test, Uber for X, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, X Prize

As employees interact with one another, the badges record and transmit to management “who talks to whom, how often, where, and how energetically.”70 Another wearable alternative for tracking employees is smart glasses, such as those made by Vuzix that have a microphone, GPS, accelerometer, and data display. Life-logging apps like Saga incorporate a barometer, camera, microphones, and the smartphone’s location sensors to provide “a more comprehensive, automatic record of your life”72 and know precisely where you are and what you are up to. The barometer helps distinguish exact location, along with deep acoustic and light signals for context.

infectious diseases, 96–97 mammography, 116–117 patient access to test results, 105–108, 120–121 patient-generated data, 135–136 prostate cancer screening, 118 real-time costs, 150–151 smartphone devices in developing countries, 262–263 Theranos blood testing, 106 See also Imaging; Individualized medicine; Scans; 23and Me LabCorp, 108 Lab-in-the-body (LIB), 111–112 Laennec, Rene, 276 Landman, Zachary, 169 Lansley, Andrew, 172 Leape, Lucian, 28 The Learned Press as an Institution (Morison), 39 Lee, Mike, 229 Leon, Katherine, 211 Lepp, Herman, 25, 25(fig.), 26 Lepp, Miriam, 25, 25(fig.), 26 Leptospira, 96–97 Licensure for physicians, 168–169 Lichter, Allen, 201 Life expectancy, 238, 239(fig.) Life science research, 207–209 Life-logging apps, 228–230 Lifestyle changes, 88, 94 Liquid biopsy of cancerous tumors, 99 Low-cost providers, 156 Lung cancer, 117–118 Luther, Martin, 50 Lynch syndrome, 93 Machine learning, 244, 246–247, 253–256 Madera, James, 22 Madrigal, Alexis, 221 Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 113, 116, 118–119.


pages: 416 words: 106,582

This Will Make You Smarter: 150 New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking by John Brockman

23andMe, adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Anthropocene, banking crisis, Barry Marshall: ulcers, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, biofilm, Black Swan, Bletchley Park, butterfly effect, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, cognitive load, congestion charging, correlation does not imply causation, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data acquisition, David Brooks, delayed gratification, Emanuel Derman, epigenetics, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, Flash crash, Flynn Effect, Garrett Hardin, Higgs boson, hive mind, impulse control, information retrieval, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Large Hadron Collider, lifelogging, machine translation, mandelbrot fractal, market design, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, microbiome, Murray Gell-Mann, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, open economy, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, placebo effect, power law, pre–internet, QWERTY keyboard, random walk, randomized controlled trial, rent control, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, Richard Thaler, Satyajit Das, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific management, security theater, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Stanford marshmallow experiment, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuart Kauffman, sugar pill, synthetic biology, the scientific method, Thorstein Veblen, Turing complete, Turing machine, twin studies, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

Having been fed personal data provided by users themselves or gathered by third parties, the technology would then analyze it to “enable identification of opportunities and/or provisioning of recommendations to increase user productivity and/or improve quality of life.” You can decide for yourself whether you trust Redmond with your lifelog, but it’s hard to fault the premise: The personal data mine, the patent states, would be a way “to identify relevant information that otherwise would likely remain undiscovered.” Both I as a citizen and society as a whole would gain if individuals’ personal datastreams could be mined to extract patterns upon which we could act.

I want to find the hidden meanings, the unexpected correlations that reveal trends and risk factors of which I had been unaware. In an era of oversharing, we need to think more about data-driven self-discovery. A small but fast-growing self-tracking movement is already showing the potential of such thinking, inspired by Kevin Kelly’s quantified self and Gary Wolf’s data-driven life. With its mobile sensors and apps and visualizations, this movement is tracking and measuring exercise, sleep, alertness, productivity, pharmaceutical responses, DNA, heartbeat, diet, financial expenditure—and then sharing and displaying its findings for greater collective understanding.


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

Away from social media platforms, some people deliberately choose to monitor the data emitted by their bodies—generally for health and wellness reasons, but sometimes for fun or curiosity. For a small group, the phenomenon of sousveillance goes beyond breathing rate and pulse. There are plans for:13 comprehensive life-logs that would create a unified, digital record of an individual’s experiences . . . a continuous, searchable, analysable record of the past that includes every action, every event, every conversation, every location visited, every material expression of an individual’s life, as well as physiological conditions inside the body and external conditions (e.g. orientation, temperature, levels of pollution).

32 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Index Jie, Ke 32 job applicants 266–7, 268 Jobs, Steve 314 Johnson, Bobby 399 Johnson, Steve 427 Jones, Steve 388 Jøsang, Audun 423 Jouppi, Norm 375 judicial system 102 Jury Theorem 224 justice algorithmic injustice 279–94 civil 259 concept 74–5, 76 conceptual analysis 81 criminal 259 as desert 260–1 as dessert 261, 262 distributive 257–70, 274, 278 and equality, difference between 259 fairness principle 353 property 313–41 in recognition 260, 271–8 social see social justice technological unemployment 295–312 Justinian, Emperor 202 Kahane, Guy 434 Kant, Immanuel 186, 272, 406 Karrahalios, Karrie 433 Kasparov, Garry 31, 36, 373 Kassarnig,Valentin 372 Keen, Andrew 376 Kelion, Leo 413 Kellmereit, Daniel 380 Kelly, Kevin 20, 21, 370, 373, 374, 375, 430 Kelly, Rick 384, 385 Kelly III, John E. 386, 388 Kelsen, Hans 103, 392 Kennedy, John F. 164, 188, 347 Kennedy, Robert F. 256 Keurig 116 Khatchadourian, Raffi 52, 382 503 Khomami, Nadia 397 Al-Khw­ār izmī, Abd’Abdallah Muhammad ibn Mūsā 94 Kim, Mark 376 King, Martin Luther 6, 180, 257, 360, 404 Kirchner, Lauren 403 Kirobo Mini 55 Kitchin, Rob 376, 377, 380, 381, 387, 388, 391, 404 Klaas, Brian 408 Kleinman, Zoe 383 Knockel, Jeffrey 399 Koch brothers 230 Kolhatkar, Sheelah 367, 423 Kollanyi, Bence 413 Korea 20 Kotler, Steven 374, 435 Krasodomski-Jones, Alex 412 Kurzweil, Ray 38, 366, 374, 436 Kymlicka, Will 418 labour market 303 Lai, Richard 386 Lampos,Vasileios 393 Landemore, Hélène 408, 411, 416 Laney, Doug 431 Langbort, Cedric 433 language importance to politics 16–17, 19 limits of 10–11 political concepts 76–80 public and private power 157 Lanier, Jaron 367, 374, 384, 400, 416, 419, 428, 431, 435 Data Deal 338 human enhancement 363 network effect 321 Silicon Valley startups 6–7 Wiki Democracy 246 Lant, Karla 376 Laouris,Yiannis 435 Large Hadron Collider 65 Larkin,Yelena 427 Larson, Jeff 403, 422 Larson, Selena 370, 421 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 504 Index law adaptive 107–10 AI Democracy 253 AI systems 31 code-ified 110–12, 245 digital 100–14 dissent 179–80 enforcement 101–7 intellectual property 332 justice in recognition 274–5 oral cultures 111–12 rule of 115 self-enforcing 101–3 supercharged state 171–2 wise restraints 185–6 written 111, 112 Lawrence, Neil 374, 388, 427 Leftwich, Adrian 389 Lenin,Vladimir Ilyich 21, 153, 370 Leonardo Da Vinci 28 Lessig, Lawrence 391, 392, 394, 420, 433 code as law 96 cyberspace as a place 97 free software 359 law enforcement through force 104, 105 privatization of force 100, 117 Leta Jones, Meg 138, 397, 432 Levellers 215–16 Levy, Steven 404 Lewis, Michael 428 liberal democracy 216–17, 246, 254 liberal-democratic principle of legitimacy 350 liberalism 77, 350 liberty 3, 10, 23, 346 concept 74–5, 76 conceptual analysis 81 contextual analysis 84 Deliberative Democracy 234 and democracy 207–8, 222, 225, 249 digital 205–7 digital dissent 179–84 digital liberation 168–71 harm principle 195–205 human enhancement 363 nature of politics 74 price mechanism 270 and private power 189–94 supercharged state 171–9 and the tech firm 188–208 transparency regulation 355 types 164–8 wise restraints 184–6 see also freedom Library of Congress 56 life-logs 63 Lincoln, Abraham 89, 210, 231, 323 Linn, Allison 398 Linux 243–4, 245, 333 Lipińska,Veronika 435 lip-reading 30 liquid democracy 242 Lively, J. 409 Livingston, James 425 Livy 216 loans, and distributive justice 267, 268 Locke, John 216, 246, 301, 323, 429 loomio.org 234 Lopatto, Elizabeth 434 lottery, work distribution via 304 Loveluck, Benjamin 378 Luca, Michael 423 luck egalitarianism 262, 307 Luddites 13 Lukes, Steven 390–1, 395, 398 Luxemburg, Rosa 348, 432 Lynch, Jack 384 Machiavelli, Niccolò 188, 217, 406, 409 machine learning 34–7, 266 algorithmic injustice 293 commons 332 data-based injustice 282 Data Democracy 248 data’s economic importance 317 distributive justice 267 future of code 98 group membership fallacy 284 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Index increasingly quantified society 61 liberty and private power 191 political campaigning 220 predictions 139, 173, 175 productive technologies 316 rule-based injustice 284 MacKinnon, Rebecca 396 Madison, James 216, 241, 369, 415 MagicLeap 59 Maistre, Joseph de 101 make-work 304 manipulation 93, 122 code 96, 97 digital liberation 170–1 harm principle 200 Mannheim, Karl 78, 390 Manyika, James 424 Mao, Huina 416 Marconi, Guglielmo 21 marginalization 273 Margretts, Helen 410 market system, and distributive justice 264–5 Markoff, John 400, 413 Martinez, Peter 413 Marx, Karl 367, 390, 398, 415, 417, 424, 425, 429, 434, 436 Communist Manifesto 326–7, 362 Direct Democracy 240–1 future of political ideas 86 justice 258 perception-control 144 on philosophers 7 political concepts 78 property 324, 326–7 sorcerer 366 workers 295, 298, 301, 307 Mason, Paul 374 Massachusetts Institute of Technology see MIT Mattu, Surya 403 Maxim, Hiram 20 Mayer-Schönberger,Viktor 387, 388, 395, 397, 427, 433 data 62, 65 forgetting versus remembering 137 505 Mayr, Otto 14, 368 McAfee, Andrew 374, 382, 390, 393, 427, 431 capital 315, 316, 334 McChesney, Robert W. 400, 427 McDermott, Daniel 390 McGinnis, John O. 416 McKinsey 295, 299 Mearian, Lucas 386 MedEthEx 108 medicine 3D printing 56–7 AI systems 31, 32, 108–9, 113 digital law 112–13 increasingly integrated technology 51, 54, 56–7 ransomware 182 robotics 54 technological unemployment 300 Medium 183 memory 136–8 Merchant, Brian 430 merit, and distributive justice 261 Mesthene, Emmanuel G. 368 metadata 63 Metcalfe’s Law 320 Metz, Cade 372, 373, 374, 375, 380 Metz, Rachel 407 Michaely, Roni 427 Microsoft acquisitions 318 chips 40 commons 332 concentration of tech industry 318, 320 Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism 191 HoloLens 59 patents 315 speech-recognition AI system 30 Tay 37, 346 might is right 349 military AI systems 31 brain–computer interfaces 48 sensors 50 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/18, SPi РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 506 Index Mill, James 195 Mill, John Stuart 367, 403, 406–7, 411, 414, 415 change, need for 3 Deliberative Democracy 234 democracy 223 freedom of speech, constraints on 237 harm principle 196, 198, 199, 203 liberty 195–6, 201, 203 liquid democracy 242 normative analysis 83 predictions 173 upbringing 195 Miller, David 435 Mills, Laurence 418 Milton, John 124, 167, 395 minstrel accounts 232 Mirani, Leo 396 Miremadi, Mehdi 424 Misra, Tanvi 377 MIT affective computing 53 bomb-detecting spinach 50–1 Senseable City Lab 50 Technology Review Custom 427 temporary tattoos for smartphone control 51 Mitchell, Margaret 403 Mitchell, William J. 183, 376, 405 Mizokami, Kyle 379 Moley 407 Momentum Machines 299 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de 358, 433 Moore, Gordon 39, 374 Moore’s Law 39–40, 41 morality AI Democracy 253 automation of 176–7 Data Democracy 249–50 Direct Democracy 240 fragmented 204, 231 harm principle 200–5 justice in distribution 261 see also ethics Moravec’s paradox 54, 382 More, Max 402, 434 Morgan, J.


pages: 263 words: 75,610

Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

digital divide, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Firefox, full text search, George Akerlof, information asymmetry, information retrieval, information security, information trail, Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, John Markoff, Joi Ito, lifelogging, moveable type in China, Network effects, packet switching, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, power law, RFID, slashdot, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systematic bias, The Market for Lemons, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Vannevar Bush, Yochai Benkler

Of course, Gordon Bell, the software engineer who has captured much of his professional life on digital memory, emphatically insists he is in charge of whether and how he makes his information available to others. Bell himself has decided to not let others peek into his information treasures. His lifeblog project, he explains, is about helping him remember, not giving others access to his files: “A lot of people put their lives on the Web. I’m not an advocate of that. [Lifelogging] was built to be entirely personal, to aid the individual.”40 His view may be admirable but, as he concedes, it is not representative of current Internet users. As I have mentioned, two out of three teenagers in the United States use the Internet to create and share information with others.41 This large and growing portion of the user population has internalized the culture of information bricolage.


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

An example is the Grillbot, a robot the size of a table tennis bat which cleans your barbecue grill, and is otherwise entirely useless.[clvi] Another form of robot which is taking off fast is drones – flying machines that can be controlled remotely or autonomously. They have a wide range of applications, including taking surreptitious photos of celebrities, taking selfies for life-logging Millennials, and delivering parcels for Amazon. They present a serious challenge for regulators concerned about the impact on more established forms of aircraft. These challenges cannot be dismissed or regulated away: internet-connected drones with powerful sensors and computers on board are quickly becoming essential tools for companies in the utilities and engineering industries, as well as government agencies.


pages: 326 words: 84,180

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness by Simone Browne

4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, autonomous vehicles, bitcoin, British Empire, cloud computing, colonial rule, computer vision, crowdsourcing, dark matter, disinformation, Edward Snowden, European colonialism, ghettoisation, Google Glasses, Internet Archive, job satisfaction, lifelogging, machine readable, mass incarceration, obamacare, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, r/findbostonbombers, Scientific racism, security theater, sexual politics, transatlantic slave trade, urban renewal, US Airways Flight 1549, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wayback Machine, Works Progress Administration

Magnet, Shoshana, and Tara Rodgers. “Stripping for the State.” Feminist Media Studies 12, no. 1 (2012): 101–118. Manchanda, Catharina. Catch Air: Robin Rhode. Wexler Center for the Arts. Columbus: Ohio State University, 2009. Mann, Steve. “Veillance and Reciprocal Transparency: Surveillance versus Souveillance, AR Glass, Lifelogging and Wearable Computing.” In 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS), June 27–29, 2013, 1–12. Mann, Steve, Jason Nolan, and Barry Wellman. “Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments.” Surveillance and Society 1, no. 3 (2003): 331–355.


pages: 761 words: 231,902

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil

additive manufacturing, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, anthropic principle, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bill Joy: nanobots, bioinformatics, brain emulation, Brewster Kahle, Brownian motion, business cycle, business intelligence, c2.com, call centre, carbon-based life, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, complexity theory, conceptual framework, Conway's Game of Life, coronavirus, cosmological constant, cosmological principle, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, Dava Sobel, David Brooks, Dean Kamen, digital divide, disintermediation, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, factory automation, friendly AI, functional programming, George Gilder, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, hype cycle, informal economy, information retrieval, information security, invention of the telephone, invention of the telescope, invention of writing, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, linked data, Loebner Prize, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mitch Kapor, mouse model, Murray Gell-Mann, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, oil shale / tar sands, optical character recognition, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, phenotype, power law, precautionary principle, premature optimization, punch-card reader, quantum cryptography, quantum entanglement, radical life extension, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, reversible computing, Richard Feynman, Robert Metcalfe, Rodney Brooks, scientific worldview, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, selection bias, semantic web, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Singularitarianism, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Stewart Brand, strong AI, Stuart Kauffman, superintelligent machines, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, telepresence, The Coming Technological Singularity, Thomas Bayes, transaction costs, Turing machine, Turing test, two and twenty, Vernor Vinge, Y2K, Yogi Berra

Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling refers to our time as 'the Golden Age of dead media, most of them with the working lifespan of a pack of Twinkles," Stewart Brand, "Written on the Wind," Civilization Magazine, November 1998 ("01998" in Long Now terminology), available online at http://www.longnow.org/10klibrary/library.htm. 43. DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office's project in this vein is called LifeLog, http://www.darpa.mil/ipto/Programs/lifelog; see also Noah Shachtman, "A Spy Machine of DARPA's Dreams," Wired News, May 20, 2003, http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,58909,00.html; Gordon Bell's project (for Microsoft) is MyLifeBits, http://research.microsoft.com/research/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx; for the Long Now Foundation, see http://longnow.org. 44.


pages: 549 words: 116,200

With a Little Help by Cory Efram Doctorow, Jonathan Coulton, Russell Galen

autonomous vehicles, big-box store, Burning Man, call centre, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, death of newspapers, don't be evil, game design, Google Earth, high net worth, lifelogging, lolcat, margin call, Mark Shuttleworth, offshore financial centre, packet switching, Ponzi scheme, reality distortion field, rolodex, Sand Hill Road, sensible shoes, skunkworks, Skype, traffic fines, traveling salesman, Turing test, urban planning, Y2K

Couldn't even drive a nail when I got here) (Not that there are any nails in there, it's all precision-fitted tongue and groove) (holy moley, lasers totally rock) 244 > But he reserved his worst criticism for the Order itself. You know the litany: we're a cult, we're brainwashed, we're dupes of the Securitat. He was convinced that every instrument in the place was feeding up to the Securitat itself. He'd mutter about this constantly, whenever we got a new stream to work on -- "Is this your lifelog, Brother Antony? Mine? The number of flushes per shitter in the west wing of campus?" 245 > And it was no good trying to reason with him. He just didn't acknowledge the benefit of introspection. "It's no different from them," he'd say, jerking his thumb up at the ceiling, as though there was a Securitat mic and camera hidden there.


Wireless by Charles Stross

air gap, anthropic principle, back-to-the-land, Benoit Mandelbrot, Buckminster Fuller, Cepheid variable, cognitive dissonance, colonial exploitation, cosmic microwave background, Easter island, epigenetics, finite state, Georg Cantor, gravity well, hive mind, hydroponic farming, jitney, Khyber Pass, Late Heavy Bombardment, launch on warning, lifelogging, Magellanic Cloud, mandelbrot fractal, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Neil Armstrong, peak oil, phenotype, Pluto: dwarf planet, security theater, sensible shoes, Turing machine, undersea cable

“Stasis Control thus has access to a theoretical maximum of 5.6 times 1021 slots across the totality of our history—but our legion of humanity comes perilously close, with a total of 2 times 1019 people. Many of the total available slots are reserved for data, relaying the totality of recorded human history to the Library—fully ninety-six percent of humanity lives in eras where ubiquitous surveillance or personal life-logging technologies have made the recording of absolute history possible, and we obviously need to archive their lifelines. Only the ur-historical prelude to Stasis, and periods of complete civilizational collapse and Reseeding, are not being monitored in exhaustive detail. “To make matters worse: in practice there are far fewer slots available for actual traffic, because we are not, as a species, well equipped for reacting in spans of less than a second.


pages: 428 words: 136,945

The Happiness Effect: How Social Media Is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost by Donna Freitas

4chan, fear of failure, Joan Didion, Jon Ronson, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Skype, Snapchat, TED Talk, Year of Magical Thinking

,” Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 2015; and Kiran Moodley, “Couple Fall to Their Death Whilst Attempting Cliff Face Selfie,” Independent, August 11, 2014. 2.In her book Seeing Ourselves through Technology: How We Use Selfies, Blogs and Wearable Devices to See and Shape Ourselves (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Jill Walker Rettberg looks at how selfies, blogs, and other life-logging tools and applications have become important ways through which we understand ourselves. Rettberg’s analysis presents these tools and applications as three intertwined modes of self-representation: visual, written, and quantitative. For more on selfies as a form of identity performance, see Gabriel Fleur, “Sexting, Selfies, and Self-Harm: Young People, Social Media, and the Performance of Self-Development,” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture & Policy 151 (May 2014): 104–112.


pages: 567 words: 122,311

Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster by Alistair Croll, Benjamin Yoskovitz

Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, barriers to entry, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Ben Horowitz, bounce rate, business intelligence, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, constrained optimization, data science, digital rights, en.wikipedia.org, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, frictionless, frictionless market, game design, gamification, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, hockey-stick growth, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, inventory management, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Marshall McLuhan, minimum viable product, Network effects, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, performance metric, place-making, platform as a service, power law, price elasticity of demand, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, sentiment analysis, skunkworks, Skype, social graph, social software, software as a service, Steve Jobs, subscription business, telemarketer, the long tail, transaction costs, two-sided market, Uber for X, web application, Y Combinator

Some products collect information passively: Fitbit logs walking steps; Siri notices when you’ve arrived somewhere; Writethatname analyzes your inbox for new contacts. Users don’t have to do much, so it can be hard to tell if they’ve “checked out.” It’s easier to find disengaged users if they have to actively use the product. Consider the aforementioned Fitbit, a tiny life-logging device that measures steps, from which it calculates calories burned, miles walked, stairs climbed, and overall activity. Fitbit users can simply record their steps with a device in their pocket, they can use it to sync data to the company’s hosted application, they can visit the portal to see their statistics and share them with friends, they can manually enter sleep and food data to augment what’s collected passively, and they can buy the premium Fitbit offering to help them reach their health goals.


Animal Spirits by Jackson Lears

1960s counterculture, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, behavioural economics, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, clockwork universe, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Doomsday Clock, double entry bookkeeping, epigenetics, escalation ladder, feminist movement, financial innovation, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, George Santayana, heat death of the universe, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Ida Tarbell, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Norman Mailer, plutocrats, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scientific racism, short selling, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, source of truth, South Sea Bubble, Stanislav Petrov, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, surveillance capitalism, the market place, the scientific method, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transcontinental railway, W. E. B. Du Bois, Whole Earth Catalog, zero-sum game

(For some reason he left out the suburb—always a convenient whipping boy for critics of banality.) “In American life, the unspoken war of the century has taken place between the city and the small town; the city which is dynamic, orgiastic, unsettling, explosive and accelerating to the psyche; the small town which is rooted, narrow, cautious and planted in the life-logic of the family,” Mailer wrote. “The need of the city is to accelerate growth; the pride of the small town is to retard it.” As in his musings on heroism, Mailer deemed “growth” a sine qua non of authentic selfhood and sign of psychic health, or at least his own idiosyncratic version of it. Infatuated with jazz, he overlooked entirely the restive energies in other forms of popular music—blues, rockabilly, rock ’n’ roll—which emanated from allegedly backward rural areas throughout the 1950s.


pages: 855 words: 178,507

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick

Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, bank run, bioinformatics, Bletchley Park, Brownian motion, butterfly effect, Charles Babbage, citation needed, classic study, Claude Shannon: information theory, clockwork universe, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, discovery of DNA, Donald Knuth, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, Fellow of the Royal Society, Gregor Mendel, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Henri Poincaré, Honoré de Balzac, index card, informal economy, information retrieval, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, Louis Daguerre, machine translation, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, microbiome, Milgram experiment, Network effects, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Macrae, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, PageRank, pattern recognition, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, pre–internet, quantum cryptography, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, reversible computing, Richard Feynman, Rubik’s Cube, Simon Singh, Socratic dialogue, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, stochastic process, talking drums, the High Line, The Wisdom of Crowds, transcontinental railway, Turing machine, Turing test, women in the workforce, yottabyte

Most of this is haphazard and unorganized, but there are extreme cases. The computer pioneer Gordon Bell, at Microsoft Research in his seventies, began recording every moment of his day, every conversation, message, document, a megabyte per hour or a gigabyte per month, wearing around his neck what he called a “SenseCam” to create what he called a “LifeLog.” Where does it end? Not with the Library of Congress. It is finally natural—even inevitable—to ask how much information is in the universe. It is the consequence of Charles Babbage and Edgar Allan Poe saying, “No thought can perish.” Seth Lloyd does the math. He is a moon-faced, bespectacled quantum engineer at MIT, a theorist and designer of quantum computers.


pages: 542 words: 161,731

Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

Albert Einstein, Columbine, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, fake news, Future Shock, global village, Hacker Ethic, helicopter parent, Howard Rheingold, industrial robot, information retrieval, Jacques de Vaucanson, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, lifelogging, Loebner Prize, Marshall McLuhan, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paradox of Choice, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rodney Brooks, Skype, social intelligence, stem cell, technological determinism, technoutopianism, The Great Good Place, the medium is the message, the strength of weak ties, theory of mind, Turing test, Vannevar Bush, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, Year of Magical Thinking

Children now tell me that parents give them two phones: one to “turn in” on the first day of camp and a second to keep for calling home. 5 In October 2005, ABC News called the term “in vogue.” See “Do ‘Helicopter Moms’ Do More Harm Than Good?” ABCNews.com, October 21, 2005, http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Health/story?id=1237868&page=1 (accessed April 7, 2004). 6 In 2004, the Pentagon canceled its so-called LifeLog project, an ambitious effort to build a database tracking a person’s entire existence: phone calls made, TV shows watched, magazines read, plane tickets bought, e-mails sent and received. It was then partially revived nine months later. See Noah Schachtman, “Pentagon Revives Memory Project,” Wired News, www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2004/09/6491 (accessed August 4, 2010).


pages: 798 words: 240,182

The Transhumanist Reader by Max More, Natasha Vita-More

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, Bill Joy: nanobots, bioinformatics, brain emulation, Buckminster Fuller, cellular automata, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, combinatorial explosion, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, Conway's Game of Life, cosmological principle, data acquisition, discovery of DNA, Douglas Engelbart, Drosophila, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, experimental subject, Extropian, fault tolerance, Flynn Effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, friendly AI, Future Shock, game design, germ theory of disease, Hans Moravec, hypertext link, impulse control, index fund, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, Louis Pasteur, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, moral hazard, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Pepto Bismol, phenotype, positional goods, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, presumed consent, Project Xanadu, public intellectual, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, reversible computing, RFID, Ronald Reagan, scientific worldview, silicon-based life, Singularitarianism, social intelligence, stem cell, stochastic process, superintelligent machines, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, systems thinking, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Nelson, telepresence, telepresence robot, telerobotics, the built environment, The Coming Technological Singularity, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, Turing machine, Turing test, Upton Sinclair, Vernor Vinge, Von Neumann architecture, VTOL, Whole Earth Review, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

I prefer to keep an open mind and, since non-destructive, very high resolution brain scanning seems feasible in principle (that is, it is compatible with the laws of physics and so it is just another engineering problem), I tend to think it will be achieved sooner or later. Another possibility is the Bainbridge–Rothblatt “soft” approach: we can create a “lifelogging” database with blogs, pictures, videos, answers to personality tests, etc. (see the CybeRev and LifeNaut projects of Martine Rothblatt [Rothblatt 2009]), hoping that some future AI technology may be able to merge the information in the database with suitable “human firmware” (me-program) and bring it to life.


