TikTok

92 results back to index

Attention Factory: The Story of TikTok and China's ByteDance by Matthew Brennan

Airbnb, AltaVista, augmented reality, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, business logic, Cambridge Analytica, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, deep learning, Didi Chuxing, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, ImageNet competition, income inequality, invisible hand, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, paypal mafia, Pearl River Delta, pre–internet, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, WeWork, Y Combinator

2019-12-12 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/furry-fandom-tiktok-gen-z-midwest-furfest-924789/ ‘Old Town Road’ proves TikTok can launch a hit song 2019-05-05 https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18296815/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-tiktok-artists-spotify-soundcloud-streams-revenue How TikTok Made “Old Town Road” Become Both A Meme And A Banger 2019-04-08 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/tiktok-lil-nas-x-old-town-road Teens Love TikTok. Silicon Valley Is Trying to Stage an Intervention 2019-11-03 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/03/technology/tiktok-facebook-youtube.html TikTok Hires Veteran YouTube Exec to Grow App in the U.S. 2019-02-08 https://medium.com/cheddar/tiktok-doubles-down-on-u-s-with-hire-of-veteran-youtube-exec-91d5bd9353d9 TikTok’s Chief Is on a Mission to Prove It’s Not a Menace 2019-11-18 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/technology/tiktok-alex-zhu-interview.html China’s ByteDance scrubs Musical.ly brand in favor of TikTok 2018-08-02 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-musically/chinas-bytedance-scrubs-musical-ly-brand-in-favor-of-tiktok-idUSKBN1KN0BW TikTok-Trump-Complaint.pdf 2020-08-24 https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7043165/TikTok-Trump-Complaint.pdf Zhang Yiming Letter to staff 2020-03-12 https://www.toutiao.com/i6803294487876469251/?

…

Use of machine learning to classify and recommend videos had been the key to unlocking the potential of both platform’s vast pools of content. TikTok cringe compilation - part 14 “Why are moms using TikTok? Why is anyone using TikTok?” 265 shouted the world’s most popular YouTuber towards the camera. Swedish gamer PewDiePie was recording his second of fifteen “TikTok Cringe Compilation” videos after the first had proved to be a hit. Each episode was ten minutes of him reacting to painfully embarrassing TikTok videos. TikTok hadn’t paid anything to PewDiePie. The A-list global internet mega-celebrity was creating video after video about TikTok because his audience loved it. This should have been the kind of authentic influencer promotion that online marketers dreamed of.

…

t=123 308 https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/14/tiktok-has-mountain-view-office-near-facebook-poaching-employees.html 309 https://therealdeal.com/2020/05/28/the-biggest-new-tenant-in-new-york-city-is-tiktok/ 310 https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7043165/TikTok-Trump-Complaint.pdf 311 Data source: Sensor Tower 312 https://turner.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-tiktok-and-understanding 313 https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-10-ways-tiktok-will-change-social-product-design 314 https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/tiktok-boom-how-exploding-social-media-app-is-going-hollywood-1293505 Epilogue “We’re looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things.” - Donald J. Trump 315 * * * 315 July 2020, the Trump re-election campaign runs anti-TikTok adverts on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, cable laying ship, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crisis actor, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, digital nomad, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, fail fast, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, geopolitical risk, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google bus, Google Chrome, GPT-3, green new deal, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low earth orbit, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, one-China policy, open economy, OpenAI, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, satellite internet, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, Solyndra, South China Sea, SpaceX Starlink, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, Susan Wojcicki, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, TSMC, Twitter Arab Spring, uber lyft, undersea cable, Unsafe at Any Speed, Valery Gerasimov, vertical integration, Wargames Reagan, Westphalian system, white picket fence, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

A guide to the rumors and the real privacy risks.” 99 Salvador Rodriguez, “TikTok insiders say social media company is tightly controlled by Chinese parent,” CNBC, June 25, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/25/tiktok-insiders-say-chinese-parent-bytedance-in-control.html. 100 Ibid. 101 Georgia Wells, Shan Li, and Liza Lin, “TikTok, Once an Oasis of Inoffensive Fun, Ventures Warily Into Politics,” Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-ventures-warily-into-politics-and-finds-complications-11594224268. 102 Wells, Li, and Lin, “TikTok, Once an Oasis of Inoffensive Fun, Ventures Warily Into Politics.” 103 Ursula Perano, “TikTok executive says app used to censor content critical of China,” Axios, November 7, 2020, https://www.axios.com/tiktok-censor-content-privacy-app-uighur-c4badd9d-a44f-4568-8cbc-af664f6bf78b.html. 104 Tanya Basu, “This girl’s TikTok “makeup” video went viral for discussing the Uighur crisis,” Technology Review, November 27, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/11/27/65030/feroza-aziz-tiktok-makeup-video-went-viral-for-discussing-the-uighur-crisis/. 105 Eva Xiao, “TikTok Users Gush About China, Hoping to Boost Views,” Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-users-gush-about-china-hoping-to-boost-views-11592386203. 106 “The TikTok War,” Stratechery, July 14, 2020, https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/. 107 Sherisse Pham, “TikTok could threaten national security, US lawmakers say,” CNN, October 25, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/25/tech/tiktok-national-security/index.html. 108 Chen Du, “Exclusive: ByteDance Cuts Domestic Engineers’ Data Access to TikTok, Other Overseas Products,” PingWest, June 7, 2020, https://en.pingwest.com/a/6875. 109 Paul Mozur, “TikTok to Withdraw From Hong Kong as Tech Giants Halt Data Requests,” New York Times, July 6, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/technology/tiktok-google-facebook-twitter-hong-kong.html. 110 Cecilia Kang, Lara Jakes, Ana Swanson, and David McCabe, “TikTok Enlists Army of Lobbyists as Suspicions Over China Ties Grow,” New York Times, July 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/technology/tiktok-washington-lobbyist.html?

…

Innovation,” Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, January 2018, https://admin.govexec.com/media/diux_chinatechnologytransferstudy_jan_2018_(1).pdf. 83 Faith Karimi and Michael Pearson, “The 13 states that still ban same-sex marriage,” CNN, February 13, 2015, https://www.cnn.com/2015/02/13/us/states-same-sex-marriage-ban/index.html. 84 “Suicide Facts,” Suicide Awareness Voices of Education, https://save.org/about-suicide/suicide-facts/. 85 Jamie Wareham, “Map Shows Where It’s Illegal to Be Gay—30 Years Since WHO Declassified Homosexuality As Disease,” Forbes, May 17, 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/jamiewareham/2020/05/17/map-shows-where-its-illegal-to-be-gay-30-years-since-who-declassified-homosexuality-as-disease/#5d42c32e578a. 86 Adam Taylor, “Ramzan Kadyrov says there are no gay men in Chechnya—and if there are any, they should move to Canada,” Washington Post, July 15, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/15/ramzan-kadyrov-says-there-are-no-gay-men-in-chechnya-and-if-there-are-any-they-should-move-to-canada/. 87 Wareham, “Map Shows Where It’s Illegal to Be Gay—30 Years Since WHO Declassified Homosexuality As Disease.” 88 Jethro Mullen and Steven Jiang, “Chinese firm buys gay dating app Grindr,” CNN, January 12, 2016, https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/12/technology/grindr-china-beijing-kunlun-tech-deal/index.html. 89 Simon Elegant, “The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name—Discreetly,” Time, January 13, 2018, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1703180,00.html. 90 Peter Moskowitz, “Grindr user ‘outed North Dakota politician in retaliation for anti-gay vote,’ ” The Guardian, April 28, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/28/north-dakota-politician-randy-boehning-outed-grindr-nude-photos. 91 Echo Wang and Carl O’Donnell, “Exclusive: Behind Grindr’s doomed hookup in China, a data misstep and scramble to make up,” Reuters, May 22, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-grindr-exclusive/exclusive-behind-grindrs-doomed-hookup-in-china-a-data-misstep-and-scramble-to-make-up-idUSKCN1SS10H. 92 Echo Wang, Alexandra Alper, and Chibuike Oguh, “Exclusive: Winning bidder for Grindr has ties to Chinese owner,” Reuters, June 2, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-grindr-m-a-sanvicente-exclusive/exclusive-winning-bidder-for-grindr-has-ties-to-chinese-owner-idUSKBN2391AI. 93 Geoffrey A. Fowler, “Is it time to delete TikTok? A guide to the rumors and the real privacy risks,” Washington Post, July 13, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/13/tiktok-privacy/. 94 Craig Chapple, “TikTok Crosses 2 Billion Downloads After Best Quarter for Any App Ever,” Sensor Tower Blog, April 29, 2020, https://sensortower.com/blog/tiktok-downloads-2-billion. 95 Fowler, “Is it time to delete TikTok? A guide to the rumors and the real privacy risks.” 96 Ibid. 97 Mike Isaac and Karen Weise, “Amazon Backtracks From Demand That Employees Delete TikTok,” New York Times, July 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/technology/tiktok-amazon-security-risk.html. 98 Fowler, “Is it time to delete TikTok?

…

A guide to the rumors and the real privacy risks.” 96 Ibid. 97 Mike Isaac and Karen Weise, “Amazon Backtracks From Demand That Employees Delete TikTok,” New York Times, July 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/technology/tiktok-amazon-security-risk.html. 98 Fowler, “Is it time to delete TikTok? A guide to the rumors and the real privacy risks.” 99 Salvador Rodriguez, “TikTok insiders say social media company is tightly controlled by Chinese parent,” CNBC, June 25, 2021, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/25/tiktok-insiders-say-chinese-parent-bytedance-in-control.html. 100 Ibid. 101 Georgia Wells, Shan Li, and Liza Lin, “TikTok, Once an Oasis of Inoffensive Fun, Ventures Warily Into Politics,” Wall Street Journal, July 8, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-ventures-warily-into-politics-and-finds-complications-11594224268. 102 Wells, Li, and Lin, “TikTok, Once an Oasis of Inoffensive Fun, Ventures Warily Into Politics.” 103 Ursula Perano, “TikTok executive says app used to censor content critical of China,” Axios, November 7, 2020, https://www.axios.com/tiktok-censor-content-privacy-app-uighur-c4badd9d-a44f-4568-8cbc-af664f6bf78b.html. 104 Tanya Basu, “This girl’s TikTok “makeup” video went viral for discussing the Uighur crisis,” Technology Review, November 27, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/11/27/65030/feroza-aziz-tiktok-makeup-video-went-viral-for-discussing-the-uighur-crisis/. 105 Eva Xiao, “TikTok Users Gush About China, Hoping to Boost Views,” Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-users-gush-about-china-hoping-to-boost-views-11592386203. 106 “The TikTok War,” Stratechery, July 14, 2020, https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/. 107 Sherisse Pham, “TikTok could threaten national security, US lawmakers say,” CNN, October 25, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/25/tech/tiktok-national-security/index.html. 108 Chen Du, “Exclusive: ByteDance Cuts Domestic Engineers’ Data Access to TikTok, Other Overseas Products,” PingWest, June 7, 2020, https://en.pingwest.com/a/6875. 109 Paul Mozur, “TikTok to Withdraw From Hong Kong as Tech Giants Halt Data Requests,” New York Times, July 6, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/technology/tiktok-google-facebook-twitter-hong-kong.html. 110 Cecilia Kang, Lara Jakes, Ana Swanson, and David McCabe, “TikTok Enlists Army of Lobbyists as Suspicions Over China Ties Grow,” New York Times, July 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/technology/tiktok-washington-lobbyist.html?

Four Battlegrounds by Paul Scharre

2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, active measures, activist lawyer, AI winter, AlphaGo, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, artificial general intelligence, ASML, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Boeing 737 MAX, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, business continuity plan, business process, carbon footprint, chief data officer, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, DALL-E, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, fake news, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of journalism, future of work, game design, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, global supply chain, GPT-3, Great Leap Forward, hive mind, hustle culture, ImageNet competition, immigration reform, income per capita, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, large language model, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, new economy, Nick Bostrom, one-China policy, Open Library, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, phenotype, post-truth, purchasing power parity, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, smart cities, smart meter, Snapchat, social software, sorting algorithm, South China Sea, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, tech worker, techlash, telemarketer, The Brussels Effect, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, TikTok, trade route, TSMC

Over time, the algorithm’s choices are refined based on user feedback, but the TikTok algorithm’s functionality is even more opaque than other platforms in which content derives from the user’s network or who the user follows. On numerous occasions, TikTok has appeared to censor political content. In June 2020, TikTok issued a public apology because “a technical glitch made it temporarily appear as if posts uploaded using #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd would receive 0 views,” according to TikTok. TikTok also had to issue an apology after it said a “human moderation error” caused it to block a user who had posted a viral video criticizing the Chinese government’s treatment of Muslims. (TikTok also briefly took down the video before reinstating it.) TikTok similarly apologized after clips of “tank man” (the unknown protestor who stood in front of a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989) was temporarily censored.

…

Reg. 31423, (June 11, 2021), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/06/11/2021-12506/protecting-americans-sensitive-data-from-foreign-adversaries. 147TikTok videos are often quirky and uplifting: Kevin Roose, “TikTok, a Chinese Video App, Brings Fun Back to Social Media,” New York Times, December 3, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/technology/tiktok-a-chinese-video-app-brings-fun-back-to-social-media.html. 147President Trump’s personal support for a proposed deal: Bobby Allyn, “TikTok Ban Averted: Trump Gives Oracle-Walmart Deal His ‘Blessing,’” Weekend Edition Sunday, September 20, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/09/20/914032065/tiktok-ban-averted-trump-gives-oracle-walmart-deal-his-blessing. 147control of the algorithm: Ben Thompson, “The TikTok War,” Stratechery (blog), July 14, 2020, https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/. 147algorithm plays a central role in shaping the content: John Herrman, “How TikTok Is Rewriting the World,” New York Times, March 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html. 147algorithm’s functionality is even more opaque than other platforms: “How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou,” TikTok, June 18, 2020, https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-videos-for-you. 147censor political content: Fergus Ryan, Danielle Cave, and Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, Mapping More of China’s Technology Giants (report no. 24/2019, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2019), https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mapping-more-chinas-tech-giants; Fergus Ryan, Audrey Fritz, and Daria Impiombato, TikTok and WeChat (report no. 37/2020, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2020), https://www.aspi.org.au/report/tiktok-wechat. 147“a technical glitch made it temporarily appear”: Vanessa Pappas and Kudzi Chikumbu, “A Message to Our Black Community,” Tiktok news release, June 1, 2020, https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/a-message-to-our-black-community. 148viral video criticizing the Chinese government’s treatment of Muslims: Brenda Goh, “TikTok Apologizes for Temporary Removal of Video on Muslims in China,” Reuters, November 27, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-tiktok-xinjiang/tiktok-apologizes-for-temporary-removal-of-video-on-muslims-in-china-idUSKBN1Y209E. 148“incorrectly partially restricted”: Yaqiu Wang, “Targeting TikTok’s Privacy Alone Misses a Larger Issue: Chinese State Control,” Human Rights Watch, January 24, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/01/24/targeting-tiktoks-privacy-alone-misses-larger-issue-chinese-state-control. 148suspicious absence of videos of Hong Kong pro-democracy: Drew Harwell and Tony Romm, “TikTok’s Beijing Roots Fuel Censorship Suspicion as It Builds a Huge U.S.

