Web/Tech

  • AI Isn’t A Substitute For Lack Of The Real Thing

    When I first got out of Law School in the 1980s, "professionals" didn't type … that was your assistant's job.

    Then again, most people couldn't have imagined what computers and software are capable of now.

    Looking back,  my career has been a series of cycles where I was able to imagine what advanced tech would enable (and how business would have to change to best leverage those new capabilities).

    Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes 10,000 hours of focus and effort for someone to become an expert at something. 

    But the game is changing.

    Today, we can do research that took humans 10,000 hours in the time it took you to read this sentence. Moreover, technology doesn't forget what it's learned because a computer's memory is much better than yours or mine. 

    Still,  technology isn't a cure-all. Many people miss out on the benefits of A.I. and technology for the same reasons they didn't master the hobbies they picked up as an adolescent. 

    I shot a video discussing how to use technology to create a sustainable creative advantage. Check it out. 

     

     

    Most people realize this technology is cool – and they want to use AI – but they forget what mastery takes. 

    When using AI and high-performance computing, you need to ask the same questions you ask yourself about your life's purpose. 

    • What's my goal?
    • What do I (or my systems) need to learn to accomplish my goal?
    • What are the best ways to achieve that goal (or something better)?

    Too many companies are focused on AI as if that is the goal. AI is simply a tool. As I mentioned in the video, you have to define the problem the right way in order to find a solution for it. 

    Artificial Intelligence is a game-changer – so you have to approach it as such. 

    Know your mission and your strategy, recognize what you're committing to, set it as a compass heading and make deliberate movement in that direction. 

    I end the video by saying, "Wisdom comes from making finer distinctions. So, it is an iterative and recursive process… but it is also evolutionary.  And frankly, that is extraordinarily exciting!"

    I hope you agree.

    Onwards!

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – April 12th, 2019

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

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  • Microsoft: Are They Where They Thought They’d Be in 2019?

     In 2009, Microsoft released a video anticipating the world in 2019. That was only 10 years ago. 

    I recently showed you how much Social Media has changed in 10 years – so how close was Microsoft's guess?

    Watch this video to find out: 

     

     

    The answer is …. not as close as I would have thought.  Nonetheless, they just hit a Trillion Dollar market cap.  So, they must have gotten something right! 

    It's interesting to think about which factors or missing innovations caused the difference between their imagined vision and reality.

    They really bought into scaleable, HD, transparent, touch screen displays being not only available, but located in everything by now … which suffice to say, isn't the case. 

    The reality is …

    • A lot of these innovations actually have little use – Not every situation needs a transparent monitor – they're worse than standard monitors in almost every way. You end up using absurdly expensive screens to display a digital version of a post it note or handwriting. The desk/monitor hybrid would be covered in sheets of paper, office supplies, and your coffee. A boarding pass being a screen is highly inefficient for so many reasons – and so is a digital newspaper. We have those – they're called phones.  
    • They assumed batteries would be way farther along – The thinner your monitor, the more transparent, the harder it is to create a high-performance high-fidelity battery to maintain it. Unfortunately, batteries haven't had nearly the boom like the rest of our tech (though they are getting better). 
    • IoT Adoption/Security – One of the biggest problems with IoT is that the more these pieces communicate the harder it is to prevent hacks. A chain is only as strong as the weakest link – and a smart coffee maker isn't nearly secure as your computer. 
    • Fingerprints (Glass) – I get this isn't a "real" concern – but every piece of technology they showed was transparent/glass. On top of being very breakable (see Samsungs new foldable phones) Could you imagine how smudged/dirty everywhere would appear? Imagine a New York subway with this technology.
    • Expense v. Convenience – A lot of technologies are feasible – but aren't cost-effective. Look at the slow adoption of Solar cells as their efficiency per cost went up.

    Making everything a device/screen means more opportunity for companies to serve you ads and retarget you ad infinitum. 

    Ultimately, I find this perceived "modern digital office environment" very inefficient. A lot of these "innovations" are less dynamic and easy to use than their analog counterparts. Mechanical keyboards serve a purpose. 

    In reality, a lot of the trends we've adopted to increase collaboration and sharing have been counterproductive. Not every office needs an open floor plan – not every team needs 15 subteams with 4 bosses – and using 20 different productivity tools actually decreases productivity. 

    That being said, we've come a long way in 10 years. Think about the quality of your phone in 2009 or your desktop computer – whirring loudly as it tried to access the disk, or the internet, or anything really. 