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

“Yearly Archives: 2007, page 3,” Quantified Self, accessed November 26, 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20170629220503/http://quantifiedself.com/2007/page/3. 64. April Dembosky, “Invasion of the Body Hackers,” Financial Times, June 10, 2011, www.ft.com/content/3ccb11a0-923b-11e0-9e00-00144feab49a?. 65. Kevin Kelly, “What Is the Quantified Self?” Quantified Self, October 5, 2007, https://web.archive.org/web/20111101100244/http://quantifiedself.com/2007/10/what-is-the-quantifiable-self; Gary Wolf, “Eric Boyd: Learning from My Nike FuelBand Data,” Quantified Self, April 5, 2013, https://quantifiedself.com/blog/eric-boyd-learning-from-my-nike-fuelband-data; Gary Wolf, “Matt Cutts Hacks His WiiFit for Biometrics,” Quantified Self, February 4, 2009, https://quantifiedself.com/blog/matt-cutts-hacks-his-wiifit-fo. 66.

“My Year in Data,” n = 1, January 1, 2021, https://samplesize.one/blog/posts/my_year_in_data. 69. “QS Guide to Sleep Tracking,” Quantified Self, accessed November 26, 2021, https://forum.quantifiedself.com/t/qs-guide-to-sleep-tracking/3721; Alexandra Carmichael, “My n=1 Quest to Live Headache-Free,” Quantified Self, August 29, 2011, https://quantifiedself.com/blog/my-n1-quest-to-live-headache-free; Ernesto Ramirez, “Diabetes, Metabolism, and the Quantified Self,” Quantified Self, June 13, 2014, https://quantifiedself.com/blog/diabetes-metabolism-quantified-self. 70. “Apple Watch Series 6—Technical Specifications,” Apple Support, Apple, October 5, 2021, https://support.apple.com/kb/SP826?

Though Miyamoto likely wouldn’t have heard of the term, his desire to measure and improve his health through data sat perfectly alongside the new “quantified self” movement that had sprung up just two months earlier in California. Wii Fit and its successor Wii Fit Plus would go on to sell a combined forty-three million copies, but it was the quantified self movement that would ultimately have the greatest lasting influence on health and wellness gamification.62 While the principles behind the movement are old, the term “quantified self” was originated by Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly in October 2007.63 As Kelly put it, “Unless something can be measured, it cannot be improved.


pages: 268 words: 75,850

The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems-And Create More by Luke Dormehl

3D printing, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, augmented reality, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, call centre, Cass Sunstein, classic study, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, computer age, death of newspapers, deferred acceptance, disruptive innovation, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Flash crash, Florence Nightingale: pie chart, Ford Model T, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, fulfillment center, Google Earth, Google Glasses, High speed trading, Internet Archive, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Kodak vs Instagram, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, machine readable, machine translation, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, price discrimination, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, Rosa Parks, scientific management, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Slavoj Žižek, social graph, speech recognition, stable marriage problem, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, technological determinism, technological solutionism, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, upwardly mobile, Wall-E, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator

As a data junkie, he is a valued member of the so-called Quantified Self movement: an ever-expanding group of similar individuals who enthusiastically take part in a form of self-tracking, somatic surveillance. Founded by Wired magazine editors Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly in the mid-2000s, the Quantified Self movement casts its aspirations in bold philosophical terms, promising devotees “self-knowledge through numbers.”4 Taking the Positivist view of verification and empiricism, and combining this with a liberal dose of technological determinism, the Quantified Self movement begs the existential question of what kind of self can possibly exist that is unable to be number-crunched using the right algorithms?

Consider, for example, the story of a young female member of the Quantified Self movement, referred to only as “Angela.” Angela was working in what she considered to be her dream job, when she downloaded an app that “pinged” her multiple times each day, asking her to rate her mood each time. As patterns started to emerge in the data, Angela realized that her “mood score” showed that she wasn’t very happy at work, after all. When she discovered this, she handed in her notice and quit. “The one commonality that I see among people in the Quantified Self movement is that they have questions only the data can answer,” says 43-year-old Selfer Vincent Dean Boyce.

Adams, Douglas 2 Adorno, Theodor 179, 205 Adventures in the Screen Trade (Goldman) 161 Affectiva 193 Against Autonomy (Conly) 138–39 Agrippa (Gibson) 238n Akrich, Madeline 136n algorithms: and Amazon’s “fulfilment associates” 44 and astronaut selection 24 and black-boxing 151–52, 227–28, 235–36 and call centers 21–22, 24–25, 49–50 cars driven by 141–42 in CCTV cameras 145–46 and death 96–98 and differential pricing 50–53 and differentiated search results 47–48 and discriminatory practices 53–54 for divorce 130–31 for drunk-driving detection 131–33 and early computer dating 82 and emotion sniffing 51–52 and equity market 210–11 and exclusive highways 48–49 explained 1–6 for finding love and sex 61–95 passim, 98–105; see also ALikeWise; BeautifulPeople; Bedpost; eHarmony; FindYourFaceMate; FitnessSingles; Internet: dating; Kari; LargeAndLovely; love and sex; “Match”; Match .com; OKCupid; PlentyOfFish; SeaCaptainDate; Serendipity; TrekPassions; UniformDating; VeggieDate Flu Trends 238–39 to forecast crime 119–24; see also Berk, Richard; law and law enforcement and gaming technology 32–34 “genetic” 203–4 growing role of 210 Iamus 206–7 inferences of, and conceptions of self 36–38 and Kari 98–103; see also love and sex and legal documents 129–30 and London Symphony Orchestra 206 and “The Match,” see “Match” measuring students’ progress with 39–41 and medic 211 and money laundering 18–19 and offence 224–27 and police work, public policy and judicial system, see law and law enforcement and recruitment 25–31 and same-sex couples 147 and student grades 208, 212 and terrorism 149–50, 153 as “tricks” 221–23 and “truths” in art 182–83; see also art and entertainment TruthTeller 237 and Twitter 35–36, 38 upward mobility programmed into 46–47 why we trust 149–51 ALikeWise 79 Amabot 214–15 Amazon 85, 188, 198 and disappearing gay-friendly books 232 e-books sold by 179–80 “fulfilment associates” at 44–45 how algorithms work with 1–2 and Solid Gold Bomb 224–25 two departments of 213–15 work practices at 44–46 Ambient Law 131–33, 137, 143–44 Amscreen 20 Anderson, Chris 56, 191n, 223 Angela (Quantified Self devotee) 14 see also Quantified Self movement Aniston, Jennifer 69 Anomo 89–90 Apple 133 Apple v. Samsung 127–28 Apprentice, The (US) 89 Aquinas, Thomas 183 Aron, Arthur 101 art and entertainment 161–207 and dehumanisation 203–4 and films via Internet 179–80 and mass market 175–77 and Salganik–Dodds–Watts study 172–73 and “superstar” markets 173 see also Epagogix; individual participants; individual titles artificial intelligence 126, 217 AT&T 29 Atlantic 11 Avatar 163, 172, 205 Avaya 49 Balloon Brigade 33 Barefoot Into Cyberspace (Hogge) 44 Barrymore, Drew 167 Barthes, Roland 186 Bauman, Zygmunt 81–82 BeautifulPeople 78 beauty map 31–32 Beck, Charlie 106–7 Bedpost 13, 93–95 Bedwood, David 97 Beethoven, Ludwig 202 Bellos, David 215 Benjamin, Walter 178–79 Bense, Max 182n Bentham, Jeremy 55, 118 Berk, Richard 120–24, 236 Bezos, Jeff 190 Bianculli, David 189 Bieber, Justin 202–3 Blackstone Electronic Discovery 127–28 Blink (Gladwell) 211 blogging 30 and owners’ personalities 38–39 and word choice 38–39 body-hacking 13–14 BodyMedia 94 books, see art and entertainment Bowden, B.


pages: 458 words: 116,832

The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism by Nick Couldry, Ulises A. Mejias

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, behavioural economics, Big Tech, British Empire, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cloud computing, colonial rule, computer vision, corporate governance, dark matter, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, different worldview, digital capitalism, digital divide, discovery of the americas, disinformation, diversification, driverless car, Edward Snowden, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, extractivism, fake news, Gabriella Coleman, gamification, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Chrome, Google Earth, hiring and firing, income inequality, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Infrastructure as a Service, intangible asset, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, job automation, Kevin Kelly, late capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, PageRank, pattern recognition, payday loans, Philip Mirowski, profit maximization, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Stallman, Richard Thaler, Salesforce, scientific management, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, Snapchat, social graph, social intelligence, software studies, sovereign wealth fund, surveillance capitalism, techlash, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, Thomas Davenport, Tim Cook: Apple, trade liberalization, trade route, undersea cable, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, work culture , workplace surveillance

Although MacPherson (Possessive Individualism, 200) shows the roots in John Locke of the idea that “every man has a Property in his own person,” Locke’s individualistic view of freedom is actually very different from Hegel’s socially grounded view. 57. Discussed in Rössler, Value, 146. 58. Hegel, Elements, 97, par. 66. 59. Kelly, Inevitable, 7, emphasis in original. 60. For the manifesto of the Quantified Self movement, see Wolf, “Data-Driven Life.” For useful reviews of the recent history of self-tracking, see Crawford, Lingel, and Karppi, “Our Metrics, Ourselves”; Lupton, Quantified Self; and Neff and Nafus, Self-Tracking. 61. Lupton, Quantified Self, 2. 62. Hildebrandt, “Balance or Trade-Off?,” 367. 63. Apple, “Apple Special Event.” 64. Neff and Nafus, Self-Tracking, 3, 8. 65. John, “Logics of Sharing.” For the wider mystification, see Couldry, “Necessary Disenchantment.” 66.

Couldn’t Hegel’s social reading of freedom (autonomy) allow us to argue that the self’s development today requires tracking devices as a way to enable selves to “determine the aims of their own actions”?75 We might counter by asking defenders of datafication to deny that some measure of control over data relations is important for autonomy,76 and indeed the Quantified Self movement has been ready to cede individual property rights in data.77 The real problem with the Quantified Self and similar visions, however, goes deeper. For Hegel, it is the reflective relation to oneself that is essential to the development of a free will. Therefore, a free life needs to be a self-sufficient life in which “nothing from outside, nothing not-me, determines my actions.”78 Hegel does not deny—indeed, he emphasizes—that the individual lives a life that is not free from external constraints; it is a life lived through mediations (lived “in the other,” as Hegel puts it).

Compare Shopkick CEO Cyriac Roeding: “We inject digital juice into the physical world, and make the offline, touchable world a more interactive experience.” Quoted in Turow, McGuigan, and Maris, “Making Data Mining,” 474. 75. Honneth, I in We, 26. 76. Hildebrandt, “Balance or Trade-Off?,” drawing on Phillip Agre, “Introduction,” 7. 77. As Lupton notes, the Quantified Self movement itself is now starting to prioritize concerns over at least access to, if not ownership of, personal data (Lupton, Quantified Self, 134). Meanwhile, according to Neff and Nafus (Self-Tracking, 117), there is no consensus among data companies that service the self-tracking sector on whether they or their customers own the data stored in the mechanisms they provide. 78.


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The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being by William Davies

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, behavioural economics, business intelligence, business logic, corporate governance, data science, dematerialisation, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Gini coefficient, income inequality, intangible asset, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Leo Hollis, lifelogging, market bubble, mental accounting, military-industrial complex, nudge unit, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Philip Mirowski, power law, profit maximization, randomized controlled trial, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, scientific management, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, social contagion, social intelligence, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, theory of mind, urban planning, Vilfredo Pareto, W. E. B. Du Bois, you are the product

But when doing so of their own volition, suddenly reporting on behaviour and moods becomes a fulfilling, satisfying activity in its own right. The ‘quantified self’ movement, in which individuals measure and report on various aspects of their private lives – from their diets, to their moods, to their sex lives – began as an experimental group of software developers and artists. But it unearthed a surprising enthusiasm for self-surveillance that market researchers and behavioural scientists have carefully noted. Companies such as Nike are now exploring ways in which health and fitness products can be sold alongside quantified self apps, which will allow individuals to make constant reports of their behaviour (such as jogging), generating new data sets for the company in the process.

See positive psychology promise of practical utility of, 91 reunion of with economics, 64, 182 social psychology, 125, 189, 266 theory of, as balancing act, 67 The Psychology of Advertising (Scott), 86 psychopharmacology, 162 psychophysical parallelism, 259 psychophysics, 29, 30, 31 psychosomatic interventions/management/programmes/theories, 122, 124, 128, 135 psychotherapy, 124, 127 pulse rate, 25, 26, 27, 37, 79 punishment, 16, 19, 22, 23, 179, 183, 239 PwC, 119 Qualia, 36 quality of life measures, 126 quantitative sociological research, 98 quantified community, 233, 234 quantified self apps, 221 quantified self movement, 221, 228 quants, 237 questionnaires, 165, 175, 176 random acts of managerial generosity, 184 randomized sampling methods, 97 Rapley, Mark, 250 Rayner, Rosalie, 93 Reagan, Ronald, 144, 149, 159 Realeyes, 72 real-time health data, 137 real-time social trends, 224 recessions, 67–8, 252 Recognizing the Depressed Patient (Ayd), 164 reductionism, 27, 264 research ethics, 91–2, 225 resilience training, 35, 273 Resor, Stanley, 93–4, 95, 96 retail culture, 58 Ricard, Matthieu, 2, 4 Robbins, Lionel, 154 Robins, Eli, 169 Rockefeller Foundation, 97, 99, 121 Rogers, Carl, 146 Roosevelt, Franklin, 101, 146 Rowntree, Joseph, 99 RunKeeper, 240 Ryanair, 185 Salter, Tim, 110 sampling methods, 97–8 Santa Monica, California, 4 São Paolo, Brazil, Clean City Law, 275 scales, 146, 165, 175, 176 scanning technology, 75–6 scent logos, 73 Schrader, Harald, 44 scientific advertising, 215 scientific management, 118–19, 120, 136–7, 235 scientific optimism, 242 scientific politics, 77, 88, 145 scientists, as source of authority, 147–8 Scott, Walter Dill, 83, 85 screen time, 207 second brain, 231 secular religions, 260 selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), 163, 166 self-anchored striving, 147, 166, 175 self-anchoring striving scale, 146 self-forming groups, 200 self-help gurus, 210 self-help literature, 247 self-improvement, 212 self-monitoring, 258 self-optimization, 213 self-reflection, 211 self-surveillance, 221, 230 Seligman, Martin, 165, 277n5 Selye, Hans, 128–31, 133, 264 The Senses and the Intellect (Bain), 48 sentiment analysis/tracking, 6, 221, 223, 261 sexual orientation disturbance, 172 sharing economy, 188 shopping, 58, 74, 93, 188, 239 sick notes, 112 Sing Sing prison, 201 Smail, David, 250 smart cities, 220, 224, 239 smart homes, 239 smart watches, 37 smartphones, 10, 207, 222, 230 smiles/smiling, 36–7, 38 Smith, Adam, 49, 50, 52, 55 social, 1, 36, 184, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208, 211–12 social analytics, 188, 191, 193, 196 social capitalism, 212 social contagion, science of, 257 social economy, 190 social epidemiology, 9, 250, 254 social media, 188, 189, 199, 203, 207, 208–9, 213, 224, 261, 274 social media addiction, 206, 207 social network analysis, 204, 208 social networks, 193, 194, 195, 196, 213, 225 social neuroscience, 193, 195, 213, 214 social obligation, 184 social optimization, 181–214 social prescribing, 194, 212, 246, 271 social psychology, 125, 189, 266 social research, 98, 202, 226 social science, as converging with physiology into new discipline, 195 sociology, 254 sociometric analysis, 199 sociometric maps, 202 Sociometric Solutions, 239 sociometry, 199, 201, 202, 203 Spengler, Oswald, 121 Spitzer, Robert, 171–3, 176, 271 sponsored conversations, 189 sport, as virtue for political leaders, 140 sporting metaphors, 141 SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), 163, 166 St Louis school of psychiatry, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174, 176, 179 Stanton, Frank, 99 Stigler, George, 150, 152, 153, 156–7, 158, 160 stress, 37, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 175, 250, 262, 272, 273 Stuckler, David, 252 subjective affect, science of, 6, 7 subjective feelings, relationship with external circumstances, 254 subjective sensation, 30, 45, 55, 61 Suicide (Durkheim), 227 Sully, James, 59, 84 surveillance, 231, 237, 238, 240, 242.

Neuroscientists identify how happiness and unhappiness are physically inscribed in the brain, as the researchers in Wisconsin did with Matthieu Ricard, and seek out neural explanations for why singing and greenery seem to improve our mental well-being. They claim to have found the precise parts of the brain which generate positive and negative emotions, including an area that provokes ‘bliss’ when stimulated, and a ‘pain dimmer switch’.8 Innovation within the experimental ‘quantified self’ movement sees individuals carrying out personalized ‘mood tracking’, through diaries and smartphone apps.9 As the statistical evidence in this area accumulates, so the field of ‘happiness economics’ grows to take advantage of all this new data, building up a careful picture of which regions, lifestyles, forms of employment or types of consumption generate the greatest mental well-being.


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

It may be the long-awaited breakthrough in wearables: both the enabler and the visible symbol of a lifestyle in which performance is continuously monitored and plumbed for its insights into further improvements. Nobody has embraced this conception of instrumented living more fervently than a loose global network of enthusiasts called the Quantified Self, whose slogan is “self-knowledge through numbers.”2 Founded by Wired editor Gary Wolf and Whole Earth Review veteran Kevin Kelly in 2007, the Quantified Self currently boasts a hundred or so local chapters, and an online forum where members discuss and rate the devices mobilized in their self-measurement efforts. (It can be difficult to disentangle this broader movement from a California company of the same name also founded by Wolf and Kelly, which mounts conferences dedicated to proselytizing for the practice of self-measurement.)

If the endeavor retains a certain sprawling and formless quality, we can get a far more concrete sense of what it involves, what it invokes and what it requires by looking at each of the primary scales at which it appears to us: that of the body, that of the room, and that of public space in general. Though they all partake of the same general repertoire of techniques, each of these domains of activity has a specific, distinguishing label associated with it. The quest to instrument the body, monitor its behavior and derive actionable insight from these soundings is known as the “quantified self”; the drive to render interior, domestic spaces visible to the network “the smart home”; and when this effort is extended to municipal scale, it is known as “the smart city.” Each of these scales of activity illuminates a different aspect of the challenge presented to us by the internet of things, and each of them has something distinct to teach us.

(It can be difficult to disentangle this broader movement from a California company of the same name also founded by Wolf and Kelly, which mounts conferences dedicated to proselytizing for the practice of self-measurement.) In their meetups and on their forum, the stalwarts of the Quantified Self discuss the theory and practice of the measured life, mulling everything from the devices most effective at capturing REM sleep to the legalities involved in sharing data. One forum thread goes quite a bit further; entitled “Can You Quantify Inner Peace?,” it discusses metrics that the instrumented aspirant might use to measure their progress toward heights of consciousness previously understood as the preserve of Zen meditators and yogic adepts.


pages: 385 words: 111,113

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

Technology is fundamentally changing both our understanding of our biology and how we will actively manage our health and lifespan in the future. In this chapter, we’ll consider how technology is helping us improve our own biology using genetics, personalised medicine and the principles that have emerged in the quantified self (QS) movement. In chapter 6, we’ll look at the use of technology to enhance our humanity more specifically. To understand the potential impact of genetics and gene editing on the future of humanity, it is helpful to understand that huge strides have been made in the last few decades. In 1984, the first Human Genome Project (HGP) was proposed and funded by the US government, but the project really only got underway with international cooperation in 1990.

That’s more than a pound’s worth of calories (3,500) torched while I walked on my treadmill desk, and everywhere else I could.” Figure 5.2: Apps like Vivofit use peer-based rankings to gamify your physical activity. Gamification through peer-group competition or comparison can be a very powerful motivator, as can competing against yourself to improve. This is a core element of the quantified self that we now recognise as a powerful behavioural imperative. Quantifying the Role of Sleep Most people are shocked to discover how often their sleep is interrupted during a typical night’s slumber. Tens of millions of people around the world have been introduced to this concept via the weight loss television reality show The Biggest Loser.

The QS idea is that facilitating this synchronisation via sound instead of electricity brings the power to enhance SWS into the hands and heads of consumers. Up to now, using electricity to effect this synchronisation (i.e. via transcranial direct current stimulation) has required the expertise of trained technicians in order to be safe and effective. “The new quantified self system utilises feedback algorithms that measure the duration and intensity of SWS as it is naturally occurring in the user’s brain and modifies the amount with which SWA is enhanced in proportion to how much it is lacking, which is much more effective than increasing the duration and intensity of SWA by some unchanging baseline degree.


pages: 391 words: 105,382

Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations by Nicholas Carr

Abraham Maslow, Air France Flight 447, Airbnb, Airbus A320, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, centralized clearinghouse, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collaborative consumption, computer age, corporate governance, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data science, deskilling, digital capitalism, digital map, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, factory automation, failed state, feminist movement, Frederick Winslow Taylor, friendly fire, game design, global village, Google bus, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, hive mind, impulse control, indoor plumbing, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, invention of movable type, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Joan Didion, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, lolcat, low skilled workers, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, means of production, Menlo Park, mental accounting, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norman Mailer, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, robot derives from the Czech word robota Czech, meaning slave, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, self-driving car, SETI@home, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Singularitarianism, Snapchat, social graph, social web, speech recognition, Startup school, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the long tail, the medium is the message, theory of mind, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator, Yochai Benkler

Explains Google mindfulness coach Chade-Meng Tan, who helps the techies gain “emotional intelligence” through meditation, “Everybody knows this EI thing is good for their career. And every company knows that if their people have EI, they’re gonna make a shitload of money.” Namaste. THE QUANTIFIED SELF AT WORK October 25, 2013 THE FAITHFUL GATHERED IN San Francisco earlier this month for the Quantified Self Global Conference, an annual conclave of “self-trackers and tool-makers.” The Quantified Self movement aims to bring the new apparatus of big data to the old pursuit of self-actualization, using sensors, wearables, apps, and the cloud to monitor and optimize bodily functions and engineer a more perfect self.