…

Reg. 31423, (June 11, 2021), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/06/11/2021-12506/protecting-americans-sensitive-data-from-foreign-adversaries. 147TikTok videos are often quirky and uplifting: Kevin Roose, “TikTok, a Chinese Video App, Brings Fun Back to Social Media,” New York Times, December 3, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/technology/tiktok-a-chinese-video-app-brings-fun-back-to-social-media.html. 147President Trump’s personal support for a proposed deal: Bobby Allyn, “TikTok Ban Averted: Trump Gives Oracle-Walmart Deal His ‘Blessing,’” Weekend Edition Sunday, September 20, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/09/20/914032065/tiktok-ban-averted-trump-gives-oracle-walmart-deal-his-blessing. 147control of the algorithm: Ben Thompson, “The TikTok War,” Stratechery (blog), July 14, 2020, https://stratechery.com/2020/the-tiktok-war/. 147algorithm plays a central role in shaping the content: John Herrman, “How TikTok Is Rewriting the World,” New York Times, March 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html. 147algorithm’s functionality is even more opaque than other platforms: “How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou,” TikTok, June 18, 2020, https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/how-tiktok-recommends-videos-for-you. 147censor political content: Fergus Ryan, Danielle Cave, and Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, Mapping More of China’s Technology Giants (report no. 24/2019, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2019), https://www.aspi.org.au/report/mapping-more-chinas-tech-giants; Fergus Ryan, Audrey Fritz, and Daria Impiombato, TikTok and WeChat (report no. 37/2020, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2020), https://www.aspi.org.au/report/tiktok-wechat. 147“a technical glitch made it temporarily appear”: Vanessa Pappas and Kudzi Chikumbu, “A Message to Our Black Community,” Tiktok news release, June 1, 2020, https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/a-message-to-our-black-community. 148viral video criticizing the Chinese government’s treatment of Muslims: Brenda Goh, “TikTok Apologizes for Temporary Removal of Video on Muslims in China,” Reuters, November 27, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bytedance-tiktok-xinjiang/tiktok-apologizes-for-temporary-removal-of-video-on-muslims-in-china-idUSKBN1Y209E. 148“incorrectly partially restricted”: Yaqiu Wang, “Targeting TikTok’s Privacy Alone Misses a Larger Issue: Chinese State Control,” Human Rights Watch, January 24, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/01/24/targeting-tiktoks-privacy-alone-misses-larger-issue-chinese-state-control. 148suspicious absence of videos of Hong Kong pro-democracy: Drew Harwell and Tony Romm, “TikTok’s Beijing Roots Fuel Censorship Suspicion as It Builds a Huge U.S.

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global by Rebecca Fannin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, call centre, cashless society, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, cloud computing, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, digital map, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, El Camino Real, electricity market, Elon Musk, fake news, family office, fear of failure, fulfillment center, glass ceiling, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, megacity, Menlo Park, money market fund, Network effects, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, QR code, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, smart transportation, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, TechCrunch disrupt, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vision Fund, warehouse automation, WeWork, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, young professional

In China, where Facebook is blocked, users spend well more than one hour daily on the app, more than the average user of Facebook or Tencent’s WeChat and Weibo. There’s also an English version, TopBuzz, with 36 million monthly users. Its short-video platform, TikTok, has surpassed 500 million monthly active users globally.10 And TikTok is ranked as one of the world’s top downloaded iPhone apps, in the top 20 league with YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and Messenger.11 TikTok got a boost internationally when its parent company bought and then merged in Musical.ly, a Chinese social video app with a large following outside China. ByteDance founder Zhang, 36, grew up in the southern province of Fujian and graduated as a software engineer from Nankai University in Tianjin.

…

That goal post got a lot closer when, in November 2017, ByteDance paid about $900 million to acquire Musical.ly, a social video app based in Shanghai with more than 200 million users worldwide. The deal combined TikTok’s AI-fed streams and monetization track record with Musical.ly’s product innovation and grasp of users’ needs and tastes in the West. The result was a multicultural DNA. After ByteDance folded the four-year-old Musical.ly into TikTok and rebranded it to a single application under the TikTok name, the app immediately gained some 30 million new users within three months. ByteDance also got inroads into Hollywood with Musical.ly and its deals with Viacom and NBCUniversal for short-form video shows.

…

A comparable Chinese video streaming site themed in comics, animation, and games, Bilibili, already went public, on Nasdaq, in 2018. Table 3-2 At a Glance: ByteDance Founder: Chinese serial entrepreneur Zhang Yiming Launched: 2012 Location: Beijing Main innovation: AI-powered apps TikTok for video and Toutiao for news Status: privately held at a $75 billion valuation, top unicorn in the world Notable: could be China’s first global internet success story Zhang is riding high with the success of TikTok. It’s actually similar to the US short-video–sharing app Vine that Twitter bought in 2012 and shut down four years after it failed to keep pace in the United States. You can bet now that Twitter wishes it had held on longer.

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination by Mark Bergen

23andMe, 4chan, An Inconvenient Truth, Andy Rubin, Anne Wojcicki, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, Burning Man, business logic, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, cloud computing, Columbine, company town, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, digital map, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, game design, gender pay gap, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Golden age of television, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, growth hacking, Haight Ashbury, immigration reform, James Bridle, John Perry Barlow, Justin.tv, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kinder Surprise, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Minecraft, mirror neurons, moral panic, move fast and break things, non-fungible token, PalmPilot, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, systems thinking, tech bro, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Walter Mischel, WikiLeaks, work culture

Instead YouTube shifted resources into Shorts, a feature for bite-sized videos. It was an obvious TikTok clone and attempt to fend off the threat it posed. Old-school YouTubers likened TikTok’s playful canvas to early YouTube, that long-gone era, where creative types could experiment and flourish. (“It’s just come out of nowhere,” Wojcicki admitted about TikTok in 2020, even though Google had previously tried to buy Musical.ly, the company that would become TikTok.) YouTube launched Shorts in India, where TikTok was banned, and started a $100 million fund bankrolling creators of these brief clips. It would sort out the business model later.

…

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT admitted about TikTok: hankschannel, “YouTube, Pandemics, Creators, and Power: An Interview with Susan Wojcicki and Hank Green,” YouTube video, May 6, 2020, 54:38, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XPXht-gyj4. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT would become TikTok: ByteDance, a tech firm based in Beijing, acquired Musical.ly in 2017 and later refashioned that company’s app as TikTok. A Google spokesperson declined to comment on its talks with Musical.ly. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Americans watched more TikTok: The study covered only Android phones. On iPhones, TikTok ranked as the most popular app in the world.

…

Of course, the main algorithmic metric for Shorts, like that for all of YouTube, remained watch time. Most signs indicated that TikTok did chip away at YouTube’s dominance. A 2021 report revealed that for the first time Americans watched more TikTok than YouTube on their phones. But thanks to its smart-TV app and streaming service, YouTube was growing enormously on television screens. YouTube’s sales team still focused on eating into TV’s market share, not TikTok’s, and its product team tinkered with ways for TV viewers to like, comment, and subscribe, making TV even more like YouTube. Besides, TikTok didn’t have stockpiles of yoga videos, bread-baking tutorials, “Let’s Play” gamers, beauty gurus, and billions of hours of toddler fodder.

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It by Azeem Azhar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Citizen Lab, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deep learning, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Diane Coyle, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, Elon Musk, emotional labour, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, GPT-3, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, lockdown, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Mitch Kapor, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, NSO Group, Ocado, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, price anchoring, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software as a service, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing machine, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, warehouse automation, winner-take-all economy, workplace surveillance , Yom Kippur War

Digital technology can help us here too. It seems fatuous to point to TikTok as an example of how people can reskill – but apps like this may well be the future of education. TikTok is rife with DIY videos – particularly in lifestyle areas like home improvement, cooking and skincare. But people with specialist interests can also find communities and continue to learn. Teachers, academics and nutritionists, for example, all have big communities on TikTok, and many use their followings to disseminate information or to correct widespread misconceptions. In June 2020, TikTok announced that it would be commissioning experts and institutions to produce educational content as part of a new trend for micro-learning.

…

Within two weeks, 2 million Koreans – about 4 per cent of the country – had opened an account. By the summer of 2019, more than 20 per cent of Koreans had done so.14 And as soon as we get to grips with one fast-moving exponential age product, another shows up. Take TikTok, a social network for funny videos. It went from an unheard-of service to the most downloaded app in the world in a matter of months. And with that growth came an unparalleled flow of sales. ByteDance, Tiktok’s parent company, reported sales of $7 billion in 2018; two years later its revenues had more than quintupled. For comparison, just five years earlier, Facebook had exceeded the same milestone of $7 billion in revenue; in its next two years, its revenues had only tripled.15 This increasing speed is the legacy of Moore’s Law.

…

People costs didn’t deliver the same levels of deflation. 7 600 million litres is 600,000 cubic metres, or a cuboid 100 metres × 100 metres × 60 metres high. 8 Al Bartlett, ‘Arithmetic, Population and Energy – a Talk by Al Bartlett’ <https://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy.html> [accessed 3 December 2020]. 9 Joanna Stern, ‘TikTok?! Clout-Chasing Millennial Learns About Memes and More’, WSJ Video, 23 January 2020 <https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-technology/tiktok-clout-chasing-millennial-learns-about-memes-and-more/3C218B25-59AA-437C-BE7A-3F215B786DDA> [accessed 30 July 2020]. 10 Of course, there are stories from antiquity that tackle this question as well. These normally tell the story of a vizier who asks to be rewarded by grains of rice placed on the squares of a chessboard.

Generations: the Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future by Jean M. Twenge

1960s counterculture, 2021 United States Capitol attack, affirmative action, airport security, An Inconvenient Truth, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, book scanning, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, critical race theory, David Brooks, delayed gratification, desegregation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, Ford Model T, future of work, gender pay gap, George Floyd, global pandemic, Gordon Gekko, green new deal, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, job automation, Kitchen Debate, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, light touch regulation, lockdown, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McJob, meta-analysis, microaggression, Neil Armstrong, new economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Thiel, QAnon, Ralph Nader, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, superstar cities, tech baron, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, TikTok, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, World Values Survey, zero-sum game

The swift pace of technological change during Gen X’ers’ lifetimes created crisp generational divides almost as soon as each device or app was introduced. Computers and email cleaved Gen X from Boomers, texting Millennials from Gen X, and TikTok Gen Z from Millennials. For the last ten years of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st, your generation often dictated how you communicated: Silents and Boomers wanted to see you in person or call you on the phone, Gen X’ers wanted to email you, Millennials wanted to text you, and Gen Z wanted to send you their resume as a TikTok video. Back in the early 2000s, before grandmothers were on Facebook, Gen X’ers saw lack of technology savvy as the unfortunate calling card of Boomers and Silents.

…

Twitter is a prime example: If it’s negative, everyone has a lot to say; if it’s positive, there are often crickets. The site is sometimes a giant complaint machine. TikTok, Gen Z’s social media of choice, seems more positive with its cool dances, but it often features dark humor. In one video, a young man sings a catchy tune about how everyone needs to do their part to help the environment—but it soon becomes clear he’s being sarcastic (“Don’t dump 2.4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico!”). Like many TikToks, it ends abruptly (with the exclamation “Metal straws!”). The message: Sure, we can all talk about what to do to help the environment, but it’s big companies that are destroying it, so what’s the point?

…

At least, it did until 2021 when the pandemic dealt a blow to work ethic and teens backed off their post-recession willingness to focus on work. Perceptions of Gen Z’s work ethic took a further hit in 2022 when the term quiet quitting (doing the minimum at work) started making the rounds, often on the Gen Z haunt TikTok. “Goal for today—500 calls?! We’re doing 50,” says a young woman in a TikTok skit on quiet quitting. “Don’t give me extra work,” she tells her boss. While it’s true that young employees were in the driver’s seat due to low unemployment and labor shortages, some pointed out that coasting at work was first publicly popularized not by Gen Z but by the “slackers” of the 1990s, Gen X.

The Revolution That Wasn't: GameStop, Reddit, and the Fleecing of Small Investors by Spencer Jakab

4chan, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, book value, buy and hold, classic study, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deal flow, democratizing finance, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, fake news, family office, financial innovation, gamification, global macro, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Gordon Gekko, Hacker News, income inequality, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, John Bogle, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, meme stock, Menlo Park, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, PalmPilot, passive investing, payment for order flow, Pershing Square Capital Management, pets.com, plutocrats, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, random walk, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Saturday Night Live, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, TikTok, Tony Hsieh, trickle-down economics, Vanguard fund, Vision Fund, WeWork, zero-sum game

MagnifyMoney, a media firm owned by LendingTree, surveyed more than fifteen hundred people in the Generation Z and millennial demographic groups in late January 2021 and found that nearly half had consulted social media in the preceding month for “investing research.” Video and images rather than boring old text seem to be the preferred medium: the largest source by far was YouTube, owned by Google, with 41 percent having consulted it. TikTok and Instagram were in second and third place, with 24 percent and 21 percent having consulted those sources, respectively. Then came Facebook groups and Twitter, with Reddit bringing up the rear at 13 percent.[13] TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, is popular with the younger side of the young cohort and had amassed nearly 7.5 billion views of videos with hashtags such as #FinTok and #investing by July 2021.[14] Influencers on the platform can make serious money no matter how good or bad their advice as long as they get views and followers.

…

A meme-loving retail-investor army putting one over on the big guys? People posting screenshots of their brokerage statements showing 5,000 percent gains and million-dollar balances? The attractive young couple with a grand total of five months’ trading experience in a raucous bull market putting up instructional TikTok videos about how they don’t have to work anymore because they only buy stocks that rise? Wall Street feels about as badly about someone walking away with millions of dollars of “its” money and crowing about it as Las Vegas does—not at all. It is why lights and sirens go off when someone hits the jackpot and the person who wins the Powerball lottery is asked to pose for reporters with a giant check.

…

Young investors were flocking to the market in record numbers and seeking out advice about what to buy on social media from people who were funny and relatable. Around the same time, a young man who made a fraction as much while exclaiming “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing” racked up half a million followers on TikTok.[2] Gill, on the other hand, knew precisely what he was talking about. He had earned a gold-plated investing credential, passing all three of the rigorous exams needed to earn the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. The average candidate spends almost one thousand hours studying for them combined, and most don’t pass either the first or the second of the three exams on their initial attempt.

Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following by Gabrielle Bluestone

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Bellingcat, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, cashless society, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, financial thriller, forensic accounting, gig economy, global pandemic, growth hacking, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Kevin Roose, lock screen, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Mason jar, Menlo Park, Multics, Naomi Klein, Netflix Prize, NetJets, Peter Thiel, placebo effect, post-truth, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Russell Brand, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, tech bro, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Vision Fund, WeWork

When I really just want to lay on the sofa with my hair in a messy bun and some sweatpants.” Maybe that’s why Blanco thinks apps like TikTok, which allows users to use technology to transform both their own images and other found material on the internet, is a more honest experience than Instagram, which revolves around the notion of stripped-bare authenticity, despite its inherently performative nature. “On Instagram, you can only post a picture or a video. TikTok lets you emulate what someone else is doing side by side, unless you use voice-over, since you can be someone else. It literally allows you to be a whole ’nother person through other apps on the internet.

