Zag To The Zig #39 :: Popsicles, duct tape and penguin colonies - a tribute to curiosity indeed
Time flies when you’re having fun. I didn’t anticipate the ZTTZ hiatus to last that long. But honestly, I didn’t read much and thoroughly enjoyed it. JOMO over FOMO.
But now it’s time to get back up to speed with some of the interesting movements in tech and innovation. Welcome back to Zag To The Zig, my tribute to Curiosity.
In the Ethics Corridor this week
Since GDPR came into action, I’ve been a sucker for actually reading Privacy Consent boxes. Not just because I’m a bit bored of the data capturing, but also because they’re so obviously designed to fool you into giving more access. And from a UX point of view, that's just rude. 🙅♂️
Turns out that, if you implement a GDPR pop-up properly, only 9% of visitors to your website will consent to you using their data. So far for data-driven decision making.
Shout-out to the author’s company, Plausible Analytics, which is an alternative to Google Analytics. Let me know if you ever use it.A story about duct tape (sort of). This report from a hands-on experiment, run by a (female) data scientist shows how tricky and nuanced the gender bias in AI can be.
In the Economy Room
No surprise that with Covid restrictions in mind, there are efforts trying to stimulate The Local Economy. This article tells the story of the Kenyan Sarafa, a Community Inclusion Currency. The ideas of micro loans and local currencies aren’t new, but sure enough, since they started running it on blockchain (they involved the GitCoin team), it became easier to scale. 😉
Programmable money, limited to be used in local communities, instant exchange with the national currency, allowing for loans using the DAI stable coin,… - if you’re into digital money, you should read this.
In a similar vein, Bloomberg had an overview of why local currencies work and why not (and they don’t mention blockchain once).
🤝💪💸 Next is the Ownership Economy. An alumni of the famous A16Z investment fund is setting up Variant, a fund to invest into projects that have the ambition to create new business models around shared value creation. While I’m not sure about the term Ownership, I’m excited to see where this is heading.
🔍💸 Apple buying privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo is the hypothetical thesis of this article. But what is revealing is the economics behind it, i.e. Google pays Apple 7bn to be integrated as the default search engine on iOS.
In the Attic of Innovation
It’s not (just) the tech, it’s the culture, the way of working, the processes. Here’s a lovely story about how the way they work at Tesla is much more inspired by software companies than a digitised version of the way they work at car companies. While even 10 years ago, half of the employees at Tesla were software focused, incumbents like VW at that time did not have one in-house software engineer!
With the car industry levelling up to develop an Operating System for software and apps, these things matter.Quite interesting overview from consultant/advisor Simon Torrance on how he explains new digital business models to non-digital senior execs.
If you’re into BioMimicry, you’ve either bookmarked this already or you will spend several hours on this site: AskNature is a collection of tactics/actions that nature uses to fix problems.
In the Tech Basement
- What do you do for a living?
- I work for Facebook.
- How sexy.
- No, I write code for chatbots to identify how scammers and bad people behave.
This is a real Facebook department.🗝️🎤 Advanced audio tech can clone your house keys, based on the sounds it makes when you try and fit it in the lock.
Q: What’s TenCent?
A: One of the most powerful, Chinese, (tech) companies in the world
…is the simple answer.
This post (and its follow-up) digs really deep into its past, its business models,...
Random ZTTZ
Nothing to do with tech, but hey: this is the random section. This Taiwanese student art project of making popsicles from dirty sewage water was an eery visual statement.
🏁 End note: 1 thing I’ll be doing this week
I’ll be waiting for your suggestions. I told you before I’ll be curating/hosting the blockchain track/conference on the new Insightz platform. The first talk is scheduled in a few weeks, but if you want to see what we’re trying to do (and pitch your idea or wishlist), check the teaser.