"The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow" - Bill Gates
We take the internet for granted.Honestly, we take a lot for granted.
Do you remember a time before cell phones, before the internet, before all these science fiction realities. Even when the internet started … do you remember dial-up ... or when you needed dial-up for each individual site?
Think of the impact of that one paper has on so many aspects of our life.
Information Gathering
I remember being in law school, going to the library and scanning through microfiche (or actual books) to study or do research.
I remember reading encyclopedias (and photocopying relevant articles).
I remember paying for newsletters that were mailed to me (or paying extra for fax delivery).
Having access to more data or faster delivery was a huge advantage.
Today, you have all the information you could ever ask for at the tip of your fingers ... Google and Wikipedia are just the tip of the iceberg.
There is almost too much information now. It is hard to separate the signal from the noise. It seems like anyone can find justification for almost anything. The result is lots of data, but too little knowledge.
Part of what is needed is a way to help people make better decisions about what to trust, what it means, and what to use.
Social Interaction
People record every moment, every intimate detail of their lives online, contrasted by a fear of strangers and letting children roam.
While riding around the neighborhood on your bike to see if your friends could come out to play is by no means outlawed - it does seem passé.
Chat rooms, Facebook, Online multi-player ... many people's key friendships are born and kept online.
I remember my son, 13 years old at the time, sending 10,000+ texts a month and thinking it was a phase. I was wrong.
The internet has radically changed the structure of relationships - for better, or often worse.
Privacy ( ... or the lack of it)
One of the biggest changes is that we as individuals have become productized. We take advantage of all these free resources at the cost of being pixeled and cookied into oblivion. We've chosen convenience over safety.
Remember, if you’re not paying for a product - you are the product.
Little bits of our private information, demographics, and psychographics are sold to advertisers to create smarter ads, new offers, and realistically we have very little control over that.
It’s been proven time and time again that these giants like Google and Facebook will find ways to sneak your data to advertisers even when it’s “illegal” with a slap on the wrist.
Data protection is a massive issue not only for corporations but for individuals. While many companies are trying to manage your privacy while still monetizing your data, there are just as many companies who couldn’t care less.
The GPDR - while frustrating for many - is a step towards protecting individuals.
Every action has a reaction, and every benefit has a cost. The internet is an amazing tool - but it can also be a weapon.
What will the next 30 years of the internet hold?
"The Internet will disappear. There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with, that you won't even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room." — Eric Schmidt
It has been 30 years since inception, and there's radical growth.
We’ve gone from bit speeds to megabyte speeds. We’ve gone from crappy-quality video taking hours to download to streaming HD quality video live.
The US grounded the Boeing 737 Max after similarities between two crashes. It's good they did, safety first, but it definitely caused some headaches coming back from Saskatchewan. There's an interesting thought experiment here to understand the complexities that the airlines had to solve.
Imagine a 737 holds 200 people and does 4 or 5 flights a day. American has 24 737s in its fleet. That means each day ~24,000 people are displaced on American Airlines alone. They're replacing those planes with smaller regional jets – meaning more flights, more small airports, and more delays. The logistical/supply chain dynamics are a nightmare.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye recently. Hope you find something interesting.
Grammar isn't everyone's cup of tea ... but it's something I spend a lot of time thinking about.
Should I use an ellipsis here or a dash? Is this an unnecessary parenthetical?
Because of that, the serial comma (commonly known as the Oxford comma) is surprisingly important to me.
If you don't know what an Oxford comma is, it is the comma before the word "and" at the end of a list.
I love it (and use it). I think it adds clarity in most situations, and while some lists make sense without it, it is helpful if not necessary in many lists.
Like below:
Who wants that?
Use the Oxford Comma ... Save yourselves the imagery.
If you need a guide of when to use it, Check out this infographic ... Click it to see the whole thing.
In 1977, the Voyager 1 launched into space. Just over a dozen years later, the Voyager 1 spacecraft had traveled farther than any spacecraft/probe/human-made anything had gone before. It was approximately 6 billion kilometers away from earth. At that point, the Voyager 1 was "told" by Carl Sagan to turn around and take one last photo of the Earth ... a pale blue dot.
The resulting photo is impressive precisely because it shows so little in so much.
"Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." – Carl Sagan
Earth is in the far right sunbeam – a little below halfway down the image. This image (and the ability to send it back to earth) was the culmination of years of effort, the advancement of technology, and the dreams of mankind.