…

Taylor Lorenz, "Welcome to the Era of Branded Engagements," The Atlantic, June 20, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/was-viral-proposal-staged/592141/. 15. Koh Ewe, "Influencer Licks Toilet Seat for TikTok Fame in ‘Coronavirus Challenge,’" VICE News, March 18, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dm43a/coronavirus-influencer-lick-toilet-seat-tiktok. 16. Dee LaVigne, "I Buy the Cheapest Thing on Hermes!!!," YouTube video, April 2, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1b7j4XnMfc. 17. Sophie Shohet | Fashion Beauty Lifestyle, "I Looked for the Cheapest Thing Cartier Sold... 6 *Insane* Luxury Items Under £495 | Selfridges AD," YouTube video, June 17, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?

…

Nowadays, of course, the 2009 film’s satire seems almost too subtle, given the Kardashian-Jenner-West family’s tidy conversion of their reality show’s Nielson ratings into hundreds of millions of Instagram followers and billions of dollars in direct-to-consumer sales, or the existence of a number of gated Los Angeles mansions inhabited exclusively by teenagers who can afford an entry fee of what appears to be a minimum of one million TikTok followers. Or the fact that in 2019, an eight-year-old YouTuber named Ryan Kaji made $26 million just for opening and reviewing toys12 you and I have probably never heard of. (Most of that money apparently came from a video he made about plastic eggs?? I don’t profess to understand any of it, but I’d be happy to do a collab if you’re reading this, Ryan.)

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, buy low sell high, Californian Ideology, carbon credits, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, Demis Hassabis, deplatforming, digital capitalism, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Extinction Rebellion, Fairphone, fake news, Filter Bubble, game design, gamification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haight Ashbury, hockey-stick growth, Howard Rheingold, if you build it, they will come, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megaproject, meme stock, mental accounting, Michael Milken, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mirror neurons, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), operational security, Patri Friedman, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, QAnon, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SimCity, Singularitarianism, Skinner box, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the medium is the message, theory of mind, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , working poor

., 2011). 165   The stock shot upwards : Eric Lam and Lu Wang, “Steely Meme-Stock Short Sellers Stare Down $4.5 Billion Loss,” Bloomberg , June 3, 2021, https:// www .bloomberg .com /news /articles /2021 -06 -03 /defiant -meme -stock -short -sellers -stare -down -4 -5 -billion -loss. 166   A platform like TikTok : Shelly Banjo and Shawn Wen, “A Push-Up Contest on TikTok Exposed a Great Cyber-Espionage Threat,” Bloomberg , May 13, 2021, https:// www .bloomberg .com /news /articles /2021 -05 -13 /how -tiktok -works -and -does -it -share -data -with -china. 167   “They all know the algorithms” : Taylor Lorenz, Kellen Browning, and Sheera Frenkel, “TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally,” New York Times , June 21, 2020, https:// www .nytimes .com /2020 /06 /21 /style /tiktok -trump -rally -tulsa .html. 167   formed a union : Zoe Schiffer, “Exclusive: Google Workers across the Globe Announce International Union Alliance to Hold Alphabet Accountable,” Verge , January 25, 2021, https:// www .theverge .com /2021 /1 /25 /22243138 /google -union -alphabet -workers -europe -announce -global -alliance. 167   “sometimes the boss is the best organizer” : Kate Conger, “Hundreds of Google Employees Unionize, Culminating Years of Activism,” New York Times , January 4, 2021, https:// www .nytimes .com /2021 /01 /04 /technology /google -employees -union .html. 169   an open letter about the frightening potential : Wikimedia, “Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence,” https:// en .wikipedia .org /wiki /Open _Letter _on _Artificial _Intelligence, accessed August 10, 2021. 170   “Things are getting … currently doing” : Cat Clifford, “Billionaire Tech Titan Mark Cuban on AI: ‘It Scares the S— Out of Me,’ ” CNBC , July 25, 2017, https:// www .cnbc .com /2017 /07 /25 /mark -cuban -on -ai -it -scares -me .html. 170   “Is the country going to turn” : Evan Osnos, “Doomsday Prep for the Super Rich,” New Yorker , January 22, 2017, https:// www .newyorker .com /magazine /2017 /01 /30 /doomsday -prep -for -the -super -rich. 170   Employees protested : Peter Kafka, “Google Wants out of the Creepy Military Robot Business,” Vox , March 17, 2016, https:// www .vox .com /2016 /3 /17 /11587060 /google -wants -out -of -the -creepy -military -robot -business. 170   four thousand Googlers : Kate Conger, “Google Employees Resign in Protest Against Pentagon Contract,” Gizmodo , May 14, 2018, https:// gizmodo .com /google -employees -resign -in -protest -against -pentagon -con -1825729300. 171   “the one who becomes the leader” : Associated Press, “Putin: Leader in Artificial Intelligence Will Rule World,” CNBC , September 4, 2017, https:// www .cnbc .com /2017 /09 /04 /putin -leader -in -artificial -intelligence -will -rule -world .html. 171   “I think the danger of AI” : Elon Musk Answers Your Questions!

…

The gamers found what hackers would call an “exploit,” and the traders were hoisted by their own petard, at least for a time. Technologies that were developed in large part to control human beings have instead turned out to be unleashing all sorts of chaotic energies. A platform like TikTok , for example, is at the very bleeding edge of persuasive technology design, complete with algorithmic content selection, mimetic entrainment, and surveillance features developed in China. Yet K-pop fans and other teenage prankster-activists used TikTok to organize a stunt where they ordered over a million tickets to a Trump rally—and didn’t show up. As one of the organizers explained to the New York Times , “They all know the algorithms and how they can boost videos to get where they want … The majority of people who made them deleted them after the first day because they didn’t want the Trump campaign to catch wind.

Who’s Raising the Kids?: Big Tech, Big Business, and the Lives of Children by Susan Linn

Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, benefit corporation, Big Tech, big-box store, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, British Empire, cashless society, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, delayed gratification, digital divide, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, gamification, George Floyd, Howard Zinn, impulse control, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, language acquisition, late fees, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, meta-analysis, Minecraft, neurotypical, new economy, Nicholas Carr, planned obsolescence, plant based meat, precautionary principle, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, retail therapy, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, techlash, theory of mind, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple

Platforms popular with teens and preteens, like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, teach kids to sell themselves—if not for money, then for virtual approval in the form of “likes,” “shares,” “friends,” and “followers.” As with so many of digital technology’s innovations, it’s possible for social media to play a positive role in children’s lives. Producing videos for TikTok and YouTube can be wonderfully creative. Facebook and Instagram can facilitate connections for kids who don’t fit easily into their communities’ norms. The problem is that social media sites are home to some of the worst tech industry business practices. TikTok’s infinite scroll is designed to keep users on the site indefinitely.

…

Take Meta, which also owns Instagram and has sometimes been lauded for promoting social justice movements like Me Too and Black Lives Matter.24 Yet the company has also been under fire for its long history of encouraging hate speech and perpetuating the growth of white supremacy groups.25 Within a week of George Floyd’s murder, a video claiming that his murder was faked reached 1.3 million Facebook users—mostly in groups run by avowedly white supremacists.26 To understand how the racism promoted by social networks and other popular tech platforms is linked to commercialism, we need to remember that algorithms governing what content we see and don’t see are created by people who, in addition to having their own biases, often work for huge conglomerates whose primary priority is to generate profits for their stockholders. For ad-driven social networks like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, profits depend on how much companies are willing to spend on advertising—and that depends on how successful the site is at (a) grabbing our attention and (b) holding it for as long as possible. After all, the more of us who use an ad-supported site and the longer we remain, the more exposed we are to its embedded advertising and the more lucrative the site becomes.

…

What we see next is based not on truth or social justice or what’s best for humanity, but on what’s likely to capture and hold our attention. Of course, the major social media sites are purportedly just for teens and adults, so you might think their biases or record of choosing profit over truth or accuracy would have no effect on younger children. Yet, tweens and even younger children have been using sites like YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook for years.27 Just as adults do, kids turn to social media for information about the world.28 And also as adults do, kids use social media to represent themselves to the world, including posting curated selfies and other pictures. But the “self” they present isn’t necessarily really what they really look like.

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud by Ben McKenzie, Jacob Silverman

algorithmic trading, asset allocation, bank run, barriers to entry, Ben McKenzie, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", blockchain, capital controls, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, data science, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental economics, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, housing crisis, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Jacob Silverman, Jane Street, low interest rates, Lyft, margin call, meme stock, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, offshore financial centre, operational security, payday loans, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, prediction markets, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, QR code, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, ransomware, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ross Ulbricht, Sam Bankman-Fried, Satoshi Nakamoto, Saturday Night Live, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, Steve Bannon, systems thinking, TikTok, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, uber lyft, underbanked, vertical integration, zero-sum game

At some point, we were joined by Katie, a publicist who had quickly become a friend and indispensable guide to the internal politics (and parties) of SXSW. Charles took an early opportunity to grope her butt. Katie took us to a TikTok-sponsored party at a fancy hotel. In line, Charles and Paul started worrying, a bit histrionically, that they would have to install TikTok, or a TikTok-related app, on their phones to enter the party. TikTok, of course, was Chinese. Charles asked Jacob if he had ever had TikTok on his phone. “I’m not sure. Maybe once,” said Jacob. “Well, then you’re fucked, even if you deleted it.” Eventually, through the alchemy of TV celebrity and Katie’s connections, we bypassed the line and headed upstairs.

…

Through Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, MLM members are able to expand their reach and engage with a wider social circle more efficiently than in the past. The hours-long Tupperware party of the 1950s has been replaced by a sixty-second TikTok video. When viewed through that lens, many crypto influencers appear uncannily similar to someone pushing an old-fashioned MLM. Crypto-world celebrities employ a number of social media channels, hawking this or that cryptocurrency based on technobabble “fundamentals,” rumors, misinformation, or just a sense of optimism. Twitter, YouTube, Discord, Telegram, and TikTok were essential platforms for crypto influencers, but there was almost no scrap of web real estate they didn’t touch.

…

It’s getting to the point that we, as a country, never hold white collar criminals or politicians accountable. Maybe we’re still in shock from 2016, I ventured. We were scammed by the biggest con man of them all, and our collective exhaustion was blinding us to an obvious, dangerous fraud happening right then, live on cable TV and Twitter and TikTok for all to see. Apologies if this is melodramatic, I said, but I’m a father and I’m worried about our country and the world we are leaving for our children. Sitting in the bar, I went on about how trust was breaking down, people were being manipulated in all sorts of ways. It felt like no coincidence that in the era of rampant misinformation, fraud was spreading like a virus.

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, Apple Newton, augmented reality, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, business process, call centre, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, deepfake, digital divide, digital twin, disintermediation, don't be evil, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, game design, gig economy, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Glasses, hype cycle, intermodal, Internet Archive, Internet of things, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Gruber, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Metcalfe’s law, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, non-fungible token, open economy, openstreetmap, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Planet Labs, pre–internet, QR code, recommendation engine, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, satellite internet, self-driving car, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social graph, social web, SpaceX Starlink, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, thinkpad, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, TSMC, undersea cable, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, Y2K

Then in 2019, Instagram launched its own dedicated Snapchat-like app, “Threads from Instagram,” though almost no one noticed. Facebook Gaming, the company’s Twitch competitor, launched in 2018, as did Facebook’s TikTok competitor, Lasso. Facebook Dating released in 2019, with Instagram adding a TikTok-like feature named “Reels” in 2020. Facebook’s efforts have undoubtedly curbed these services’ growth, yet each service is larger than ever and still expanding. By the end of 2021, TikTok had more than billion users and was reportedly the most visited web domain of the year, with Google and Facebook rounding out the top three. Though the top integrated virtual world platforms are mighty and fast-growing, they also represent a far smaller portion of the gaming industry than Facebook does in the social web.

…

In early August, South Korean gaming giant Krafton, maker of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (also known as PUBG) completed its IPO, the second largest in the country’s history. Krafton’s investment bankers made sure to tell would-be investors that the company would also be a global leader in the Metaverse. In the ensuing months, Chinese internet giants Alibaba and ByteDance, the parent company of the global social network TikTok, both began to register various Metaverse trademarks and acquire various VR and 3D-related start-ups. Krafton, meanwhile, committed publicly to launching a “PUBG Metaverse.” The Metaverse captured more than the imagination of techno-capitalists and sci-fi fans. Not long after Tencent publicly unveiled its vision of hyper-digital reality, the Communist Party of China (CCP) began its biggest-ever crackdown of its domestic gaming industry.

…

Or where Reddit’s stock investing forum, combined with free and easy investing via platforms such as Robinhood, would drive the rise of “You Only Live Once” trading strategies—which in turn saved companies such as GameStop and AMC Entertainment from COVID-19–driven bankruptcy. Or where 60-second-long TikTok remixes would define the Billboard charts, and with it, the soundtrack of our daily commutes. In 1950, IBM’s product planning department reportedly spent the entire year “insisting that the market would never amount to more than about eighteen computers nationwide.”16 Why? Because the department could not imagine why anyone would need such devices, except to use the software and applications IBM was developing at the time.

Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley by Atsuo Inoue

Adam Neumann (WeWork), air freight, Apple II, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, business climate, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, fixed income, game design, George Floyd, hive mind, information security, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Masayoshi Son, off grid, popular electronics, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, social distancing, SoftBank, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TikTok, Vision Fund, WeWork

In 2018, Son introduced Claure to a 35-year-old Chinese entrepreneur by the name of Zhang Yiming, the CEO of ByteDance, although Claure could not really grasp what Son meant when he described Zhang as the head of a ‘new media company’. ByteDance operated TikTok, a service where hundreds of thousands of people could record and upload video content, with the algorithm showing users those it thinks they would like to see. Users would spend all day watching videos, and the products featured in the adverts between videos were selling quite well. Son told Claure that TikTok was the future of media and e-commerce, to which his counterpart chuckled, ‘Masa, you are always dreaming.’ ‘Bytedance and TikTok, in my opinion, will be one of the world’s most valuable companies’ Marcelo recalls.

…

‘Compare this model to the New York Times website where everyone is reading the same type of news – there is an absence of personalisation. TikTok shows you the videos about the news you want to see and the news you are interested in, and the figures speak for themselves, with average viewing times for the New York Times website standing at just two minutes per day; for TikTok average viewing times are 90 minutes per day. Looking at these figures from an advertising revenue standpoint TikTok is vastly superior, underscoring the capacity of ByteDance’s algorithm to provide users with the content each and every one of them wants to see.’

…

Responding to a question put to him by Andrew Ross Sorkin (DealBook editor and CNBC presenter) at the DealBook Online Summit organised by the New York Times held on 17 November 2020 concerning his failed stake in Bitcoin, Son stated, ‘I was told to look into it, so I did, but now I don’t bother with it any more.’ He would also talk about the optimistic outlook he has for ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company), as the SoftBank Vision Fund is a major investor. Furthermore, he spoke about the extensive monetisation operation under way, stating the SoftBank Group had ‘80 billion dollars (approximately 8.32 trillion yen, inclusive of deals such as the sale of ARM, which should be concluded by March 2022) in cash in hand.