., 107 proactive cognitive control, 96 Prochnik, George, 243–46 “Productivity Future Vision (2011),” 108–9 Project Gutenberg, 278 prosperity, technologies of, 118, 119–20 prosumerism, 64 protest movements, 61 Proust and the Squid (Wolf), 234 proximal clues, 303 public-domain books, 277–78 “public library,” debate over use of term, 272–74 punch-card tabulator, 188 punk music, 63–64 Quantified Self Global Conference, 163 Quantified Self (QS) movement, 163–65 Quarter-of-a-Second Rule, 205 racecars, 195, 196 radio: in education, 134 evolution of, 77, 79, 159, 288 as music medium, 45, 121–22, 207 political use of, 315–16, 317, 319 Radosh, Daniel, 71 Rapp, Jen, 341–42 reactive cognitive control, 96 Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, 91 reading: brain function in, 247–54, 289–90 and invention of paper, 286–87 monitoring of, 257 video gaming vs., 261–62 see also books reading skills, changes in, 232–34, 240–41 Read Write Web (blog), 30 Reagan, Ronald, 315 real world: digital media intrusion in, 127–30 perceived as boring and ugly, 157–58 as source of knowledge, 313 virtual world vs., xx–xxi, 36, 62, 127–30, 303–4 reconstructive surgery, 239 record albums: copying of, 121–22 jackets for, 122, 224 technology of, 41–46 Redding, Otis, 126 Red Light Center, 39 Reichelt, Franz, 341 Reid, Rob, 122–25 relativists, 20 religion: internet perceived as, 3–4, 238 for McLuhan, 105 technology viewed as, xvi–xvii Republic of Letters, 271 reputations, tarnishing of, 47–48, 190–94 Resident Evil, 260–61 resource sharing, 148–49 resurrection, 69–70, 126 retinal implants, 332 Retromania (Reynolds), 217, 292–95 Reuters, Adam, 26 Reuters’ SL bureau, 26 revivification machine, 69–70 Reynolds, Simon, 217–18, 292–95 Rice, Isaac, 244 Rice, Julia Barnett, 243–44 Richards, Keith, 42 “right to be forgotten” lawsuit, 190–94 Ritalin, 304 robots: control of, 303 creepy quality of, 108 human beings compared to, 242 human beings replaced by, 112, 174, 176, 195, 197, 306–7, 310 limitations of, 323 predictions about, xvii, 177, 331 replaced by humans, 323 threat from, 226, 309 Rogers, Roo, 83–84 Rolling Stones, 42–43 Roosevelt, Franklin, 315 Rosen, Nick, 52 Rubio, Marco, 314 Rumsey, Abby Smith, 325–27 Ryan, Amy, 273 Sandel, Michael J., 340 Sanders, Bernie, 314, 316 Sansom, Ian, 287 Savage, Jon, 63 scatology, 147 Schachter, Joshua, 195 Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, 229 Schmidt, Eric, 13, 16, 238, 239, 257, 284 Schneier, Bruce, 258–59 Schüll, Natasha Dow, 218 science fiction, 106, 115, 116, 150, 309, 335 scientific management, 164–65, 237–38 Scrapbook in American Life, The, 185 scrapbooks, social media compared to, 185–86 “Scrapbooks as Cultural Texts” (Katriel and Farrell), 186 scythes, 302, 304–6 search-engine-optimization (SEO), 47–48 search engines: allusions sought through, 86 blogging, 66–67 in centralization of internet, 66–69 changing use of, 284 customizing by, 264–66 erroneous or outdated stories revived by, 47–48, 190–94 in filtering, 91 placement of results by, 47–48, 68 searching vs., 144–46 targeting information through, 13–14 writing tailored to, 89 see also Google searching, ontological connotations of, 144–46 Seasteading Institute, 172 Second Life, 25–27 second nature, 179 self, technologies of the, 118, 119–20 self-actualization, 120, 340 monitoring and quantification of, 163–65 selfies, 224 self-knowledge, 297–99 self-reconstruction, 339 self-tracking, 163–65 Selinger, Evan, 153 serendipity, internet as engine of, 12–15 SETI@Home, 149 sexbots, 55 Sex Pistols, 63 sex-reassignment procedures, 337–38 sexuality, 10–11 virtual, 39 Shakur, Tupac, 126 sharecropping, as metaphor for social media, 30–31 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 88 Shirky, Clay, 59–61, 90, 241 Shop Class as Soulcraft (Crawford), 265 Shuster, Brian, 39 sickles, 302 silence, 246 Silicon Valley: American culture transformed by, xv–xxii, 148, 155–59, 171–73, 181, 241, 257, 309 commercial interests of, 162, 172, 214–15 informality eschewed by, 197–98, 215 wealthy lifestyle of, 16–17, 195 Simonite, Tom, 136–37 simulation, see virtual world Singer, Peter, 267 Singularity, Singularitarians, 69, 147 sitcoms, 59 situational overload, 90–92 skimming, 233 “Slaves to the Smartphone,” 308–9 Slee, Tom, 61, 84 SLExchange, 26 slot machines, 218–19 smart bra, 168–69 smartphones, xix, 82, 136, 145, 150, 158, 168, 170, 183–84, 219, 274, 283, 287, 308–9, 315 Smith, Adam, 175, 177 Smith, William, 204 Snapchat, 166, 205, 225, 316 social activism, 61–62 social media, 224 biases reinforced by, 319–20 as deceptively reflective, 138–39 documenting one’s children on, 74–75 economic value of content on, 20–21, 53–54, 132 emotionalism of, 316–17 evolution of, xvi language altered by, 215 loom as metaphor for, 178 maintaining one’s microcelebrity on, 166–67 paradox of, 35–36, 159 personal information collected and monitored through, 257 politics transformed by, 314–20 scrapbooks compared to, 185–86 self-validation through, 36, 73 traditional media slow to adapt to, 316–19 as ubiquitous, 205 see also specific sites social organization, technologies of, 118, 119 Social Physics (Pentland), 213 Society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise, 243–44 sociology, technology and, 210–13 Socrates, 240 software: autonomous, 187–89 smart, 112–13 solitude, media intrusion on, 127–30, 253 Songza, 207 Sontag, Susan, xx SoundCloud, 217 sound-management devices, 245 soundscapes, 244–45 space travel, 115, 172 spam, 92 Sparrow, Betsy, 98 Special Operations Command, U.S., 332 speech recognition, 137 spermatic, as term applied to reading, 247, 248, 250, 254 Spinoza, Baruch, 300–301 Spotify, 293, 314 “Sprite Sips” (app), 54 Squarciafico, Hieronimo, 240–41 Srinivasan, Balaji, 172 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 68 Starr, Karla, 217–18 Star Trek, 26, 32, 313 Stengel, Rick, 28 Stephenson, Neal, 116 Sterling, Bruce, 113 Stevens, Wallace, 158 Street View, 137, 283 Stroop test, 98–99 Strummer, Joe, 63–64 Studies in Classic American Literature (Lawrence), xxiii Such Stuff as Dreams (Oatley), 248–49 suicide rate, 304 Sullenberger, Sully, 322 Sullivan, Andrew, xvi Sun Microsystems, 257 “surf cams,” 56–57 surfing, internet, 14–15 surveillance, 52, 163–65, 188–89 surveillance-personalization loop, 157 survival, technologies of, 118, 119 Swing, Edward, 95 Talking Heads, 136 talk radio, 319 Tan, Chade-Meng, 162 Tapscott, Don, 84 tattoos, 336–37, 340 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 164, 237–38 Taylorism, 164, 238 Tebbel, John, 275 Technics and Civilization (Mumford), 138, 235 technology: agricultural, 305–6 American culture transformed by, xv–xxii, 148, 155–59, 174–77, 214–15, 229–30, 296–313, 329–42 apparatus vs. artifact in, 216–19 brain function affected by, 231–42 duality of, 240–41 election campaigns transformed by, 314–20 ethical hazards of, 304–11 evanescence and obsolescence of, 327 human aspiration and, 329–42 human beings eclipsed by, 108–9 language of, 201–2, 214–15 limits of, 341–42 master-slave metaphor for, 307–9 military, 331–32 need for critical thinking about, 311–13 opt-in society run by, 172–73 progress in, 77–78, 188–89, 229–30 risks of, 341–42 sociology and, 210–13 time perception affected by, 203–6 as tool of knowledge and perception, 299–304 as transcendent, 179–80 Technorati, 66 telegrams, 79 telegraph, Twitter compared to, 34 telephones, 103–4, 159, 288 television: age of, 60–62, 79, 93, 233 and attention disorders, 95 in education, 134 Facebook ads on, 155–56 introduction of, 103–4, 159, 288 news coverage on, 318 paying for, 224 political use of, 315–16, 317 technological adaptation of, 237 viewing habits for, 80–81 Teller, Astro, 195 textbooks, 290 texting, 34, 73, 75, 154, 186, 196, 205, 233 Thackeray, William, 318 “theory of mind,” 251–52 Thiel, Peter, 116–17, 172, 310 “Things That Connect Us, The” (ad campaign), 155–58 30 Days of Night (film), 50 Thompson, Clive, 232 thought-sharing, 214–15 “Three Princes of Serendip, The,” 12 Thurston, Baratunde, 153–54 time: memory vs., 226 perception of, 203–6 Time, covers of, 28 Time Machine, The (Wells), 114 tools: blurred line between users and, 333 ethical choice and, 305 gaining knowledge and perception through, 299–304 hand vs. computer, 306 Home and Away blurred by, 159 human agency removed from, 77 innovation in, 118 media vs., 226 slave metaphor for, 307–8 symbiosis with, 101 Tosh, Peter, 126 Toyota Motor Company, 323 Toyota Prius, 16–17 train disasters, 323–24 transhumanism, 330–40 critics of, 339–40 transparency, downside of, 56–57 transsexuals, 337–38 Travels and Adventures of Serendipity, The (Merton and Barber), 12–13 Trends in Biochemistry (Nightingale and Martin), 335 TripAdvisor, 31 trolls, 315 Trump, Donald, 314–18 “Tuft of Flowers, A” (Frost), 305 tugboats, noise restrictions on, 243–44 Tumblr, 166, 185, 186 Turing, Alan, 236 Turing Test, 55, 137 Twain, Mark, 243 tweets, tweeting, 75, 131, 315, 319 language of, 34–36 theses in form of, 223–26 “tweetstorm,” xvii 20/20, 16 Twilight Saga, The (Meyer), 50 Twitter, 34–36, 64, 91, 119, 166, 186, 197, 205, 223, 224, 257, 284 political use of, 315, 317–20 2001: A Space Odyssey (film), 231, 242 Two-Lane Blacktop (film), 203 “Two Tramps in Mud Time” (Frost), 247–48 typewriters, writing skills and, 234–35, 237 Uber, 148 Ubisoft, 261 Understanding Media (McLuhan), 102–3, 106 underwearables, 168–69 unemployment: job displacement in, 164–65, 174, 310 in traditional media, 8 universal online library, 267–78 legal, commercial, and political obstacles to, 268–71, 274–78 universe, as memory, 326 Urban Dictionary, 145 utopia, predictions of, xvii–xviii, xx, 4, 108–9, 172–73 Uzanne, Octave, 286–87, 290 Vaidhyanathan, Siva, 277 vampires, internet giants compared to, 50–51 Vampires (game), 50 Vanguardia, La, 190–91 Van Kekerix, Marvin, 134 vice, virtual, 39–40 video games, 223, 245, 303 as addictive, 260–61 cognitive effects of, 93–97 crafting of, 261–62 violent, 260–62 videos, viewing of, 80–81 virtual child, tips for raising a, 73–75 virtual world, xviii commercial aspects of, 26–27 conflict enacted in, 25–27 language of, 201–2 “playlaborers” of, 113–14 psychological and physical health affected by, 304 real world vs., xx–xxi, 36, 62, 127–30 as restrictive, 303–4 vice in, 39–40 von Furstenberg, Diane, 131 Wales, Jimmy, 192 Wallerstein, Edward, 43–44 Wall Street, automation of, 187–88 Wall Street Journal, 8, 16, 86, 122, 163, 333 Walpole, Horace, 12 Walters, Barbara, 16 Ward, Adrian, 200 Warhol, Andy, 72 Warren, Earl, 255, 257 “Waste Land, The” (Eliot), 86, 87 Watson (IBM computer), 147 Wealth of Networks, The (Benkler), xviii “We Are the Web” (Kelly), xxi, 4, 8–9 Web 1.0, 3, 5, 9 Web 2.0, xvi, xvii, xxi, 33, 58 amorality of, 3–9, 10 culturally transformative power of, 28–29 Twitter and, 34–35 “web log,” 21 Wegner, Daniel, 98, 200 Weinberger, David, 41–45, 277 Weizenbaum, Joseph, 236 Wells, H.

LIVE FAST, DIE YOUNG, AND LEAVE A BEAUTIFUL HOLOGRAM ONLINE, OFFLINE, AND THE LINE BETWEEN GOOGLE GLASS AND CLAUDE GLASS BURNING DOWN THE SCHOOLHOUSE THE ENNUI OF THE INTELLIGENT MACHINE REFLECTIONS WILL GUTENBERG LAUGH LAST? THE SEARCHERS ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS AI MAX LEVCHIN HAS PLANS FOR US EVGENY’S LITTLE PROBLEM THE SHORTEST CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO POINTS HOME AWAY FROM HOME CHARCOAL, SHALE, COTTON, TANGERINE, SKY SLUMMING WITH BUDDHA THE QUANTIFIED SELF AT WORK MY COMPUTER, MY DOPPELTWEETER UNDERWEARABLES THE BUS THE MYTH OF THE ENDLESS LADDER THE LOOM OF THE SELF TECHNOLOGY BELOW AND BEYOND OUTSOURCING DAD TAKING MEASUREMENT’S MEASURE SMARTPHONES ARE HOT DESPERATE SCRAPBOOKERS OUT OF CONTROL OUR ALGORITHMS, OURSELVES TWILIGHT OF THE IDYLLS THE ILLUSION OF KNOWLEDGE WIND-FUCKING THE SECONDS ARE JUST PACKED MUSIC IS THE UNIVERSAL LUBRICANT TOWARD A UNIFIED THEORY OF LOVE <3S AND MINDS IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BORED, THE ONE-ARMED BANDIT IS KING THESES IN TWEETFORM THE EUNUCH’S CHILDREN: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS FLAME AND FILAMENT IS GOOGLE MAKING US STUPID?


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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

And as we mentioned in Chapter One, a Google car, with its lidar (light radar) scanning the surrounding environment with sixty-four lasers, collects almost a gigabyte of data per second per car. This revolution is also impacting our human bodies. In 2007, Wired magazine editors Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly created the Quantified Self (QS) movement, which focuses on self-tracking tools. The first Quantified Self conference was held in May 2011, and today the QS community has more than 32,000 members in thirty-eight countries. Many new devices have been spun out of this movement. One of them is Spire, a QS device that measures respiration. Singularity University alumnus Francesco Mosconi is the chief data officer of Spire.

In addition to the goal of helping to transform the downtown area into the most community-focused large city in the world, Hsieh aims to create the smartest place on the planet by maximizing the chances of serendipitous learning between Zappos insiders and outsiders. The result is not only a community built around common passions, but also around a common location. Note that in early stages, many companies find it easier to join an existing community that shares its MTP. The Quantified Self movement, for instance, is drawing together startups engaged in measuring all aspects of the human body. Examples of startups offering wearable technology that have banded together to form a community include Scanadu, Withings and Fitbit. As each startup finds its path, of course, it is free to create its own community, particularly once its user base is more significant.

Step 2: Join or Create Relevant MTP Communities The collaborative power of communities is critical to any ExO. Whatever your passion (let’s say you dream of curing cancer), there are communities out there filled with other passionate, purpose-driven people devoted to the same crusade. The recent rise of the Quantified Self (QS) movement, first introduced in Chapter Five, is a great example of a community with an MTP. Operating in 120 cities and in forty countries, approximately 1,000 companies and 40,000 members currently participate in the QS ecosystem. Anyone interested in setting up a medical device company or addressing a major area such as cancer or heart disease can find and join a rich community of interested fellow participants.


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The Great Fragmentation: And Why the Future of All Business Is Small by Steve Sammartino

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, augmented reality, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bitcoin, BRICs, Buckminster Fuller, citizen journalism, collaborative consumption, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Dunbar number, Elon Musk, fiat currency, Frederick Winslow Taylor, game design, gamification, Google X / Alphabet X, haute couture, helicopter parent, hype cycle, illegal immigration, index fund, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, lifelogging, market design, Mary Meeker, Metcalfe's law, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Network effects, new economy, peer-to-peer, planned obsolescence, post scarcity, prediction markets, pre–internet, profit motive, race to the bottom, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, remote working, RFID, Rubik’s Cube, scientific management, self-driving car, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, social graph, social web, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, subscription business, survivorship bias, The Home Computer Revolution, the long tail, too big to fail, US Airways Flight 1549, vertical integration, web application, zero-sum game

That’s the emerging job of marketers. Everything can and will be connected, unless of course the item’s brand proposition is that it’s ‘deliberately not connected’. What’s first? The connected home we spoke about above and the quantified self will provide the seeds of belief and value for everyone to embrace the web of things. The connected home and the quantified self can be defined as technology that tracks our human movements, providing data and feedback on what we do physically. Many popular smartphone apps already play in this space. The benefits we see from using gadgets such as fitness-tracking apps for quantifiable feedback are indisputable.

They’d claim that digital games just don’t garner the loyalty required to become a serious commercial outcome. But what they’re missing is the fact that most digital-based gaming hasn’t had the important layer of economic incentives added. This is the missing link. Due to that, gamification in the infiltrated commercial sense is in its infancy. But it has given birth to the quantified-self movement. quantified self: the use of technology to track personal activity and provide feedback to improve ourselves and our lives Games are for nerds, right? Sure, we all enjoy a little mobile app–based game for a bit of fun, but isn’t hardcore, continuous, long-term gaming behaviour the domain of the ultra nerd?

What smart businesses will do, is connect what they sell and open up or hand over the software-development ecosystem to the crowd to see what they can build. To benefit from a connected world, businesses need to let go of perceived control and hand the brand over to the audience in the same way traditional media should have — but didn’t — when social media arrived. The connected home, the quantified self, two-way loyalty, gamification and real data will usurp demographic profiling and marketing guessing games forever. But getting to that phase requires companies and brands to have trust in the potential or organic commercial ecosystems. They will have to trust that the opportunity can’t be totally strategised or foretold and just needs to be embraced.


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Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing by Hod Lipson, Melba Kurman

3D printing, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, additive manufacturing, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, DIY culture, dumpster diving, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, factory automation, Free Software Foundation, game design, global supply chain, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, lifelogging, Mars Rover, Marshall McLuhan, microcredit, Minecraft, Neal Stephenson, new economy, off grid, personalized medicine, planned obsolescence, printed gun, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, stem cell, Steve Jobs, technological singularity, TED Talk, the long tail, the market place

Its inventors knew they had succeeded when the CandyFab’s heat gun slowly toasted the phrase used by worldwide by software developers when they create a new application, “Hello World.” Feeding the quantified self Precision food printers are the ideal output device for a era where diet, health and medicine are increasingly driven by data. Low-cost sensors, online assessment tools, low-cost DNA testing, and greatly improving medical diagnostic tests have paved the way for a new movement in bodily awareness, the Quantified Self or “self-knowledge through numbers.” 3D printed food cartridges could be a food delivery vehicle for the growing numbers of people who count, log and analyze every biometric they capture.

Table of Contents Cover Chapter 1: Everything is becoming science fiction Chapter 2: A machine that can make almost anything Printing three-dimensional things The ten principles of 3D printing Chapter 3: Nimble manufacturing: Good, fast, and cheap Somewhere between mass production and the local farmer’s market The blank canvas of the 21st century Chapter 4: Tomorrow’s economy of printable products Like ants with factories The experience economy A future economy of printable products Chapter 5: Printing in layers A manufacturing process at heart Two families of printers Cleaning up design files The raw materials Chapter 6: Design software, the digital canvas A word processor for drawing Today’s design software What you design is not (necessarily) what you print The next generation of design software: digital capture Chapter 7: Bioprinting in “living ink” The printer of youth Tissue engineering CAD for the body The future Chapter 8: Digital cuisine Digital gastronomy Feeding the quantified self Processed food Chapter 9: A factory in the classroom Make to learn: Children’s engineering Not a national crisis . . . but learning should be enjoyable Now let’s see you draw that abstract equation on a graph Barriers to classroom adoption The road ahead Chapter 10: Unleashing a new aesthetic Computers that act like nature Printing wavy walls and custom gargoyles Chapter 11: Green, clean manufacturing A tale of two plastic toys Greener manufacturing 3D printing a more beautiful landfill Chapter 12: Ownership, safety, and new legal frontiers Printing weapons, drugs, and shoddy products Rip, mix, and burn physical things Exclusivity vs. the freedom to innovate Chapter 13: Designing the future Tea.

Low-cost sensors, online assessment tools, low-cost DNA testing, and greatly improving medical diagnostic tests have paved the way for a new movement in bodily awareness, the Quantified Self or “self-knowledge through numbers.” 3D printed food cartridges could be a food delivery vehicle for the growing numbers of people who count, log and analyze every biometric they capture. Our bodies are the target of increasingly more sophisticated data collection. Quantified Self enthusiasts strap monitoring devices to themselves. They track how far they walk, their heartbeat, weight, calories burned, and how well they have slept. Imagine this emerging world of biometric data, combined with personalized medical care, combined with a home-scale, digitally controlled food printer. It’s easy to imagine a medical 3D printer fabricating the future version of granola or pharmaceutically-enhanced candy bars. The printer could be even more responsive than that, however.


pages: 420 words: 100,811

We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves by John Cheney-Lippold

algorithmic bias, bioinformatics, business logic, Cass Sunstein, centre right, computer vision, critical race theory, dark matter, data science, digital capitalism, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Hans Moravec, Ian Bogost, informal economy, iterative process, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, late capitalism, Laura Poitras, lifelogging, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, price discrimination, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rosa Parks, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, software studies, statistical model, Steven Levy, technological singularity, technoutopianism, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, Toyota Production System, Turing machine, uber lyft, web application, WikiLeaks, Zimmermann PGP

, “Get Active,” 2014, www.letsmove.gov. 49. Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New York: Penguin Books, 2009). 50. Let’s Move!, “Get Active.” 51. Quantified Self, “About the Quantified Self,” 2014, http://quantifiedself.com. 52. Dawn Nafus and Jamie Sherman, “Big Data, Big Questions | This One Does Not Go Up to 11: The Quantified Self Movement as an Alternative Big Data Practice,” International Journal of Communication 8 (2014): 1785. 53. Thanks goes to Farzana Dudhwala for introducing me to this example. See Farzana Dudhwala, “The Quantified Qualified Self: The Number Affect,” paper presented at 4S Conference, Buenos Aires, 2014. 54.

While the “power over life” might be impressively imperial as a catchphrase, the technologies facilitating that power are as ordinary as our cell phones. And with these technologies both decreasing in price and increasing in availability, large numbers of individuals around the world, most notably those organizing around the Quantified Self community, or QS, use this mode of self-tracking to sleep better, eat healthier, and exercise more efficiently. QS is the practice of datafying bodies and environments (the types of food consumed, calories burned, moods, blood oxygen levels, insulin levels, and even sleep quality) in order to know more about one’s self.

., 172, 186 Haraway, Donna, 17, 34, 54, 162, 191, 198 Harding, Sandra, 62 Hardt, Michael, 112 Harlem Renaissance, 67 Hartford Courant, 179, 292n76 Harvard University, 216–17 Hayden, Michael, 39 Hayles, N. Katherine, 84, 127, 162–63, 264, 271n34 health, 50, 66, 97–100, 117–29, 131–32, 139, 201, 203–5, 220. See also *999 system; Google Flu Trends; Let’s Move!; National Health Service (UK); Quantified Self community (QS) hegemony, 12, 52–54, 137, 141–42, 163, 208, 262–63 Hemingway, Ernest, 57 Hemmings, Mark, 201, 203–7, 215–16, 218–19, 223–24, 227, 233–34, 242–43, 296n2 Hidden Markov Model, 69–70 Hispanic people, 10, 18, 22, 114–15, 137 Holder, Eric: “NSA FAA Minimization Procedures A,” 159–61 Homedepot.com, 19 Hong, Grace, 54 hooks, bell, 62 HP, 26, 29, 32–34, 180, 204; “HP Computers Are Racist,” 15–18, 16, 72; Mediasmart, 15 HSV (hue, saturation, value), 17–18, 33, 272n43 Hu, Tung-Hui, 112, 185–86, 270n18 Huizinga, Johan, 284n17 Hume, David, 162 ideal types, 23, 47, 51 Immersion, 291n43 interpellation, 91, 169–71 intersectionality, 42, 76–87, 281n110 Inter-Services Intelligence (Pakistan), 186 Jackson, Steven J., 80 Jackson, Virginia, xiii Jasanoff, Sheila, 53 jazz, 34, 66–72 Jernigan, Carter, 219 Jezebel.com, 141 Jim Crow, 72 Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), 189, 295n102 Kaplan, Frédéric, 21 King Richard the Lionheart, 221–22 Kitchin, Rob, 58, 81, 181 Kittler, Friedrich, 30 Kranzberg, Melvin, 31 Krotoszynsk, Ronald J., 213 Kupfer, Joseph, 225 Lacan, Jacques, 169 Lanier, Jaron, 256 Lazzarato, Lauricio, 144 Lessig, Lawrence, 104 Let’s Move!


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The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty by Benjamin H. Bratton

1960s counterculture, 3D printing, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, additive manufacturing, airport security, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, call centre, capitalist realism, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, Charles Babbage, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, company town, congestion pricing, connected car, Conway's law, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Graeber, deglobalization, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, digital divide, disintermediation, distributed generation, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, Flash crash, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, functional programming, future of work, Georg Cantor, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, High speed trading, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, industrial robot, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kiva Systems, Laura Poitras, liberal capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, McMansion, means of production, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, OSI model, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, peak oil, peer-to-peer, performance metric, personalized medicine, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Philip Mirowski, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, post-Fordism, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reserve currency, rewilding, RFID, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, skeuomorphism, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Startup school, statistical arbitrage, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, the long tail, the scientific method, Torches of Freedom, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, working poor, Y Combinator, yottabyte

Its position at the top of The Stack, where driving agency is situated momentarily, is slippery, fragile, and always enmeshed in its own redefinition, an uncertainty that underwrites the formation of subjectivity in general, always a manifest image cobbled in relation to available technologies of self-reflection, from cave walls at Lascaux to Quantified Self Apps.8 The Quantified Self movement enrolls available digital tools into the willful fabrication of autonomic self-interpolation and may be where the current political logic of the User reaches a certain apotheosis. While the empirical tracking and analysis of one's personal biological processes is surely diagnostically important in many ways, especially as such data are aggregated and pluralized beyond private individuals by the surfacing of ecological, economic, and microbial forces, but the currency of personal performance optimization leans toward something rather different.

Interfaces in The Stack 1: The Aesthetics of Logistics 55. Interfaces in The Stack 2: Apps and Programming the Space at Hand 56. Interfaces in the Stack 3: Theo-Interfaciality 57. Geoscapes: Interfaces Drawing Worlds User Layer 58. Origins of the User 59. Finding the Universal User 60. Quantified Self and Its Mirror 61. Trace and Frame 62. Maximum User 63. Death of the User 64. Animal User 65. AI User 66. Machine User 67. From User-Centered Design to the Design of the User III The ProjectsThe Stack to Come 68. Seeing The Stack We Have, Stacks to Come 69. Earth Layer to Come: God Bows to Math; Will Leviathan?

Human and nonhuman Users are positioned by The Stack (perhaps rudely) as comparable and even interchangeable through a wide-ranging and omnivorous quantification of their behaviors and effects. The preponderance of data generated by Users and the traces of their worldly transactions initially overtrace the outline of a given User (e.g., the hyperindividualism of the quantified self movement), but as new data streams overlap over it and through it, the coherent position of the User dissolves through its overdetermination by external relations and networks. The User's enumeration is first a grotesquely individuated self-image, a profile, but as the same process is oversubscribed by data that trace all the things that affect the User, now included in the profile, the persona that first promises coherency and closure brings an explosion and liquefaction of self.


Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture by Designing the Mind, Ryan A Bush

Abraham Maslow, adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, cognitive bias, cognitive load, correlation does not imply causation, data science, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, drug harm reduction, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, fundamental attribution error, hedonic treadmill, hindsight bias, impulse control, Kevin Kelly, Lao Tzu, lifelogging, longitudinal study, loss aversion, meta-analysis, Own Your Own Home, pattern recognition, price anchoring, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, Walter Mischel

., “Self-Control/Management And Internet Addiction,” International Online Journal of Educational Sciences 7 (August 11, 2015): 95–100, https://doi.org/10.15345/iojes.2015.03.016. Kashmir Hill, “Adventures in Self-Surveillance, Aka The Quantified Self, Aka Extreme Navel-Gazing,” Forbes, accessed November 25, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/04/07/adventures-in-self-surveillance-aka-the-quantified-self-aka-extreme-navel-gazing/. “Carbonfootprint.Com - Carbon Footprint Calculator,” accessed November 25, 2020, https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx. Peter M. Gollwitzer and Veronika Brandstätter, “Implementation Intentions and Effective Goal Pursuit,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73, no. 1 (1997): 186–99, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.1.186.

We have to learn to develop increasing control over ourselves, and the key is not so much moderation as it is intentionality. The next chapter will cover the fine details of self-control, but the process begins with broad strategy and awareness. And the first step to designing our behavior is to become aware of how we live currently. The quantified self movement is centered around collecting and analyzing data about our behavior and lifestyle, and this type of careful monitoring is essential to change behavior and habits.27 Make a list of desirable and undesirable habits, which may include how many hours you sleep, how many miles you run, or how many calories you consume, depending on the behaviors you are concerned with.


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To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death by Mark O'Connell

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Picking Challenge, artificial general intelligence, Bletchley Park, Boston Dynamics, brain emulation, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, computer age, cosmological principle, dark matter, DeepMind, disruptive innovation, double helix, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, Elon Musk, Extropian, friendly AI, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, impulse control, income inequality, invention of the wheel, Jacques de Vaucanson, John von Neumann, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, life extension, lifelogging, Lyft, Mars Rover, means of production, military-industrial complex, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, profit motive, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, San Francisco homelessness, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Singularitarianism, Skype, SoftBank, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, superintelligent machines, tech billionaire, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Coming Technological Singularity, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Turing machine, uber lyft, Vernor Vinge

She introduced herself as one of Tim’s two fellow interlocutors on the panel. Her name was Anne Wright; she was a professor at Carnegie Mellon, and she was heavily involved in the Quantified Self movement, whose adherents used technology to track and analyze data about their everyday lives. Tim told her he’d dabbled in QS himself, that he’d recently bought a wearable gadget that tracked his every movement and uploaded the data to the cloud for later analysis. He was interested in the whole Quantified Self thing, he said, but had his reservations. “It’s really a matter of gathering as much data as possible about your life,” she told him, “and figuring out how you can use that data to optimize yourself as a person.”

And what linked the elements in these systems was information. The key idea of cybernetics was the notion of the “feedback loop,” whereby a component in a system—for instance, a human—receives information about its environment, and reacts to that information, changing the environment and thereby the subsequent information it receives. (The Quantified Self movement is, in this sense, deeply embedded in the cybernetic worldview.) Where energy, its transformations and transfers, had previously been seen as the fundamental building block of the universe, information was now the unit of universal exchange. In cybernetics, everything is a technology: animals and plants and computers were all essentially the same type of thing, carrying out the same type of process.


pages: 138 words: 40,787

The Silent Intelligence: The Internet of Things by Daniel Kellmereit, Daniel Obodovski

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, business intelligence, call centre, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, connected car, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Freestyle chess, Google X / Alphabet X, Internet of things, lifelogging, Metcalfe’s law, Network effects, Paul Graham, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Robert Metcalfe, Salesforce, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, software as a service, Steve Jobs, The future is already here, the long tail, Tony Fadell, vertical integration, web application, Y Combinator, yield management

In the near future we will see more and more devices that are able to track not only basic data, but also vital signs. Also, real-time blood analysis will be possible due to super-thin sensors on the skin that transmit data to the cloud, where it will be analyzed. This development, which will be much more powerful than what we see today around the quantified self,33 will create a whole new health ecosystem in the near future. Imagine vending machines for drinks, snacks, or electronic devices in airports and other central locations becoming smart machines that will be able to track what people buy, where, and when. They will even be able to analyze who is standing in front of them and how long the buying decision takes.

But at the end of the day, the best investment opportunities are going to be driven by very well-defined problems that the Internet of Things will help solve: increased visibility, increased productivity, reduced guesswork, better risk management, and better connection to our environment. 29 Paul Graham, “How to Get Startup Ideas,” November 2012. http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html. 30 Iain Morris, “Intelligent Systems to Drive Value in M2M Market: IDC,” Telecom Engine, June 4, 2013. http://www.telecomengine.com/article/intelligent-systems-drive-value-m2m-market-idc. 31 Singularity University, “What Is Singularity University?” http://singularityu.org/overview/. 32 Wikipedia, “Metcalfe’s Law,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe’s_law. 33 Quantified Self, “What We Are Reading,” http://quantifiedself.com/. 34 Department of Health and Human Services, “Food Labeling; Calorie Labeling of Articles of Food in Vending Machines; Proposed Rule,“ Federal Register, April 6, 2011. http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-04-06/html/2011-8037.htm. 35 Just prior to publishing, Jawbone acquired BodyMedia for over $100 million.


pages: 304 words: 82,395

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, Kenneth Cukier

23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Apollo 11, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Black Swan, book scanning, book value, business intelligence, business process, call centre, cloud computing, computer age, correlation does not imply causation, dark matter, data science, double entry bookkeeping, Eratosthenes, Erik Brynjolfsson, game design, hype cycle, IBM and the Holocaust, index card, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, lifelogging, Louis Pasteur, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, obamacare, optical character recognition, PageRank, paypal mafia, performance metric, Peter Thiel, Plato's cave, post-materialism, random walk, recommendation engine, Salesforce, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, smart meter, social graph, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, systematic bias, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Turing test, vertical integration, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

It could tell if someone fell and did not get back up, an important feature for the elderly. Retailers could learn the flow of traffic through their stores. When the floor is datafied, there is no ceiling to its possible uses. Datafying as much as possible is not as far out as it sounds. Consider the “quantified self” movement. It refers to a disparate group of fitness aficionados, medical maniacs, and tech junkies who measure every element of their bodies and lives in order to live better—or at least, to learn new things they couldn’t have known in an enumerated way before. The number of “self-trackers” is small for the moment but growing.

Twitter and flu shots—Marcel Salathé and Shashank Khandelwal, “Assessing Vaccination Sentiments with Online Social Media: Implications for Infectious Disease Dynamics and Control,” PLoS Computational Biology, October 2011. [>] IBM’s “smart floor” patent—Lydia Mai Do, Travis M. Grigsby, Pamela Ann Nesbitt, and Lisa Anne Seacat. “Securing premises using surfaced-based computing technology,” U.S. Patent number: 8138882. Issue date: March 20, 2012. The quantified-self movement—“Counting Every Moment,” The Economist, March 3, 2012. Apple earbuds for bio-measurements—Jesse Lee Dorogusker, Anthony Fadell, Donald J. Novotney, and Nicholas R Kalayjian, “Integrated Sensors for Tracking Performance Metrics,” U.S. Patent Application 20090287067. Assignee: Apple. Application Date: 2009-07-23.

See also correlation analysis; data analysis big data and, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>] Department of Homeland Security uses, [>] vs. free will, [>], [>], [>], [>]–[>] in health care, [>]–[>], [>] in insurance industry, [>]–[>] in Iraq War, [>] in mechanical & structural failure, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>] parole boards use, [>] police use, [>], [>]–[>], [>] in profiling, [>] punishment based on, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>] in sports, [>]–[>], [>] by Target, [>]–[>] and terrorism, [>], [>]–[>], [>] by UPS, [>] predictive policing, [>] and crime prevention, [>]–[>] price-prediction: for consumer products, [>]–[>], [>] PriceStats, [>] printing press: socioeconomic effects of, [>], [>], [>]–[>] Prismatic: analyzes online media, [>]–[>] privacy: and anonymization, [>]–[>] and big data, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>] and cell phone data, [>], [>] Google and, [>]–[>] and Internet, [>]–[>] laws protecting, [>], [>] and notice & consent, [>], [>], [>]–[>] Ohm on, [>] and opting out, [>], [>] and personal data, [>]–[>], [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>] profiling: and guilt by association, [>]–[>] predictive analytics in, [>] progress: as concept, [>]–[>] Project Gutenberg, [>] proxies: in correlation analysis, [>]–[>], [>], [>] Ptolemy: Geographia, [>] public health: reporting system limitations, [>]–[>] punch cards: Hollerith and, [>], [>] punishment: based on predictive analytics, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>] quality control: statistical sampling in, [>] Quantcast, [>] quantification. See measurement “quantified self” movement, [>] quantum physics, [>] rabies vaccine: Pasteur and, [>]–[>] randomness: needed in statistical sampling, [>]–[>] real estate: regulation of illegal conversions, [>]–[>] reality mining, [>]–[>] record-keeping: in the ancient world, [>]–[>] Reuters, [>] Rigobon, Roberto, [>] Roadnet Technologies, [>] Rolls-Royce, [>] Roman numerals, [>]–[>] Rudin, Cynthia, [>], [>] Rudin, Ken, [>] sabermetrics, [>] Saddam Hussein: trial of, [>] Salathé, Marcel, [>]–[>] sales data: analysis of, [>], [>], [>], [>] Salesforce.com, [>] sampling, statistical: big data replaces, [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>] exactitude necessary in, [>], [>]–[>] Graunt and, [>] limitations inherent in, [>]–[>], [>], [>] Neyman on, [>] in quality control, [>] randomness needed in, [>]–[>] scale in, [>] Silver on, [>] scale: in data, [>]–[>] imprecision and, [>], [>], [>], [>], [>] qualitative functions of, [>], [>]–[>], [>], [>]–[>], [>]–[>] in statistical sampling, [>] scientific method: vs. correlation analysis, [>]–[>] Scott, James: Seeing Like a State, [>] search engines: and mathematical models, [>]–[>] search terms: analysis and reuse of, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>], [>] Seeing Like a State (Scott), [>] Sense Networks, [>], [>] sentiment analysis, [>], [>]–[>], [>] Silver, Nate: on statistical sampling, [>] Skyhook, [>] Sloan Digital Sky Survey, [>] Smith, Adam, [>] social media: datafication by, [>]–[>] social networking analysis: Huberman and, [>] social sciences: data-gathering in, [>], [>] Society for American Baseball Research, [>] speech-recognition: at Google, [>]–[>] spell-checking systems: and data-reuse, [>]–[>] sports: predictive analytics in, [>]–[>], [>] Stasi, [>], [>], [>] statisticians: demand for, [>], [>] statistics: military use of, [>] stock market investment: datafication in, [>]–[>] subprime mortgage scandal (2009): correlation analysis and, [>] sumo wrestling: corruption in, [>]–[>], [>] Sunlight Foundation, [>] Super Crunchers (Ayres), [>] surveillance: by government, [>]–[>], [>]–[>] SWIFT: data-reuse by, [>] tagging: vs. categorization, [>]–[>] Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, [>] Target: predictive analytics by, [>]–[>] Telefonica Digital Insights, [>] Teradata, [>], [>], [>] terrorism: predictive analytics and, [>], [>]–[>], [>] text: correlation analysis of, [>]–[>] datafication of, [>], [>] The-Numbers.com: predicts Hollywood film profitability, [>]–[>] Thomson Reuters, [>] traffic-pattern analysis: by Inrix, [>]–[>], [>] translation, language, [>] Google and, [>]–[>], [>], [>], [>] IBM and, [>]–[>], [>] Microsoft and, [>] transparency: of algorithms, [>] truth: data as, [>], [>] imprecision and, [>] 23andMe, [>] Twitter, [>], [>], [>]–[>], [>] as big-data company, [>], [>]–[>] data processing by, [>] datafication by, [>]–[>] message analysis by, [>] Udacity, [>] Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) system, [>] universe: information as basis of, [>]–[>] “Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data, The” (Norvig), [>] UPS: predictive analytics by, [>] uses geospatial location data, [>]–[>] UPS Logistics Technologies, [>] U.S.


pages: 330 words: 88,445

The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Steven Kotler

Abraham Maslow, adjacent possible, Albert Einstein, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Clayton Christensen, data acquisition, delayed gratification, deliberate practice, do what you love, escalation ladder, fear of failure, Google Earth, haute couture, impulse control, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, jimmy wales, Kevin Kelly, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, life extension, lifelogging, low earth orbit, Maui Hawaii, pattern recognition, Ray Kurzweil, risk tolerance, rolodex, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, SimCity, SpaceShipOne, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, time dilation, Virgin Galactic, Walter Mischel, X Prize

Quite simply, the zone is the only reason these athletes are surviving the big-mountains, big waves, and big rivers. When you’re pushing the limits of ultimate human performance, the choice is stark: it’s flow or die. Ironically, this is very good news. Scientists have lately made enormous progress on flow. Advancements in brain-imaging technologies like fMRI and consumer “quantified self” devices like the Nike Fuel band allow us to apply serious metrics where once was merely subjective experience. Until now, there’s been no way to tie all this disparate information together, but recent events in action and adventure sports solve this problem. Knowing that survival demands flow gives us a hard data set with which to work.

“People no longer have to come to the lab, get tons of sensors attached, and destroy their normal routines. A football player on the flight home after a game; a businessman about to enter a meeting; a housewife with a half-hour before the kids come home. They just put on the headset and start training.” Concurrently, a revolution in sensors, batteries, and connectivity has led to a flood of “quantified self” devices such as Nike Fuel band, Jawbone’s UP, and the Basis Band. These wearable gadgets monitor an expansive array of biometrics, most of which can be used to hunt flow. And there are iPhone apps that do the same. We can now track cardiac coherence—when brain waves and heart waves synch up—which has been correlated with the state (but needs more research).

they too found a Montessori connection: Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen, “The Innovator’s DNA,” Harvard Business Review, December 2009. 179 “Go back to Roger Bannister’s time”: Mike Gervais, AI, April 2013. 180 “The idea was to develop”: Leslie Sherlin, AI, February 2013. “quantified Self” devices: Lila Battis, “Fitness Trackers Compared!” Men’s Health. See: http://www.menshealth.com/techlust/new-fitness-trackers. 181 Hugh Herr, the head of the biomechatronics: Steven Kotler, “Bionic Man,” Playboy, June 2012. “anyone with a bum knee”: Ibid. 182 five times the speed of Moore’s Law: Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think (Free Press, 2011). 183 meet Alex Honnold: Honnold quotes and details came from a series of interviews conducted by the author between March 2013 and July 2013.


pages: 25 words: 5,789

Data for the Public Good by Alex Howard

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Atul Gawande, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, crowdsourcing, data science, Hernando de Soto, Internet of things, Kickstarter, lifelogging, machine readable, Network effects, openstreetmap, Silicon Valley, slashdot, social intelligence, social software, social web, web application

It will emerge as a new asset class touching all aspects of society.” The idea of data as a currency is still in its infancy, as Strata Conference chair Edd Dumbill has emphasized. The Locker Project, which provides people with the ability to move their own data around, is one of many approaches. The growth of the Quantified Self movement and online communities like PatientsLikeMe and 23andMe validates the strength of the movement. In the U.S. federal government, the Blue Button initiative, which enables veterans to download personal health data, has now spread to all federal employees and earned adoption at Aetna and Kaiser Permanente.


pages: 51 words: 8,543

Dear Data by Giorgia Lupi, Stefanie Posavec, Maria Popova

lifelogging, Menlo Park

Because of this, we are said to be living in the age of “Big Data”, where algorithms and computation are seen as the new keys to universal questions, and where a myriad of applications can detect, aggregate, and visualize our data for us to help us become these efficient super-humans. We prefer to approach data in a slower, more analogue way. We’ve always conceived Dear Data as a “personal documentary” rather than a quantified-self project which is a subtle – but important – distinction. Instead of using data just to become more efficient, we argue we can use data to become more humane and to connect with ourselves and others at a deeper level. We hope this book will inspire you in many ways: to draw (even if you don’t think of yourself as an artist), to slow down and appreciate the small details of your life, and to make connections with other people.


pages: 223 words: 60,909

Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech by Sara Wachter-Boettcher

"Susan Fowler" uber, Abraham Maslow, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, AltaVista, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Trump, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, Grace Hopper, Greyball, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, independent contractor, job automation, Kickstarter, lifelogging, lolcat, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, microaggression, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, real-name policy, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Tactical Technology Collective, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, upwardly mobile, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce, work culture , zero-sum game

That’s great in theory, but when personas are created by a homogenous team that hasn’t taken the time to understand the nuances of its audience—teams like those we saw in Chapter 2—they often end up designing products that alienate audiences, rather than making them feel at home. That’s what happened to Maggie Delano. She’s a PhD candidate at MIT and an active participant in the Quantified Self movement, a loose organization of people who are interested in tracking everything from moods to sleep patterns to exercise. One day in 2015, she decided to investigate tools for tracking something people have been monitoring for millennia: her period. Her cycle had been recently irregular, and she wanted to do a better job of tracking both her period and her moods in relation to it.

., 184–186 photo autotagging, 129–130, 129, 130, 132–133, 135–138, 145 pickup artist (PUA) community, 91–92 Pinterest, 42 political bias, and Trending Facebook feature, 165–167, 169 Practical Empathy (Young), 46 privacy and digital products’ collection of personal data, 115, 117 and Facebook, 108–109 and Google, 109 and Uber, 107–108 ProPublica, 103, 112–113, 120, 126–127 proxy data, 109–114 PUA (pickup artist) community, 91–92 PureGym, 6 push notifications, 198 Quantified Self movement, 28 queer people. See LGBTQ community Quinn, Zoe, 157 racial bias. See also diversity and COMPAS, 120, 125–129, 136 and default settings, 37, 61 and facial-recognition software, 137 and form field design, 50, 59–62 and Google’s photo autotagging, 129–130, 129, 130, 132–133, 135–138 and meritocracy of tech, 173–174, 176, 180 as microaggressions, 72–73 and Nextdoor’s Crime and Safety report, 68–71, 71, 73–74 and normalizing TV programming, 47–48 and personas, 45–46 and photographic technology, 133–135 and proxy data, 112–113 and Reddit, 161–163 and team performance, 184–186 and tech educational pipeline, 21–26, 181–184 in tech industry, 13, 17–18, 20, 200 on Twitter, 151, 154 and Twitter’s executive leadership, 157–158 and word-embedding systems, 141 rape, and smartphone personal assistants, 6–7, 7 recruiting, 23–26 Reddit, 149–150, 160–164, 166 regulation, tech industry’s desire to avoid, 187–189, 199 Relman, John, 112 retweets, 156 Rhimes, Shonda, 47–48 Rock, David, 189 Rock, Irvin, 95 Roof, Dylann, 141–142 Rooney, Mickey, 7, 8 Rooney, Sally, 85–86, 98 Rose, Todd, 38–39, 47 Ross, David, 186 Roth, Lorna, 134 Sacks, David, 175 Salesforce, 158 same-sex marriage, 196–198 Samsung, 6, 36 Sandberg, Sheryl, 23 Sankin, Aaron, 163 Sarkeesian, Anita, 157 Savage, Tag, 98 Scandal (TV show), 47 Seamless app, 114 search engines, 10, 138, 141–142.


pages: 309 words: 114,984

The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hype, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age by Robert Wachter

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, Airbnb, Atul Gawande, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Checklist Manifesto, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, cognitive load, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, deep learning, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Firefox, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, general purpose technology, Google Glasses, human-factors engineering, hype cycle, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Internet of things, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lifelogging, Marc Benioff, medical malpractice, medical residency, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, personalized medicine, pets.com, pneumatic tube, Productivity paradox, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Hendricks, Robert Solow, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TED Talk, The future is already here, the payments system, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Toyota Production System, Uber for X, US Airways Flight 1549, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Yogi Berra

But over the past five years, these challenges have been overcome through the development of gizmos ranging from the tiny accelerometers in your Fitbit or Jawbone to nanosensors that can be safely ingested. And, of course, the outputs of all these miraculous devices can now connect to our smartphones and to the Internet. This means that the so-called Quantified Self movement is shifting from a technical problem (how to capture the data) into an analytics question (how to make sense of the data). And this is where the hope butts up against the hype. The consulting firm Gartner defines big data as “high volume, high velocity, and/or high variety information assets that require new forms of processing to enable enhanced decision making, insight discovery, and process optimization.”

For now, I see big data as a crucial area for research and development, one that is likely to bear fruit over time—particularly as EHRs become ubiquitous and somehow linked to patient-generated data from sensors and elsewhere, and as developers figure out how to integrate these tools with the habits and work flows of real people. A wise person once observed that we usually overestimate what can be done in a year and underestimate what can be done in a decade. To me, big data in healthcare meets that descriptor perfectly. If I am right, then, for the foreseeable future, the Quantified Self movement is likely to make its biggest mark among folks who have a bit too much time (and money) on their hands. Mark Smith recalled his experience as a member of the Qualcomm advisory board. Since the company specializes in providing—and profiting from—24/7 connectivity, there were many lively discussions about the value to consumers of minute-to-minute monitoring of things like blood sugar and heart rate.

See doctor’s notes Picture Archiving and Communication System. See PACS Plummer, Henry, 36 Polevoi, Steve, 77 POMR. See Problem-Oriented Medical Record privacy, 13–14 See also Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Problem-Oriented Medical Record, 46, 79 productivity, 244 productivity paradox, 244–253 Quantified Self movement, 117, 122 radiologists alienation of, 56–58 busyness of, 58–59 economic pressures, 59–60 nighthawks, 60–61 replacement by computers, 61–62 resisting isolation, 62 radiology, 50 impact of PACS on, 53–56 teleradiology, 60–61 transition from film to computerized radiology, 51 RAND Corporation study of healthcare reform’s effects on doctor’s professional satisfaction, 73, 74 study on healthcare costs, 81, 247 rationing, 15 Reason, James, 131 regional health information exchanges (RHIOs), 187 Reider, Jacob, 211–212, 229–230 Reiser, Stanley, 30, 33, 41 relational coordination, 57 relationships, 77–78 demise of, 268 See also doctor-patient relationships Relman, Arnold “Bud”, 23–25 RHIOs.


pages: 257 words: 64,285

The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport: Second Edition by David Levinson, Kevin Krizek

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bay Area Rapid Transit, big-box store, bike sharing, carbon tax, Chris Urmson, collaborative consumption, commoditize, congestion pricing, crowdsourcing, DARPA: Urban Challenge, dematerialisation, driverless car, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ford Model T, Google Hangouts, high-speed rail, Induced demand, intermodal, invention of the printing press, jitney, John Markoff, labor-force participation, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, Lyft, means of production, megacity, Menlo Park, Network effects, Occam's razor, oil shock, place-making, pneumatic tube, post-work, printed gun, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, tacit knowledge, techno-determinism, technological singularity, Tesla Model S, the built environment, The future is already here, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, transaction costs, transportation-network company, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban renewal, women in the workforce, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, Zipcar

This information will prove useful not only for planning, but even for real-time operations and controls, identifying information that will feed algorithms that decide how to time traffic signal timings or dispatch additional buses. Apps which crowdsource vertical acceleration information and GPS locations from smartphone sensors are already useful for automatically providing agencies about road quality, like where is the latest pothole.209 At the personal level, The "Quantified Self" suggests that the outputs of many new sensors will be fed back to the individual traveler. Yingling Fan of the University of Minnesota suggests that information about travel can lead to behavioral interventions.210 She identifies three stages: awareness: informing the traveler of their environmental impacts, motivation: describing the benefits of change, and action: providing the tools to change behavior (e.g. making it easy to rent a bike or take transit).

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38(2): 379-392. 208 Kitchin, Rob. 2013. The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism. GeoJournal 79:1-14. 209 gov.uk (2013) Government backs smartphone app to pinpoint potholes https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-backs-smartphone-app-to-pinpoint-potholes 210 Fan, Yingling (2016) Quantified Self and Quantified Networks (Chapter 5) in Levinson, David; Boies, Adam; Cao, Jason; Fan, Yingling. (2016). The Transportation Futures Project: Planning for Technology Change. Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota. Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy, http://hdl.handle.net/11299/177640. 211 This idea is also discussed in Enoch, Marcus (2015) How a rapid modal convergence into a universal automated taxi service could be the future for local passenger transport.


pages: 279 words: 71,542

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport

Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, Cal Newport, data science, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, financial independence, game design, Hacker News, index fund, Jaron Lanier, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Mr. Money Mustache, Pepto Bismol, pre–internet, price discrimination, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TED Talk

In my work on this topic, I’ve become convinced that what you need instead is a full-fledged philosophy of technology use, rooted in your deep values, that provides clear answers to the questions of what tools you should use and how you should use them and, equally important, enables you to confidently ignore everything else. There are many philosophies that might satisfy these goals. On one extreme, there are the Neo-Luddites, who advocate the abandonment of most new technologies. On another extreme, you have the Quantified Self enthusiasts, who carefully integrate digital devices into all aspects of their life with the goal of optimizing their existence. Of the different philosophies I studied, however, there was one in particular that stood out as a superior answer for those looking to thrive in our current moment of technological overload.

