👋 On time for your weekend: a round-up of this week’s remarkable stories at the intersection of technology, business, design, and culture. Three reads and three listens; no fluff, just stuff ⚡
We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely —E.O. Wilson
📚 Reading
Ode to software:
Creating software is some of the most work we’ve put into building almost anything, far beyond the wonders in Rome or Luxor. The International Space Station probably still leads, at around 6 billion man hours, but man, its getting close. That’s what it means to live in the Information Age. The things we build might not be as easily visible but they are the water we swim in.
Rohit Krishnan — Strange Loop Canon | 11 minutes
AI Has an Uber Problem:
It may be that, like Uber and Lyft, the overfunded AI market leaders may only be able to deliver on investors’ heated expectations by crushing all competition. That’s not betting on the wisdom of the market […] That’s betting on premature consolidation and the wisdom of a few large investors to choose a future everyone else will be forced to live in.
Tim O’Reilly — O’Reilly Radar | 7 minutes
On Curiosity:
Curiosity is a right hemispheric impulse. It connects you to the world. It is emotional, it is non logical, it is intuitive. But it also sees the whole picture […] But don't forget: the left hemisphere always denigrates the contributions of the right. Particularly as they're fuzzy, emotional, nonverbal. So following your curiosity requires faith.
Tom Morgan — A Letter a Day | 5 minutes
🎧 Listening
Politics & the Future of Tech:
It's striking how many topics that you would not think are tech topics end up being tech topics. And it's just because when the state exercises power now, it does so with technologically enabled means. And then when citizens basically resist the state or fight back against the states, they do so with technologically enabled means […] and then it turns out the things that are important in the world end up getting pulled into politics.
Marc Andreessen—The a16z Podcast | 103 minutes
Connecting through questions:
We don't spend most of our time talking to our leaders in one-on-ones. We do it talking to our colleagues or talking to clients or talking to other kinds of stakeholders. The questions we are asking or not asking in those kinds of conversations actually have a bigger impact on how the work is being done during the day, during the week, during the months and years.
Pia Lauritzen — Lancefield on the Line | 45 minutes
How human history shapes scientific inquiry:
What we came up with is the following very obvious statement that a living system is a system, a mechanism, that is able to integrate and store a past so as to be able to predict a future. If you think about it in those terms, then you start to generalize your notion of individuality because maybe a culture has that property, right? And certainly you do during your lifespan and your lineage does too, species do.
David Krakauer— Complexity Podcast | 33 minutes
🎁 Ep. 004 of It’s Just a Model
💎 Timeless
1️⃣ year ago—When Will AI Take Your Job?
2️⃣ years ago—Send in the Clowns
3️⃣ years ago—It's time to build: A New World's Fair