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything by Kelly Weill

4chan, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic bias, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Big Tech, bitcoin, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, cryptocurrency, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, income inequality, Internet Archive, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Society, mass immigration, medical malpractice, moral panic, off-the-grid, QAnon, recommendation engine, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, tech worker, Tesla Model S, TikTok, Timothy McVeigh, Wayback Machine, Y2K

Anti-fascist activists often work to get neo-Nazis banned from popular websites, because disrupting their online activities and kicking them off these sites makes it harder for fascist types to recruit. When the video-sharing app TikTok blocked hashtags associated with QAnon in July 2020, it removed one of the most straightforward means for Q supporters to discover and network with their peers. But while Silicon Valley giants like YouTube can curb the spread of conspiracy theories by taking away their artificial algorithmic boost, big tech firms are unlikely to deliver us, as a species, from the meaning-­ making thought processes that misfire when we craft conspiracy theories. TikTok can ban a hashtag, but it has less control over the feelings of fear and uncertainty that send us searching for alternative explanations.

…

Even when content isn’t explicitly against the law, social media companies’ moderation powers can stray into censorship under enough government pressure. TikTok, a China-based company, secretly ordered employees to censor videos about protests and political movements that opposed the Chinese government, like the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the Tibetan independence movement, according to leaked documents obtained by the Guardian in 2019. TikTok was also accused of censoring footage of then-ongoing protests in Hong Kong, a charge the company has denied. Authoritarian regimes aren’t the only ones contemplating a crackdown.

…

I Wasn’t,” Medium, May 23, 2020, https://fightfortheftr.medium.com/facebook-told-my-followersi-was-spreading-misinformation-about-government-surveillance-i-wasnt63622dd7ae56. 204 “harassment and bullying” Sam Levin, “YouTube Under Fire for Censoring Video Exposing Conspiracy Theorist Alex Jones,” Guardian, April 23, 2018, www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/23/ youtube-alex-jones-sandy-hook-media-matters-video. 204 purge in 2019 Kelly Weill, “YouTube Crackdown on Extremism Also Deleted Innocent Videos,” Daily Beast, June 6, 2019, www.thedailybeast.com/ youtube-crackdown-on-extremism-also-deleted-videos-combating-extremism. 205 accidentally flagged factual content Jay Peters, “Facebook Was Marking Legitimate News Articles about the Coronavirus as Spam Due to a Software Bug,” Verge, March 17, 2020, www.theverge.com/2020/3/17/21184445/ facebook-marking-coronavirus-posts-spam-misinformation-covid-19. 205 Ethiopia passed a law “Ethiopia: Bill Threatens Free Expression,” Human Rights Watch, December 19, 2019, www.hrw.org/news/2019/12/19/ethiopia-billthreatens-free-expression; Simon Marks, “67 Killed in Ethiopia Unrest, but Nobel-Winning Prime Minister Is Quiet,” New York Times, October 25, 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/world/africa/ethiopia-protests-prime-minister .html. 205 basis to arrest a journalist Edrine Wanyama, “Ethiopia’s New Hate Speech and Disinformation Law Weighs Heavily on Social Media Users and Internet Intermediaries,” Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa, July 22, 2020, https://cipesa.org/2020/07/ethiopias-new-hate-speechand-disinformation-law-weighs-heavily-on-social-media-users-and-internetintermediaries; “Ethiopian Journalist Yayesew Shimelis Detained Following COVID-19 Report,” Committee to Protect Journalists, April 1, 2020, https:// cpj.org/2020/04/ethiopian-journalist-yayesew-shimelis-detained-fol/. 205 leaked documents obtained by the Guardian Alex Hern, “Revealed: How TikTok Censors Videos That Do Not Please Beijing,” Guardian, September 25, 2019, www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/25/ revealed-how-tiktok-censors-videos-that-do-not-please-beijing. 206 when and where to vote “Fighting Digital Disinformation,” Warren Democrats, https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/fighting-digital-disinformation. 206 exclusive banner Kelly Weill, “Flat Earthers Call Trump’s Space Force Idea ‘Impossible,’ ” Daily Beast, August 10, 2018, https://www.thedailybeast.com/ flat-earthers-call-trumps-space-force-idea-impossible.

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All by Adrian Hon

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", 4chan, Adam Curtis, Adrian Hon, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Astronomia nova, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, bread and circuses, British Empire, buy and hold, call centre, computer vision, conceptual framework, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, David Sedaris, deep learning, delayed gratification, democratizing finance, deplatforming, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, electronic logging device, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, fake news, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, Galaxy Zoo, game design, gamification, George Floyd, gig economy, GitHub removed activity streaks, Google Glasses, Hacker News, Hans Moravec, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, job automation, jobs below the API, Johannes Kepler, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, linked data, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, LuLaRoe, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, megaproject, meme stock, meta-analysis, Minecraft, moral panic, multilevel marketing, non-fungible token, Ocado, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Parler "social media", passive income, payment for order flow, prisoner's dilemma, QAnon, QR code, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, r/findbostonbombers, replication crisis, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Coase, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, shareholder value, sharing economy, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skinner box, spinning jenny, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, warehouse robotics, Whole Earth Catalog, why are manhole covers round?, workplace surveillance

“Robinhood CEO Testimony Transcript GameStop Hearing February 18,” Rev, February 18, 2021, www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/robinhood-ceo-testimony-transcript-gamestop-hearing-february-18. 43. Katherine Rosman, “How the Case of Gabrielle Petito Galvanized the Internet,” New York Times, updated October 20, 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/style/gabby-petito-case-tiktok-social-media.html; Sarah Sloat, “TikTok Has Created a West Elm Caleb Cinematic Universe,” Wired, January 22, 2022, www.wired.com/story/tiktok-west-elm-caleb-cinematic-universe; Joseph Cox and Jason Koebler, “‘FIND THIS FUCK:’ Inside Citizen’s Dangerous Effort to Cash In on Vigilantism,” VICE, May 27, 2021, www.vice.com/en/article/y3dpyw/inside-crime-app-citizen-vigilante. 44.

…

Notably, all photos came with a public count of how many times they had been viewed or favourited. Twitter, with its all-important follower counts along with favourite and retweet counts for individual tweets, established a template for game-like competition on later social networks like Instagram and TikTok. Stack Overflow, a question-and-answer website for programmers, incentivised users to participate by awarding them reputation points and badges for answers deemed helpful by the community; today, the site is practically an essential utility for programmers, and the Stack Exchange network covers subjects as diverse as mathematics, anime, coffee, and video games.

…

Yoni Freedhoff, an associate professor of family medicine at the University of Ottawa, told the New York Times.24 The measure can be useful for understanding large populations for epidemiologic research, but it’s no good for helping individuals understand their own health: it was created using data mostly from white men, meaning it’s inaccurate for women and people of colour; it doesn’t account for muscle or bone mass; it’s bad at predicting metabolic health; and it can lead to harmful weight stigma. Though these flaws were known long before Wii Fit’s launch in 2007, the game used BMI to calculate a Wii Fit Age.25 Perversely, even when a player had a BMI in the “normal weight” range, the game still suggested they try to lower it, according to Ana Diaz at Polygon.26 TikTok is rife with funny but desperately sad jokes on how Wii Fit made players feel terrible. Thankfully, Nintendo didn’t repeat its mistake in Ring Fit Adventure, which never told me to lose weight. None of this is to diminish people’s enjoyment of exergames or the fact they’ve helped many get fit. Rather, it’s that exergames aren’t a panacea.

Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology by Adrienne Mayor

AlphaGo, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, classic study, deep learning, driverless car, Elon Musk, industrial robot, Islamic Golden Age, Jacquard loom, life extension, Menlo Park, Nick Bostrom, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, popular electronics, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, theory of mind, TikTok, Turing test

GODS AND ROBOTS Copyright © 2018 by Adrienne Mayor Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions@press.princeton.edu Published by Princeton University Press 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Control Number: 2018938106 ISBN 978-0-691-18351-0 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Editorial: Rob Tempio and Matt Rohal Production Editorial: Lauren Lepow Text Design: Chris Ferrante Jacket/Cover Design: Jason Alejandro Production: Jacquie Poirier Publicity: Julia Haav This book has been composed in Adobe Text Pro, Abolition, and Refuel Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 for my brother MARK MAYOR I sometimes wonder whether robots were invented to answer philosophers’ questions —TIK-TOK CONTENTS List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xv INTRODUCTION. Made, Not Born 1 1 The Robot and the Witch: Talos and Medea 7 2 Medea’s Cauldron of Rejuvenation 33 3 The Quest for Immortality and Eternal Youth 45 4 Beyond Nature: Enhanced Powers Borrowed from Gods and Animals 61 5 Daedalus and the Living Statues 85 6 Pygmalion’s Living Doll and Prometheus’s First Humans 105 7 Hephaestus: Divine Devices and Automata 129 8 Pandora: Beautiful, Artificial, Evil 156 9 Between Myth and History: Real Automata and Lifelike Artifices in the Ancient World 179 EPILOGUE.

…

Here and there, I point out similar themes in modern mythologies of fiction, film, and popular culture, and I draw parallels to scientific history to help illuminate the natural knowledge and prescience embedded in mythic material. Along the way, the age-old stories, some very familiar and others long forgotten, raise questions of free will, slavery, the origins of evil, man’s limits, and what it means to be human. As the evil robot Tik-Tok in John Sladek’s 1983 science-fiction novel remarks, the very idea of an automaton leads one into “deep philosophical waters,” posing questions of existence, thought, creativity, perception, and reality. In the rich trove of tales from the ancient mythic imagination, one can discern the earliest traces of the awareness that manipulating nature and replicating life might unleash a swarm of ethical and practical dilemmas, further explored in the epilogue.

…

Type III, as yet undeveloped, would possess theory of mind and the ability to anticipate others’ expectations or desires (fictional examples: Star Wars’ C-3PO, Hephaestus’s Golden Servants, the Phaeacian ships). Type IV AI of the future would possess theory of mind as well as self-awareness (fictional examples include Tik-Tok in John Sladek’s 1983 novel and Eva in the 2015 film Ex Machina). Since she is capable of deceit and persuasion, Pandora seems to fall between Types II and III. artificial life. Systems, beings, or entities that simulate natural life, natural processes; or replicate aspects of biological phenomena; human or animal artifacts brought to life.

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World by Max Fisher

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, Bellingcat, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, call centre, centre right, cloud computing, Comet Ping Pong, Computer Lib, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, dark pattern, data science, deep learning, deliberate practice, desegregation, disinformation, domesticated silver fox, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Filter Bubble, Future Shock, game design, gamification, George Floyd, growth hacking, Hacker Conference 1984, Hacker News, hive mind, illegal immigration, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Roose, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, military-industrial complex, Oklahoma City bombing, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, profit maximization, public intellectual, QAnon, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, social web, Startup school, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, TikTok, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator

But hints of the machines’ power have occasionally slipped through. TikTok, a Chinese-made app, shows each user a stream of videos selected almost entirely by algorithms. Its A.I. is so sophisticated that TikTok almost immediately attracted 80 million American users, who often use it for hours at a time, despite most of its engineers not speaking English or understanding American culture. “A machine-learning algorithm significantly responsive and accurate can pierce the veil of cultural ignorance,” the investor Eugene Wei wrote of TikTok. “Culture can be abstracted.” Or, as one engineer on YouTube’s algorithm team told the Wall Street Journal, “We don’t have to think as much.”

…

The pattern was playing out across all the major platforms, converting Americans’ fear and confusion first into softer conspiracy belief, then into full-blown QAnonism, a huge engagement booster on the platforms. Wellness channels on YouTube and fitness influencers on Instagram drifted from astrology to coronavirus conspiracies to QAnon. Facebook’s largest anti-vaccine network filled with Q dog whistles. TikTok surged with Pizzagate conspiracies. One twenty-year-old TikToker, who’d helped spark the Pizzagate resurgence, said she’d learned about it from a viral YouTube video. When Plandemic’s producers released a sequel, the video was predominantly pushed via Q pages. By the pandemic’s outset, the QAnon cause, amid its now almost impenetrably dense lore and esoterica, had sharpened around a core belief: President Trump and loyal generals were on the verge of a glorious military coup that would overturn the cabal that had orchestrated Pizzagate and that secretly dominated American life.

…

Jessie Alexander Rush, Robert Jesus Blancas, Simon Sage Ybarra, and Kenny Matthew Miksch, Case CR-21-0121-JD, March 23, 2021. 35 their groups attracted 900,000 users: “Facebook Removes Some Events Calling for Protests of Stay-at-Home Orders,” Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News, April 20, 2020. 36 But thousands remained active on the pages: See, for example: “Extremists Are Using Facebook to Organize for Civil War amid Coronavirus,” Tech Transparency Project Report, April 22, 2020. 37 QAnon belief now infused: “QAnon Booms on Facebook as Conspiracy Group Gains Mainstream Traction,” Deepa Seetharaman, Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2020. 38 Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation: Tweet by Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia), May 27, 2020. twitter.com/wiczipedia/status/1265629272988954625 39 filled with Q dog whistles: “Facebook Bans One of the Anti-Vaccine Movement’s Biggest Groups for Violating QAnon Rules,” Aatif Sulleyman, Newsweek, November 18, 2020. 40 TikTok surged with Pizzagate:“‘PizzaGate’ Conspiracy Theory Thrives Anew in the TikTok Era,” Cecilia Kang and Sheera Frenkel, New York Times, June 27, 2020. 41 That summer, ninety-seven: “Here are the QAnon Supporters Running for Congress in 2020,” Alex Kaplan, Media Matters, January 7, 2020 (updated through July 27, 2021). 42 Hunter yelled, “Justice for Floyd”: USA v.

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning by Justin E. H. Smith

3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Adrian Hon, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic management, artificial general intelligence, Big Tech, Charles Babbage, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, dark matter, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, game design, gamification, global pandemic, GPT-3, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, Jacques de Vaucanson, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kuiper Belt, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, meme stock, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, passive income, Potemkin village, printed gun, QAnon, Ray Kurzweil, Republic of Letters, Silicon Valley, Skype, strong AI, technological determinism, theory of mind, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, Turing machine, Turing test, you are the product

Since the nineteenth century, many have been captivated by the idea that mass culture—whether religion, as for Karl Marx, or popular music and movies, as for Theodor Adorno—is in some metaphorical sense an “opium.” More recently China’s delivery of TikTok to the West, with the political and cultural upheavals it has triggered, has recently been described as “revenge for the Opium Wars,” sending back, after a century and a half, a new sort of addictive drug that also threatens to exacerbate geopolitical instability.37 With TikTok and similar online platforms, the comparison of mass entertainment to opium may now be passing from metaphor into literalism. The science of addiction is revealing that the brain’s reward system works in largely the same way whether the hit it is receiving comes as true opium or as a like on Facebook.

