Zag To The Zig #52 :: Lionesses, dustmites and sharks
It’s been over 3 years since I published my book ‘Blockchain is WTF’. Quite a few of the ZTTZ readers bought it. Thanks for that, especially to the guy who insisted on paying with BTC. Appreciated.
So just to let you know that I’ll be stopping the discount program. When the book was launched, I gave owners of the book the chance to go to my site and use a unique code to claim 0,003 ETH (€2 at the time) from a rewards contract. Kind of like a discount, as a gimmick, as an exercise in making a smart contract d-app and to make people feel what it was like to interact with a blockchain.
To the people who claimed it, well done: your discount has now gone 3x. To the ones who haven’t yet claimed it, do it this week. The end is 6/6.
However, what I didn’t explicitly tell was that the transaction also included 1 GRR coin. These days, NFTs are all the rage, but back then I saw it as a fun proof-of-ownership way to say you owned my book. So, to let the fun continue - and to be optimistic about re-establishing our social lives, here’s an extra little chapter. If you can prove you own one of those GRR-coins, I’ll buy you lunch and we talk Zag To The Zig (or your favourite coins). 🤑🤑
In the Tech Basement this ‘week’
My new favourite blockchain project is Helium, a peer-to-peer network of antennas that transport IoT sensor data. Why do I like it? It uses blockchain and incentive design to reward people who install and maintain an antenna. Plus, the network is actually being used by ‘normal’ clients, for instance by a carwash. 🧼🧼
🔬🔬 One day, you, yes you, might become a thing in this Internet of Things and send data over such a network. At Columbia University they have now developed a chip, the size of a dustmite, ready to be implanted.
Sci-fi writers need to up their game. This is the story of a driverless test car that got stuck, then tried to drive away from the physical support team that came by to fix/reset it.
Last year, I wrote in a strategic trend recommendation for a tourism client: "Digitally Remote VR style stuff? It's not relevant, until there's a major tech shift, which will make adoption go much faster". Is Project Starline from Google one of those amazing breakthroughs?
If you've ever wondered about how this email *actually* reaches you, say in South Africa, then look no further. This amazing map and infographic tells you all you need to know about the physical cables that make up the internet, including the risk posed by sharks.
In the Ethics Corridor
💎💎 Trend decks always describe Gen Z/Millennials as more purpose-driven and aware, so I’m always on the lookout for consumer behaviour that actually backs that up. But this case of millennials preferring manufactured diamonds to mined ones seems to be moving the needle. Bling bling.
In a similar vain, Epicurious, the cooking recipe walhalla, has decided not to create new recipes with beef.
Boomer-comment: also note the sentence "It will be absent from our Instagram feed." 📴Very marketing-y from Signal, using the Facebook ad engine to create ads about Facebook advertising.
In the Salon
I loved this post from Toni Cowan-Brown on time and creator fatigue (scroll down past the news-y stuff to ‘No Time To Think’):
Which led me to this article with the amazing quote:
One heuristic to tell how good someone is at making decisions is by how much time they have. The busiest people are often the ones who make the worst decisions. Busy people spend a lot of time correcting poor decisions.
Now, this is a worrying potential side effect of climate change. On hot days, we are more likely to discriminate and not help people from other backgrounds.
In the Economy Room
If you're wondering why Decentralised Finance (aka DeFi) has been described as the 'killer app' for blockchain, then this might be a good DeFi-primer.
Random ZTTZ
Funny stat of the week, about men and women answering the question “which animal could you beat in a fight, unarmed”. No surprise, men are a little more optimistic about their perceived skills. Apart from when it comes to lions! 🦁🦁
🏁 End note: 1 thing I’m doing this week
I'll be upping my knowledge on Cloud. Reason: I’m hosting and moderating 2 days of the Cloud Summit on Insightz.io. So if you’re interested, do check out the 4-day program on Digital Transformation, Security,… It doesn’t come with discount tokens, but it is free.