    What we have now isn't perfect – but it's leaps and bounds ahead of where we were. A lot of technology seems like science fiction – like the Babel fish from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – May 5th, 2019

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

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  • Gartner’s 2018 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies

    With all the "fake news" and manufactured social buzz, it's hard to identify what technologies are reaching maturity and which ones are fads. Gartner's Hype Cycle attempts to solve that problem. 

    What's a "Hype Cycle"?

    As technology advances, it is human nature to get excited about the possibilities and 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. It tells us which will survive the hype have the potential to become a part of our daily life. 

    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.

    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). 

     

    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 exciting this year? 

    Currently, people are probably "too" excited about IoT platforms, Deep Learning, and Virtual Assistants. The idea isn't they won't stand the test of the time, but there's an artificial influx of people inflating the adoption numbers. Once the chaff is separated from the wheat – you can expect these to succeed. Autonomous driving, connected homes, and mixed reality have matured past the hype phase. 

    For comparison, here's my article from last year, and here's my article from 2015. Click the chart below to see a larger version of this year's Hype Cycle.

    PR_490866_5_Trends_in_the_Emerging_Tech_Hype_Cycle_2018_Hype_Cycle via Gartner

    This year, Gartner organized the 17 highlighted technologies into 5 encompassing trends:

     

    • Democratized AI (autonomous driving, conversational AI, deep neural nets, etc.) is one of the most disruptive classes of technology. It's becoming more readily available due to open source and cloud computing. There's a burgeoning field of "makers" inspired to push the boundaries of what's possible.  
    • Digitalized Ecosystems ( blockchain, IoT) support emerging technologies by being the foundations for dynamic systems. There's a shift from discrete infrastructure systems to comprehensive ecosystems. Think of blockchains potential impact on tracking and communication.  
    • Do-It-Yourself Biohacking (biotech, biochips, exoskeletons, AR) is something I've talked about before. Dave Asprey is a public face of this movement and we shot a video together last year. The future is bringing implants to extend humans past their perceived limits and increase our understanding of our bodies; biochips with the potential to detect diseases, synthetic muscles, and neural implants. 
    • Transparently Immersive Experiences (connected home, smart dust, volumetric displays) represent the blending of where human stops, work starts, and things exist. Imagine a theoretical smart workspace where electronic whiteboards capture all your notes and disseminate them, sensors let you know where people are and what they're working on, and everything in your office interacts directly with your IT platform. This creates much more contextual and personalized experiences.  
    • Ubiquitous Infrastructure (5G, carbon nanotubes, quantum computing) means that infrastructure is becoming a less competitive advantage. As infrastructure becomes cheaper, more ubiquitous, and faster, it becomes background noise.  

     

    Looking at the overarching trends of this year, it's also fun to look at what technologies are just starting their hype cycle. 

    • Artificial Tissue (Biotech) could be used to repair or replace portions of, or whole, tissues (cartilage, skin, muscle, etc.)
    • Flying Autonomous Vehicles can be used as taxis, but also as transports for other things such as medical supplies, food delivery, etc. Amazon and Uber are likely excited about this development – and expect it in the next couple of years. 
    • Smart Dust opens up the possibility of monitoring essentially everything by creating a vast network of minuscule sensors that can detect various inputs. 
    • Artificial General Intelligence
    • 4D Printing would theoretically allow us to print objects that reshape or self-assemble over time. 

     

    Which technologies do you think will survive the hype?

  • Social Media Is Changing Everything: A Reprisal

    I came across a post from 2009 about social media. 10 years later, with the knowledge of how much data we use today, it's quite a read.

    Here it is in its full glory. 

    Social Media Is Changing Everything: October 18th, 2009

    My son won't use e-mail the way I did. So how will people communicate and collaborate in the next wave of communications?

    Here is a peek into the difference that is taking hold.  I was looking at recent phone use.  The numbers you are about to see are from the first 20 days of our current billing cycle.

      • My wife, Jennifer, has used 21 text messages and 38 MB of data.
      • I have used 120 text messages and 29 MB of data.
      • My son, at college, used 420 text messages, and is on a WiFi campus so doesn't use 3G data.
      • My son, in high school, used 5,798 text messages and 472 MB of data.

    How can that be?  That level of emotional sluttiness makes porn seem downright wholesome. 

    But, of course, that isn't how he sees it.  He is holding many conversations at once.  Some are social; some are about the logistics of who, what, when, where and why … some are even about homework.  Yet, most don't use full sentences, let alone paragraphs.  There is near instant gratification.  And, the next generation of business people will consider this normal.

    Is social media a fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

    Welcome to the World of Socialnomics.  This video has a bunch of interesting statistics … and is fun to watch. 