…

New York Times, August 4, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/opinion/qanon-conspiracy-theory-arg.html 35. Lynn, “The Big Tech Extortion Racket.” 36. For an engaging analysis of this phenomenon, see Vanderbilt, You May Also Like. 37. Niall Ferguson, “TikTok Is Inane. China’s Imperial Ambition Is Not,” Bloomberg Opinion, August 9, 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-09/tiktok-is-the-superweapon-in-china-s-cultural-warfare?sref=ojq9DljU 38. Lanier, Ten Arguments. 39. Tweet from the @AliceFromQueens account, dated May 13, 2019. Chapter 2. The Ecology of the Internet 1. Farag, Zhang, and Ryu, “Dynamic Chemical Communication.” 2.

…

See Cantwell Smith, Brian sociobiology, 71 Source, The (computer network), 8 Spotify, 47–49, 164 Srinivasan, Balaji, 29 Stanley, Manfred, 6–7 Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), 35 telecommunication: among humans, 59, 83–84, 124; among plants and animals, 56–59, 73–74, 83–84 teledildonics, 164 TikTok, 50 Tinder, 21 Tormé, Mel, 47 trolley problem, 13 Trump, Donald, 44, 49 Tupi (language), 108 Turing test, 30 Turing Tumble (toy), 110–11 Twitter, 32, 53–55, 122, 155, 164 Tyson, Neil DeGrasse, 90 Uber, 45 Vaucanson, Jacques de, 98, 119, 128–30 video games, 41, 43–45, 122 virality.

The Kickstarter Handbook: Real-Life Success Stories of Artists, Inventors, and Entrepreneurs by Steinberg, Don

3D printing, crowdsourcing, fulfillment center, Kickstarter, multilevel marketing, Skype, TikTok, Y Combinator

In April 2011, New York designer/musician Rafael Atijas ran a Kickstarter campaign offering, for $150, a guitar kit that, he said, would sell online later for $215 (it did). He got 308 backers at that pledge level—his most popular level—and raised more than $65,000 after asking for only $15,000. The TikTok+LunaTik wristwatch kits were also offered on Kickstarter at early-bird prices. Backers could pledge $25 to get a TikTok that would later sell for $34.95 (2,432 people chose this reward level). Or they could pledge $50 to get a fancier LunaTik that would later sell for $69.95. That bargain got more than 5,000 backers! But what if you’re raising money to create a phone app that you plan to sell for $10 or less when it’s done?

…

He got $35. The site grew fast, evolving from a home for offbeat art ideas to a place where serious designers could test the viability of their products. In November 2010, a project to create a tripod mount for the iPhone, called Glif, attracted 5,273 backers and raised $137,417. In December 2010, the TikTok and LunaTik wristbands, which would allow a user to wear an iPod nano music player as a wristwatch, raised close to $1 million from 13,512 backers. Born as a so-crazy-it-just-might-work notion, Kickstarter was quickly becoming a breeding ground to nurture more such outlandish ideas. But even then, Kickstarter had barely shifted into second gear.

…

Tim Schafer, who smashed Kickstarter fund-raising records in March 2012 when he attracted $3.3 million in pledges for the Double Fine Adventure video game, was a known game developer who’d spent more than a decade at LucasArts creating such industry hits as Grim Fandango, Monkey Island, and Psychonauts. Scott Wilson, who in late 2010 raised $942,578 for the TikTok and LunaTik wristbands, which turn an iPod nano into a wristwatch, is a former creative director for Nike whose work has been displayed in museums. The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive, which in early 2012 drew $1.25 million in pledges for Philadelphia illustrator Rich Burlew, was set up to print books of Burlew’s existing webcomics; the passionate fan base he’d spent years developing drove his funding total to dizzying new heights every day.

It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO by Felix Gillette, John Koblin

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 13, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, business cycle, call centre, cloud computing, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, data science, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Erlich Bachman, Exxon Valdez, fake news, George Floyd, Jeff Bezos, Keith Raniere, lockdown, Menlo Park, multilevel marketing, Nelson Mandela, Netflix Prize, out of africa, payday loans, peak TV, period drama, recommendation engine, Richard Hendricks, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Durst, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, subscription business, tech billionaire, TechCrunch disrupt, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban decay, WeWork

A stuffed white owl sat on his shoulder. He looked like a rich guy visiting Burning Man for the first time. Then there was his preoccupation with TikTok. The short-form video-sharing site, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, was exploding in popularity, particularly with young people. There were viral dancing videos. Acting lessons. Fashion tutorials. Recipes. Pranks. Above all else, Kilar wanted HBO Max to have an impressive presence on TikTok. He convened one meeting after the next to discuss the topic. His idea was to hire a group of young interns to make their own videos inspired by HBO and Warner Bros. programming.

…

Facing a nearly endless list of emergencies—COVID, Black Lives Matter, programming and technical upgrades to HBO Max—Kilar devoted many hours on the initiative. “It just depends on do you think the internet is a big deal or not?” Kilar says. “I think it distills to that.” Finally, a handful of paid college interns got HBO Max up and running on TikTok. By the end of the summer, they were making videos riffing on the makeup styles of HBO’s teen drama Euphoria and getting ready for a big Halloween marketing push for the coming fall. To several staffers at WarnerMedia, the whole thing seemed like an odd priority. “We were running around saying, ‘Oh my god, there are so many things going wrong,’ ” said one staffer.

…

Among other enticements, the movie would feature Michael Gandolfini playing a teenage version of Tony Soprano, the character made famous by his father. After decades of trying to escape the confines of TV, Chase was poised to make a splash on the grand big screen. Then Kilar repurposed Chase’s work as part of Project Popcorn without so much as a heads-up phone call. There’d been time for TikTok, but no time for Chase. The Sopranos creator felt angry and burned. What he wanted was for ticket-paying customers to experience the film communally in a hushed and darkened theater. “Movie magic,” he says. “It’s that simple.” Now, AT&T has gone and jammed the return of the outsize Soprano clan back into home television sets.

Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix by Dade Hayes, Dawn Chmielewski

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Apollo 13, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Big Tech, borderless world, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate raider, COVID-19, data science, digital rights, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, George Floyd, global pandemic, Golden age of television, haute cuisine, hockey-stick growth, invention of the telephone, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, late fees, lockdown, loose coupling, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mitch Kapor, Netflix Prize, Osborne effect, performance metric, period drama, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, QR code, reality distortion field, recommendation engine, remote working, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, Steve Jobs, subscription business, tech bro, the long tail, the medium is the message, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, vertical integration, WeWork

Materially, it amounted to a rounding error, factoring little into the tech giant’s weightier deliberations about supply chains and contagion protocols. Quibi, meanwhile, had managed to raise a boatload of initial funding. Its fundamental consumer premise—“quick-bite,” short-form video on the go—suddenly seemed less viable with shelter-in-place orders in effect, though TikTok’s weedlike surge proved that people stuck at home still want to watch videos on their phones. Traditional media companies faced a more vexing conundrum. Their streaming services would still require intensive capital investments, in terms of both hiring and digital infrastructure, as well as a willingness to forgo millions in licensing revenue.

…

With this new contender, the pedigree of the founder and CEO made ripe targets for ridicule. Despite the repeated assertions that Quibi had identified an uncluttered “white space” on the entertainment map, the streaming landscape had grown crowded over the service’s three-year gestation. One notable rival, the compulsively entertaining video-sharing app TikTok, was stealing all the thunder, having surpassed 2 billion downloads around the time Quibi finally launched. “The whole hating-on-Quibi thing became such a trend on Twitter, with everyone wanting to shit on Quibi, I found myself getting defensive and hurt,” Heller said. “I got to make my show there.

…

“I actually could not be more proud that in that very short amount of time this incredible wall of entertainment—and many, many more—have agreed to be a part of it.” Here was the challenge, though: The millennial viewers Katzenberg hoped to entice with Quibi’s marquee names couldn’t have cared less. They hardly needed Quibi to connect with celebrities through the phone. Stars could readily be found in abundance elsewhere, on TikTok or Instagram. Katzenberg returned to the stage to acknowledge the difficulty of launching a subscription service without a rich catalog of familiar movies and TV shows. Quibi’s bespoke programming strategy wasn’t something it could find off-the-rack. So, it would create every piece of content from scratch, planning to launch a prodigious 175 new original shows over the course of the year—the kind of production slate associated with Netflix, though with a fraction of the streaming giant’s $13.5 billion budget.

Buy Now, Pay Later: The Extraordinary Story of Afterpay by Jonathan Shapiro, James Eyers

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Apple Newton, bank run, barriers to entry, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, book value, British Empire, clockwatching, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, delayed gratification, diversification, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, financial deregulation, George Floyd, greed is good, growth hacking, index fund, Jones Act, Kickstarter, late fees, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, managed futures, Max Levchin, meme stock, Mount Scopus, Network effects, new economy, passive investing, payday loans, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Rainbow capitalism, regulatory arbitrage, retail therapy, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, rolodex, Salesforce, short selling, short squeeze, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, tech bro, technology bubble, the payments system, TikTok, too big to fail, transaction costs, Vanguard fund

Clearpay has always supported fit for purpose regulation that recognises the diversity of the industry and desire from consumers for flexible payment options that don’t trap them in long term debt.’22 But within a fortnight, a cross-party selection of 60 members of parliament signed a letter to the council to express concerns about the sponsorship deal, urging the event organisers to provide warnings about the ‘risk this form of lending presents’.23 Meanwhile, on social media, users were documenting their love–hate relationship with buy now, pay later as it exploded across America. ‘Someone send me to afterpay rehab I need help,’ wrote one TikTok user, showing her bank account cleared out. Another appeared on her laptop, looking defiant: ‘Me using afterpay to order cloths [sic] with only 10.49 in my bank account’. To Canadian rocker Alanis Morissette’s lyrics ‘I’m broke but I’m happy’, one TikTok user displayed a list of Klarna, Quadpay and Afterpay debits on her bank account, and a Christmas tree surrounded by wrapped gifts, while a girl in another TikTok video shrieked in panic like she’d seen a cockroach, before breathing a sigh of relief: ‘When you almost submit payment with your default debit card instead of clicking the Quadpay button.’

…

Natalie Xenita, of IMG Events, which runs the week, had known Molnar from her days editing the teen magazine Girlfriend; back in the day, he had made offers for Ice Online to sponsor fashion editorials.2 ‘After the washout of 2020 there was a palpable sense of hope, relief and renewal as Molnar spoke of his commitment to the Australian fashion industry,’ Sams wrote in her AFR profile. Afterpay was also following its customers onto new social-media platforms, including TikTok, which hosted short, user-made videos. Afterpay conducted a week-long campaign engaging young Australian musicians to create sounds that, as Natasha Gillezeau wrote in The Australian Financial Review, ‘alludes to Afterpay’s payment mechanism that splits payments into four instalments through the lyrics “Pose … two, three, four, strut”.’3 And Afterpay was endearing itself to the industry by embracing philanthropic causes.

…

Chapter 15 1 The Treasury, Review of the Australian Payments System, 21 October 2020. 2 The Treasury, Payments System Review: Issues Paper, November 2020. 3 James Eyers, ‘ASIC to call out buy now, pay later “harms that we continue to see”’, The Australian Financial Review, 13 November 2020. 4 Australian Securities & Investments Commission, REP 672: Buy Now Pay Later: An Industry Update, 16 November 2020. 5 The Australian Financial Review Banking & Wealth Summit, transcript, 18 November 2020. Chapter 16 1 Lauren Sams, ‘In Vogue’. 2 Lauren Sams, ‘In Vogue’. 3 Natasha Gillezeau, ‘Afterpay underscores fashion links in TikTok campaign’, The Australian Financial Review, 2 November 2020. 4 ‘Robinhood trader “sticking it to the man”’. Reuters Now, 30 January 2021, <www.reuters.com/video/watch/idPWzc?now=true>. 5 Nicholas Reimann, ‘AOC calls Reddit-fueled GameStop frenzy similar to movement that put her in Congress’, Forbes, 30 January 2021. 6 Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), net short positions archive, <www.afm.nl>. 7 ‘Affirm: The morality of money’, The Generalist, 10 December 2020, <https://thegeneralist.substack.com/p/affirm-the-morality-of-money>. 8 Donna Fuscaldo, ‘Struggling online lender OnDeck sold to Enova International’, Forbes, 29 July 2020. 9 Jeff Kaufli, ‘Inside the billion-dollar plan to kill credit cards’, Forbes, 8 February 2021. 10 Tom Richardson, ‘PayPal flags extraordinary demand in buy now, pay later space’, The Australian Financial Review, 3 November 2020. 11 Ashwini Chandra, Some observations on US BNPL from PYPL’s 4Q20, Goldman Sachs research report, 4 February 2021. 12 Tom Beadle, ‘PayPal’s entry into “Pay in 4”: Running the scenarios’, UBS Global Research, 10 September 2020. 13 Tim Piper, BNPL: Payments giant PayPal enters ‘Pay in 4’, RBC Capital Markets report, 6 September 2020. 14 Tom Richardson, ‘Zip valuation frustrates boss after “absolutely cracking” quarter’, The Australian Financial Review, 21 January 2021. 15 Sarah Thompson, Anthony Macdonald & Tim Boyd, ‘Zip Co goes shopping for US investors, mulls second listing’, The Australian Financial Review, 7 February 2021. 16 Thea de Gallier, Harvey Day & Hannah Price, ‘Influencer: “Why I stopped working with Klarna”’, BBC, 11 February 2021. 17 HM Treasury, ‘Buy-now-pay-later products to be regulated’, 2 February 2021, <www.gov.uk/government/news/buy-now-pay-later-products-to-be-regulated>. 18 Simon English, ‘City watchdog launches clampdown on buy-now-pay-later loans’, Evening Standard, 2 February 2021. 19 Julia Kollewe & Kalyeena Makortoff, ‘Buy now pay later firms such as Klarna to face FCA regulation’, The Guardian, 3 February 2021. 20 Hans van Leeuwen & James Eyers, ‘Britain wields regulator’s rod on buy now, pay later firms’, The Australian Financial Review, 3 February 2021. 21 Danielle Wightman-Stone, ‘London Fashion Week names Clearpay as principal partner’, FashionUnited, 10 February 2021. 22 Danielle Wightman-Stone, ‘London Fashion Week names Clearpay as principal partner’. 23 Danielle Wightman-Stone, ‘MPs criticise London Fashion Week sponsorship deal with Clearpay’, FashionUnited, 22 February 2021. 24 Consumers’ Federation of Australia, ‘Joint consumer submission: Australian Finance Industry Association (AFIA) Buy Now Pay Later Code of Practice’, 6 May 2020, <http://consumersfederation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/20200506FINAL-Submission.pdf>. 25 James Eyers, ‘ASIC lashes buy now, pay later code of conduct’, The Australian Financial Review, 10 June 2020. 26 John Kehoe, ‘Responsible lending laws to be axed’, The Australian Financial Review, 24 September 2020. 27 James Eyers, ‘Consumer groups attack the new buy now, pay later code of conduct’, The Australian Financial Review, 24 February 2021. 28 James Eyers, ‘Consumer groups attack the new buy now, pay later code of conduct’.