Money Mustache (Pete Adeney), 171–73, 176, 194–96 music: iPod and, 4, 5, 100–101, 217 record player and, 72 Walkman and Discman and, 100 NAACP, 94 negativity, xii Netflix, 46–47, 64 neuroscience, 131–35 new-mom boot camp, 185, 189 news, 45–46, 78–79, 222, 233, 238–42 newspapers, 79, 215, 241 Newton, Isaac, 96 New York, ix New Yorker, 220 New York Post, 27, 28 New York Sun, 215 New York Times, 7n, 66 New York Times Magazine, 107 Nicholson, Scott, 183 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 165–66 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 97, 116–19 notebooks, 81, 122–26 NPR, 79, 136–39, 141 NW (Smith), 226 office hours, 160–64 optimization, 36, 43–49, 60 Packer, George, 220 Page, Larry, 12 Paleolithic period, 21, 22 Parker, Sean, 19, 23 Pascal, Blaise, 95–96 PBS NewsHour, 12 Pearlman, Leah, 21–23 perceived social isolation (PSI) metric, 139 Persuasive Technology Lab, 11 PET scans, 131–35 philosophy of technology use, xiv phones, phone calls, 4–5, 150, 160 car, 99, 100 commutes and, 161–62 dumb, 242–48 flip, 31–32, 242–43 life before cell phones, 113–14 office hours and, 161–62 placing calls, 160, 164 see also smartphones Planet Fitness, 185, 187 Plato, 25 podcasts, 67 politics, 238, 240–41 positive reinforcement, intermittent, 17–21 presidential election of 2016, xii, 137, 213, 244 Primack, Brian, 139, 140 productivity, 199–200, 226, 227 psychoanalysis, 96 psychological well-being, xi–xii, 104–9, 136–41 psychology, in rock paper scissors, 129 quality of life, 104, 140, 253 mental health and psychological well-being, xi–xii, 104–9, 136–41 Quantified Self, xiv radio, 78–79, 215–16 Real Time with Bill Maher, 9–11, 13, 24–25 Reclaiming Conversation (Turkle), 144, 145, 150 Redding, David, 186–87 relationships, xvii, 65–66, 77, 80, 96, 108, 147, 158–59 conversation in, 147, 158–59 conversation-centric communication philosophy and, 149, 154 real-world, replacing with social media, 140–44 solitude and, 104 see also social connection return curve, 43–44, 46 Revenge of Analog, The (Sax), 182 Riggs, George, 85–86 Rimbaud, Arthur, 118 rock paper scissors (RPS), 127–30, 135 Rogowski, Gary, 178–79, 181–82 Room of One’s Own, A (Woolf), 97 Roosevelt, Theodore, 174, 176 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 118 Ruskin, John, 178 Sarton, May, 98 Savov, Vlad, 244 Sax, David, 182–84 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 97 Science, 226 Scott, Laurence, 6 Sears catalog, 195–96 seasonal leisure plans, 207–10 SelfControl, 226 Setiya, Kieran, 166 Settlers of Catan, 183, 184 Shakya, Holly, 139–42 Silicon Valley, 10, 11, 58, 151, 161, 252 60 Minutes, 9–10, 11 skills and craft, 171–72, 177–82, 194–98 Slow Food movement, 236, 237 Slow Media, 236–42 Slow Media Manifesto, 236–38, 241 smartphones, 4, 6, 55–56, 80–81, 101, 104, 156, 217, 251 apps on, 27, 28, 47, 79, 148, 222–25, 245 digital declutter and, 69–71 Do Not Disturb mode on, 157–60 dumbing down, 242–48 emergencies and, 157, 159 leaving at home, 112–16 life before, 113–14 mental health and, 104–9 in movie theaters, 112–13 perceived necessity of, 113, 115–16, 246 release of iPhone, 4–6, 101, 216–17, 251 replacing with flip phone, 31–32 social media on, 47, 79 social media on, deleting, 222–25 solitude deprivation and, 101–9, 115, 116 specific needs for, 247 text messaging on, see text messaging time spent using, 102–3 see also digital communication tools Smith, Zadie, 226 Snakes & Lattes, 182–84, 189 Snapchat, 22–23 Social (Lieberman), 131–35 social connection(s), 103–4 brain processes and, 130, 133–34, 142, 143 conversation vs. mere connection, 144, 146, 147, 150, 154 drive for social approval, 17, 20–23 Dunbar Number and, 232–33 groups and networks in, 136, 149–50, 155 loss of, 134–35 and man as social animal, 131–36 perceived social isolation (PSI) metric, 139 solitude and, 98–99, 103–4, 109–12 supercharged, 182–90 weak-tie, importance of, 155 see also conversation; digital communication tools; relationships; social media “social fitness” exercise groups, 184–89, 206 social media, 6–8, 48–49, 79–80, 148, 198–99, 202, 221–22, 225, 251 anger and outrage on, xii, 143 approval clicks and, 9, 18, 21, 136, 138, 140–42, 147, 148, 151–56, 180 artists’ use of, 7 author’s relationship with, ix, xiiin, 29, 218n, 220 blocking, 229 commenting on, 153–56 Facebook, see Facebook feedback on, 18, 20–22 loneliness and, 137–40 paradox of, 136–44 on phone, 47, 79 on phone, deleting, 222–25 productivity and, 199–200 psychological well-being and, xi–xii, 104–9, 136–41 quitting, 30–31 as substitute source of aggrandizement, 180 tagging in, 22–23 time spent on, 6, 199, 202 using like a professional, 230–36 warning others that you’re spending less time on, 154–55 see also digital communication tools Social Psychology and Personality Science, 138 Socrates, 25, 241 So Good They Can’t Ignore You (Newport), 124 Soldiers’ Home, 85–92, 126 solitude, xvii, 85–126, 246 connectivity and, 98–99, 103–4, 109–12 definition of, 92–94, 119, 125 deprivation of, 99–109, 115, 116 King and, 94–95 and going without smartphone, 112–16 Lincoln and, 86–93, 111, 126 loneliness, see loneliness physical separation and, 93–94 relationships and, 104 value of, 92–99, 104, 109, 246 walking and, 116–22 writing letters to yourself, 122–26 Solitude (Harris), 97–98 Solitude: A Return to the Self (Storr), 96–97 Sony Walkman and Discman, 100 Spinoza, Baruch, 96 State Street, 230 Storr, Anthony, 96–97, 99–101 streaming entertainment, 46–47, 64, 67, 68, 168, 171 stress, 109 Stutzman, Fred, 225–26, 228, 229 suicide, 106 Sullivan, Andrew, ix, xii, xviii, 254 supercharged sociality, 182–90 Supreme Court, U.S., 92n Syracuse University, 231 tablets, 244 tagging people, 22–23 Tang, Kaiwei, 245–46, 248 technology, 253, 254 Amish and, 49–57 intentionality in use of, 36, 49–57, 193 maximalist philosophy of, 29, 57–58 Luddism and, xiv, 50, 193 Mennonites and, 54–57 minimalist philosophy of, see digital minimalism neutrality of, 10 philosophy of use of, xiv, 28 temporary break from, 166–69 see also digital devices and internet TED, 13 telegraph, 99, 100, 249–51 television and streaming entertainment, 46–47, 64, 67, 68, 168, 171 television industry, 215–16 text messaging, 5, 32, 65, 66, 136, 147–49 consolidating, 156–60 conversation vs., 157 Thames, Liz, 172–74, 176 Thoreau, Henry David, xv, 36–41, 100, 101, 120, 251–52 Walden, xviii, 36–40, 99, 109–11 walks of, 118, 119, 122 Time Well Spent, 12 tobacco industry, 9–11 Trump, Donald, 92n Turkle, Sherry, 144–47, 150, 156, 160 Twenge, Jean, 105–8 Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche), 116–17 Twitter, 7, 33, 75, 79, 199, 220, 232, 233, 239, 244 cost vs. value of using, 41–42 TweetDeck and, 234–35 Union Fire Company, 204 USA Rock Paper Scissors League, 127–30, 135 Vail, Alfred, 250 value(s): Amish and, 51–54 digital minimalism and, 28–36 low-value activities, 30 and reintroducing technologies in digital declutter, 60, 70, 71, 75–81 Variety, 112 Verge, The, 222, 244 video games, 63–64, 68, 171, 177, 181, 183, 184 Walden (Thoreau), xviii, 36–40, 99, 109–11 “Walking” (Thoreau), 118 walks, walking, 116–22 with friends, 149, 150, 163 gratitude, 120 Wallace, Mike, 10–11 Wanderer and His Shadow, The (Nietzsche), 117–18 Washington, DC, 85–86, 240 Washington Post, 239 Washington University, 131 watch, 81 weekly leisure plans, 210–12 welding, 194–95 WhatsApp, 7, 65, 156 What Technology Wants (Kelly), 50–51 White House Historical Association, 88 Whitmire, Tim, 187 Wigand, Jeffrey, 10–11 Winchester, Simon, 249–51 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 97 Woolf, Virginia, 97 work, 168 Wu, Tim, 215–16 YouTube, 127, 168, 193 how-to lessons on, 192, 193, 195, 197–98 Zeiler, Michael, 17–18 Zuckerberg, Mark, 103, 222 ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ About the Author Cal Newport is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of six books, including Deep Work and So Good They Can't Ignore You.


pages: 238 words: 68,914

Where Does It Hurt?: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Fixing Health Care by Jonathan Bush, Stephen Baker

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Atul Gawande, barriers to entry, Clayton Christensen, commoditize, data science, informal economy, inventory management, job automation, knowledge economy, lifelogging, obamacare, personalized medicine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, web application, women in the workforce, working poor

And then what about the marathoners or swimmers who accumulate loads of biological data? Many start with a Fitbit or Jawbone wristband to track the miles run and calories burned. But then they see the possibility of measuring sleep, diet, anxiety—in short, participating in what’s called the “Quantified Self” movement. These people are hard at work attempting to optimize their health. Aren’t they likely to flock to doctors, and to insurance companies, that welcome this data and use it to give them better service and care? At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, different blends of data, including patient behavior, genetics, location, and weather, should enable researchers to study the effects of certain drugs and regimes in the wild.

See also wellness Preventive Medicine Research Institute, 119–20 prices, 2–4, 6–8, 64, 66, 149, 166 charged by hospitals, 29–30, 82–83, 90, 94, 96, 101 comparing of, 83, 85 customized, 208 disregard for, 15–16, 166 and fee for service, 71–72 fixed, 201 increase in, 6, 86, 88–89, 92 inflated, 10, 173 and the marketplace, 28–29 of medicines, 76 monopoly in, 136 reduction in, 16, 23, 68, 85, 92–93, 96, 198 transparency of, 94, 109 See also costs primary care, 10, 22, 84, 90–91, 103, 106, 108–9, 112, 117–18, 128 profits, 5, 20, 23, 25, 27, 76, 107, 143 and childbirth, 32–33, 36, 40–41, 55, 105–6, 123, 158 and chronically ill, 84–85, 118 of cooperatives, 125, 127 of doctors, 103, 105, 202–3 of entrepreneurs, 99–102, 105–6, 110, 121, 150, 195, 204–5 of hospitals, 6–8, 84–87, 89–90, 92–96, 106, 108–9, 114, 123, 167 and preventive health care, 119–21 “soft belly,” 36, 85, 106, 123 proton accelerator, 62–65, 77, 149 Purdue, George, 124–25 quality, of health care, 3, 6, 16, 41, 52, 62, 64, 66, 67, 74, 92, 107, 131, 162–63, 198 Quantified Self movement, 189 Radisphere, 161–63 Randazzo, John, 107–9 Reagan, Ronald, 17–18 RegisterPatient.com, 153–54 regulations, 25, 35, 60–62, 66, 68–69, 74–76, 101, 168, 180, 197–98, 204 Renaissance Health, 112, 117 research hospitals, 6–7, 9–10, 23, 83–84, 87, 89–91, 93–96, 99–101, 123, 131, 138, 146, 151 Reuters survey, 190 risk, 173–76, 180, 199–200, 208 risk contracts, 104, 120, 138, 201–3 Roosevelt Hospital, 87 Roth, David Lee, 184 Rugge, John, 122–24, 127–28, 132 Salesforce.com, 150 San Diego, California, 5, 9, 37–41, 44–45, 48–51, 53, 55, 57, 100, 105, 119, 124 Schnucks, 97 Schultz, Howard, 33 Schumer, Charles, 123 Schwartz, Bill, 37–38 Scripps Mercy Hospital, 40 self-insurance, 92, 114 Senior Bridge, 205–6 shopping, for health care, 4, 25, 31, 33, 64–65, 168 and choices, 10–12, 17, 85, 94–95, 186, 212 and doctors, 85, 93, 113, 202 and health care data, 67, 209 and health care quality, 166 and health insurance, 118, 172–73, 187, 199 and hospitals, 68, 83, 85, 94–95, 106, 138 importance of, 11–12, 212 and insurance companies, 51, 198 and procedure prices, 16, 68, 83, 85, 110, 166 Slingerland, Tucker, 125–26 Small Smart Medicine, 178–79 smart phones, 7, 140, 145–46, 152, 155, 176 social networks, 62, 67, 190, 211 software programs, 91, 120–21, 159–60 for appointments, 153–54 for billing, 5, 42–45, 47–50, 53–56, 136, 143, 158 companies of, 57–58, 60, 88, 135–47 for hospitals, 135–47, 156–57 and MUMPS, 141 for patient management, 158, 204 and primitive technology, 206 for scheduling, 171 systems of, 135–36, 150 See also specific companies specialists, 7, 30, 69, 83–84, 86, 90, 97, 106, 111, 118, 131–32, 160–63, 198.


pages: 366 words: 76,476

Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking) by Christian Rudder

4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, bitcoin, cloud computing, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, data science, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, fake it until you make it, Frank Gehry, Howard Zinn, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Snow's cholera map, lifelogging, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nate Silver, Nelson Mandela, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, p-value, power law, pre–internet, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, race to the bottom, retail therapy, Salesforce, selection bias, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, Twitter Arab Spring, two and twenty

In the same way a service like Facebook or Twitter exposes our data to academic scrutiny, it reflects it back at us, for scrutiny of our own. Weak tools to capture and analyze our own physical activity are already here, and better ones are not long off. When you see people in middle management dickering with their Fitbits in the elevator, you know the Quantified Self movement is here to stay. The above is my very small attempt to add to the possibilities. If you use my app with someone else, here’s hoping you’re at the top of each other’s lists, and remember: a little creative defriending can give your assimilation score the necessary boost. Because self-measurement is all well and good until some ex-girlfriend comes in ahead of your wife. 1 Evidence against: of the seven bridges so famous in Euler’s time, four have since been destroyed.

Phish, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6 photobombing photographs, 5.1, 7.1, 9.1, 14.1, 14.2, bm1.1 captions of, 3.1, 5.1 on OkCupid, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 14.1, nts.1 scrambled, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 phrenologists Pinterest, 7.1, 7.2, nts.1 Pitbull Pixar, 4.1, nts.1 pixels pizza, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, nts.1 planets, 10.1, nts.1 poetry, itr.1, 3.1, 11.1 polio vaccine politics, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 7.1, 8.1, 11.1 gridlock in, 9.1, 14.1 liberal vs. conservative, 6.1, 9.1, 9.2 party, 5.1, 8.1, 8.2, 9.1, 14.1, nts.1 racism and Twitter use and popular culture, 3.1, 11.1 pornography gay, 11.1, 12.1, nts.1, nts.2 women-with-women Potomac River, 3.1, 3.2 PowerPoint presentations, 2.1, 14.1 “pratfall effect,” 2.1, nts.1 pravastatin Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, US psychology, 6.1, 10.1 neuro- social, 2.1, 7.1 punk rock puns, 3.1, 6.1 Quantcast, 6.1, nts.1 Quantified Self movement “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books” (Michel and Aiden), n race, itr.1, itr.2, itr.3, 7.1, 8.1, 8.2 attractiveness and, 6.1, 6.2 four largest groupings by Internet use and, itr.1, 6.1, 6.2 jokes about, 8.1n, 8.2, 9.1 quantitative analysis of, 6.1, nts.1 rhetoric about tokenism and racism, itr.1, 1.1, 5.1, 8.1, 9.1, 11.1 data on, itr.1, 6.1, nts.1 dating and, 6.1, 6.2 expression of, itr.1, 6.1, 8.1, 9.1, nts.1 Obama on pervasiveness of, 6.1, 8.1 politics and stereotypes of, 8.1, 10.1 radio CB, 9.1, nts.1 ratings compatibility, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4 congressional, itr.1, itr.2 of men and women, itr.1, itr.2, itr.3, itr.4, itr.5, 1.1 pizza, itr.1, itr.2 Reagan, Ronald Reddit, itr.1, itr.2, itr.3, 2.1, 12.1, 13.1, 14.1n, nts.1, nts.2 community and subreddit pages on, 2.1n, 12.1 relationships assimilated bonds of, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 breakup of, 1.1, 4.1 common interests in connectors in, 4.1, 4.2 of couples, 1.1, 4.1, 5.1, bm2.1 courtship, 1.1, 4.1 evaluation of family leading separate lives in, 4.1, 4.2 progression of “real life,” romantic, 1.1, 2.1, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, nts.1 stability in, itr.1, 4.1 see also dating; friends; marriage Republican National Convention of 2008 Republican Party, 5.1, 8.1, 13.1, 14.1, nts.1 Richter scale, 7.1, 12.1, nts.1 Rieger, Gerulf, 11.1, nts.1 Romans, ancient Romney, Mitt, Twitter followers of, 13.1, 13.2, nts.1 Rorschach tests Rove, Karl Russia, 9.1n, bm1.1 Ruthstrom, Ellyn, 11.1, nts.1 Sacco, Justine, 9.1, 9.2, 12.1, 13.1, nts.1 Salesforce.com, 13.1, 13.2, nts.1 Salk, Jonas Samsung Sapolsky, Robert, 7.1, nts.1 SAT science, itr.1, 1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 6.1, 9.1 computer, 4.1, 13.1, 14.1 data, itr.1, itr.2, 2.1, 8.1n, 12.1, 12.2, 13.1, 14.1, 14.2, bm1.1, bm2.1, bm2.2 genetic network analysis political social, itr.1, itr.2, 5.1, 6.1, 8.1, 9.1, 10.1, bm2.1 Scientific American, 14.1, 14.2, nts.1, nts.2 Scruff, n Seacrest, Ryan seismology, 7.1, 12.1 selfies September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks sex, itr.1, 1.1, 6.1, 8.1, 10.1, 11.1 attractiveness and, itr.1, 1.1, 2.1, 6.1, 7.1, 7.2, bm2.1 casual, 5.1, 11.1 regret and, itr.1, nts.1 threesome see also bisexuality; homosexuality; lesbianism; lust Shakespeare, William Sharpton, Al Shazam Shiftgig, 7.1, 7.2, nts.1 showers, 12.1, 12.2 Silver, Nate, 11.1, 11.2, 14.1, nts.1 Simmons, Gene “six degrees of separation” theory Slackers (film) Slate, itr.1n, 3.1, 13.1, nts.1 smartphones, itr.1, 12.1, 12.2 smell, sense of, 2.1, nts.1 Snapchat Snowden, Edward, 14.1, 14.2 social desirability bias social graphs, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 social media, 4.1, 6.1, 7.1, 9.1, 9.2, 13.1, 13.2, 14.1, nts.1 unrest and protest fanned on social physics solar eclipse of 1919 Sorell, C.


pages: 479 words: 144,453

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

23andMe, Aaron Swartz, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic trading, Anne Wojcicki, Anthropocene, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, call centre, Chekhov's gun, Chris Urmson, cognitive dissonance, Columbian Exchange, computer age, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, don't be evil, driverless car, drone strike, European colonialism, experimental subject, falling living standards, Flash crash, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, glass ceiling, global village, Great Leap Forward, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, lifelogging, low interest rates, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minecraft, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Nick Bostrom, pattern recognition, peak-end rule, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, Ray Kurzweil, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, stem cell, Steven Pinker, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, too big to fail, trade route, Turing machine, Turing test, ultimatum game, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero-sum game

Microsoft has launched the Microsoft Band in November 2014 – a smart armband that monitors among other things your heartbeat, the quality of your sleep and the number of steps you take each day. An application called Deadline goes a step further, telling you how many years of life you have left, given your current habits. Some people use these apps without thinking too deeply about it, but for others this is already an ideology, if not a religion. The Quantified Self movement argues that the self is nothing but mathematical patterns. These patterns are so complex that the human mind has no chance of understanding them. So if you wish to obey the old adage and know thyself, you should not waste your time on philosophy, meditation or psychoanalysis, but rather you should systematically collect biometric data and allow algorithms to analyse them for you and tell you who you are and what you should do.

Martha Mendoza, ‘Google Develops Contact Lens Glucose Monitor’, Yahoo News, 17 January 2014, accessed 12 August 2015, http://news.yahoo.com/google-develops-contact-lens-glucose-monitor-000147894.html; Mark Scott, ‘Novartis Joins with Google to Develop Contact Lens That Monitors Blood Sugar’, New York Times, 15 July 2014, accessed 12 August 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/business/international/novartis-joins-with-google-to-develop-contact-lens-to-monitor-blood-sugar.html?_r=0; Rachel Barclay, ‘Google Scientists Create Contact Lens to Measure Blood Sugar Level in Tears’, Healthline, 23 January 2014, accessed 12 August 2015, http://www.healthline.com/health-news/diabetes-google-develops-glucose-monitoring-contact-lens-012314. 25. Quantified Self, http://quantifiedself.com/; Dormehl, The Formula, 11–16. 26. Dormehl, The Formula, 91–5; Bedpost, http://bedposted.com. 27. Dormehl, The Formula, 53–9. 28. Angelina Jolie, ‘My Medical Choice’, New York Times, 14 May 2013, accessed 22 December 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/opinion/my-medical-choice.html. 29.