     

     

    Other Resources:

    Social Media Is Changing Everything: April 20th, 2019 

    Looking at the stats from 2009 is pretty funny

    • My son was using 472 MB of data a month
    • Hulu had grown from to 373 million total streams in April 2009
    • Only 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video on their phone

    For some context, I looked up the comparative numbers for 2018. 

    • I picked a random month in 2018 … in August my son used 10.85 GB of data. He doesn't text as often – but has sent/received 282,000 snapchats since downloading it 5 years ago.
    • Hulu has over 20 million subscribers who streamed more than 26 million hours a day in 2018 
    • People spend over five hours a day on their smartphones on average. 70% of web traffic happens on a mobile device, and more than 50% of videos are watched on mobile (93% of twitter videos). 

    Here's what happens every minute of every day on the internet

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    via Lori Lewis and Chadd Callahan

     

    A little different than 2009 …

  • Reinventing Hedge Funds

    Two months ago, I spoke at IBM's Think 2019 Conference with iOLAP's Chris Jordan. Our talk was Gaining a Financial Edge through Fast Data and Analytics.

     

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    The crux of our presentation was that high-performance computing and advanced technology stacks are fundamental to today's trading strategies.

    Earlier this week, IBM released a commercial we shot together about how IBM's Integrated Analytics System (IAS) is helping us re-invent hedge funds.  Check it out.

     

     

    via IBM Analytics

    Think of it this way: 

    Evolution of TradingEach generation of traders finds new ways to play the game and to generate Alpha (the excess return generated by manager skill, rather than luck or excess risk). As soon as enough people adopt a strategy (or figure out a way to combat it), the edge begins to decay.

    When computerized data became available, simply understanding how to download and use it generated Alpha. The same could be said for each later evolution: the adoption of complex algorithms, access to massive amounts of clean data, and the adoption of AI strategies.

    Each time a new shift happens, traders pivot or fail – it's not that active trading stopped working – it's that the tools and styles necessary to play that game evolved.

    We use a similar concept we call "Active Switching".  Instead of simply trying to pick stocks or markets, we use advanced technology and techniques to choose markets, techniques, risk levels, and allocation strategies. Further, we use Active Switching to make many decisions, great and small, that together allow us to build portfolios that adjust themselves to changing market conditions.

     

    Playing a New Game

     

    Confusion is the catalyst to most trades.  What that means is the ability to parse information … to create a contextual map of meaning and figure out where there's signal and noise … is the new table stakes for playing that game.   ~ Howard Getson

     

    Historically, most active traders don't beat the S&P in any given year … and even less beat it with any semblance of consistency.  But those that do – the ones that have been doing it for long enough that it's not chance … exercise a willingness (and a skill) to adapt quickly. 

    One of Charles Darwin's best-known concepts is: It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.

    While computers have made information accessible to everyone, they've also created a massive asymmetric information advantage for those who have both the access and the skill to best use the massive amounts of data now available.  This is more complicated than it seems.  You need the information, the technology, the process, and the people.  There is so much data available now that figuring out what to ignore is probably more important than what to use.  Likewise, the ability to ingest, clean, validate and curate the data is a huge hurdle that most can't clear.

     

    FInding A Needle In A Haystack_PPT Size

     

    Even with those skills, it's harder than ever to take advantage of inefficiencies (edges) than ever before.  The edges are smaller, more fleeting, and surrounded by more volatility and noise.  It's like finding a needle in a haystack.  That being said – finding a needle in a haystack is easy when you have a metal detector. 

    That's where A.I. has come in for us. We use A.I. to develop algorithms, to analyze markets, and to create meaning where humans can't find any. 

     

    Wisdom Comes From Making Finer Distinctions_PPT Size

     

    We live in exciting times.  Onwards!

  • Photographing a Supermassive Black Hole: The Gravity of This Situation is Immeasurable

    The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing. – Frodo seeing Sauron through the Mirror of Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring

    The Event Horizon Telescope just released the first-ever image of a black hole … specifically a supermassive black hole with a mass 6.5 billion times heavier than our sun. This behemoth of a black hole is over 50 million light-years away in a galaxy we call M87. The little blob (in the picture below) is 25 billion miles across, and the bright part is brighter than all of the billions of other stars in that galaxy combined.  To put it in context … the black hole, shown below, is larger than our entire Solar System. 

    Here's a link to the original RAW (183 mb) image. 

     

    A-Consensusvia National Science Foundation

    The image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole that is 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun

    In my opinion, the black hole image is even more amazing when you zoom out and see the entire m87 galaxy. The little black dot inside the orange is the black hole.