100 Things We've Lost to the Internet by Pamela Paul

2021 United States Capitol attack, 23andMe, Big Tech, coronavirus, COVID-19, emotional labour, financial independence, Google Earth, Jaron Lanier, John Perry Barlow, Kickstarter, lock screen, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Minecraft, off-the-grid, pre–internet, QR code, QWERTY keyboard, rolodex, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, TaskRabbit, telemarketer, TikTok, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Wall-E

But retaining that sense of authenticity is particularly tough on those who’ve committed to making a living off it—the social media stars, the influencers, the online thought leaders. What may begin as a passion project can feel like a trap when it must bend to the whims of an audience. For those who depend on YouTube for income, catering to the algorithm with ever more pleasing posts can be about making a living, which ups the incentive to stay on top. On TikTok, same thing. Maria Shabalin, a TikTok influencer who had two million fans by the time she’d graduated eighth grade, told The New York Times, “There was a part of the app, like a chart that would rank the influencers. And I remember checking it and thinking: ‘Why am I not on the top? What do I have to do to get to the top?’ 

…

The corporate gatekeepers—the executive assistants, the agents, the managers, the deciders—no longer stand between you and your überboss, just as there’s no one between you and John Legend and Joe Biden, at least online. You can @ them. DM them. Publicly comment on what they say. Not much insulates them in an environment where you yourself can be a celebrity and an authority, at least for a micro–news cycle, thanks to one successful TikTok. Online, the youngs are always at least three steps ahead, and their parents, teachers, and bosses know it. The whole adult world has to defer to the students, kids, and entry-level associates for tech tips and the latest terminology. On Slack, everyone is in the same typeface; bosses and new hires commingle in millennial lowercase-speak without the slightest nod to the org chart.

…

True, not all of it is terrible, and some of it is lovely: heartwarming memories can be accessed at any time, giving them a longer tail and allowing you to bask again in a decade-old glow. You can call up a flattering email your supervisor sent you about your performance and reread it, without rummaging through a file cabinet. You can gaze deep into the eyes of your now twelve-year-old’s baby face because it’s your screensaver. You can watch a happy dance on TikTok or rewatch the final kiss scene in a favorite rom-com at the click of a mouse, and without having to sit through the entire movie. It’s all happening right now. Joy is here for us, at our fingertips. But when past, present, and future all stir together in the ether, it’s harder than ever to differentiate between what’s over and done with and what constitutes the present tense.

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, American ideology, big-box store, Cal Newport, call centre, cognitive load, collective bargaining, COVID-19, David Brooks, death from overwork, delayed gratification, do what you love, Donald Trump, financial independence, future of work, gamification, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, helicopter parent, imposter syndrome, Inbox Zero, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, late capitalism, longitudinal study, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Minecraft, move fast and break things, precariat, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, school choice, sharing economy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, TikTok, uber lyft, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Vanguard fund, work culture , working poor, workplace surveillance

“Old Economy Steve” first appeared on Reddit in 2012, pairing a 1970s high school portrait with a caption suggesting he’s now your market-loving dad who won’t shut up about how you should really start putting money into your 401k. Subsequent iterations narrativized his economic privilege: DRIVES UP FEDERAL DEFICIT FOR 30 YEARS / HANDS THE BILL TO HIS KIDS, one version of the meme exclaims; “WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE MY SUMMER JOB PAID THE TUITION” / TUITION WAS $400 says another.1 More recently, on TikTok, Gen Z popularized the phrase “OK Boomer” as a reaction to someone with an outdated, intractable, and/or bigoted point of view. It could be directed, as Taylor Lorenz pointed out in the New York Times, toward “basically any person over 30 who says something condescending about young people—and the issues they care about.”

…

I’m posting a dog walk photo to Instagram and wondering if I’ve posted too many dog photos lately. I’m making dinner while asking Alexa to play a podcast where people talk about the news I didn’t really internalize. I get into bed with the best intention of reading the book on my nightstand but wow, that’s a really funny TikTok. I check my Instagram likes on the dog photo I did indeed post. I check my email and my other email and Facebook. There’s nothing else to check, so somehow I decide it’s a good time to open my Delta app and check on my frequent flyer mile count. Oops, I ran out of book time; better set SleepCycle.

…

So they softly urge, manipulate, and command it: through notifications, but also through gamification, which use game-like elements to draw you into otherwise very un-fun activities, like following my Delta Frequent Flyer progress. These days, the phone is where most millennials do our bank account checking, Amazon ordering, ride hailing, route finding, music playing, TikTok watching, photo taking, secondhand clothes selling, recipe finding, sleeping baby monitoring, and ticket (plane, movie, bus, concert) storing. Some of those tasks can still be done off the phone, but they’re increasingly designed to be performed through an app. That’s how phones root themselves in our lives: not through one app or five, but via a whole maelstrom of assault on our attention.

Nothing But Net by Mark Mahaney

Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, Black Swan, Burning Man, buy and hold, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, financial engineering, gamification, gig economy, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), knowledge economy, lockdown, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, medical malpractice, meme stock, Network effects, PageRank, pets.com, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, stocks for the long run, subscription business, super pumped, the rule of 72, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft

I also was consistently among the earlier adopters of services and products like Gmail, Netflix streaming, Facebook, Twitter, the Kindle, Alexa devices, Google Glass, Snapchat Spectacles, the Amazon Fire Phone, Stitch Fix, Oculus Virtual Reality headsets, and Uber, partly out of a fun fascination with new services and products and partly out of a need to stay on top of my sector. Later, my four sons came to generate (not always consciously) some of my best insights into the newest social networks, like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. Analysts do a lot of odd things. Like looking for correlations in unusual places. Here’s one. My oldest son, Noah, was born on March 12, 2000, just two days after the NASDAQ peak of 5,048. Almost from the beginning, I nicknamed Noah “The Bear,” not at all realizing that his birth date marked the beginning of a multiyear bear market for tech stocks.

…

Growth companies are typically expected to be, well, growing when they stage their IPOs. Airbnb was declining. And it still pulled off a highly successful IPO. Wow! Reflects a lot of trust and hope by investors in Airbnb’s secular growth opportunity post-Covid-19. A lot. And imagine how much interest there would be were TikTok—one of the fastest-growing Internet apps of all time—to announce its IPO intentions! The Covid-19 crisis made some of these Internet companies indispensable. We needed Amazon to keep our pantries and closets stocked during the pandemic. We needed Netflix to keep us entertained and distracted. Pet adoption surged, and so did the customer count at Chewy—rising by at least 1 million per quarter for three straight quarters in 2020.

…

After all, more buyers on eBay created a bigger market for sellers, which attracted more sellers, which created a bigger market for buyers, which attracted more buyers, and so on. But a superior value proposition and better execution by Amazon blew up those network effects advantages. Facebook as a social network should be a superb beneficiary of network effects, but somehow Instagram rose up to compete with it (leading Facebook to acquire it), and so did Snap, and so did TikTok, and so will another company. Still, although their impact has often been exaggerated, there definitely is something to network effects, with a company like Uber being a good example. In any one geographic area, the more drivers there are for Uber, the greater the value of the service is for riders (e.g., shorter wait times), which begets more riders, which makes the service compelling for more drivers (e.g., shorter wait times).

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World by David Sax

Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, bread and circuses, Buckminster Fuller, Cal Newport, call centre, clean water, cognitive load, commoditize, contact tracing, contact tracing app, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fiat currency, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, indoor plumbing, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Minecraft, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Thiel, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, retail therapy, RFID, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, TikTok, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unemployed young men, urban planning, walkable city, Y2K, zero-sum game

During the past decade, as ed tech boosters pushed for a more digital future in schools, the argument was that computer-based skills were the tools that the next generation needed to succeed in the world. But what many of us saw, as our children were unleashed onto the internet all day, wasn’t the blossoming of a million Steve Jobses coding the future; it was an orgy of Fortnite and social media and watching random shit on TikTok. One day, I heard my son yapping away under the coffee table into the iPad. He said, “Ninjago pictures. Pictures! Pictures of Ninjago!” until finally the iPad gave him glamour shots of Kai, Cole, and the other plastic heroes he desired. Did his ability to figure out Siri’s integration with Google images make him more prepared for some future career?

…

Musicians livestreamed concerts from their homes, from megastars like Elton John and Alicia Keys to my friend Andrew Badali, who took his preschool music classes to Instagram and suddenly found thousands of tots around the world singing along. Selena Gomez and Amy Schumer whipped up cooking shows, while Shakespearean actors read the Bard’s great works on Zoom. Every comedian launched a podcast, while rappers played video games on Twitch and performed in the virtual reality world of Fortnite. Ballet dancers filmed TikTok videos of pirouettes on apartment balconies. Mo Willems taught kids how to draw on YouTube. Museums offered video tours of every exhibit. Erykah Badu built a massive studio in her home in Dallas and self-produced elaborate livestreamed shows, with props and costumes and special effects that transported her fans into a dimension as eccentric and beautiful as the great Badu herself.

…

Ever since Rand wrote his first play, he had been told that the future of live theater was doomed. Plays were too costly to produce, television was so good, audiences would rather stay home, and, besides, the younger generation was more interested in digital content. “Just look at how glued teens are to TikTok!” he was told. But every year Rand keeps writing plays, and more of those plays are performed for bigger and bigger audiences, mostly by teenagers for teenagers. Prior to the pandemic, Broadway was posting record ticket sales, and the boom in live performance was just as true for concerts, comedy shows, improv clubs, and sports leagues, despite limitless digital streaming alternatives.

For the Love of Autism: Stories of Love, Awareness and Acceptance on the Spectrum by Tamika Lechee Morales

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, autism spectrum disorder, Berlin Wall, COVID-19, Elon Musk, Google Hangouts, neurotypical, stem cell, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, TikTok

On her blog, The Autism Cafe, she shares the ups and downs of raising a severely autistic child while being on the autism spectrum herself. In her free time, Eileen enjoys daydreaming and road trips. Website: theautismcafe.com Email: eileen@theautismcafe.com Social Media Instagram/Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest: theautismcafe TikTok: eileen.lamb Hashtags #DearAutism #TheAutismCafe #YouAreNotAlone MY JOURNEY FROM NONSPEAKING TO DOCTORATE IN EDUCATION Dr. Kerry Magro, EdD, is an award-winning professional speaker and best-selling author, who is on the autism spectrum. “Autism can’t define me. I define autism.” “You have autism?

…

For his efforts, Kerry has been featured on NBC’s Today Show, CBS News, Inside Edition, Upworthy, and HuffPost. Kerry resides in Hoboken, New Jersey. You also can invite him to speak with your school or business via email at Kerrymagro@gmail.com. Website KerryMagro.com Social Media Facebook fan page: KerrysAutismJourney Facebook author page, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok: KerryMagro YouTube: KerrysAutismJourney Hashtag #AutismCantDefineMe DRIVING ON A SELF-DETERMINED ROUTE Andrew Arboe is the Director of Community Outreach for Planning Across the Spectrum and the Founder of Driving with Autism. You can connect with him on autism, driving, transportation, and employment through email and LinkedIn.

…

She has single-handedly pushed me just by listening to her advice. Documentaries: Sounding the Alarm, A Mother’s Courage, and Best Kept Secret. Podcasts: Autism Live, Moms Talk Autism, and Uniquely Human Email: belqui@belquistwist.com Website: www.belquistwist.com Social Media Facebook, Instagram, TikTok: belquistwist LinkedIn: Belqui Ortiz-Millili www.​linkedin​.com​/company​/belquistwist​/ Hashtag #AMothersPromise My Love Letter to My Child Connor, You have brought so much joy to my life! I am so grateful that the one day you could have chosen to leave us, you didn’t. You stayed. Ever since then and every single day, you have taught me so many lessons about how to be compassionate, patient, and loving.

Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy by Andrew Yang

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, basic income, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, blue-collar work, call centre, centre right, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, data is the new oil, data science, deepfake, disinformation, Donald Trump, facts on the ground, fake news, forensic accounting, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, medical bankruptcy, new economy, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pez dispenser, QAnon, recommendation engine, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, surveillance capitalism, systematic bias, tech billionaire, TED Talk, The Day the Music Died, the long tail, TikTok, universal basic income, winner-take-all economy, working poor

YouTube: Mansoor Iqbal, “YouTube Revenue and Usage Statistics (2020),” Business of Apps, updated Nov. 17, 2020. Twitter: Mansoor Iqbal, “Twitter Revenue and Usage Statistics (2020),” Business of Apps, updated Dec. 5, 2021. Snapchat: Mansoor Iqbal, “Snapchat Revenue and Usage Statistics (2020),” Business of Apps, updated Feb. 12, 2021. TikTok: Mansoor Iqbal, “TikTok Revenue and Usage Statistics (2021),” Business of Apps, updated Feb. 10, 2021. CHAPTER 22: THE RETURN OF FACTS At the beginning of my presidential campaign “Democratic Fundraiser in Iowa,” C-SPAN, Oct. 14, 2018. My speech cited several facts “Available Customized Tables,” U.S.

…

After the success with Sam Harris, I would often go on podcasts and pursue interviews with tech figures and business journalists, the kinds of people who spoke to a similar demographic. As time went on, we became increasingly hungry for data. Facebook offers an advertising tool—Custom Audience—where you can target ads across Facebook, Instagram, and a network of apps and sites that includes TikTok, Tinder, and Pandora. Ever notice how ads seem to follow you around the internet from site to site? This is why. If we had enough data to identify our audience, we could scale more quickly. This is particularly true using an advertising feature on Facebook called Lookalike Audience. If you have identified between one thousand and fifty thousand fans on Facebook, you can create a Lookalike Audience—that is, other Facebook users who have the same characteristics as your current audience in terms of age, gender, education, location, media habits, likes, and other factors.

…

You don’t get anything that will get you fired.” A friend who works in politics put it this way: “No one knows how we’ll reach voters in twenty years when TV ads no longer work.” They will be replaced by a patchwork of podcasts and tens of thousands of ads and influencer posts through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Clubhouse, and their successors. As people get their information and news in different ways, our politics are likely to evolve in new ways as well. When the gatekeepers go away, does that free up more oxygen in the media ecosystem for candidates like me, who don’t fit so easily into the old guard’s preconceived notions?

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, affirmative action, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, George Floyd, global pandemic, green new deal, hockey-stick growth, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, information security, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, natural language processing, offshore financial centre, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social web, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, TechCrunch disrupt, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, WikiLeaks

Respondents said that of all the options, they were most comfortable with a government mandate to unwind Facebook. The company deployed Schrage’s replacement, Nick Clegg, to bat down the idea. Clegg wrote his own op-ed in the New York Times to refute Hughes’s characterization of Facebook as a monopoly, pointing to competition from Snapchat, Twitter, and the rising threat of the Chinese short-video service TikTok. He warned, “Chopping a great American success story into bits is not something that’s going to make those problems go away.”12 Unlike Schrage, Sir Nicholas Clegg was a natural public speaker and an ambassador for the company with global leaders. The former deputy prime minister had exited British politics in defeat.

…

He had banned the Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE from selling equipment in the United States and pressured allies in Europe to reject Chinese tech and telecom equipment and services. When the opportunity arose, Zuckerberg pounced, chiming in that Facebook’s rivals in China were dangerously ascendant. Apps like TikTok and WeChat were among the top in the world, racking up more downloads in the iTunes and Android stores than most of the American competition. The spread of China’s government-sponsored tech sector threatened America’s leadership in innovation and technology, the two men agreed. The hour-long discussion ended on a genial note.

