Curated Commons // Edition 8
Thank you for subscribing and welcome to the eight edition of Curated Commons. Let’s dive right in.
Can you put an algorithm in jail?
A couple of years ago, one of Uber’s self-driving cars hit and killed a pedestrial while the safety driver was apparently distracted. A prosecutor has now brought criminal charges against the safety driver. And this brings up fairly complex questions that need to be tackled sooner than later. In a world run by machines and algorithms, and where oversight is left to low-level contractors on minimum pay, who takes the blame when something goes wrong (which they will!)? You can’t hold an algorithm accountable, but what of the devs that worked on it, the business managers that signed-off on the tradeoffs, the leaders who decided to deploy it? Or will the blame continue to fall on the lowest part of the food chain. This piece from Slate raises some very interesting questions on our algorithmic future.
https://slate.com/technology/2020/10/uber-self-driving-car-death-arizona-vs-vasquez.html
Influencers as curators…and aid to authoritarian regimes
In 2019, brands apparently spent $8 Billion on influencers. And they are everywhere around us. Influencers, in certain industry segments, fill a valuable gap of curation. Human-led curation that is, not retailer-led. Which leads this interesting article in Vogue to posit if influencers are the new retailers.
https://www.vogue.com/article/will-influencers-replace-retailers-2020s
If influencers as retailers is one extreme, the other is where they become spokespersons/whitewashers in the hands of regimes that are looking to change the narrative of their countries. Good read on how some are doing this through influencers.
https://restofworld.org/2020/the-authoritarian-influencers/
And finally, a very interesting stat that highlights how big TikTok was in India before it was banned.
A pragmatic look at vaccine development.
Really good long-read on the practical challenges that make up the vaccine’s journey from the lab to the arm.
“The light is real, but the tunnel it’s at the end of is still pretty long.”
https://unherd.com/2020/10/will-a-vaccine-cure-covid/
And talking of vaccines, this is a very interesting read on how a key component of the currently in trial Novavax vaccine comes from a rare tree in Chile.
No, algorithms and tech companies aren’t superhuman
Says Meredith Whittaker, AI researcher. Tech is powerful, but tech companies are pushing a narrative that it is too powerful and can’t be controlled, which is wrong, says Whittaker. A very good interview touching a variety of topics including the infamous Netflix movie The Social Dilemma.
Are you shifting to a Zoom Town?
The pandemic, and the associated remote work phenomenon, has made employees, and companies alike, realize that there really wasn’t much reason to endure big city traffic and pollution to continue to work effectively. Ergo, boomtime for “Zoom towns”, putting pressure on their infrastructure. How long before we start hearing of gentrification, but in interior towns?
https://www.fastcompany.com/90564796/zoom-towns-are-exploding-in-the-west
Science, FTW
Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the brilliant achievement of humanity in extracting rock sample from an asteroid that’s 200 million miles from earth.
"This was an incredible feat -- and today we've advanced both science and engineering and our prospects for future missions to study these mysterious ancient storytellers of the solar system," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in a statement. "A piece of primordial rock that has witnessed our solar system's entire history may now be ready to come home for generations of scientific discovery, and we can't wait to see what comes next."
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/20/world/nasa-asteroid-bennu-mission-updates-scn-trnd/index.html
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The lines are thin, and tempting.
Fascinating story of a company that started out on a strong privacy protection stance, and ultimately ended up becoming the tech backbone of organized crime.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m4pj/the-network-vincent-ramos-phantom-secure
Ecommerce is a great hook for…Brick and Mortar
Ecommerce was supposed to eat physical retail. It is, although the pace varies dramatically across categories. That said, while ecommerce is eating physical retail, online retailers are also increasingly doubling down on their brick and mortar initiatives. Be it smaller retailers who are setting up experience stores, or the biggies such as Alibaba/Amazon who are taking up stakes in physical retailers.
Here’s Alibaba announcing that it has doubled its stake in Chinese retailer Sun Art, one of the largest big-box chains. Alibaba already has a retail chain, “Hema”, where it extensively deploys technology inside the store. Its biggest competitor in China, JD.com, has already been investing in several physical retail chains.
https://fortune.com/2020/10/19/alibaba-sun-art-deal-ecommerce-brick-mortar/
Similar story playing out in India. Walmart-owned Flipkart is buying a$200 Mn+ stake in Aditya Birla Fashion, a fashion retailer with over 3,000 stores. While Amazon continues to fight it out with the arbitrator on their investment into one of the largest retail chains, Future Group, which is now under the Reliance Jio Retail umbrella.Turning the tables, and the tools
Law enforcement authorities have started using facial recognition tools across many cities globally. This despite their spotty efficacy. Now activists are doing the same, trying to identify cops. This is not going to end well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/technology/facial-recognition-police.html
We are all into deepfakes already; we just call them filters
With the number of filters that most camera apps offer, that question of how true a representation of the real world is a picture we take is increasingly hard to answer. And with some of these newer Photoshop neural filters, it nigh impossible!
Can you really do well by doing good?
The draw of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investing is that you can do well by doing good. By investing in companies with ethical supply chains, with positive environmental approaches and the like. How valid is this assumption though. An interesting piece (free read) that raises some questions.
At best, companies with strong ESG credentials represent a certain set of investment attributes — a “factor” similar to company size, stock momentum, or profit growth. Whether any of these factors outperform over the long run is hotly debated, but it is certain that they can suffer very long periods of underperformance.
https://www.ft.com/content/9e3e1d8b-bf9f-4d8c-baee-0b25c3113319
Founder CEO over Professional CEO?
It appears founder-led firms are outpacing CEO-led ones in market recovery. Interesting charts in this Reuters report.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-companies-founders-idUSKBN2741T0
And while at it, sample this - Tech companies now account for nearly 40% of the S&P 500. During the peak of the dotcom boom, they were at 37% in 1999.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/techs-influence-over-markets-eclipses-dot-com-bubble-peak-11602894413
Why is social media good at polarizing us?
Social media optimizes for engagement. Engagement hinges on outrage. Outrage generation is a function of highlighting niche developments in concentrated echo chambers. Algorithmic recos help build echo chambers that drive engagement. Very good read.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-social-media-is-so-good-at-polarizing-us-11603105204
Best of the rest:
The World Economic Forum report on Future of Jobs is out - http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2020.pdf
Submarines, but for transporting narcotics across the Atlantic. Apparently, it’s a thing! - https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-first-narco-submarine-caught-after-crossing-the-atlantic-11603033200
If you needed more evidence, masks work - https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/23/pandemic-data-chart-masks/
A thread of threads ripping apart a Netflix show, Emily in Paris. Hilarious must read -
I've heard the calls from my many fans and I WILL be hate-watching and livetweeting this: My qualifications: 1) I am Parisian 2) I have radioactive levels of contempt for any Anglophone béret/baguette take on France 3) I think Sex and the City 2 is the most racist film ever madeLily Collins is Emily in Paris. This sumptuous new series — from the creator of Sex and the City and Younger — premieres October 2. https://t.co/wcLX1AQQDVNetflix Queue @netflixqueue
I leave you with yet another brilliant cartoon from the New Yorker, pretty representative of the past several months of these rolling lockdowns. We have a lot to look forward to!
Stay safe, and happy reading! And if you liked the newsletter, please do share on your social networks. My DMs on Twitter are always open for any feedback.