(game show) 315–16, 315 Jesus Christ 91, 155, 183, 187, 271, 274, 297 Jews/Judaism: ancient/biblical 60, 90–1, 94, 172–3, 174, 181, 193, 194–5, 268, 390; animal welfare and 94; expulsions from early modern Europe 197, 198; Great Jewish Revolt (AD 70) 194; homosexuality and 225–6; Second World War and 164–5, 165, 182 Jolie, Angelina 332–3, 335, 347 Jones, Lieutenant Henry 254 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 354–5 Joyce, James: Ulysses 240 JSTOR digital library 383 Jung, Carl 223–4 Kahneman, Daniel 294, 295–6, 338–9 Kasparov, Garry 320–1, 320 Khmer Rouge 264 Khrushchev, Nikita 263, 273–4 Kurzweil, Ray 24, 25, 27; The Singularity is Near 381 Kyoto protocol, 1997 215–16 Lake Fayum engineering project, Egypt 161–2, 175, 178 Larson, Professor Steve 324–5 Law of the Jungle 14–21 lawns 58–64, 62, 63 lawyers, replacement by artificial intelligence of 314 Lea, Tom: That 2,000 Yard Stare (1944) 244, 245, 246 Lenin Academy for Agricultural Sciences 371–2 Lenin, Vladimir 181, 207, 251, 271, 272, 273, 375 Levy, Professor Frank 322 liberal humanism/liberalism 98, 181, 247; contemporary alternatives to 267–77; free will and 281–90, 304; humanism and see humanism; humanist wars of religion, 1914– 1991 and 261–7; individualism, belief in 290–304, 305; meaning of life and 304, 305; schism within humanism and 246–57; science undermines foundations of 281–306; technological challenge to 305–6, 307–50; value of experience and 257–9, 260, 387–8; victory of 265–7 life expectancy 5, 25–7, 32–4, 50 ‘logic bombs’ (malicious software codes) 17 Louis XIV, King 4, 64, 227 lucid dreaming 361–2 Luther, Martin 185–7, 275, 276 Luther King, Martin 263–4, 275 Lysenko, Trofim 371–2 MAD (mutual assured destruction) 265 malaria 12, 19, 315 malnutrition 3, 5, 6, 10, 27, 55 Mao Zedong 27, 165, 167, 251, 259, 263, 375 Maris, Bill 24 marriage: artificial intelligence and 337–8, 343; gay 275, 276; humanism and 223–5, 275, 276, 291, 303–4, 338, 364; life expectancy and 26 Marx, Karl/Marxism 56–7, 60, 183, 207, 247–8, 271–4; Communist Manifesto 217; Das Kapital 57, 274 Mattersight Corporation 317–18 Mazzini, Giuseppe 249–50 meaning of life 184, 222, 223, 299–306, 338, 386 Memphis, Egypt 158–9 Mendes, Aristides de Sousa 164–5, 164 Merkel, Angela 248–9 Mesopotamia 93 Mexico 8–9, 11, 263 Michelangelo 27, 253; David 260 Microsoft 15, 157, 330–1; Band 330–1; Cortana 342–3 Mill, John Stuart 35 ‘mind-reading’ helmet 44–5 Mindojo 314 MIT 322, 383 modern covenant 199–219, 220 Modi, Narendra 206, 207 money: credit and 201–5; Dataism and 352, 365, 379; intersubjective nature of 144, 145, 171, 177; invention of 157, 158, 352, 379; investment in growth 209–11 mother–infant bond 88–90 Mubarak, Hosni 137 Muhammad 188, 226, 270, 391 Murnane, Professor Richard 322 Museum of Islamic Art, Qatar 64 Muslims: Charlie Hebdo attack and 226; Crusades and 146, 147, 148, 149; economic growth, belief in 206; evaluating success of 174; evolution and 103; expulsions of from early modern Europe 197, 198; free will and 285; lawns and 64; LGBT community and 225 see also Islam Mussolini, Benito 302 Myanmar 144, 206 Nagel, Thomas 357 nanotechnology 23, 25, 51, 98, 212, 269, 344, 353 National Health Service, UK 334–5 National Salvation Front, Romania 136 NATO 264–5 Naveh, Danny 76, 96 Nayaka people 75–6, 96 Nazism 98, 164–5, 181, 182, 247, 255–7, 262–3, 375, 376, 396 Ne Win, General 144 Neanderthals 49, 156, 261, 273, 356, 378 Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylonia 172–3, 310 Nelson, Shawn 255 New York Times 309, 332–4, 347, 370 New Zealand: Animal Welfare Amendment Act, 2015 122 Newton, Isaac 27, 97–8, 143, 197 Nietzsche, Friedrich 234, 254, 268 non-organic beings 43, 45 Norenzayan, Ara 354–5 Novartis 330 nuclear weapons 15, 16, 17, 17, 131, 149, 163, 216, 265, 372 Nyerere, Julius 166 Oakland Athletics 321 Obama, President Barack 313, 375 obesity 5–6, 18, 54 OncoFinder 323 Ottoman Empire 197, 207 ‘Our Boys Didn’t Die in Vain’ syndrome 300–3, 301 Page, Larry 28 paradox of knowledge 55–8 Paris Agreement, 2015 216 Pathway Pharmaceuticals 323 Petsuchos 161–2 Pfungst, Oskar 129 pharmacists 317 pigs, domesticated 79–83, 82, 87–8, 90, 98, 99, 100, 101, 231 Pinker, Steven 305 Pius IX, Pope 270–1 Pixie Scientific 330 plague/infectious disease 1–2, 6–14 politics: automation of 338–41; biochemical pursuit of happiness and 41; liberalism and 226–7, 229, 232, 232, 234, 247–50, 247n, 252; life expectancy and 26–7, 29; revolution and 132–7; speed of change in 58 pollution 20, 176, 213–14, 215–16, 341–2 poverty 3–6, 19, 33, 55, 205–6, 250, 251, 262, 349 Presley, Elvis 159–60, 159 Problem of Other Minds 119–20, 126–7 Protestant Reformation 185–7, 198, 242–4, 242, 243 psychology: evolutionary 82–3; focus of research 353–6, 360–2; Freudian 117; humanism and 223–4, 251–2; positive 360–2 Putin, Vladimir 26, 375 pygmy chimpanzees (bonobos) 138–9 Quantified Self movement 331 quantum physics 103, 170, 182, 234 Qur’an 170, 174, 269, 270 rats, laboratory 38, 39, 101, 122–4, 123, 127–8, 286–7 Redelmeier, Donald 296 relativity, theory of 102, 103, 170 religion: animals and 75–8, 90–8, 173; animist 75–8, 91, 92, 96–7, 173; challenge to liberalism 268; Dataism 367–97 see also Dataism; defining 180–7; ethical judgments 195–7; evolution and see evolution; formula for knowledge 235–7; God, death of 67, 234, 261, 268; humanist ethic and 234–5; monotheist 101–2, 173; science, relationship with 187–95, 197–8; scriptures, belief in 172–4; spirituality and 184–7; theist religions 90–6, 98, 274 revolutions 57, 60, 132–7, 155, 263–4, 308, 310–11 Ritalin 39, 364 robo-rat 286–7 Roman Empire 98, 191, 192, 194, 240, 373 Romanian Revolution, 1989 133–7, 138 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) 365–6 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 223, 282, 305 Russian Revolution, 1917 132–3, 136 Rwanda 15 Saarinen, Sharon 53 Saladin 146, 147, 148, 150–1 Santino (chimpanzee) 125–7 Saraswati, Dayananda 270, 271, 273 Scientific Revolution 96–9, 197–8, 212, 236–7, 379 Scotland 4, 303–4, 303 Second World War, 1939–45 21, 34, 55, 115, 164, 253, 262–3, 292 self: animal self-consciousness 124–7; Dataism and 386–7, 392–3; evolutionary theory and 103–4; experiencing and narrating self 294–305, 337, 338–9, 343; free will and 222–3, 230, 247, 281–90, 304, 305, 306, 338; life sciences undermine liberal idea of 281–306, 328–9; monotheism and 173, 174; single authentic self, humanist idea of 226–7, 235–6, 251, 281–306, 328–41, 363–6, 390–1; socialism and self-reflection 251–2; soul and 285; techno-humanism and 363–6; technological challenge to liberal idea of 327–46, 363–6; transcranial stimulator and 289 Seligman, Martin 360 Senusret III 161, 162 September 11 attacks, New York, 2011 18, 374 Shavan, Shlomi 331 Shedet, Egypt 161–2 Silico Medicine 323 Silicon Valley 15, 24, 25, 268, 274, 351, 381 Sima Qian 173, 174 Singapore 32, 207 smallpox 8–9, 10, 11 Snayers, Pieter: Battle of White Mountain 242–4, 243, 246 Sobek 161–2, 163, 171, 178–9 socialist humanism/socialism 247–8, 250–2, 256, 259–60, 261–2, 263, 264, 265, 266–7, 271–4, 325, 351, 376 soul 29, 92, 101–6, 115–16, 128, 130, 132, 138, 146, 147, 148, 150, 160, 184–5, 186, 189, 195, 229, 272, 282, 283, 285, 291, 324, 325, 381 South Korea 33, 151, 264, 266, 294, 349 Soviet Union: communism and 206, 208, 370, 371–2; data processing and 370, 370, 371–2; disappearance/collapse of 132–3, 135, 136, 145, 145, 266; economy and 206, 208, 370, 370, 371–2; Second World War and 263 Spanish Flu 9–10, 11 Sperry, Professor Roger Wolcott 292 St Augustine 275, 276 Stalin, Joseph 26–7, 256, 391 stock exchange 105–10, 203, 210, 294, 313, 369–70, 371 Stone Age 33–4, 60, 74, 80, 131, 155, 156, 157, 163, 176, 261 subjective experience 34, 80, 82–3, 105–17, 143–4, 155, 179, 229, 237, 312, 388, 393 Sudan 270, 271, 273 suicide rates 2, 15, 33 Sumerians 156–8, 159, 162–3, 323 Survivor (TV reality show) 240 Swartz, Aaron 382–3; Guerilla Open Access Manifesto 383 Sylvester I, Pope 190–1 Syria 3, 19, 149, 171, 220, 275, 313 Taiping Rebellion, 1850–64 271 Talwar, Professor Sanjiv 286–7 techno-humanism: definition of 352–3; focus of psychological research and 353–9; human will and 363–6; upgrading of mind 359–66 technology: Dataism and see Dataism; inequality and future 346–50; liberal idea of individual challenged by 327–46; renders humans economically and militarily useless 307–27; techno-humanism and see techno-humanism Tekmira 203 terrorism 14, 18–19, 226, 288, 290, 311 Tesla 114, 322 Thatcher, Margaret 57, 372 Thiel, Peter 24–5 Third Man, The (movie) 253–4 Thirty Years War, 1618–48 242–3 Three Gorges Dam, 163, 188, 196 Thucydides 173, 174 Toyota 230, 294, 323 transcranial stimulators 44–5, 287–90, 362–3, 364 Tree of Knowledge, biblical 76–7, 77, 97, 98 tuberculosis 9, 19, 23, 24 Turing, Alan 120, 367 Turing Machine 367 Turing Test 120 23andMe 336 Twitter 47, 137, 313, 387 US Army 287–90, 362–3, 364 Uganda 192–3, 195 United States: Dataism and 374; energy usage and happiness levels in 34; evolution, suspicion of within 102; Kyoto protocol, 1997 and 215–16; liberalism, view of within 247n; nuclear weapons and 163; pursuit of happiness and 31; value of life in compared to Afghan life 100; Vietnam War and 264, 265; well-being levels 34 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 21, 24, 31 Urban II, Pope 227–8 Uruk 156–7 Valla, Lorenzo 192 Valle Giulia, Battle of, 1968 263 vampire bats 204–5 Vedas 170, 181, 270 Vietnam War, 1954–75 57, 244, 264, 265 virtual-reality worlds 326–7 VITAL 322–3 Voyager golden record 258–9 Waal, Frans de 140–1 Walter, Jean-Jacques: Gustav Adolph of Sweden at the Battle of Breitenfeld (1631) 242, 243, 244–5 war 1–3, 14–19; humanism and narratives of 241–6, 242, 245, 253–6 Warsaw Pact 264–5 Watson (artificial intelligence system) 315–17, 315, 330 Watson, John 88–9, 90 Waze 341–2 web of meaning 143–9 WEIRD (Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic) countries, psychology research focus on 354–5, 359, 360 West Africa: Ebola and 11, 13, 203 ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’


pages: 324 words: 92,535

Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn From the Strange Science of Recovery by Christie Aschwanden

An Inconvenient Truth, fake news, gamification, lifelogging, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, multilevel marketing, Nate Silver, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Silicon Valley, TED Talk, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

Marketing these tests to athletes so that they can try to “improve” their biomarkers is the sporting equivalent of teaching to the test. Rather than teaching athletes to read their bodies and understand when they’re tired and need rest, these tests draw attention to numbers that may or may not be relevant. We are in the midst of a data explosion. In this era of smartphones, personal trackers, and the quantified self, athletes willing to shell out some money can collect an astounding amount of data on their body and their training. Tech companies are standing by with gadgets and apps that can measure everything from the number of steps you take, miles run, elevation climbed and descended, and heart rates, to power output, workload, sleep, weight, and even some nutritional factors.

Millet, “Sleep Extension before Sleep Loss: Effects on Performance and Neuromuscular Function,” Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 48, no. 8 (2016): 1595–1603, https://doi.10.1249/MSS.0000000000000925. 10. Kelly Glazer Baron, Sabra Abbott, Nancy Jao, Natalie Manalo, and Rebecca Mullen, “Orthosomnia: Are Some Patients Taking the Quantified Self Too Far?” Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine 13, no. 2 (2017): 351–54, https://doi.10.5664/jcsm.6472. 11. Christina Draganich and Kristi Erdal, “Placebo Sleep Affects Cognitive Functioning,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 40, no. 3 (2014): 857–64, https://doi.10.1037/a0035546. 12.


pages: 100 words: 28,911

A Short Guide to a Long Life by David B. Agus

Danny Hillis, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Larry Ellison, lifelogging, Marc Benioff, meta-analysis, Murray Gell-Mann, personalized medicine, placebo effect, risk tolerance, TED Talk, the scientific method

In 2007, a couple of brainy Wired editors saw this coming: the day when we’d be able to track ourselves digitally as Sanctorius of Padua did manually when he weighed everything that came in and out of his body over a period of thirty years in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Wired editors coined the term the “quantified self,” and this kind of effort has already become a movement. Even if you don’t subscribe to the idea of wearing a piece of Star Treky equipment, most of us keep mental track of certain things in our lives such as weight, sleep quality, and activity level—if just to make sure we’re within the parameters we’d like to follow.


pages: 347 words: 97,721

Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines by Thomas H. Davenport, Julia Kirby

"World Economic Forum" Davos, AI winter, Amazon Robotics, Andy Kessler, Apollo Guidance Computer, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, business intelligence, business process, call centre, carbon-based life, Clayton Christensen, clockwork universe, commoditize, conceptual framework, content marketing, dark matter, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, deliberate practice, deskilling, digital map, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, estate planning, financial engineering, fixed income, flying shuttle, follow your passion, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, Freestyle chess, game design, general-purpose programming language, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Hans Lippershey, haute cuisine, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, industrial robot, information retrieval, intermodal, Internet of things, inventory management, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, lifelogging, longitudinal study, loss aversion, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, performance metric, Peter Thiel, precariat, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, robo advisor, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, social intelligence, speech recognition, spinning jenny, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, superintelligent machines, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, tech worker, TED Talk, the long tail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Works Progress Administration, Zipcar

A last form of augmentation, also a kind of leverage, is the smart machine that helps you become a better version of yourself. Consider the new class of devices that have recently exploded on the consumer market that allow you to set personal goals and capture the progress you are making toward them. As part of what is known as the “quantified self” movement, they create feedback loops to tell you how you are doing on the (often nonwork) objectives that matter to you—whether you’re training for a marathon, trying to stay mentally sharp, or doing therapy to recover from some setback. In a way, this kind of leverage works not by erecting supports but by countering some of the regrettable tendencies of your human self, such as a lack of willpower or self-discipline.

., 179 Persado, 121 personal shoppers, 111 Pink, Daniel, 169 Plett, Heather, 110–11 Popa, Dan, 123 Port, David, 87 precariat, 241 Predictably Irrational (Ariely), 113 Press, Gil, 191 productivity automation and gains, 1, 3, 167, 227 BYOD and, 13 knowledge workers and, 100 man-machine partnerships and, 234 price reductions and, 14 “silent firing” and, 24 Progressive insurance, 197 “Prose of the Machines, The” (Oremus), 127 ProSystem, 22 “quantified self” movement, 68 Race Against the Machine, 31 RAGE Frameworks, 45, 216–17 Reimsbach-Kounatze, Christian, 236 Rethink Robotics, 50, 182, 193 Rhodin, Mike, 55 Riedl, Mark, 126 Riordan, Staci Jennifer, 160 Rise of the Robots (Ford), 205 Risi, Karin, 210, 220, 223 Ritchie, Graeme, 125 Robinson, Sir Ken, 115 robotic process automation, 48–49, 187, 221, 222–23 robotics, 24, 35, 40, 49–52, 54, 157 anthropomorphizing and, 49 collaborative robots, 49–51, 182, 193 DARPA Robotics Challenge, 51, 56 education for, 232 patience and, 123–24 programming language, 49, 50 self-awareness and, 56 transparency and ease of use, 193 warnings and predictions about, 225–26 Ronanki, Rajeev, 187–89, 220 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 238, 248 Rudin, Cynthia, 193 Rumsfeld, Donald, 214 Russell, Stuart, 227–28 Sachs, Jeffrey, 228 Sadler-Smith, Eugene, 117–18 Safecast, 247 Saffo, Paul, 24 Salovey, Peter, 113, 116 Samasource, 168 Sand, Benjamin, 6 SAP, 133 SAS, 104, 132, 140, 141, 194 Saxena, Manoj, 45 Schneider National, 132, 147–48, 189–90, 196 Short Haul Optimizer, 147, 190, 191 Scientific Music Generator (SMUG), 126 “School of One,” 141 Science: The Endless Frontier (Bush), 248 Scott, David, 67 Scott, Rebecca, 162 Second Machine Age, The (Brynjolfsson and McAfee), 6, 74 self-driving vehicles, 4, 51–52, 213–14, 244, 246 Sharp, Phillip, 209 Shaughnessy, Dan, 117 Shiller, Robert, 7 Simon, Herbert, 163 Singapore, 250 Singularity Is Near, The (Kurzweil), 36 Skype Translator, 56 smartphones, 53, 235, 239 “social license to operate,” 233 Spanish National Research Council, 54–55 Spielberg, Steven, 125 spreadsheets, 69–70 Standing, Guy, 241 Starner, Thad, 65 Stats Inc., 97 Steinberg, Dan, 124–25 Stepping Aside, 77 artisanal jobs, 119–21 augmentation to free people up, 121–24 characteristics of a candidate, 129 for financial planners and brokers, 87 how to build skills for, 129–30 incursion of machines into human attributes, 124–27 in insurance underwriting, 81 jobs with nonprogrammable skills, 109–12 learning “noncognitive” skills, 115–18 multiple intelligences and, 112–14 for teachers, 85 value of human involvement, 127–28 what it means, 108 where a candidate is likely found, 130 Stepping Forward, 77, 176–200 adding new sources of data, 196–97 broadening application of tools, 194–95 broadening the base of methods, 194 characteristics of a candidate, 199–200 consultants, 187–89 creating usability and transparency by business users, 192–94 data scientists, 179–80 embedding automation functions, 196 entrepreneurs, 185–87 examples, successful people, 179–89 for financial planners and brokers, 88 focusing on behavioral finance and economics, 198–99 how to build skills for, 200 in insurance underwriting, 83–84 internal automation leaders, 189–91 jobs, technical and nontechnical, 177–91 marketers, 183–85 number of jobs, 191–92 product managers, 182–83 programmers and IT professionals, 178 reporting and showing results, 195–96 researchers, 181–82 for teachers, 85–86 what it is, 176 where a candidate is likely found, 200 working on the math, 197–98 Stepping In, 77, 131–52 automation technologies and, 134–35 bright future for, 149–51 characteristics of a candidate, 151–52 common attributes of, 145–49 examples, successful people, 132, 134–35, 137–48 for financial planners and brokers, 97 having an aptitude for, 142–45 how to build skills for, 152 in insurance underwriting, 81–82 predecessors of, 132–34 purple people, 131, 133–34, 135, 147, 151 for teachers, 85 value provided by, 138–42 what it is, 131–32 what candidates are and aren’t, 135–38 where a candidate is likely found, 152 working with vendors and, 140–41 Stepping Narrowly, 77, 153–75 achieving mastery and, 162–66 augmentation and, 166–69, 173–74 building on your narrowness, 161–62 characteristics of a candidate, 174 education for, 232 examples, successful people, 153–54, 159–60, 162, 163, 164, 170, 172–73 for financial planners and brokers, 87–88 finding a specialty, 158–61 “hedgehog” thinker and, 171 how to build skills for, 175 individual psychology and, 169–71 in insurance underwriting, 82 “long tail” and, 157, 162 machine-unfriendly economics and, 155–58, 162 in medicine, 157 niche business, 153–54, 171–73 for teachers, 85 where a candidate is likely found, 175 Stepping Up, 76–77, 89–107, 155 automation decisions and, 93–95 big-picture perspective, 98–100 building and ecosystem, 100–102 careful work design for automated business functions, 103–4 characteristics of a candidate, 106 creating a balance between computer-based and human skills, 105–6 examples, successful people, 89–91, 95–98 for financial planners and brokers, 86–87 in financial sector, 92–93 how to build skills for, 106–7 in insurance underwriting, 80 in marketing, 93 staying close, but moving on and, 102–3 for teachers, 84–85 what it is, 91–93 where a candidate is likely found, 107 Stewart, Martha, 111 Summers, Larry, 95, 227 Suncor, 205 Surrogates (film), 125 Sutton, Bob, 170–71 Sweetwood, Adele, 104 taste, augmentation and, 122 TaxCut, 22 tax preparation, 22, 67–68 Tegmark, Max, 243–44, 247 Telefónica’s O2, 49 Teradata, 43 Terminator films, 65 Tesla, 213, 246 Thiel, Peter, 243 Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman), 236 Thinking for a Living (Davenport), 5 This, Herve, 164 Thompson, Derek, 242 Tibco, 194 Time magazine, AI cover and article, 36 TopCoder, 168 Torrence, Travis, 132, 147–48, 189, 190 Tourville, Lisa, 83–84, 137 TurboTax, 22, 67–68 “12 Risks That Threaten Human Civilization” (Armstrong), 249 2001: A Space Odyssey (film), 76, 245 Udacity, 178 UltraTax, 22 UnitedHealthCare, 83 University of California, Berkeley, 51 University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, 115 “Unusual and Highly Specialized Practice Areas” (Bohrer), 159 UPS automated driver routing algorithm (ORION), 196 USAA, 87–88 U.S.


Data and the City by Rob Kitchin,Tracey P. Lauriault,Gavin McArdle

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, algorithmic management, bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, cloud computing, complexity theory, conceptual framework, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, create, read, update, delete, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, dematerialisation, digital divide, digital map, digital rights, distributed ledger, Evgeny Morozov, fault tolerance, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, floating exchange rates, folksonomy, functional programming, global value chain, Google Earth, Hacker News, hive mind, information security, Internet of things, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, linked data, loose coupling, machine readable, new economy, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, nowcasting, open economy, openstreetmap, OSI model, packet switching, pattern recognition, performance metric, place-making, power law, quantum entanglement, RAND corporation, RFID, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, semantic web, sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, smart contracts, smart grid, smart meter, social graph, software studies, statistical model, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technological solutionism, text mining, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, the market place, the medium is the message, the scientific method, Toyota Production System, urban planning, urban sprawl, web application

Provenance and profit At times, the rhetoric around data treats them in an essentialist manner as an almost natural by-product of existence; given off like body heat and lost to entropy unless captured and stored, as exhaust data. Such a by-product orientation is increasingly evident in the health care industry as it tries to capture every heartbeat of an as-yet born foetus through monitoring (Smith 2014). Similarly, the quantified-self movement promises better living through the routine, everyday capture and analysis of personal data (Wolcott 2013). However, actual data are not inherently produced as a function of being alive, but through the active and passive recording of actions. And just as a forest and a map of it are distinct, data about a person are merely representative rather than constitutive of them.

., O’Sullivan, D. and Mahmoudi, D. (2016) ‘Data colonialism through accumulation by dispossession: New metaphors for daily data’, Environment and Planning D. doi:10.1177/0263775816633195. Townsend, A.M. (2013) Smart Cities. New York: W.W. Norton. Wolcott, J. (2013) ‘Wired up! Ready to go!’ Vanity Fair. Available from: www.vanityfair. com/culture/2013/02/quantified-self-hive-mind-weight-watchers [accessed 10 February 2017]. Zetter, K. (2008) ‘Six-year-old news story causes united airlines stock to plummet – Update Google placed wrong date on story’, Wired. Available from: www.wired.com/2008/09/ six-year-old-st/ [accessed 10 February 2017]. Zittrain, J. (2012) ‘Meme patrol: “When something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product”’, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.


pages: 97 words: 31,550

Money: Vintage Minis by Yuval Noah Harari

23andMe, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Anne Wojcicki, autonomous vehicles, British Empire, call centre, credit crunch, DeepMind, European colonialism, Flash crash, Ford Model T, greed is good, job automation, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, lifelogging, low interest rates, Nick Bostrom, pattern recognition, peak-end rule, Ponzi scheme, self-driving car, Suez canal 1869, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero-sum game

In November 2014 Microsoft launched the Microsoft Band – a smart armband that monitors among other things your heartbeat, the quality of your sleep and the number of steps you take each day. An application called Deadline goes a step further, informing you how many years of life you have left, given your current habits. Some people use these apps without thinking too deeply about it, but for others this is already an ideology, if not a religion. The Quantified Self movement argues that the self is nothing but mathematical patterns. These patterns are so complex that the human mind has no chance of understanding them. So if you wish to obey the old adage and know thyself, you should not waste your time on philosophy, meditation or psychoanalysis, but rather you should systematically collect biometric data and allow algorithms to analyse them for you and tell you who you are and what you should do.


pages: 405 words: 117,219

In Our Own Image: Savior or Destroyer? The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence by George Zarkadakis

3D printing, Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, animal electricity, anthropic principle, Asperger Syndrome, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Bletchley Park, British Empire, business process, carbon-based life, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, combinatorial explosion, complexity theory, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, continuous integration, Conway's Game of Life, cosmological principle, dark matter, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Edward Snowden, epigenetics, Flash crash, Google Glasses, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hans Moravec, income inequality, index card, industrial robot, intentional community, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, Jacques de Vaucanson, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, liberal capitalism, lifelogging, machine translation, millennium bug, mirror neurons, Moravec's paradox, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, off grid, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, packet switching, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, Plato's cave, post-industrial society, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Rodney Brooks, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, speech recognition, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Strategic Defense Initiative, strong AI, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, systems thinking, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, theory of mind, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vernor Vinge, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y2K

In 2002, British scientist Kevin Warwick, presaging Google Glass somewhat gruesomely, had a hundred electrodes surgically implanted in the median nerve fibres of his left arm. Using the electrodes, he connected his nervous system to the Internet and thereby controlled a host of electrical devices including a robotic arm, a loudspeaker and an amplifier. Meanwhile, a global movement calling itself ‘Quantified Self’ promotes the idea of measuring everything about our body, behaviour and outcomes, and use these measurements as feedback signals for self-improvement. In 2014, Apple unveiled the Watch, which is likely to evolve into a wearable device supporting a quantified lifestyle. Could all such innovations be harbingers of our next evolutionary step?

