Capitalogix

Everything's Bigger In Texas - Weekly Reading List - October 13th, 2017

From our womens' hair, to pick-up trucks, to our barbecue ... everything's bigger in Texas.

Looking at that meat is an almost religious experience. Here is a peek at what I've been reading lately. These are the links I saved this week. Hope you find some interesting and enjoyable tidbits. Let me know if you read something I'd like ... Or if there are other sources I should add to my weekly reading. Thanks.

Lighter Links:

The Equifax Aftermath We Need More Hacking. (LawFareBlog) What Happens When We Give up Control of Our Cars? (Car&Driver) DeepMind Creates New Research Unit to Explore Ethics of AI.(SDTimes) Puzzles in Modern Biology. (F1000) Amazon Just Bought a Startup that Models People's Bodies in 3D. (Mashable) Australia Goes Hawk with New Diplomatic Cyber Strategy. (ZDNet) Meet Pepper X, Soon to Be the World's Hottest Pepper.(OddityCentral) Civil-Rights Protests Have Never Been Popular. (The Atlantic) Billionaire Mike Bloomberg Offers to 'Match Every Donation' to Fight Gun Violence. (CNBC) Toward an Integrated Technology Operating Model. (McKinsey) Nobel Prize-Winning Body Clock Studies Support Mandatory Naptime.(Inverse) We're Nearly Ready to Use CRISPR to Target Far More Diseases.(NewScientist) Which Professions Have the Most Psychopaths? (Spring) NASA is Teaming up with Russia to Put a New Space Station near the Moon. Here's Why. (Popular Science) The Deadly Germ Warfare Island Abandoned by the Soviets. (BBC) 13 Successful People on the Books that Changed Their Lives. (Time) Mindfulness is More Than a Buzzword: a Look at the Neuroscience behind the Movement. (Forbes) We Expect Too Much from Our Romantic Partners. (The Atlantic) What Salesforce Einstein Teaches Us about Enterprise AI.(VentureBeat) Manuel Lima's the Book of Circles: Visualizing Spheres of Knowledge.(Printmag)

Market-Related Links

7 Artificial Intelligence Stats that Will Blow You Away. (Fool) Warren Buffett Explains the Bull Market. (Axios) Goldman Sachs is Flirting with Bitcoin Trading. (Insider) This Startup Wants to Be Vanguard for Cryptocurrencies. (Bloomberg) Tim Harford Recommends the Best Introductions to Economics.(FiveBooks) Apple's Head Designer Jony Ive Explains How the IPhone X Took 5 Years of Failure to Create. (BI) Behavioral Economics. (Exploring-Economics) Why Nation-states are Good. (Aeon) The Last Invention of Man. (Nautilus) The Future of Google is AI ... But Can They Fix the Algorithm? (TheVerge) How Big Data and Artificial Intelligence are Changing Online Lending.(CoinTelegraph) Deutsche Bank is Pulling a Silicon Valley Move and Unleashing Its Code onto Wall Street. (Insider) Why Oil and Gas Companies Must Act on Analytics. (McKinsey) Google: the Future is No Longer Mobile, It's Artificial Intelligence. (Tech) "The End of the QE Trade": Why Bank of America Expects an Imminent Market Correction. (ZeroHedge) Apple's Working to Become the next Chipmaking Superpower.(Idropnews) Fed Admits the Failure of Prosperity for the Bottom 90%. (ZeroHedge) Stuck in Traffic: We Need a Smarter Approach to Congestion Than Building More Roads. (The Conversation) Are Consumer Staples Signaling a Volatility Omen? (SeeItMarket) How Fintechs are Targeting Small- and Medium-sized Businesses and Pushing Incumbents to Fight Back. (BusinessInsider)

Let me know what you think. Thanks. - Howard

Defining A Meaningful Life - Howard Getson on The American Dreams Show

Recently, I was interviewed on The American Dreams Show. with Alan Olsen.

Alan is a wealth manager to the ultra-wealthy.  His American Dreams show is very popular in Silicon Valley.

It's a show about finding your path in life, and making businesses thrive through adversity and challenging economic times. 

We talked about my career path and how I went from a young lawyer to spending over 25 years running tech companies ... and we talked about the lessons I learned along the way.

It is different than other interviews I've done.  Take a look.

 

via The American Dream (transcript is here) 

I also encourage you to check out some of the other American Dream interviews.

Good stuff!

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - October 8th, 2017

 Old people and their joints ... it's becoming an issue. 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Why Culture Doesn't Just Beat Strategy, It Must Be the Strategy. (Inc)
• Google Reveals the Top Things People Want to Find out How To' Do. (TechCrunch)
• Pain Leads to Empathy and Self-preservation: Should We Make Robots Feel' It? (Aeon)
• Gartner's Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Adds 5G and Deep Learning. (Forbes)
• Hostile Terrain: Tank Traps, Fake Towns & Secret Tunnels of the Korean Borderlands. (99PercentInvisible)

Trading Links:

• Seventy-Eight Billion Reasons Why Bitcoin Is the New Gold. (Globe&Mail)
• Amazon Wants to Open a $5 Billion Second HQ in North America. (CNN)
• Has Disruption from E-commerce Run Its Course? (Latest)
• Who Vladimir Putin Thinks Will Rule the World. (CNN)
• Employees at the World's Largest Hedge Fund Use iPads to Rate Each Other's Performance in Real-Time – See How It Works. (Insider)

Gartner's 2017 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies Innovations Worth Monitoring

There's a lot of "hype" these days.  Social media and tools like Kickstarter would have you believe that every new idea is the "next big new thing".