…

Once viewed as a hero hacker among college students, Zuckerberg now came off as a rich thirty-five-year-old father of two. The college students were almost a full generation younger than he. They weren’t using Facebook, a site popular with older audiences. Many were on Instagram but were increasingly spending time on Snapchat and TikTok. Georgetown was a deliberate choice. Facebook’s policy and lobbying staff wanted to find a place for Zuckerberg to deliver his speech where his words would carry intellectual and historical import. The staff wanted to do it in Washington, with Zuckerberg’s most important viewers a few miles east, at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

The Stolen Year by Anya Kamenetz

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Anthropocene, basic income, Black Lives Matter, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, Day of the Dead, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, East Village, emotional labour, ending welfare as we know it, epigenetics, food desert, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, helicopter parent, informal economy, inventory management, invisible hand, Kintsugi, labor-force participation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, medical residency, Minecraft, moral panic, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Ponzi scheme, QAnon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, rent stabilization, risk tolerance, school choice, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Thorstein Veblen, TikTok, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, War on Poverty, white flight, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

She wasn’t doing well, her mother told me. She had one friend from preschool who she would see sometimes for playdates, and otherwise it was just the two of them. She wanted her mother’s phone all the time and didn’t want to play outside. She would watch cartoons on YouTube or sometimes videos on TikTok that her mother didn’t understand and worried were inappropriate. Elisa berated herself for not spending more time reading to Serena, who showed little interest in books. My life is very rushed. I don’t have time to sit and read. I would like to sit with her and help her with her homework, help her with her classes, but I can’t.

…

It gave the world a tiny little reprieve from talking about COVID, stolen elections, or the dawn of American fascism; but it could definitely be read as an omen, if you were into that sort of thing. Jeannie’s laughter got a little more nervous when the neighbor started sending her QAnon memes on TikTok and telling her Tom Hanks was a child molester who left his wife for a porn star. And she was pretty upset when the neighbor told her the vaccine was a Trojan horse, that “Bill Gates is going to implant the mark of the beast into us.” Jeannie worried that lots of her community would feel the same way.

…

As a housing-insecure Black mother below the poverty line, she belonged to several of the demographic groups least likely to be vaccinated for COVID in the first half of 2021. Missouri was also lagging behind other states in its vaccination rate. We stopped for a snack, sitting on the balcony so we could watch a fire display spurting over the lake. Habersham passed up the soda because his football coach forbade it. His oldest brother showed me his TikTok, which featured funny memes about working at Chipotle. The baby wandered back inside through double doors; another family returned him before any of us noticed he was gone. SHOTS AND CHECKS In the spring of 2021, patches of blue sky and sunshine were peeking through the clouds that had hovered over the world for the past twelve months.

Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? by Dr. Julie Smith

Albert Einstein, COVID-19, fake news, fear of failure, meta-analysis, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, side hustle, TikTok

28: Why reducing stress is not the only answer 29: When good stress goes bad 30: Making stress work for you 31: Coping when it counts 8: On a Meaningful Life 32: The problem with ‘I just want to be happy’ 33: Working out what matters 34: How to create a life with meaning 35: Relationships 36: When to seek help References Resources Acknowledgements Spare tools Index About the Author DR JULIE SMITH has over ten years’ experience as a clinical psychologist and was the first professional to use TikTok to give insights on therapy. After running her own private practice, Julie launched her TikTok channel with the mission of making top-quality mental health education accessible to all. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her audience grew astronomically to 3 million followers as users related to the bite-sized self-help videos she was sharing and put her advice into practice. Those videos have clocked up around half a billion views across her platforms. She was named by TikTok as one of its Top 100 creators. Julie has appeared in two BBC films as well as on CBBC, Good Morning Britain, BBC Breakfast and CNN International.

Reset by Ronald J. Deibert

23andMe, active measures, air gap, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Cal Newport, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, cashless society, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, confounding variable, contact tracing, contact tracing app, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, information retrieval, information security, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megastructure, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, New Journalism, NSO Group, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-truth, proprietary trading, QAnon, ransomware, Robert Mercer, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sorting algorithm, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, techlash, technological solutionism, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, TSMC, undersea cable, unit 8200, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

At their core, social media are vehicles for the relentless collection and monetization of the personal data of their users. Social media are so overwhelming and omnipresent in our lives, it may feel like they have been with us forever. Some of you reading this may have grown up entirely within the universe of Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and TikTok and not know what it’s like to live without them. I’m among those living generations that have experienced life before and after social media. I remember standing in a long line with nothing to do but think. Not everything is social media, but social media influence everything else, so prominent and influential is the business model at their core.

…

A provocative social media post on a sensitive topic might contribute to a lower score, which can then affect an individual’s ability to get a loan, purchase luxury goods or an airline ticket, or obtain a visa to travel abroad. While the system is uneven in various ways, it’s also quickly streamlining, with industry and government agencies sharing databases of “blacklisted” individuals to more efficiently police behaviour. For example, TikTok, the massively popular video streaming app, has partnered with local authorities in some Chinese provinces to show photographs of blacklisted people in between video streams, even offering rewards for information on their whereabouts.224 In Shijiazhuang, the capital city of Hebei Province, local authorities have developed a plug-in to WeChat that displays the names and locations of nearby debt defaulters, urging users to either avoid or shame them.

…

A. (2017). “Cashless Society, Cached Data: Are Mobile Payment Systems Protecting Chinese Citizens’ Data?” Citizen Lab Research Report No. 86, University of Toronto. Retrieved from https://citizenlab.ca/2017/01/cashless-society-cached-data-mobile-payment-systems-protecting-chinese-citizens-data/ TikTok, the massively popular video streaming app: Ahmed. The messy truth. In China, facial recognition systems have been deployed almost completely in the absence of any privacy protections: Qin, A. (2020, January 21). Chinese city uses facial recognition to shame pajama wearers. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/china-pajamas-facial-recognition.html SenseTime’s database had inadvertently exposed the … data of more than five hundred million people: Tao, L. (2019, April 12).

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

barriers to entry, behavioural economics, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, classic study, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, fake news, financial independence, Girl Boss, growth hacking, hive mind, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Keith Raniere, Kickstarter, late capitalism, lockdown, loss aversion, LuLaRoe, Lyft, multilevel marketing, off-the-grid, passive income, Peoples Temple, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Ponzi scheme, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, QAnon, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, Social Justice Warrior, Stanford prison experiment, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, tech bro, the scientific method, TikTok, uber lyft, women in the workforce, Y2K

Search “MLM scam” on YouTube, and endless pages of videos like “The MLM ‘Girl Boss’ Narrative Is a Lie,” “I Filed for Bankruptcy After LuLaRoe and Now Work 2 Jobs,” and “AMWAY: The Final Straw (with Audio EVIDENCE!)—How I Quit My MLM Cult” accumulate millions of views. Anti-MLMers occupy passionate nooks of Instagram and TikTok. In 2020, TikTok banned MLM recruiters from the platform altogether. There is no shortage of incriminating evidence against the #bossbabe industrial complex. And yet MLM rhetoric is such a successful assault on the human spirit, so consistently compelling and adaptable, that these companies only continue to thrive.

…

But it quickly became clear that learning about the connections across language, power, community, and belief could legitimately help us understand what motivates people’s fanatical behaviors during this ever-restless era—a time when we find multilevel marketing scams masquerading as feminist start-ups, phony shamans ballyhooing bad health advice, online hate groups radicalizing new members, and kids sending each other literal death threats in defense of their favorite brands. Chani, the twenty-six-year-old SoulCycler, told me she once saw one teenager pull a weapon on another over the last pair of sneakers at an LA hypebeast sample sale. “The next Crusades will be not religious but consumerist,” she suggested. Uber vs. Lyft. Amazon vs. Amazon boycotters. TikTok vs. Instagram. Tara Isabella Burton put it well when she said, “If the boundaries between cult and religion are already slippery, those between religion and culture are more porous still.” The haunting, beautiful, stomach-twisting truth is that no matter how cult-phobic you fancy yourself, our participation in things is what defines us.

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups by Ali Tamaseb

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Anne Wojcicki, asset light, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, bitcoin, business intelligence, buy and hold, Chris Wanstrath, clean water, cloud computing, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, discounted cash flows, diversified portfolio, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, game design, General Magic , gig economy, high net worth, hiring and firing, index fund, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, late fees, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Mitch Kapor, natural language processing, Network effects, nuclear winter, PageRank, PalmPilot, Parker Conrad, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, power law, QR code, Recombinant DNA, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, rolodex, Ruby on Rails, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, survivorship bias, TaskRabbit, telepresence, the payments system, TikTok, Tony Fadell, Tony Hsieh, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, web application, WeWork, work culture , Y Combinator

The success of TripAdvisor also made it easier for CarGurus to attract talent and funding, which may have helped Steinert succeed as a solo founder. CarGurus had an IPO in 2017 that valued the company at $1.5 billion. Similar patterns are also found outside the United States. ByteDance, one of the highest-valued privately-owned startups in the world at the time of writing this book and the famous Chinese company behind the video-sharing app TikTok and the content-aggregation platform Toutiao, was started by a solo founder, Zhang Yiming. Ric Fulop didn’t have a single co-founder when he started Desktop Metal—he had six of them. Desktop Metal pioneered the field of additive manufacturing. Its 3D printers print objects from metal powder, a useful process for prototyping or testing metal parts before machining them in high volumes.

…

Founders are regularly told to build a product that addresses a real need. The problem is, no founder has ever thought that their product isn’t solving a real need. All startups position their product as a solution to a problem, and many founders would rather believe that the problem they’re solving is in need of a painkiller. So how were products like Snapchat and TikTok, arguably vitamin pills, so successful? Let’s first understand the differences in these approaches. One strategy is to go after well-defined and deeply annoying pain points felt by customers. Another is to improve on the way something is done, giving customers better value, efficiency, entertainment, or joy.

…

Still, BuzzFeed became wildly popular in a short amount of time. It saw huge traffic surges from readers, and it monetized their patronage by featuring sponsored posts from advertisers. BuzzFeed’s audience spent more than a hundred million hours each month consuming its content, earning BuzzFeed over $100 million in revenues.2 TikTok—a Chinese video-sharing social network that is used to create short and viral lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos—is similarly an example of a vitamin-pill product that has captured audiences and created fans globally. There’s a huge difference between the painkiller and the vitamin-pill approach.

The Capitalist Manifesto by Johan Norberg

AltaVista, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Boris Johnson, business climate, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crony capitalism, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, export processing zone, failed state, Filter Bubble, friendshoring, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, Google Glasses, Greta Thunberg, Gunnar Myrdal, Hans Rosling, Hernando de Soto, Howard Zinn, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, Indoor air pollution, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, lockdown, low cost airline, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, Minecraft, multiplanetary species, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, open economy, passive income, Paul Graham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, planned obsolescence, precariat, profit motive, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, rent control, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sam Bankman-Fried, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Snapchat, social distancing, social intelligence, South China Sea, Stephen Fry, Steve Jobs, tech billionaire, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, Virgin Galactic, Washington Consensus, working-age population, World Values Survey, X Prize, you are the product, zero-sum game

In terms of video streaming and food delivery, the leading company has lost more than a quarter of the market.34 This is partly because of relative newcomers. During the pandemic, we were all on Zoom rather than established companies’ video services. Snapchat and TikTok suddenly made the old social media look rheumatic. Despite it being said that no new arrivals can upset reinforced incumbents, TikTok reached one billion users in just four years – half the time it took Facebook to do the same. Salesforce is becoming increasingly aggressive in cloud services, and in five years Canada’s Shopify has gone from one-seventieth of US e-commerce to one-tenth.

…

., 141 Obama, Barack, 147, 152, 165 Oculus, 177 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), 147, 249–50 Open (Norberg), 297 Our World in Data, 18, 250, 268, 270 Oxfam, 4, 43, 133–4 ozone layer, 236 Pakistan, 219 Palm, 174 Paraguay, 239 Paris, France, 66–7 Paris Climate Agreement, 233 Parks, Rosa, 62–3 Paulsen, Roland, 98 PayPal, 178 Peru, 29–30 Pfizer, 177 Philippines, 248 Piketty, Thomas, 127–31 Pinochet, Augusto, 29, 46 ‘planned obsolescence’, 156–60 Poland, 26 populism, 47–8 pornography, 188–9 Portugal, 26–7, 254 poverty, 12, 17–25, 20, 29–33, 53–4, 110, 291–2 in China, 213, 214 climate change and, 235–6, 245 inequality and, 133–7 Prasad, Chandra Bhan, 64 prices, 67–9 price regulation, 68 profit, 74, 122–4 profit-hunger, 273–5 property rights, 70–72 protectionism, 3, 5, 11–12, 78–9, 115, 117–18 Putin, Vladimir, 5, 39 Quaero, 191–2 Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117 Quartz, Steven, 287 Questioning the Entrepreneurial State, 198 racial segregation, 62–3 racism, 62–3, 111 Radelet, Steven, 24 RAND Corporation, 184, 186 Rao, Madhusudan, 63 Reagan, Ronald, 8–10 Rehbinder, Caspian, 269–70 religion, 26–7 Republican Party (US), 8–9 Ridley, Matt, 188 Ritchie, Hannah, 250, 270 Romer, Paul, 241 Romney, Mitt, 165 Roser, Max, 18 Rosling, Hans, 18 Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban, 148–9 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 279, 284 Rubio, Marco, 181 Rü ck, Christian, 272 Russia, 39, 138 see also Soviet Union Rwanda, 35 Samuelson, Paul, 5 Sanders, Bernie, 43, 122 Sandström, Christian, 183, 240 Scandinavia, 22, 36, 281 Schröer, Gerhard, 191 Schumpeter, Joseph, 89 Segerfeldt, Fredrik, 137 Shah, Parth, 25 Shambaugh, David, 215 Shanghai, China, 209 Shelby, Richard, 202–3 Shopify, 178 Silicon Valley, 141 Singapore, 23, 84 Singh, Manmohan, 25 Sixdegrees, 170 slavery, 31, 73, 75 Smith, Adam, 213, 264 smoking, 137 Snapchat, 178 Soave, Robby, 171 social class, 137 middle class erosion, 93–5, 95 working class, 7 social media, 155, 163, 165–9 social mobility, 90–91 social networks, 169–71 socialism, 11, 44, 75, 120–21, 145 three steps of socialism, 44–5 Swiss bank socialism, 33 Socrates, 65 Son of a Servant, The (Strindberg), 120–21 Sony, 151 South Africa, 45–6, 72, 267 South Korea, 23–5, 84, 225 Soviet Union, 26, 215, 219, 241–2 see also Russia Sowell, Thomas, 62 space programme, 181–3, 191, 201–2 moon landing, 181–3, 191, 201–2 Space Launch System (SLS), 202 SpaceX, 202 Spain, 26, 27, 97 Spanish flu pandemic, 1918, 77 Starbucks, 75–6, 148 Stephens-Davidowitz, Seth, 155 Strain, Michael, 94 Strindberg, August, 120 subsidies, 139–40 suicide, 271 sulphur dioxide, 236 supply and demand, 67–9 supply chains see global supply chains Svensson, Mattias, 256 Sweden, 49–51, 54–5, 66, 75–8, 91, 240, 244–5, 251, 266, 268–9, 271, 285 Swedish Energy Agency, 194 Swiss bank socialism, 33 Switzerland, 285 Taiwan, 23–5, 205, 207, 225, 267 Taliban, 160–61 Tanzania, 239 Target, 178 taxation, 56, 259 tax deductions, 141, 148 Taylor, Robert, 184–6 tech companies, 162–79 competition, 178–80 data, 175–6 GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft), 169–80 regulations, 164, 174–5 Tech Panic (Soave), 171 Technology Pork Barrel, The (Cohen and Noll), 190 technology, 40–41 Thanks a Thousand (Jacobs), 60 Thatcher, Margaret, 8–11, 116 Theranos, 153 Thoreau, Henry David, 82 Thunberg, Greta, 230, 232 TikTok, 178 Times, The, 116 traditions, 26–7 Trotsky, Leon, 73 Trump, Donald, 6, 8, 48, 83, 107, 140, 165, 217 Truss, Liz, 9, 11, 56, 117 trust, 153–6 Turkmenistan, 225 Twitter, 166–7 Uber, 102 Uganda, 35 Ukraine, 5, 215 United Kingdom, 10, 22–3, 38, 49, 97, 101, 268–9, 283 Brexit, 116–17 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 233, 239 United States, 22, 55, 62–3, 80, 85, 97, 110–11, 239, 267–8, 282 China and, 205, 211, 221 crony capitalism, 139–40 ‘deaths of despair’, 7, 108–10, 136, 271, 293 Defense Communication Agency, 187 Jim Crow laws, 63 labour market, 85, 87–93, 101, 104–11 political polarization, 167 productivity growth, 148–9, 152–3 welfare state, 111–14 US–China Business Council, 210 Vance, J.