     

    190414 black-hole-photo-amazing-zoom-out-1200x630

    via NASA/CXC/VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY/J. NEILSEN 

    To take a step back, a black hole is a celestial object that has a gravitational field so strong that light cannot escape it and that is believed to be created especially in the collapse of a very massive star.  It warps spacetime and superheats all surrounding materials. 

    “In space no one can hear you scream; and in a black hole, no one can see you disappear.” 
    ― Stephen Hawking

    Before today, black holes had only been observed indirectly. We had math that "proved it."  Now, we have direct, observable, and corroborated evidence for everyone to see.

    Do you understand the gravity of that? 

    In my lifetime, Black holes have gone from a fringe theory to a possibility, to a probability, and now, to reality.  

    It is amazing to think about how right Einstein's theory of general relativity was … especially considering that he did the math in 1915, before we had the technology and science to back it up.  The basic idea is that the relative velocity of light doesn't change, therefore it must be a constant in our universe. Using his math, we were able to predict how a black hole would "look", and it was supported by the Event Horizon Telescope's image. 

    Veritasium puts understanding the image into better perspective. Check it out. 

     

    via Veritasium 

    For a side note, the first proposal of black holes actually goes back to John Michell in 1784

    "If there should really exist in nature any bodies, whose density is not less than that of the sun, and whose diameters are more than 500 times the diameter of the sun, since their light could not arrive at us; or if there should exist any other bodies of a somewhat smaller size, which are not naturally luminous; of the existence of bodies under either of these circumstances, we could have no information from sight; yet, if any other luminous bodies should happen to revolve about them we might still perhaps from the motions of these revolving bodies infer the existence of the central ones with some degree of probability, as this might afford a clue to some of the apparent irregularities of the revolving bodies, which would not be easily explicable on any other hypothesis; but as the consequences of such a supposition are very obvious, and the consideration of them somewhat beside my present purpose, I shall not prosecute them any further." 

    It took a massive amount of work to produce the photos of the black hole shown in this post. The ingredients: 200 researchers, 20 years, over 9 petabytes of data, 8 telescopes, and immense vision. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, it also took the 104 years of research since Einstein's theory. 

    Powerful stuff. 

    For more:

  • Robocalls and Taxes: These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

    What're everyone's two favorite things? Paying taxes and receiving robocalls, obviously. 

    Phone scammers used to just target the elderly or those with poor English skills, but today, they go after everyone. In fact, Americans received over 30 billion robocalls last year … and it's only getting worse. Around half of those are "legal," but more and more are scams.

    Those scams increase during tax season. 

    Several of my friends have received calls from the "IRS" demanding immediate payment. That is a scam. The IRS has stated repeatedly, they will not call you asking for your credit card numbers over the phone, they will not threaten lawsuits, and they will not call you unless they've already tried reaching you by mail. 

    According to the FTC, robocall complaints in March and April are 20% higher. They're the icing on the tax season cake. 

     

    Screen Shot 2019-04-05 at 9.24.44 AMvia allareacodes

     

    If increased robocalls weren't enough, you can expect your refund to be 8% lower than last year. Though the average refund is still several thousand dollars, and my home state of Texas can expect the highest returns. 

     

    Tax-refund-by-state-(1)-1eb6

    via HowMuch

    Texas tops the list (Everything IS bigger in Texas) with $3,206 as the average tax refund. Maine inhabitants bottom out the list with $2,336.

    It's worth mentioning that these refunds represent federal figures, and don't take into account any refunds from your state government – meaning there's likely more money flowing back to taxpayers than this map illustrates. 

    What many people don’t understand is that the size of your tax refund isn’t solely based on tax cuts or raises.

    Getting a refund feels like a win, but it represents an interest-free loan to the government for the last year. In an ideal world, you'd have a refund of $0 – meaning you paid exactly what you were supposed to.

    Don't forget to file your taxes (Monday, April 15th is the deadline to file without an extension) and if you want to protect yourself from robocallers, here are some tips: 

    • Don't answer calls from unknown phone numbers – let them go to voicemail and call back if necessary
    • If you do accidentally answer a spam call, don't press any buttons or speak, as that simply alerts them that they've reached a working phone number
    • Don't call a scammer back, and don't engage with them … it's like talking with cops, Anything you say can and will be used against you 
    • To decrease legal calls sign up for the federal and state do not call lists
    • Check out CTIA's tip sheet on How to Stop Robocalls to see a list of apps available to prevent robocalls on your mobile OS

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – April 7th, 2019

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

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