Zag To The Zig #32 :: Zoom-room raters, blockchain haters & Bob Dylan covering Britney
In the Tech Basement this week
Talk about re-defining your brand in these digital times. Olivia’s, a British homeware brand, is offering design consultancy for your Virtual Interior in the Nintendo game Animal Crossing. And you thought the last story in this week’s ZTTZ was silly (do read on)?
💥 An explosive combination. 💥 Ukraine’s energy minister has tabled a proposal to allow nuclear plants to use their excess electricity to start mining cryptocurrencies. Lateral thinking, I like it.
Blockchain, schmockchain. While mainstream media and enterprises’ interest in the tech has cooled, we’ve only just started. Emin Gun Sirer (a professor, who I mainly know as a staunch critic of blockchain-optimism) is now claiming: “They’re an extinction level event.’ WTF after all ;-).
Note: he’s part of a team who’ve developed a new ‘scalable’ blockchain.With voice becoming one of the new interfaces, these fake mash-ups are scarily real. Bob Dylan singing Britney Spears? Check. Jay-Z reciting Shakespeare? Double-check.
In the Music Room
Those last 2 stories somehow made me think of this letter by Nick Cave, as an answer to a fan’s question about plagiarism.
everybody is grabbing stuff from everybody else, all the time. It’s a feeding frenzy of borrowed ideas that goes toward the advancement of rock music — the great artistic experiment of our era.
In the Ethics Corridor
Facebook has created an Independent Board to make decisions on ethical rules around content. Serious mission, with serious people (former presidents, editors of global publications,…). But quite possibly not-so-fundamental, i.e. I assume they won’t have much to say about core issues like their business model,… However, to be followed.
I’m a sucker for interconnected think-pieces like this: how the African concept of Ubuntu should be applied to ethics in AI (also a brief link to content moderation).
In the Kitchen
Diet reset. Corona is having quite an impact on the meat industry - the wholesale price for beef (in the US) is up 67%. At the same time, demand for plant-based protein foods is increasing in Asia.
In the Office
I’m getting bloody fed up of video webinars. Not because they’re not interesting, but because most people don’t even make a half-decent effort at adapting their story to the format. Yes, you, CEO of an important tech company who did a video talk with the laptop pointing up. I’m not interested in your ceiling, nor your chin/nose. 💻👃👀
See how Marcus Brown crams useful tips on better virtual keynote in under 4’30"?
In the Economy Salon
Territorial fighting. With cinemas in lockdown, Universal Studio did the previously unthinkable, i.e. release the new Trolls move online, directly to viewers. Result 1: about 95m in rental fees and less to pay to the middlemen (cinemas apparently take about 50%). Result 2: cinemas refusing to play Universal films.
Is that the Will E Coyote moment for cinemas? Not sure, but other industries, like the ad industry, are hanging over the cliff, not fully realising they are going to plunge down. Lots of interesting charts and comments from Ben Evans.
Random ZTTZ
Using tech for stuff it wasn’t meant for. This musician used TikTok to create ambient music with piano loops.
Best wishes from my living room (where the kids are asking me if they can use the iPads and my wife wants her phone back)
Using tech for stuff it *was* meant for. With all news interventions done from people’s living rooms and studies, this Twitter account rates the quality of their interiors. Bloody hilarious.