The resulting speech from Carl Sagan is still profound, moving, and worth a listen.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Today, we have people living in space, posting videos from the ISS, and high-resolution images of space and galaxies near and far.
We take for granted the immense phase shift in technology. You have more computing power in your pocket than we first used to go to the moon.
As humans, we're wired to think locally and linearly. We evolved to live our lives in small groups, to fear outsiders, and to stay in a general region until we die. We're not wired to think about the billions and billions of individuals on our planet, or the rate of technological growth - or the minuteness of that all in regard to the expanse of space.
However, today's reality necessitates we think about the world, our impact, and what's now possible for us.
We created better and faster ways to travel, we've created instantaneous communication networks across vast distances, and we've created megacities. Our tribes have gotten much bigger - and with that, our ability to enact massive change has grown as well.
Space was the first bastion of today's innovation, but today we can look toward A.I., medicine, epigenetics, and more.
It's hard to comprehend the scale of the universe and the scale of our potential ... but that's what makes it worth exploring!
AI has been around in science fiction for over 1oo years. As it becomes reality, it's amusing to look at different depictions and attempt to connect the dots.
AI first broke onto the film scene with Metropolis in 1927. "Maria" the evil robot disguising herself as a human played on many human fears; deception, lack of control, and perhaps most importantly being replaced.
Maria represented a future that was bleak and set the foundation for AI in cinema. Since then, there have been approximately 100 movies starring AI.
According to Enlighten Digital, 52% of movies portray AI positively, which means it's about 50/50, and there has been a 144% increase in AI movies since 2010 - so we're becoming more saturated with AI.
According to a study by Cambridge, seeing more films portraying robots (whether positive or negative) is associated with more positive attitudes toward robots. This is in line with the theory that the more exposure one has with "out-group" members (i.e. robots, or people of other races) the more positive one's attitude toward them.
These movies all have different tones but there's a trope that remains common from that initial film in 1927 to films in 2018.
We're always imagining that next step. What's going to happen as AI becomes (in some ways) smarter than us? What's going to happen when our creations surpass our control? What's going to happen if the line between human and robot blurs?
There are a lot of advancements in real-life, in respect to AI. As such, there is a lot of movement on AI ethics, and how to best limit or best enable AI.
In film, we gravitate toward two extremes - utopias and dystopias. In real life, we can recognize those extremes are unlikely ... but the effect of AI is still profound.
We're expanding a technology with the ability to radically change our world - for better or worse - so it's important to keep a purpose-driven approach. We can't lose track of humanity in the pursuit of AI.
Metropolis's final title card (that first AI movie from 1927) still rings true ... "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart"
As the holiday season begins, I was thinking about my father.
I love him and miss him ... but, truth be told, I teased him mercilessly about being technologically challenged (especially around the holidays, when I'd buy him a new gadget – only to roll on the floor laughing while watching him try to figure it out).
Karma is a bitch! My Dad used to say "whatever you make fun of me for ... will happen to you."
I didn't yet realize how fast the world was changing ... or how quickly I'd find it hard to keep up.
It's only four years later ... and somehow my realizations seem out-dated.
It's not just me, it's everyone!
Realize that human perception is linear, but technological growth isn't.
As technology progression evolves and quickens, it is going to get harder to keep up.
Check out this video from 1974 ... It shows Arthur C. Clarke making some impressive guesses about the future of technology.
Now that we're here, it may not seem like an impressive prediction ... but how cool was it that Arthur C. Clarke believed a computer would fit on a desk in 1974?
Do you think that you can predict what a computer will look like in 2034?
Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, augmented reality, neuro-interfaces, etc. are all going to change the face and nature of computing and perhaps life itself.
“The addict only needs to change one thing… their whole damn life.”— Ben Hill, Ph.D.
In one way, shape, or form, we’re all prone to some form of addiction or bad habit. Whether it’s food, adrenaline, TV, we all have a psychological or physiological “need” for something that we could probably afford less of.
Every second you spend or decision you make trying to fight that compulsion depletes your ability to say “no” to it the next time. If you want to permanently change your relationship with something ... willpower, alone, may not get you there.
That same principle applies to pursuing success or personal progress. The trick is recognizing that you can create conditions that make your success much more likely.