A. 61–2, 68 Hofstadter, Douglas 186–8 Hohlenstein Stadel lion-man statuette 3–5, 19–20 holistic approach to knowledge 174–5 holistic scientific methods 41–2 Holocene period 10 Holy Scripture, authority of 113–14 homeostasis 173 Homo erectus 6–7, 8, 10 Homo habilis 6, 12 Homo heidelbergensis 7 Homo sapiens archaic species 7, 8, 10 emergence of modern humans 8 Homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) 4, 7–8, 9–10 Homo sapiens sapiens 9–10 human ancestors aesthetic practices 9 archaic Homo sapiens 7, 8, 10 arrival in Europe 3–5 australopithecines 5, 6, 22 changes in the Upper Palaeolithic Age 9–10, 11 common ancestor with chimpanzees 5 emergence of art in Europe 3–5 emergence of modern humans 8 exodus from Africa 3–4, 6–7, 8–9 Homo erectus 6–7, 8, 10 Homo habilis 6, 12 Homo heidelbergensis 7 Homo sapiens 7, 8, 10 Homo sapiens sapiens 9–10 in Africa 5–7 Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) 4, 7–8, 9–10 Human Brain Project (HBP) xiv–xvi, 164–5, 287 see also brain (human) human culture, approaches to understanding 74–9 human replicas, disturbing feelings caused by 66–73 humanity becoming like machines (cyborgs) 79–85 future of 304–17 Hume, David 139–40 humors theory of life 31–4 humour, and theory of mind 54 Humphrey, Nicholas 11 hunter-gatherer view of the natural world 20–2 hydraulic and pneumatic automata 32–6 IBM (International Business Machines) 230, 263, 264 Ice Age Europe 4, 10, 21–2 iconoclasm 67 idealism versus materialism 92–4 identity theory 144–5 imagined world of the spirits 22–3, 25, 27 inanimate objects, projection of theory of mind 15–18 Incompleteness Theorem (Gödel) 180, 186, 206–9, 211–16 inductive logic 196, 197 information disembodiment of 146–52 significance of context 151–2 the mind as 123–5 information age 232–4 information theory 147–52 Ingold, Tim 20 intelligence, definitions of 48–9, 52 intelligent machines as objects of love 48–59 Internet brain metaphor 43 collection and manipulation of users’ data 250–3 origins of 238 potential for sentience 214–15 Internet of things 251–3 intuition 200, 211 Iron Man (film) 82 Ishiguro, Hiroshi 72 Islam 102 Jacquard loom 225 James, William 162 Johnson, Samuel 140 Kasparov, Garry 263 Kauffman, Stuart 295 Kempelen, Wolfgang von 37 Kline, Nathan 79 Koch, Christof 167–8 Krauss, Lawrence 244–5 Krugman, Paul 269 Kubrick, Stanley 56, 257 Kuhn, Thomas 29, 75 Kurzweil, Ray 126, 270–1 Lang, Fritz 50 language and genesis of the modern mind 13–15 and human relationship with objects 15–18 evolution of 13–15 naming of objects 16–17 LeCun, Yann 255 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 116–17, 218–20 Lettvin, Jerry 293 liberty, end of 313–17 life algorithms of 292–6 origins of 181–3 Life in the Bush of Ghosts (Tutuola) 19 linguistics, descriptions of reality 75 lion-man statuette of Stadel cave 3–5, 19–20 Llull, Ramon (Doctor Illuminatus) 218 Locke, John 139 locked-in syndrome 307 logic x–xi, 195–202 logical substitution method 180, 183, 186 Lokapannatti (early Buddhist story) 34 London forces 107 love conscious artefacts as objects of 48–59 human need for 55–6 human relationships with androids 53–9 Lovelace, Ada 62, 226–7, 228 Luddites 268 Machine Intelligence Research Institute 58–9 machine metaphor for life 36–8 Magdalenian period 21 magnetoencephalography (MEG) 159–60, 161 Maillardet, Henri 218 Marconi, Guglielmo 239 Maria (robot in Metropolis) 50, 51 Marlowe, Christopher 63 Mars colonisation 291 Marx, Groucho 205 materialism versus idealism 92–4 mathematical dematerialisation view 92 mathematical foundations of the universe 103–6 mathematical reflexivity 186–7 mathematics 31 formal logical systems 200–11 views on the nature of 136 Maturana, Humberto 294 McCarthy, John 256, 307 McCorduck, Pamela 45, 67 McCulloch, Warren S. 36, 175, 176–8, 256, 293 Mead, Margaret 175 mechanical metaphor for life 36–8 mechanical Turk 37 medicine, development of 31–2 meditation 157 memristors 286–7 Menabrea, Luigi 226, 227 Mesmer, Franz Anton 40 mesmerism 40 Mesopotamian civilisations 30 metacognition 184 metamathematics 202, 205, 207 metaphors confusing with the actual 44–5 for life and the mind 28–47 in general-purpose language 75 misunderstanding caused by 308–13 Metropolis (1927 film) 50, 51 Middle Palaeolithic 6 Miller, George 154, 155 Milton, John 1 mind altered states 110, 111 as pure information 123–5 aspects of 85–7 debate over the nature of 91–4 disembodiment of 42 empirical approach 143–6 quantum hypothesis 106–9 scientific theory of 152–3 search for a definition 189–91 self-awareness 86–7 separate from the body 110–15 view of Aristotole 137–8 mind-body problem 32, 114–19, 129–31 Minsky, Marvin 178, 256 modern mind big bang of 10, 12–15 birth of 10–15 impacts of the evolution of language 13–15 monads 117, 119 monism versus dualism 92–3 Moore’s Law 244–5, 263, 270–1, 287 moral decision-making 277–8 Moravec paradox 275–6 Morris, Ian 222 Morse, Samuel 42 mud metaphor for life 29–31, 45 My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (music album) 19 Nabokov, Vladimir 167 Nagel, Thomas 120, 121 Nariokotome boy 7 narratives 18–27, 75 see also metaphor Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) 4, 7–8, 9–10 Negroponte, Nicholas 243–4 neopositivism 141 neural machines 282–7 neural networks theory 36 neural synapses, functioning of 117–19 neuristors 286–7 neurodegenerative diseases xiii–xiv, 163–4 Neuromancer (Gibson) 36 neuromorphic computer archtectures 286–7 neurons, McCulloch and Pitts model 177–8 neuroscience 158, 306–8 Newton, Isaac 38, 103 Nike’s Fuel Band 81 noetic machines (Darwins) 284 nootropic drugs 81 Nouvelle AI concept 288 Offray de La Mettrie, Julien 37 Ogawa, Seiji 158–9 Omo industrial complex 6 On the Origin of Species (Darwin) 289–90 ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ concept 10 Otlet, Paul 239–40 out-of-body experiences 110–11 Ovid 49, 64 Paley, William 289 panpsychism 92, 117, 252 paradigm shifts 75 in the concept of life 29–47 Pascal, Blaise 219–20 Penrose, Roger 106–9, 117, 211–12, 214 Pert, Candace B. 170 physics, gaps in the Standard Model 105 Piketty, Thomas 267, 269 pineal gland 115–16 Pinker, Steven 13, 275 Pinocchio story 56 Pitts, Walter 36, 177–8, 256, 293 Plato 134, 143, 152, 176, 189, 305 central role of mathematics 103–6 idea of reality 78, 83 influence of 95–106 notion of philosopher-kings 98–9 separation of body and mind 112 The Republic 97–101, 309, 310 theory of forms 99–101, 104, 106 Platonism 101–2, 135–7, 139, 142, 146, 147, 182, 189, 190, 242–3, 296 Pleistocene epoch 7 Poe, Edgar Allan 79 Polidori, John William 60, 62 Popov, Alexander 239 Popper, Karl 98 Porter, Rodney 282 posthuman existence 147 postmodernism 208 post-structuralist philosophers 75–9 precautionary principle 64–5 predicate logic 198–200, 206 Principia Mathematica 205–6, 207 Prometheus 29–30, 63–4 psychoanalysis 50 psychons 118, 119 Pygmalion narrative 49–52 qualia of consciousness 120–3, 157 Quantified Self movement 81–2 quantum hypothesis for consciousness 106–9 quantum tunnelling 118–19 Ramachandran, Vilayanur 70 rationalism 116 Reagan, President Ronald 237 reality, impact of acquisition of language 15–18 reductionism 41–2, 104–5, 121, 184 reflexivity 183–4, 186–9 religions condemnation of human replicas 67 seeds of 22–3, 25–6 Renaissance 34, 103, 139, 218 RepRap machines 290 res cogitans (mental substance) 38, 113–14 res extensa (corporeal substance) 38, 113–14 resurrection beliefs 126–7 RoboCop 80 robot swarm experiments 287–8 robots human attitudes towards 50–1 rebellion against humans 53, 57–9 self-replication 289–92 see also androids Rochester, Nathaniel 256 Romans 31 Rubenstein, Michael 287–8, 291 Russell, Bertrand viii, 92, 198, 204, 205–6, 207, 208, 215 Russell, Stuart 270 Sagan, Carl 133 Saygin, Ayse Pinar 69 science as a cultural product 75–9 influence of Aristotle 134–8 influence of Descartes 113–19 influence of Plato see Plato scientific method 102–5, 121 scientific paradigms 75 scientific reasoning, as unnatural to us 133–4, 137 scientific theory, definition 166, 196 Scott, Ridley 53 Searle, John, Chinese Room experiment 52, 71 Second Commandment (Bible) 67 second machine age, impact of AI 266–9 Second World War 234–6 self-awareness 16, 86–7, 157, 215–16, 273–5 self-driving vehicles 263–4 self-organisation in cybernetic systems 273–4 in living things 292 self-referencing 186–9, 215–16 see also reflexivity self-referencing paradoxes 204–6 self-replicating machines/systems 179–82, 289–92 sensorimotor skills, deficiency in AI 275–6 servers, dependence on 245–9 Shannon, Claude 147–52, 154, 176, 230–1, 256 Shaw, George Bernard Shaw 49–50 Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein 40, 60–5, 165 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 60, 62, 63–4 Shickard, Wilhem 219 Silvester II, Pope 35 Simmons, Dan 160 simulated universe concept 127–9 smart drugs 81 Snow, C.


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

Hearing aids have now been joined by a panoply of additional choices when it comes to the sensors, trackers, and computers available to be worn on our bodies today. Many of these developments have been driven by the “quantified self” movement, which employs a variety of methodologies for collecting data about an individual’s life using technological tools. Every day, millions of quantified-self adherents record every aspect of their lives, thoughts, and experiences via self-tracking tools in search of a better life through “life logging.” They track and measure their sleep, weight, calories burned, biofeedback, heart rate, brain waves, EKG rhythms, happiness, number of steps in a day, all in an effort to improve mental and physical performance, easily gathered through the introduction of wearable-computing devices known as wearables.

Chapter 14: Hacking You 1 “We Are All Cyborgs Now”: Amber Case, “We Are All Cyborgs Now,” TED Talk, Dec. 2010. 2 Over 90 percent: “Text Message/Mobile Marketing,” WebWorld2000, http://​www.​webworld2000.​com/. 3 Over 100 million: Marcelo Ballve, “Wearable Gadgets Are Still Not Getting the Attention They Deserve—Here’s Why They Will Create a Massive New Market,” Business Insider, Aug. 29, 2013. 4 Most wearable devices: “How Safe Is Your Quantified Self? Tracking, Monitoring, and Wearable Tech,” Symantec Security Response, July 30, 2014. 5 Google has already: “Google Partners with Ray-Ban, Oakley for New Glass Designs,” NBC News, March 24, 2014; Deloitte, Technology, Media, and Telecommunications Predictions, 2014, 10. 6 The fear of filming: Richard Gray, “The Places Where Google Glass Is Banned,” Telegraph, Dec. 4, 2013. 7 In fact, hackers had already: Andy Greenberg, “Google Glass Has Already Been Hacked by Jailbreakers,” Forbes, April 26, 2013. 8 The GPS features: Mark Prigg, “Google Glass HACKED to Transmit Everything You See and Hear: Experts Warn ‘the Only Thing It Doesn’t Know Are Your Thoughts,’ ” Mail Online, May 2, 2013. 9 While your grandma: John Zorabedian, “Spyware App Turns the Privacy Tables on Google Glass Wearers,” Naked Security, March 25, 2014. 10 Given the pace: Katherine Bourzac, “Contact Lens Computer: Like Google Glass, Without the Glasses,” MIT Technology Review, June 7, 2013. 11 The device is in early stages: Leo King, “Google Smart Contact Lens Focuses on Healthcare Billions,” Forbes, July 15, 2014. 12 Not to be outdone: Bourzac, “Contact Lens Computer.” 13 The historic operation: N.


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

In one meta-analysis of fifty-three fall detection device studies, only half of them even described the sex of participants, let alone delivered sex-disaggregated data;27 another study noted that ‘Despite extensive literature on falls among seniors, little is known about gender-specific risk factors.’28 The Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning points out that ‘a notable motivation for elders to reject fall-detection devices is their size’, suggesting mobile phones as a solution.29 Except this isn’t really a solution for women because as the authors themselves note, women tend to keep their phones in their handbags, ‘where fall-detection algorithms will likely fail because they are trained to detect falls through acceleration sensors close to the body trunk’. In acknowledging this, the authors are unusual. Whitney Erin Boesel, a researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, is a member of the ‘quantified self’ community, which promises ‘self-knowledge through numbers’. These numbers are often collected via passive tracking apps on your phone, the classic being how many steps you’ve taken that day. But there’s a pocket-sized problem with this promise: ‘Inevitably some dude gets up at a conference and [says] something about how your phone is always on you,’ Boesel told the Atlantic.30 ‘And every time I’ll stand up, and I’ll be like, “Hi, about this phone that is always on you.

Australia gender pay gap gendered poverty Gillard ministries (2010–13) homelessness leisure time maternity. leave medical research military murders paternity. leave political representation precarious work school textbooks sexual assault/harassment taxation time-use surveys unpaid work Australia Institute Austria autism auto-plastics factories Autoblog autoimmune diseases automotive plastics workplaces Ayrton, Hertha Azerbaijan babies’ cries baby bottles Baker, Colin Baku, Azerbaijan Ball, James Bangladesh Bank of England banknotes Barbican, London Barcelona, Catalonia beauticians de Beauvoir, Simone Beer, Anna Beijing, China Belgium Berkman Center for Internet and Society Besant, Annie BI Norwegian Business School bicarbonate of soda Big Data bile acid composition biomarkers biomass fuels biomechanics Birka warrior Birmingham, West Midlands bisphenol A (BPA) ‘bitch’ bladder ‘Blank Space’ (Swift) blind recruitment blood pressure Bloom, Rachel Bloomberg News Bock, Laszlo body fat body sway Bodyform Boesel, Whitney Erin Boler, Tania Bolivia Boosey, Leslie Boserup, Ester Bosnia Boston Consulting Group Botswana Bouattia, Malia Boulanger, Béatrice Bourdieu, Pierre Bovasso, Dawn Boxing Day tsunami (2004) boyd, danah brain ischaemia Brazil breasts cancer feeding and lifting techniques pumps reduction surgery and seat belts and tactile situation awareness system (TSAS) and uniforms Bretherton, Joanne Brexit Bricks, New Orleans brilliance bias Brin, Sergey British Electoral Survey British Journal of Pharmacology British Medical Journal British Medical Research Council British National Corpus (BNC) Broadly Brophy, Jim and Margaret Buick Bulgaria Burgon, Richard Bush, Stephen Buvinic, Mayra BuzzFeed Cabinet caesarean sections Cairns, Alex California, United States Callanan, Martin Callou, Ada Calma, Justine calorie burning Cambridge Analytica Cameron, David Campbell Soup Canada banknotes chemical exposure childcare crime homelessness medical research professor evaluations sexual assault/harassment toilets unpaid work Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) Canadian Institutes of Health cancer canon formation Cape Town, South A.ica carcinogens cardiac resynchronisation therapy devices (CRT-Ds) cardiovascular system care work and agriculture elderly people and employment gross domestic product (GDP) occupational health and paternity leave time-use surveys and transport and zoning Carnegie Mellon University carpenters cars access to crashes driving tests motion sickness navigation systems Castillejo, Clare catcalling Cavalli, Francesco cave paintings CCTV Ceccato, Vania cell studies Center for American Progress Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) Center for Talent Innovation Central Asia Centre of Better Births, Liverpool Women’s Hospital chemicals Chiaro Chicago, Illinois chief executive officers (CEO) child benefit child marriage childbirth childcare and agriculture cost of and employment and gross domestic product (GDP) and paternity leave time-use surveys and zoning children’s television China cholera Chopin, Frédéric Chou, Tracy chromosomes chronic illness/pain Chronic Pain Policy Coalition chulhas Cikara, Mina circadian rhythms Citadel classical music clean stoves cleaning climate change Clinton, Hillary clitoridectomies Clue coal mining coastguards Collett Beverly colon cancer Columbia University competence vs warmth composers Composers’ Guild of Great Britain computer science confirmation bias confounding factors Congo, Democratic Republic of the Connecticut, United States Conservative Party construction work contraception contractions cooking cookstoves Corbusier, Le Cornell University coronary stents Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) corrective rape cosmetology Cosmopolitan Cotton, Dany Coyle, Diane crash test dummies Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Crewe, Emma Crick, Francis Crime Prevention and Community Safety crime crime scene investigators Croatia crochet Crockety, Molly CurrMIT CVs (curriculum vitaes) Czech Republic daddy quotas Daly, Caroline Louisa Data2x Davis-Blake, Alison Davis, Wendy Davison, Peter defibrillators deforestation Delhi, India dementia Democratic Party Democratic Republic of the Congo Democratic United Party dengue fever Denmark dental devices Department for Work and Pensions depression diabetes diarrhoea diet diethylstilbestrol (DES) disabled people disasters Ditum, Sarah diversity-valuing behavior DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) Do Babies Matter (Goulden, Mason, and Wolfinger) Doctor Who domestic violence Donison, Christopher Doss, Cheryl ‘draw a scientist’ driving dry sex Dyas-Elliott, Roger dysmenorrhea E3 Eagle, Angela early childhood education (ECE) Ebola economics Economist, The Edexcel education Edwards, Katherine Einstein, Albert elderly people Eliot, George Elks lodges Elvie emoji employment gender pay gap occupational health parental leave precarious work sexual assault/harassment and unpaid work ‘End of Theory, The’ (Anderson) endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) Endocrine Society endometriosis endovascular occlusion devices England national football English language ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) Enlightenment entrepreneurs epilepsy Equal Times Equality Act (2010) erectile dysfunction Estonian language Ethiopia EuroNCAP European Parliament European Union academia bisphenol A (BPA) chronic illnesses crash test dummies employment gap endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) gender-inflected languages life expectancy medical research parental leave precarious work sexual harassment taxation transport planning Evernote EverydaySexism evolution exercise extension services Facebook facial wrinkle correction fall-detection devices Fallout Family and Medical Leave Act (1993) farming Fawcett Society Fawlty Towers female Viagra feminism Feminist Frequency films Financial crash (2008) Finland Finnbogadóttir, Vigdís Finnish language firefighters first past the post (FPTP) First World War (1914–18) Fiske, Susan Fitbit fitness devices flexible working Folbre, Nancy Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) football forced marriage Ford Fordham, Maureen fragile states France Franklin, Rosalind Frauen-Werk-Stadt free weights Freeman, Hadley French language Freud, Sigmund From Poverty to Power (Green) funeral rites FX gaming GapJumpers Gates Foundation Gates, Melinda gathering Geffen, David gender gender data gap academia agriculture algorithms American Civil War (1861–5) brilliance bias common sense crime Data2x female body historical image datasets innovation male universality medical research motion sickness occupational health political representation pregnancy self-report bias sexual assault/harassment smartphones speech-recognition technology stoves taxation transport planning unpaid work warmth vs competence Gender Equality Act (1976) Gender Global Practice gender pay gap gender-fair forms gender-inflected languages gendered poverty genderless languages Gendersite General Accounting Office generic masculine genius geometry Georgetown University German language German Society of Epidemiology Germany academia gender pay gap gender-inflected language Landesamt für Flüchtlingsangelegenheiten (LAF) medical research precarious work refugee camps school textbooks unpaid work Gezi Park protests (2013) Ghana gig economy Gild Gillard, Julia GitHub Glencore Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Global Gender Gap Index Global Media Monitoring Project Golden Globes Google artificial intelligence (AI) childcare Images maternity leave News Nexus petabytes pregnancy parking promotions search engine speech-recognition software Translate Gosling, Ryan Gothenburg, Sweden Gove, Michael Government Accounting Office (GAO) Great Depression (1929–39) Greece Green, Duncan Greenberg, Jon groping gross domestic product (GDP) Grown, Caren Guardian Gujarat earthquake (2001) Gulf War (1990–91) gyms H1N1 virus Hackers (Levy) hand size/strength handbags handprints haptic jackets Harman, Harriet Harris, Kamala Harvard University hate crimes/incidents Hawking, Stephen Haynes, Natalie Hayward, Sarah Hazards Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) Health and Safety Executive (HSE) health-monitoring systems healthcare/medicine Hearst heart attacks disease medication rhythm abnormalities surgery Heat St Heinrich Böll Foundation Helldén, Daniel Henderson, David Henry Higgins effect Henry VIII, King of England Hensel, Fanny hepatitis Hern, Alex high-efficiency cookstoves (HECs) Higher Education Statistics Agency Himmelweit, Sue hip belts history Hodgkin’s disease Holdcrofity, Anita Hollaback ‘Hollywood heart attack’ Homeless Period, The homelessness hopper fare Hopper, Grace hormones House of Commons Household Income Labour Dynamics of Australia Survey housekeeping work Howard, Todd human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) Human Rights Act (1998) Human Rights Watch human–computer interaction Hungary hunter-gatherer societies Huntingdon, Agnes Hurricane Andrew (1992) 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precarious work pregnancy Pregnant Workers Directive (1992) premenstrual syndrome (PMS) primary percutaneous coronary interventions (PPCI) Prinz-Brandenburg, Claudia progesterone projection bias prolapse promotions proportional representation (PR) Prospect Union Prospect Public Monuments and Sculptures Association public sector equality duty (PSED) public transport Puerto Rico purchasing authority ‘quantified self’ community Quebec, Canada QuiVr radiation Rajasthan, India rape RateMyProfessors.com recruitment Red Tape Challenge ‘Redistribution of Sex, The’ Reference Man Reformation refugees Renaissance repetitive strain injury (RSI) Representation of the People Act (1832) Republican Party Resebo, Christian Reykjavik, Iceland Rhode Island, United States Rio de Janeiro, Brazil risk-prediction models road building Road Safety on Five Continents Conference Roberts, David Robertson, Adi robots Rochdale, Manchester Rochon Ford, Anne Rudd, Kevin Rukeyser, Muriel Russian Federation Rwanda Sacks-Jones, Katharine Saenuri Party Safecity SafetyLit Foundation Sánchez de Madariaga, Inés Sandberg, Sheryl Sanders, Bernard Santos, Cristine Schalk, Tom Schenker, Jonathan Schiebinger, Londa School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) school textbooks Schumann, Clara science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) Scientific American scientists Scotland Scythians ‘sea of dudes’ problem Seacole, Mary seat belts Second World War (1939.45) self-report bias September 11 attacks (2001) Serbia Sessions, Jefferson severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) sex Sex Discrimination Act (1975) sex robots sex-disaggregated data agriculture chemical exposure conflict employment fall-detection devices fitness devices gendered poverty medical research precarious work smartphones taxation transport urban design virtual reality voice recognition working hours sexual violence/harassment shape-from-shading Sherriff, Paula Shield, The shifting agriculture Sierra Leone sildenafil citrate Silicon Valley Silver, Nate Singh, Jyoti single parents single-member districts (SMD) Siri Skåne County, Sweden skeletons skin Slate Slocum, Sally Slovenia smartphones snow clearing social capital social data Social Democratic Party (SDP) social power socialisation Solna, Sweden Solnit, Rebecca Somalia Sony Ericsson Sounds and Sweet Airs (Beer) South Africa South Korea Soviet Union (1922–91) Spain Spanish language Speak with a Geek speech-recognition technology Sphinx sports Sprout Pharmaceuticals Sri Lanka St Mark’s, Venice St Vincent & the Grenadines stab vests Stack Overflow Stanford University staple crops Star Wars Starbucks Starkey, David statins statues stem cells Stevens, Nettie Stockholm, Sweden Stoffregen, Tom stoves Streisand, Barbra streptococcal toxic shock syndrome stress strokes Strozzi, Barbara Studenski, Paul Sulpicia Supreme Court Sweden Birka warrior car crashes councils crime depression gender pay gap heart attacks murders paternity leave political representation refugee camps snow clearing sports taxation unpaid work youth urban regeneration Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute Swift, Taylor swine flu Swinson, Joanne Kate ‘Jo’ Switzerland Syria Systran tactile situation awareness system (TSAS) Taimina, Daina Taiwan Tate, Angela Tatman, Rachael Tavris, Carol taxation teaching evaluations Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) tear gas tech industry television temperature Temperature Temporary Assistance to Needy Families tennis tenure-track system text corpora thalidomide ThinkProgress Thor three-stone fires time poverty time-use surveys TIMIT corpus Tin, Ida toilets Toksvig, Sandi tools Toronto, Ontario Tottenham, London Toyota Trades Union Congress (TUC) tradition transit captives transportation treadmills trip-chaining troponin Trump, Donald tuberculosis (TB) Tudor period (1485–1603) Tufekci, Zeynep Turkey Twitter Uberpool Uganda Ukraine ulcerative colitis Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher Umeå, Sweden Understanding Girls with ADHD (Littman) unemployment unencumbered people Unicode Consortium Unison United Association of Civil Guards United Kingdom academia austerity autism banknotes breast pumps Brexit (2016–) Fire Brigade caesarean sections children’s centres chronic illness/pain coastguards councils employment gap endometriosis Equality Act (2010) flexible working gender pay gap gendered poverty general elections generic masculine gross domestic product (GDP) heart attacks homelessness Human Rights Act (1998) leisure time maternity leave medical research military murders music nail salons occupational health paternity leave pedestrians pensions personal protective equipment (PPE) police political representation precarious work public sector equality duty (PSED) Representation of the People Act (1832) scientists Sex Discrimination Act (1975) sexual assault/harassment single parents statues stress taxation toilets transportation trip-chaining universities unpaid work Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Commission on the Status of Women Data2x Economic Commission for Africa Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) homicide survey Human Development Report and peace talks Population Fund Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) and stoves and Switzerland and toilets and unpaid childcare Women’s Year World Conference on Women United States academia Affordable Care Act (2010) Agency for International Development (USAID) Alzheimer’s disease banknotes bisphenol A (BPA) breast pumps brilliance bias Bureau of Labor Statistics car crashes chief executive officers (CEO) childbirth, death in Civil War (1861–5) construction work councils crime early childhood education (ECE) employment gap endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) endometriosis farming flexible working gender pay gap gendered poverty generic masculine Great Depression (1929–39) gross domestic product (GDP) healthcare heart attacks Hurricane Andrew (1992) Hurricane Katrina (2005) Hurricane Maria (2017) immigration detention facilities job interviews ‘just in time’ scheduling so.ware leisure time maternity leave medical research meritocracy military mortality rates murders nail salons National Institute of Health Revitalization Act (1993) occupational health personal protective equipment (PPE) political representation precarious work presidential election (2016) school textbooks September 11 attacks (2001) sexual assault/harassment single parents soccer team Supreme Court taxation tech industry toilets transportation Trump administration (2017–) universities unpaid work universal credit (UC) universality universities University and College Union University of California, Berkeley University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) University of Chicago University of Liverpool University of London University of Manchester University of Michigan University of Minnesota University of North Carolina University of Stirling University of Sussex University of Washington University of York unpaid work agriculture and algorithms and gross domestic product (GDP) and occupational health and stoves and transport in workplace and zoning upper body strength upskirting urinals urinary-tract infections urination uro-gynaecological problems uterine failure uterine tybroids Uttar Pradesh, India Uzbekistan vaccines vagina Valium Valkrie value-added tax (VAT) Van Gulik, Gauri Venice, Italy venture capitalists (VCs) Veríssimo, Antônio Augusto Viagra Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom video games Vienna, Austria Vietnam Vikings Villacorta, Pilar violence virtual reality (VR) voice recognition Volvo voting rights Vox voyeurism Wade, Virginia Walker, Phillip walking wallet to purse Walmart warfare warmth vs competence Warsaw Pact Washington Post Washington Times Washington, DC, United States WASHplus WaterAid Watson, James We Will Rebuild weak contractions Weapons of Math Destruction (O’Neil) West Bengal, India whiplash Wiberg-Itzel, Eva Wikipedia Wild, Sarah Williams, Gayna Williams, Serena Williams, Venus Williamson, £eresa Willow Garage Wimbledon Windsor, Ontario Winter, Jessica Wired Wolf of Wall Street, The Wolfers, Justin Wolfinger, Nicholas ‘Woman the Gatherer’ (Slocum) Women and Equalities Committee Women Will Rebuild Women’s Budget Group (WBG) Women’s Design Service Women’s Engineering Society Women’s Refugee Commission Women’s Year Woolf, Virginia workplace safety World Bank World Cancer Research Fund World Cup World Economic Forum (WEF) World Health Organization (WHO) World Meteorological Organisation worm infections Woskow, Debbie Wray, Susan Wyden, Robert XY cells Y chromosome Yale University Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre, Bedford Yatskar, Mark Yemen Yentl syndrome Yezidis Youth Vote, The youthquake Zambia zero-hour contracts Zika zipper quotas zombie stats zoning Zou, James Photo by Rachel Louise Brown CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ is a writer, broadcaster, and feminist activist and was named Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year and OBE by the Queen.


pages: 420 words: 130,503

Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges and Leaderboards by Yu-Kai Chou

Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Burning Man, Cass Sunstein, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life?, don't be evil, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, Firefox, functional fixedness, game design, gamification, growth hacking, IKEA effect, Internet of things, Kickstarter, late fees, lifelogging, loss aversion, Maui Hawaii, Minecraft, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, performance metric, QR code, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Skype, software as a service, Stanford prison experiment, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs

Lifestyle Gamification involves applying gamification principles and the 8 Core Drives into daily habits and activities, such as managing your to-do list, exercising more often, waking up on time, eating healthier, or learning a new language. There are also many technological enablers that make Lifestyle Gamification more popular, including big buzzword trends such as Big Data, Wearable Tech, Quantified Self, and The Internet of Things23. The interesting thing about all these trends is that it enables all your activity to be tracked allowing you the ability to manage your Feedback Mechanics and Triggers. Games have historically been able to track every single action that a player makes. A game would automatically know that this particular player is on Level three, she has picked up these four items, learned these three skills, talked to these six characters, but not those other three characters, and because of that, this door does not open for the player.

