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This is an interesting point of view which reminds me of the Solid-discussion we had. Solid allows the user to control her data and to have an overview of personal data. It also allows seamless integration of many information types and as such it can be used to streamline information at companies and institutions. So Solid could just as well be used to connect seamlessly many types of information about you and me. Maybe we could still consult that information in readable-but-not-writable form, but it would be of even bigger interest to surveillance professionals from states and private companies who probably would have to means to get this information in a readable and writable form.

From the research side of things, we continue to see a strong correlation between the size of the model and the performance on many popular benchmarks. Universities can no longer compete on this. Academics can still make valuable research contributions by showing new ways to do things that work on smaller, publicly available models. However, it does put a number of research goals out of the realm of possibility without collaborating with large tech firms.

"documents the downward trend in the labor share of income since the early 1990s, as well as its heterogeneous evolution across countries, industries, and workers of different skill groups, using newly assembled data for a large sample of advanced and emerging market and developing economies. The chapter then analyzes the forces behind these trends. Technological progress, reflected in the steep decline in the relative price of investment goods, along with varying exposure to routine-based occupations, explains about half the overall decline in advanced economies, with a larger negative impact on the earnings of middle-skilled workers. "

"He believes that although technology can objectively decrease risk of a particular kind or make us feel less vulnerable in particular way, any technology that decreases some kind of risk also introduces new risks, thereby altering the ways in which we are at risk and experience vulnerability. Thus, rather than think of the human-technology dialectic as a process that makes humans less vulnerable, it is better conceptualized, he believes, as a process of transformation--a process that transforms human vulnerability."

Title: The Most Crucial Design Job Of The Future Excerpt: If artificial intelligence has any hope of expanding our understanding of the world, rather than simply reflecting old biases, it needs radical transparency.

Transscript of DWeb panel. "Many of us know that the Internet is broken, so how do we build something better? On September 22, DWeb San Francisco invited a panel of experts to share their views on the most viable paths forward. The panelists included author & EFF advisor Cory Doctorow, Matrix.org co-founder Amandine Le Pape, decentralized social media researcher Jay Graber, and TechDirt's Mike Masnick. They covered a range of approaches - including technical, regulatory, and organizational - that could bring us towards a future where our networks are more resilient, participatory, and decentralized."

Title: Reverse Robin Hood: The Historical Scam of Global Development Excerpt: IN 2015, the United Nations announced that their Millennium Campaign had successfully halved the number of hungry people on earth.

Title: Roomba's Next Big Step Is Selling Maps of Your Home to the Highest Bidder Excerpt: The Roomba is generally regarded as a cute little robot friend that no one but dogs would consider to be a potential menace. But for the last couple of years, …

"Yet buried in this scenario of a takeover of superhuman artificial intelligence are five assumptions which, when examined closely, are not based on any evidence."

"call on governments to use the data-driven management techniques common in the private sector to find out how best to respond to the employment disruption that is coming. These include using "A/B" testing of alternative options to do small trials of new social policies designed to counteract the impact of automation, before expanding them to entire populations."

"The most unexpected part of the Microsoft Ignite keynote was the panel discussion on Quantum Computing and the potential role for Microsoft to empower this next revolution in computing with a new programming language and qubit simulator that runs on Azure later this year. While Quantum Computing efforts are likely to be immaterial to the forecast over the next three-to-five years, the amount of airtime that Quantum Computing received at the opening keynote at Ignite showcases the longer-term aspirations for Microsoft to continue pushing the envelope of technology innovation, with an emphasis on mixed reality, AI, and quantum computing."

Transition Design brings together two global memes. First, the idea that entire societies must transition toward more sustainable, equitable and desirable long-term futures and second, that these transitions will require intentional, systems-level change. We see evidence of these memes in the large number of transition-related initiatives springing up around the world, and the rise in the number of tools and knowledge sets aimed at understanding complex systems and systems problems.

The Indieweb is based on owning your own domain name and owning and managing your own web server. As Goldsmith notes, none of these is free, and in fact, they create a significant barrier to participation. "If a movement has at its core a significant barrier to entry, then it is always exclusionary. While we've already seen that the movement has barriers at ability and personality, it is also true that, as of 2021, there is a significant barrier in terms of monetary resources."

Scientific experts recognize that building and scaling quantum-protected and enhanced communication networks are among the most important technological frontiers of the 21st century. The international research community perceives the construction of a first prototype global quantum network-the Quantum Internet-to be within reach over the next decade.

Wiki.js is a Javascript-based wiki you can run on your computer or (better) in the cloud. It is open source and based on Node. It uses any of a number of database engines and runs on most platforms. There are modules available that allow you to run analytics, use social authentication, and choose the content editor you wish to use, and sync and backup your content to a number of storage services.

This is about afro-futurism, offering eye-opening stats about black characters in scifi-movies, offering a definition of what afro-futurism is about, and most of all it gives insight in the importance of images and stories in building empathy and new futures.

Title: The Corporatization of AI is a Major Threat to Humanity Excerpt: This "editorial" article represents the personal views of the author, shaped by his 3 decades in the AI research community and 2 decades as an AI entrepreneur. It absolutely doe…

I still have to read this one. Seems interesting, the political background of bitcoin. Not necessarily something which will make you happy.

This 20 minute video show Terry Irwin, Director of the Transition Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon University introducing the Transition Design approach and looking at COVID-19 in the U.S. through the lens of Transition Design.

" Google's announcement is a classic example of what you might call privacy theater: While marketed as a step forward for consumer privacy, it does very little to change the underlying dynamics of an industry built on surveillance-based behavioral advertising."