Benjamin Hardy is a Ph.D. candidate in Organizational Psychology, a bestselling author of "Willpower Doesn’t Work", a top writer on Medium, and a friend from Genius Network.
I spoke with him about his new book, the idea that “willpower doesn’t work” and what the lessons taught in his book can do for you or your organization. Check it out.
No matter how much internal resolve you have, changing the story you tell yourself and the environment you create for yourself, are reliable ways to make meaningful and lasting change.
Once you’ve found what you really want and created the environment to support it – willpower is secondary.
Very few people understand what we do at Capitalogix; even fewer understand it well enough to paint a vivid picture ... yet, that's exactly what Dave did ... almost instantly.
I asked him to retell it on video - to try and capture his take. To set your expectations, his take is different than you might imagine ... It's got ancient bacteria, futuristic algorithms, and a little genius.
"It takes a lot of computer power, and it takes a lot of algorithms, and it takes a lot of environmental sensors ... that's why we can walk around, breathe, and think." ~ Dave Asprey
Markets are an environment just like the environment we live in. Our algorithms can learn and evolve based on markets in a similar way to how humans evolved and adapted to their environments.
To summarize: In the beginning, there was an algorithm ... and it was good.
Celebrating 30 Years of the Internet [Infographic]
We take the internet for granted. Honestly, we take a lot for granted.
Do you remember a time before cell phones, before the internet, before all these science fiction realities. Even when the internet started … do you remember dial-up ... or when you needed dial-up for each individual site?
In March of 1989, Tim Berners-Lee published “Information Management: A Proposal” which outlined his vision for what would soon become the World Wide Web. March 12th is the official anniversary.
In celebration of 30 years of the internet, here’s an infographic on the timeline. Click to see the full thing.
via AppInstitute
Think of the impact of that one paper has on so many aspects of our life.
Information Gathering
I remember being in law school, going to the library and scanning through microfiche (or actual books) to study or do research.
I remember reading encyclopedias (and photocopying relevant articles).
I remember paying for newsletters that were mailed to me (or paying extra for fax delivery).
Having access to more data or faster delivery was a huge advantage.
Today, you have all the information you could ever ask for at the tip of your fingers ... Google and Wikipedia are just the tip of the iceberg.
There is almost too much information now. It is hard to separate the signal from the noise. It seems like anyone can find justification for almost anything. The result is lots of data, but too little knowledge.
Part of what is needed is a way to help people make better decisions about what to trust, what it means, and what to use.
Social Interaction
People record every moment, every intimate detail of their lives online, contrasted by a fear of strangers and letting children roam.
While riding around the neighborhood on your bike to see if your friends could come out to play is by no means outlawed - it does seem passé.
Chat rooms, Facebook, Online multi-player ... many people's key friendships are born and kept online.
I remember my son, 13 years old at the time, sending 10,000+ texts a month and thinking it was a phase. I was wrong.
The internet has radically changed the structure of relationships - for better, or often worse.
Privacy ( ... or the lack of it)
One of the biggest changes is that we as individuals have become productized. We take advantage of all these free resources at the cost of being pixeled and cookied into oblivion. We've chosen convenience over safety.
Remember, if you’re not paying for a product - you are the product.
Little bits of our private information, demographics, and psychographics are sold to advertisers to create smarter ads, new offers, and realistically we have very little control over that.
It’s been proven time and time again that these giants like Google and Facebook will find ways to sneak your data to advertisers even when it’s “illegal” with a slap on the wrist.
Data protection is a massive issue not only for corporations but for individuals. While many companies are trying to manage your privacy while still monetizing your data, there are just as many companies who couldn’t care less.
The GPDR - while frustrating for many - is a step towards protecting individuals.
Every action has a reaction, and every benefit has a cost. The internet is an amazing tool - but it can also be a weapon.
What will the next 30 years of the internet hold?
It has been 30 years since inception, and there's radical growth.
We’ve gone from bit speeds to megabyte speeds. We’ve gone from crappy-quality video taking hours to download to streaming HD quality video live.
How do imagine that the internet will evolve?
What influence do you think the Internet of Things will have?
It’s hard to foresee how innovation and regulation will change the internet, but it’s clear there will be change.
We live in exciting times!
Posted at 07:48 PM in Books, Business, Current Affairs, Gadgets, Ideas, Market Commentary, Science, Trading Tools, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)
Reblog (0)