In contrast, Gartner's Hype Cycle Report is a considered analysis of market excitement, maturity, and the benefit of various technologies.  It aggregates data and distills more than 2,000 technologies into a succinct, contextually understandable, snapshot of where various emerging technologies sit on the hype cycle.

Understanding this hype cycle framework enables you to ask important questions like "How will these technologies impact my business?" and  "Which technologies can I trust to stay relevant in 5 years?"

 

What's a "Hype Cycle"?

 

As technology advances, it is human-nature to get excited about the possibilities we imagine ... and then to get disappointed when those expectations aren't met. 

At its core, the Hype Cycle tells us where in the product's timeline we are, and how long it will take the technology to hit maturity. 

At this point in time, Machine Learning/Deep Learning and Connected Homes are at the peak of their hype cycles ... Meanwhile, Augmented Reality and Blockchain have matured past the hype phase (with Self-Driving Cars following close behind).  

This year, according to Gartner, there are three overarching "mega-trends" to watch. 

• AI Everywhere shows the transition towards a ubiquitous AI experience, from self-driving cars, to machine learning, and to smart robots.  Consider the impact on traffic/accidents with the adoption of autonomous vehicles, or the ability of machine learning to process more data faster. 
• Transparently Immersive Experiences shows our transition towards human-centric contextual and fluid technological experiences.  - like Connected Homes or Virtual Reality. Consider the impact of Augmented Reality on advertisements or gamification. 
• Digital Platforms shows the transition of emergent platforms into adoption. Platforms like Blockchain, IoT,  and Quantum Computing. Consider the effects of bitcoin and other blockchain initiatives, as well as the opportunity for new business models centered around these platforms.

 

Here is the chart. You can click the image to see it larger. 

 

via Gartner

For comparison, here is the chart from last year; and you can check out my article on 2015's hype cycle here.

via Gartner

The hype cycle gives us an idea of which of these technologies will likely survive the market hype and have a potential to become a part of our daily life. 

Here are the five regions of Gartner's Hype Cycle framework:

1. Innovation Trigger (potential technology breakthrough kicks off),
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations (Success stories through early publicity),
3. Trough of Disillusionment (waning interest),
4. Slope of Enlightenment (2nd & 3rd generation products appear), and
5. Plateau of Productivity (Mainstream adoption starts). 

  

Which technologies do you think are over-hyped ... and which ones might survive the hype?

I find this stuff fascinating.  Consider some of the interesting technologies just starting their hype cycle:

• Human Augmentation has the potential to enhance our bodies and minds using electrical currents, chips, or exoskeletons, but also raises ethical and legal questions. 
• Quantum Computing is still in its infancy, but could theoretically solve certain problems far faster than classical computers. 
• Smart Dust opens up the possibility of monitoring essentially everything by creating a vast network of minuscule sensors that can detect various inputs. 
• 4D Printing would theoretically allow us to print objects that reshape or self-assemble over time. 

We live in amazing times! 

Onwards. 

How Many People Lie To You On Social Media?

Social Media often becomes a "best-of" reel of our lives ... carefully curated to show off our best selves. 

Imagine what that leads to for us and our children ... ??

It is tough to live up to your social media standards (let alone to keep up with others').

This  Instagram model (apparently, that's a thing now) with over half a million followers took to changing her captions to display the falsehoods. 

 

via The Guardian

 

How tempting is it to photoshop (or embellish) a little?  In a recent survey of 2000 British people, more than 75% admitted to lying about themselves on social profiles.

Here is a chart ranking the most common topics people are most dishonest about.

 

via 10Awesome

 

Fake photos, fake ownership, and relationship lies top the list.  

There was something magical about taking a trip back before everything was a camera.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - October 1st, 2017

 

William Levin via Shabot6000

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.

Lighter Links:

• Here's Why Calorie Restriction Makes Us Live Longer. (BigThink)
• Google is Sharing Its Management Tools with the World. (Quartz)
• Physicists Want to Rebuild Quantum Theory from Scratch. (Wired)
• The Best Exercise Routine for Your Brain. (Medium)
• The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI. (RodneyBrooks)

Trading Links:

• A Rare Joint Interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Bill Gates. (Apple)
• How Financial Institutions are Turning AI into ROI. (TheFinancialBrand)
• The Blockchain is the Internet of Money. (Wall Street Journal)
• There Will Be More Retail Stores Opening Than Closing in 2017. (Forbes)
• Don't Be Scared about the End of Capitalism.  Be Excited to Build What Comes Next. (FastCompany)

Yom Kippur: A Day of Atonement

Yesterday was Yom Kippur, one of the High Holy Days for Jews, otherwise known as the Day of Atonement.

As part of the holiday, we read down a list of sins (text available here), apologizing for the ones that we committed, and asking forgiveness.  In addition, we promise to do better next year.  

It's really interesting how little human nature has changed in the past several thousand years. The list of sins is just as relevant today as I imagine it was back then.  

via Dry Bones

Equally important to recognizing and repenting for your sins, is what comes after.

Remembering all the good you did as well ... for yourself, your friends and family, or your community. 

It's an important framework that highlights how you have grown; and, it also shows where you have room to grow. 

Hoping you all experience growth in your mental states, your relationships, and in your businesses.