A game would automatically know that this particular player is on Level three, she has picked up these four items, learned these three skills, talked to these six characters, but not those other three characters, and because of that, this door does not open for the player. A game remembers everything you have done and customizes your experience based on that. In real-life, most of your “data” is not recorded, and so it is hard to craft a optimized lifestyle. The trend with wearable tech and quantified self finally allows us to track more of our own behavior on a daily basis. Of course, even companies that claim they wield the power of Big Data don’t yet compare to the level of customization that gamers take for granted. Many still stick to generalized demographics and non-actionable reports, instead of creating a unique experience for each user in real-time24.


pages: 196 words: 54,339

Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff

1960s counterculture, Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, big-box store, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, clockwork universe, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate personhood, digital capitalism, disintermediation, Donald Trump, drone strike, European colonialism, fake news, Filter Bubble, full employment, future of work, game design, gamification, gig economy, Google bus, Gödel, Escher, Bach, hockey-stick growth, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, invisible hand, iterative process, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, life extension, lifelogging, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, mirror neurons, multilevel marketing, new economy, patient HM, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, power law, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, theory of mind, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, universal basic income, Vannevar Bush, We are as Gods, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

With each leap in human–machine intimacy, resolution increases, and our utility value is improved along some measurable metric. This is the mindset encouraged by wristbands that count our heartbeats and footsteps under the pretense of improved health or life extension. Health, happiness, and humanity itself are all reducible to data points and subject to optimization. We are all just numbers: the quantified self. Like a music recording that can be reduced to code and stored in a file, the quantified human can also be reduced to bits, replicated infinitely, uploaded to the cloud, or installed in a robot. But only the metrics we choose to follow are recorded and translated. Those we don’t value, or don’t even know about, are discarded in the new model.


pages: 246 words: 70,404

Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free by Cody Wilson

3D printing, 4chan, Aaron Swartz, active measures, Airbnb, airport security, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, assortative mating, bitcoin, Chelsea Manning, Cody Wilson, digital rights, disintermediation, DIY culture, Evgeny Morozov, fiat currency, Google Glasses, gun show loophole, jimmy wales, lifelogging, Mason jar, means of production, Menlo Park, Minecraft, national security letter, New Urbanism, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, printed gun, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Skype, Streisand effect, thinkpad, WikiLeaks, working poor

This was a town full of them; full of “angels” too. Some others in the room worked for VCs. Our host said he placed his faith in large data sets. Those gathered generally commended the moving front of companies comprising Big Data, who produced the advances necessary for the technologies of the quantifiable self, among other Big Ideas. Varol brought up DD to the gathered company, and our host compared my situation to the one in Diamond Age, a novel I hadn’t read. Our host doubted a scenario where the United States Government would allow us to release anything that the common people would be able to reproduce.


Big Data at Work: Dispelling the Myths, Uncovering the Opportunities by Thomas H. Davenport

Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, bioinformatics, business intelligence, business process, call centre, chief data officer, cloud computing, commoditize, data acquisition, data science, disruptive innovation, Edward Snowden, Erik Brynjolfsson, intermodal, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, lifelogging, Mark Zuckerberg, move fast and break things, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, New Journalism, recommendation engine, RFID, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, smart grid, smart meter, social graph, sorting algorithm, statistical model, Tesla Model S, text mining, Thomas Davenport, three-martini lunch

Image data from CAT scans and MRIs is another huge source; thus far doctors only look at it but don’t analyze it in any systematic fashion. Human genome data—at about 2 terabytes per human—is rapidly becoming inexpensive enough ($1,000 per patient within a few years) to gather on many patients. And if that weren’t enough, there will be massive amounts of data from connected health (telemedicine and remote monitoring) and quantified self (personal monitoring) devices. 3 Imagine that doctors and hospitals could gather data on every patient’s weight, blood pressure, heart rate, physical activity, and even mental state—every day or even every hour or minute! The amount of data boggles the mind. In sum, the ­primary challenge in the health-care industry won’t be how to gather big data, but how to make use of it all.


pages: 239 words: 70,206

Data-Ism: The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, and Almost Everything Else by Steve Lohr

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, bioinformatics, business cycle, business intelligence, call centre, Carl Icahn, classic study, cloud computing, computer age, conceptual framework, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Danny Hillis, data is the new oil, data science, David Brooks, driverless car, East Village, Edward Snowden, Emanuel Derman, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Future Shock, Google Glasses, Ida Tarbell, impulse control, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of writing, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John von Neumann, lifelogging, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, meta-analysis, money market fund, natural language processing, obamacare, pattern recognition, payday loans, personalized medicine, planned obsolescence, precision agriculture, pre–internet, Productivity paradox, RAND corporation, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Salesforce, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, six sigma, skunkworks, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, The Design of Experiments, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tony Fadell, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, yottabyte

Personally, I would like to see it become a consumer service. Let people see themselves more deeply, as revealed by their own tweets and analyzed by some clever software. IBM is not a consumer product company, but it could be the technology engine, partner, or licensor to a hot new start-up. The technology could become a lucrative arm of the quantified-self movement. Why not go beyond health-monitoring wristbands and smartphone applications? Democratize personality measurement. Zhou smiled at the suggestion, and she thinks individuals will someday be using such data-generated personality profiles in areas like career planning. Certain personality traits are correlated with success in different occupations.


Raw Data Is an Oxymoron by Lisa Gitelman

23andMe, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, continuous integration, crowdsourcing, disruptive innovation, Drosophila, Edmond Halley, Filter Bubble, Firefox, fixed income, folksonomy, Google Earth, Howard Rheingold, index card, informal economy, information security, Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, liberal capitalism, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Louis Daguerre, Menlo Park, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, peer-to-peer, RFID, Richard Thaler, Silicon Valley, social graph, software studies, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, text mining, time value of money, trade route, Turing machine, urban renewal, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks

There is of course an ongoing relationship with the real world and the human observer (nature and society), however it is a difficult one to express. Both the natural world and its human observers are being ever more instrumented with intelligent machines. Staggering arrays of sensors and cameras furbish “us” with terabytes of data a day about the natural world and about our social activities. The “quantified self ” movement is an oddly worshipful effort to celebrate this quantification (computers do not deal with “soft” data). The qualified self seems to be slipping out of the picture—the interpretative work is done inside the computer and read out and acted on by humans. A dark vision is that our interaction with the world and each other is being rendered epiphenomenal to these data-program-data cycles.


pages: 249 words: 81,217

The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite in the Modern Age by Claudia Hammond

Abraham Maslow, Anton Chekhov, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, Desert Island Discs, Donald Trump, El Camino Real, iterative process, Kickstarter, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral panic, overview effect, Stephen Hawking, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thorstein Veblen

The rise of the Fitbit shows just how many people today are not only keen to walk, but to measure their walking, to quantify it, to visualise it on a graph and then receive the equivalent of primary school gold stars for their achievements. I am one of those people. But maybe if I want walking to be restful, I should rethink that. This is the age of ‘the quantified self’, where people are using technology to track everything from their moods to the number of times they pee. In terms of fitness, it’s surely a good thing if we find ways of encouraging ourselves to move more. After all, Public Health England released figures in 2017 estimating that four out of ten middle-aged people don’t even manage a brisk ten-minute walk each month.9 But is counting steps the best way to persuade yourself to walk more?


Know Thyself by Stephen M Fleming

Abraham Wald, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, AlphaGo, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, backpropagation, citation needed, computer vision, confounding variable, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, fake news, global pandemic, higher-order functions, index card, Jeff Bezos, l'esprit de l'escalier, Lao Tzu, lifelogging, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, patient HM, Pierre-Simon Laplace, power law, prediction markets, QWERTY keyboard, recommendation engine, replication crisis, self-driving car, side project, Skype, Stanislav Petrov, statistical model, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, traumatic brain injury

Rumsfeld’s argument was influential in persuading the United States to invade Iraq, after both the White House and UK government agreed it was too dangerous to do nothing about one particular unknown unknown: the ultimately illusory weapons of mass destruction. But we can also apply the same categories to judgments about ourselves, providing a tool for quantifying self-awareness. This is a strange idea the first time you encounter it. A useful analogy is the index of a book. Each of the entries in the index usually points to the page number containing that topic. We can think of the index as representing the book’s knowledge about itself. Usually the book’s metacognition is accurate—the entries in the index match the relevant page number containing that topic.


pages: 669 words: 210,153

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Timothy Ferriss

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, Alexander Shulgin, Alvin Toffler, An Inconvenient Truth, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Madoff, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Beryl Markham, billion-dollar mistake, Black Swan, Blue Bottle Coffee, Blue Ocean Strategy, blue-collar work, book value, Boris Johnson, Buckminster Fuller, business process, Cal Newport, call centre, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, Columbine, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, David Brooks, David Graeber, deal flow, digital rights, diversification, diversified portfolio, do what you love, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fault tolerance, fear of failure, Firefox, follow your passion, fulfillment center, future of work, Future Shock, Girl Boss, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, Howard Zinn, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, life extension, lifelogging, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mason jar, Menlo Park, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, PageRank, Paradox of Choice, passive income, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, phenotype, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, post scarcity, post-work, power law, premature optimization, private spaceflight, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, selection bias, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social graph, software as a service, software is eating the world, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, vertical integration, Wall-E, Washington Consensus, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Kelly has daughters and texted me about the latter book, which follows a young female protagonist: “How do you raise girls that are of the system but crush the system while rebuilding a better one?” Boner or No Boner? “Men, if you wake up and you don’t have a boner, there’s a problem. Yes or no? One or zero? Boner, no boner?” TF: “Quantified self” tracking doesn’t need to be complicated. It’s easy to miss the flashing red signal in front of your face while chasing the cutting edge of blood testing, genomics, etc. For men, the “boner or no boner” test is a simple but excellent indicator of sleep quality, hormonal health (GH, FSH, testosterone), circadian rhythm timing, and more.

In his spare time, he writes best-selling books, co-founded the Rosetta Project, which is building an archive of all documented human languages, and serves on the board of the Long Now Foundation. As part of the last, he’s investigating how to revive and restore endangered or extinct species, including the woolly mammoth. He might be the real-world “most interesting man in the world.” Behind the Scenes I attended the very first Quantified Self meet-up on September 10, 2008, at Kevin’s picturesque wood cabin-style home. From that small, 28-person gathering, “QS” has grown into a pop-culture term and international phenomenon, with organizations in more than 20 countries. Sit, Sit. Walk, Walk. Don’t Wobble. “The Zen mantra is ‘Sit, sit.


pages: 285 words: 86,853

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, Charles Babbage, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Claude Shannon: information theory, commoditize, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, DeepMind, disruptive innovation, Donald Knuth, Donald Shoup, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, factory automation, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, Flash crash, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker Conference 1984, High speed trading, hiring and firing, Ian Bogost, industrial research laboratory, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Conway, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late fees, lifelogging, Loebner Prize, lolcat, Lyft, machine readable, Mother of all demos, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Netflix Prize, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, PageRank, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, power law, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, ride hailing / ride sharing, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skinner box, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Coming Technological Singularity, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, traveling salesman, Turing machine, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, wage slave

Figure 2.3 “Search Story,” an ad for Google Search. The construction of computational intimacy has also expanded into the physical world. Algorithmic companions that map out both public and inner space are already here in fragmentary form, from matchmaking websites to Google Now. The emerging markets for the quantified self—consumer devices for tracking exercise, diet, sleep, and other activities—presage a deeper engagement with the human body as a space of computation, another platform for making the world “effectively computable” by counting steps, heartbeats, and geospatial data. As N. Katherine Hayles argues, these computations of space and person seem to reprise the algorithm as philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s anti-Enlightenment vision of a body without organs, “an assemblage rather than an organism, which does away with consciousness as the seat of coherent subjectivity.”46 In lieu of a soul or an essence, the algorithmic person is defined by a distribution of data, patterns, and interactions scattered across many platforms and interfaces.


pages: 354 words: 91,875

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Doto Get More of It by Kelly McGonigal

banking crisis, behavioural economics, bioinformatics, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, cognitive bias, delayed gratification, Dunning–Kruger effect, Easter island, game design, impulse control, lifelogging, loss aversion, low interest rates, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, PalmPilot, phenotype, Richard Thaler, social contagion, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Tragedy of the Commons, Walter Mischel

• Strengthen Self-Monitoring: Formally keep track of something you don’t usually pay close attention to. This could be your spending, what you eat, or how much time you spend online or watching TV. You don’t need fancy technology—pencil and paper will do. But if you need some inspiration, the Quantified Self movement (www.quantifiedself.com) has turned self-tracking into an art and science. For any of these willpower-training exercises, you could choose something related to your main willpower challenge. For example, if your goal is to save money, you might keep track of what you spend. If your goal is to exercise more often, you might decide to do ten sit-ups or push-ups before your morning shower.


pages: 340 words: 101,675

A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction by Adrian Hon

Adrian Hon, air gap, Anthropocene, augmented reality, blockchain, bounce rate, call centre, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cepheid variable, charter city, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deepfake, defense in depth, discrete time, disinformation, disintermediation, driverless car, drone strike, food desert, game design, gamification, gravity well, hive mind, hydroponic farming, impulse control, income inequality, job automation, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, life extension, lifelogging, low earth orbit, machine translation, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral panic, Neal Stephenson, no-fly zone, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, peak oil, peer-to-peer, phenotype, planned obsolescence, post scarcity, precariat, precautionary principle, prediction markets, rewilding, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Skype, smart contracts, social graph, South Sea Bubble, speech recognition, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, telepresence, transfer pricing, tulip mania, Turing test, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, VTOL, working-age population

“Training nurses in virtual reality” might become “teaching therapists using videoconferences.” The remapping was performed on your own hardware rather than in the cloud, ensuring security. It was all free. You were only asked to help someone else in the same way. As for the questions, they were designed to unsettle. A designer proposing yet another quantified self application would be challenged on the virtue of perspective. Might users who became fixated on tracking their calories and sleep patterns lose the time and ability to examine their own overall character? An engineer building a “carebot” to replace human caregivers would be asked if the genuine good it could provide might be outweighed by the gradual erosion of our virtue of caring, of being able to respond to and meet the needs of others—a virtue cultivated only by our repeated, intimate exposure to our mutual concern, dependence, vulnerability, and gratitude for one another.


pages: 502 words: 107,657

Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die by Eric Siegel

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Apollo 11, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, backtesting, Black Swan, book scanning, bounce rate, business intelligence, business process, butter production in bangladesh, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, commoditize, computer age, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data is the new oil, data science, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental subject, Google Glasses, happiness index / gross national happiness, information security, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, lifelogging, machine readable, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, mass immigration, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, Norbert Wiener, personalized medicine, placebo effect, prediction markets, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Coase, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Shai Danziger, software as a service, SpaceShipOne, speech recognition, statistical model, Steven Levy, supply chain finance, text mining, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Davenport, Turing test, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, X Prize, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Code,” Gawker.com, November 16, 2011. http://gawker.com/5860275/how-a-geek-cracked-the-jeopardy-code. Ned Potter, “‘Jeopardy!’ Champ Wins Jackpot with Web App,” ABCNews, Technology Review, November 17, 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2011/11/jeopardy-champ-wins-jackpot-with-web-app/. Alexandra Carmichael, “Roger Craig Wins Jeopardy Championship with Knowledge Tracking,” Quantified Self, November 17, 2011. http://quantifiedself.com/2011/11/roger-craig-on-knowledge-tracking/. Ken Jennings used Roger Craig’s study system: Ken Jennings, “Map Tourism,” Ken-Jennings.com blog post, November 17, 2011. http://ken-jennings.com/blog/archives/3385. Ken Jennings quotes: Ken Jennings, “My Puny Human Brain,” Slate.com, February 16, 2011. www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/02/my_puny_human_brain.html.


pages: 364 words: 99,897

The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, AltaVista, Anne Wojcicki, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Brian Krebs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, carbon footprint, clean tech, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, connected car, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disintermediation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fiat currency, future of work, General Motors Futurama, global supply chain, Google X / Alphabet X, Gregor Mendel, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lifelogging, litecoin, low interest rates, M-Pesa, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mobile money, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Nelson Mandela, new economy, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open economy, Parag Khanna, paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, precision agriculture, pre–internet, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rubik’s Cube, Satoshi Nakamoto, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, social graph, software as a service, special economic zone, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, Travis Kalanick, underbanked, unit 8200, Vernor Vinge, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator, young professional

As big data erodes privacy, there are some things worth fighting to keep private. OUR QUANTIFIED SELVES Privacy is just the first in a series of concerns that big data will raise as it inserts itself more inseparably into our lives. There are abundant other reasonable objections to the dangers of a newly quantified self and society. Philosophically, there has been a longtime fear with the rise of robotics and automation that machines will become more human—potentially supplanting “us” by taking our jobs or by literally taking over. In the big data world, the new fear is that humans will become more like machines.


pages: 379 words: 109,612

Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think?: The Net's Impact on Our Minds and Future by John Brockman

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Asperger Syndrome, availability heuristic, Benoit Mandelbrot, biofilm, Black Swan, bread and circuses, British Empire, conceptual framework, corporate governance, Danny Hillis, disinformation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Emanuel Derman, epigenetics, Evgeny Morozov, financial engineering, Flynn Effect, Frank Gehry, Future Shock, Google Earth, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, index card, information retrieval, Internet Archive, invention of writing, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Large Hadron Collider, lifelogging, lone genius, loss aversion, mandelbrot fractal, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Neal Stephenson, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, pneumatic tube, Ponzi scheme, power law, pre–internet, Project Xanadu, Richard Feynman, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, satellite internet, Schrödinger's Cat, search costs, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart grid, social distancing, social graph, social software, social web, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, telepresence, the medium is the message, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, trade route, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, Whole Earth Catalog, X Prize, Yochai Benkler

All my beloved screens offer infinite, charming, playful, powerful, informative, social windows into global human experience. The Internet, the online virtual universe, is my jungle gym, and I swing from bar to bar, learning about how writing can be either isolating or social, about DIY Drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) at a Maker Faire, about where to find a quantified-self meetup, about how to make sach moan sngo num pachok. I can use an image search to look up “hope” or “success” or “play.” I can find a video on virtually anything: I learned how to safely open a young Thai coconut from this Internet of wonder. As I stare out my window at the unusually beautiful Seattle weather, I realize I haven’t been out to walk yet today—sweet Internet juices still dripping down my chin.


pages: 390 words: 115,769

Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World's Healthiest and Longest-Lived Peoples by John Robbins

caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clean water, collective bargaining, Community Supported Agriculture, Donald Trump, happiness index / gross national happiness, illegal immigration, indoor plumbing, land reform, life extension, lifelogging, longitudinal study, Maui Hawaii, meta-analysis, Nelson Mandela, randomized controlled trial, Silicon Valley, telemarketer

Comparing his results with the frequency of heart disease, he found that the men who used the first-person pronouns the most often had the highest risk of heart trouble. What’s more, by following his subjects for several years thereafter, he found that the more a man habitually talked about himself, the greater the chance he would actually have a heart attack.10 Apparently, counting the times a person said “I” was an ingenious way to quantify self-absorption. It seems that the less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers. Dr. Scherwitz counsels: “Listen with regard when others talk. Give your time and energy to others; let others have their way; do things for reasons other than furthering your own needs.” This is sound medical advice, and it speaks also to our spiritual and emotional needs.


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

An autonomous car generates four terabytes a day, or a thousand feature length films’ worth of information; a commercial airliner, forty terabytes; a smart factory, a petabyte. So what does this data haul get us? Plenty. Doctors no longer have to rely on annual checkups to track patients’ health, as they now get a blizzard of quantified-self data streaming in 24-7. Farmers can know the moisture content in both the soil and the sky, allowing pinpoint watering for healthier crops, bigger yields, and—an important factor during global warming—far less water waste. In business, since lithe trumps lumbering during times of rapid change, agility will be the biggest advantage.


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

Occasionally a stranger will happily tell me that I ought to work harder at it, that it was easy in their experience, and then in practically the same breath whine about how they can’t get their startup funded, or their book published, or are subject to some other misfortune that seems to them to not be a fault of their own. Silicon Valley is drowning in quantified self-help and productivity cults that are supposed to sculpt one’s life into an ideal in every way. This is not only foolish but destructive. The impulse to pretend that we already understand everything is antiscience, just as surely as the antivax or antievolution movement. It also is a stealth conveyor of conformity.


pages: 442 words: 127,300

Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker

A. Roger Ekirch, active measures, autism spectrum disorder, Boeing 747, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, clockwatching, Dmitri Mendeleev, Donald Trump, Exxon Valdez, impulse control, lifelogging, longitudinal study, medical residency, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Pepsi Challenge, placebo effect, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, systems thinking, the scientific method, time dilation

If patients are given tools that can be used at home to track their improving physiological health in response to an exercise plan—such as blood pressure monitors during exercise programs, scales that log body mass index during dieting efforts, or spirometry devices that register respiratory lung capacity during attempted smoking cessation—compliance rates with rehabilitation programs increase. Follow up with those same individuals after a year or even five, and more of them have maintained their positive change in lifestyle and behavior as a consequence. When it comes to the quantified self, it’s the old adage of “seeing is believing” that ensures longer-term adherence to healthy habits. With wearables that accurately track our slumber fast emerging, we can apply this same approach to sleep. Harnessing smartphones as a central hub to gather an individual’s health data from various sources—physical activity (such as number of steps or minutes and intensity of exercise), light exposure, temperature, heart rate, body weight, food intake, work productivity, or mood—we show each individual how their own sleep is a direct predictor of their own physical and mental health.


pages: 742 words: 137,937

The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts by Richard Susskind, Daniel Susskind

23andMe, 3D printing, Abraham Maslow, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, Atul Gawande, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, Bill Joy: nanobots, Blue Ocean Strategy, business process, business process outsourcing, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, Clapham omnibus, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer age, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, death of newspapers, disintermediation, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, full employment, future of work, Garrett Hardin, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker Ethic, industrial robot, informal economy, information retrieval, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, James Hargreaves, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, lifelogging, lump of labour, machine translation, Marshall McLuhan, Metcalfe’s law, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, optical character recognition, Paul Samuelson, personalized medicine, planned obsolescence, pre–internet, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Feynman, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, semantic web, Shoshana Zuboff, Skype, social web, speech recognition, spinning jenny, strong AI, supply-chain management, Susan Wojcicki, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, telepresence, The Future of Employment, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Turing test, Two Sigma, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, world market for maybe five computers, Yochai Benkler, young professional

The Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, for example, has worked with IBM to develop bedside monitors in their Intensive Care Unit that collect and analyse over 100,000 data points for each patient each second.35 The commercial availability of many of these devices and systems has also stirred a cultural movement of ‘self-monitoring’, or ‘self-tracking’. Called ‘Quantified Self’, the many tens of thousands who are involved use devices like Jawbone, Fitbit, and MyFitnessPal to collect large volumes of data about themselves—from pulse rates to digestive behaviour, from sleep patterns to happiness levels—and to analyse it with a sophistication that rivals many clinicians.


pages: 836 words: 158,284

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Timothy Ferriss

23andMe, airport security, Albert Einstein, Black Swan, Buckminster Fuller, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon footprint, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, Dean Kamen, game design, Gary Taubes, Gregor Mendel, index card, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, language acquisition, life extension, lifelogging, Mahatma Gandhi, messenger bag, microbiome, microdosing, p-value, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, Paul Buchheit, placebo effect, Productivity paradox, publish or perish, radical life extension, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, stem cell, Steve Jobs, sugar pill, survivorship bias, TED Talk, The future is already here, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, Vilfredo Pareto, wage slave, William of Occam

TOOLS AND TRICKS Seth Roberts, “Self-Experimentation as a Source of New Ideas: Ten Examples Involving Sleep, Mood, Health, and Weight,” Behavioral and Brain Science 27 (2004): 227–88 (www.fourhourbody.com/new-ideas) This 61-page document about self-experimentation provides an overview of some of Seth’s findings, including actionable sleep examples. The Quantified Self (www.quantifiedself.com) Curated by Wired cofounding editor Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf, a managing editor of Wired, this is the perfect home for all self-experimenters. The resources section alone is worth a trip to this site, which provides the most comprehensive list of data-tracking tools and services on the web (www.fourhourbody.com/quantified).


pages: 778 words: 239,744

Gnomon by Nick Harkaway

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, Albert Einstein, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, behavioural economics, Burning Man, choice architecture, clean water, cognitive dissonance, false flag, fault tolerance, fear of failure, Future Shock, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, impulse control, Isaac Newton, Khartoum Gordon, lifelogging, neurotypical, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, place-making, post-industrial society, Potemkin village, precautionary principle, Richard Feynman, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, skunkworks, the market place, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, urban planning, urban sprawl

Imagine a society premised on that logic of benign observation, and go from there.’ I hadn’t known, so I shook my head. Annie shrugged. ‘Nor did I. They don’t make a big thing about it. Rather talk about the stuff that doesn’t freak people out. But it doesn’t seem like a great leap from there to networking those quantified self bracelets’ – I had only the vaguest notion what these were – ‘so that the state can tell you: “Hey! You want to smoke, that’s fine, but your NHS contribution goes up because you’re a risk.” Or whatever. ‘So, okay,’ she went on, ‘next question: did you also know that there’s a private prison firm working on a house arrest system that allows judges to impose permanent surveillance?