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back by Bruce Schneier

4chan, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Automated Insights, banking crisis, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Brian Krebs, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, computerized trading, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, dark pattern, deepfake, defense in depth, disinformation, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, driverless car, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, fake news, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, first-past-the-post, Flash crash, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, late capitalism, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, money market fund, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, payday loans, Peter Thiel, precautionary principle, Ralph Nader, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Skype, smart cities, SoftBank, supply chain finance, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, union organizing, web application, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, WikiLeaks, zero day

HACKING TO DESTRUCTION 172he formed a syndicate: Andy Williamson (16 May 2013), “How Voltaire made a fortune rigging the lottery,” Today I Found Out, http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/05/how-voiltaire-made-a-fortune-rigging-the-lottery. 173automatically submitted fake reports: Janus Rose (8 May 2020), “This script sends junk data to Ohio’s website for snitching on workers,” Vice, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxqemy/this-script-sends-junk-data-to-ohios-website-for-snitching-on-workers. 173fake ticket requests: Taylor Lorenz, Kellen Browning, and Sheera Frenkel (21 Jun 2020), “TikTok teens and K-Pop stans say they sank Trump rally,” New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/style/tiktok-trump-rally-tulsa.html. 174Zimbabwe experienced hyperinflation: Janet Koech (2012), “Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe,” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute 2011 Annual Report, https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/institute/annual/2011/annual11b.pdf. 174In Venezuela, hyperinflation began: Patricia Laya and Fabiola Zerpa (5 Oct 2020), “Venezuela mulls 100,000 Bolivar bill.

…

This isn’t necessarily true when the hackers are following some moral or ethical precept. They’re hacking the system because they don’t like the system, not because they want to profit from it. Like the Ohio unemployment website hacker, their goal is to reduce its functionality, undermine its efficacy, or destroy it. We saw another example of this in 2020, when TikTok users coordinated to submit fake ticket requests to a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa, in order to engineer an arena full of no-shows. It was a basic hack, exploiting the fact that all it took to reserve a ticket was an easily obtained dummy email address and a dummy phone number care of Google Voice.

Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell

air gap, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bike sharing, Bill Atkinson, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, do what you love, Elon Musk, fail fast, follow your passion, General Magic , Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, hiring and firing, HyperCard, imposter syndrome, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kanban, Kickstarter, Mary Meeker, microplastics / micro fibres, new economy, pets.com, QR code, QWERTY keyboard, rolodex, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, synthetic biology, TED Talk, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Tony Fadell, Y Combinator

Upswings will inevitably turn into downswings. And you want to leave when things are going well, when you can hand the company over proudly to the next CEO, not throw it to them in a panic as you get cut loose by the board. As we’re writing this, Zhang Yiming, the founder and CEO of ByteDance, the creators of TikTok, announced that he’s resigning. TikTok has never been more popular. Zhang is experiencing a high that few CEOs ever reach. But he can see a change coming. And in this case, it’s internal. He just doesn’t want the job. It doesn’t suit him. “The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager,” he said.

…

It can take a long, long time, but usually their opinions begin to lose their power and they fade away. But not always. Sometimes, even if they’re chased out of the organization, they can still screw you over. So always keep an eye on social media. Don’t just watch for internal rumblings; remember to check Glassdoor, Facebook, Twitter, Medium, LinkedIn, hell—even Quora. TikTok. Whatever. Pissed-off people will poison the water anywhere. Social media is a new weapon in every asshole’s arsenal. If they fail to get what they want from you at work, they can make things very, very personal very, very publicly. This is always problematic and incredibly unpleasant, but if they’re controlling assholes or just your regular, run-of-the-mill asshole-assholes, they’ll probably undermine themselves and the truth will come out eventually.

…

See also Facebook; Twitter Soloway, Elliot, 2 Sony, 117, 121, 209 Sony Magic Link launch of, 12–13, 12, 31, 139–40 MagicBus for, 24 target customer of, 15, 35–36, 58 Square, 250 startups angel investors, 192 board of directors and, 183, 184, 218–19, 223, 335, 338–39 building blocks of, 181–82 cofounders and, 180, 183, 184, 186 compensation and, 184–85 crisis and, 206, 207, 208, 209, 218–24 design challenges, 264 employees and, 183–84 equity packages and, 184–85 evolution of, 236 failure rate of, 199 founding team of, 180, 183, 184–85, 197–98, 366 implementation plan, 172 investors and, 169, 181, 184, 189–200 key teams and competencies of, 227 mentors for, 180, 183, 184, 185–86, 194, 218, 223 perks and, 356, 359 prioritizing and, 206–7, 210 readiness for, 180–88 seed crystals, 180, 185 spotting ideas, 169, 171–79, 180, 182 storytelling and, 184, 196–97 stress of, 169, 183, 200 target customer of, 201–5 virtual reality and, 15 vision and, 184 work/life balance and, 206–17 Stebbings, Harry, 22–23 storytelling analogies for, 112–14 decisions and, 63–64 design and, 264–65, 266 empathy and, 111–12 ideas and, 172, 174, 177–78 marketing and, 270, 271, 273–74, 278–79, 278, 285, 286, 290 products and, 107–14, 266, 270, 271, 273, 278, 286, 288 quitting and, 83–84, 235 startups and, 184, 196–97 strategies to deal with assholes and, 74–75 vision and, 63–64, 107, 112 Stripe, 250 Surface products, 124 Swatch, 332 Tamaseb, Ali, Super Founder, 181 Tannenbaum, Harry, 55 Target, 160 teams assistant for, 216 birthday celebrations and, 242–43 breakpoints, 242–60, 283 brown-bag lunches with the CEO, 237 building of, 225–27, 229, 239, 240–41 CEO expectations and, 323–25 crisis and, 218–22, 224, 259 culture of, 229, 234, 236–38, 255, 257–60 decisions and, 57, 61 design thinking and, 261–69 diversity of perspectives on, 231–32 firing people and, 229, 238–40 founding team for business, 180, 183, 184–85, 197–98, 366 hiring process, 229–41 human resource topics at meetings, 240, 241 individual contributor’s perspective, 32–33 integration of new employees, 236–37 internal customers, 233, 325 interview process, 229, 232–36 key teams and competencies, 227 leadership of, 37–41, 45, 46, 247 management of, 41, 43–44, 46, 49–56, 242, 244, 245, 247, 249–50, 331 marketing teams, 270–80 meetings of, 50–51, 240, 241, 253–55 mentoring within, 230, 240, 256–57 multigenerational teams, 229, 230–31 1:1s with, 43, 50–51, 55, 238, 252, 259, 342 organizational design and, 250–51, 258 positive micromanagement and, 236–37 predictability for, 149 product managers and, 230, 270, 273, 281–91 recruiters and, 234, 255–56 rhythms of, 138, 139, 143–46 seed crystals and, 232 size of, 46, 141–43, 242, 243–49, 244, 245, 246, 260, 283 team leads, 47–48, 249 Three Crowns method of hiring, 233 training for, 229, 230, 258 trust of, 45, 48, 49, 51, 128, 233–34 version one product team, 128 version two product team, 128 work process of, 49–50 TeleScript, 15 term sheets, 194 Tesla, 119, 123, 157 Thread, 310 TikTok, 369 Tim Ferris Show podcast, 51n TiVo, 40, 88 Tolstoy, Leo, 336 trust of assholes, 65, 67, 68, 69 in companies, 41, 77, 80 of decisions, 57, 59, 61, 62, 64 of heroes, 25, 27 investors and, 190 of leadership, 62, 64, 330 marketing and, 276 in mentors, xii sales and, 294 of teams, 45, 48, 49, 51, 128, 233–34 Twilio, 250 Twitter, 21, 22, 73, 160, 205, 297 Uber, 16, 156 USB devices, 10, 24 venture capital (VC) firms, 90, 156, 164, 189–99, 200 Verily, 314 virtual reality (VR), startups failing at, 15 virus of doubt, 109, 278 vision of CEOs, 334, 339 for companies, 14, 15, 19, 248, 254 decisions and, 57, 126, 135 disruption and, 119 for ideas, 178 for leadership, 18 for product development, xvii, 1–2, 16, 41, 60, 132, 133, 134, 135 startups and, 184 storytelling and, 63–64, 107, 112 for version one products, 126, 136, 137, 142 for version two products, 127–28, 134 Walmart, 160 Waze, 352 West, Kanye, 311 WhatsApp, 156 Wolf of Wall Street, The (film), 296 work/life balance adjustments in, 11 crisis and, 208, 209, 221, 223–24 eating habits, 215 engineering your schedule, 206, 208, 212, 214–15, 216 exercise and, 215 hiring an assistant, 215–17 prioritizing and, 206–7, 210, 211, 212 scheduling and, 214 sleeping, 213, 221 taking breaks, 212, 214, 217 taking notes and, 210–12 types of, 206 vacations and, 207–8, 212–13, 214 Yahoo, 18, 358–59 Yiming, Zhang, 369 YouTube, 21, 156, 352 Sustainability Information This book is as green as we could make it.

The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health--And How We Must Adapt by Sinan Aral

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, AOL-Time Warner, augmented reality, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, death of newspapers, deep learning, deepfake, digital divide, digital nomad, disinformation, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental subject, facts on the ground, fake news, Filter Bubble, George Floyd, global pandemic, hive mind, illegal immigration, income inequality, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lockdown, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Metcalfe’s law, mobile money, move fast and break things, multi-sided market, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, performance metric, phenotype, recommendation engine, Robert Bork, Robert Shiller, Russian election interference, Second Machine Age, seminal paper, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, skunkworks, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social intelligence, social software, social web, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, WikiLeaks, work culture , Yogi Berra

The social platforms addressed the economic fallout from the pandemic as well. Small businesses used their Facebook pages to sell online. Live videocasts were hosted across social media to replace in-store events that usually generate foot traffic and boost sales. Stage shows were produced and aired over Instagram Stories and TikTok. Yoga classes, guitar lessons, and hairstylist sessions all transitioned to the Hype Machine. Facebook even set up a $100 million small-business relief fund to dole out no-strings-attached cash grants to keep small businesses afloat. These projects were just beginning as I finished this book.

…

But he was supportive nonetheless, and I wrote my PhD thesis on how information flows through digital social networks. As it turned out, social networking wasn’t a phase, and it didn’t pass. Friendster was founded in 2002, MySpace in 2003, Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006, WhatsApp in 2009, Instagram in 2010, WeChat in 2011, and TikTok in 2012. The New Social Age was born, and I’ve been studying it ever since. My scientific work is firmly rooted both in my deep admiration for technology and in a healthy skepticism about how it is put to use. I’m convinced we are witnessing a new era of human evolution, one in which mass automated, digitized socialization will change the way we interact, communicate, perceive our world, decide, and act.

…

To grow their own businesses, new platforms like Google initially underpriced their attention. So Gary Vee invested his marketing dollars in Google. As it became established, the price of Google’s attention increased, and even newer services, like Twitter and YouTube, came online. So when their price of attention was lower, Gary poured his money into those platforms. Now he’s touting TikTok as the next attention gold rush. He says he has no particular affinity for any channel—he’s “platform agnostic.” He simply engages in attention arbitrage. “I’ve built a career on exploiting underpriced attention. Email marketing in ’97, Google AdWords in 2000, YouTube in ’06, Twitter ’07, Snapchat,” he says.

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, anti-communist, anti-globalists, autism spectrum disorder, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, Boycotts of Israel, Cambridge Analytica, capitalist realism, ChatGPT, citizen journalism, Climategate, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, critical race theory, dark matter, deep learning, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, feminist movement, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hive mind, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Jeffrey Epstein, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, lab leak, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, neurotypical, new economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, phenotype, profit motive, QAnon, QR code, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Rosa Parks, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, shared worldview, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce

Peters had written that individuals now had the same need for visibility as major corporations, which are able to purchase “a full flight of TV and print ads designed to get billions of ‘impressions’ … If you’re brand You, you’ve got the same need for visibility—but no budget to buy it.” Well, exactly: normal humans don’t have ad budgets, which is why the whole concept seemed absurd to our 1990s brains. This was, remember, well before Facebook, let alone TikTok or Substack. Even reality television wasn’t yet up and running to pick wannabe celebrities out of obscurity. In short, the idea of personal branding began as a ruse—a transparent sop being pitched in lieu of actual jobs or a stable income by companies and their management consultants, drunk on the cost savings and stock-price inflation born of sweeping downsizing and outsourcing.

…

These influencers gaze at us through the camera’s lens with so much heart-bursting love that it’s easy to forget that what they are actually looking at is their own faces on their phones—their digital doubles—as they coach us all to reach for our own best selves, our body doubles, in the never-ending house of mirrors. Like so much else online, glowing influencer culture, for a time, didn’t seem all that dangerous. Yes, Instagram and TikTok could be brutal on self-esteem, and, sure, a good bit of quackery and dodgy diuretic teas was being peddled. But there were also healthy recipes, and free exercise tips, and some genuinely helpful information. Then came Covid—and this booming, unregulated industry of self-styled health experts collided with a global health crisis that scared the hell out of pretty much everyone, including the professionally well.

…

., RFK Jr.). In our time of personal branding and optimized selves, you don’t need inherited wealth or a title to do something similar. You can simply treat your child as a spin-off or brand extension—you and your little mini-me can dress up in matching outfits for Instagram or share adorable dances on TikTok. Glowing Mama does this with her very cute daughter—posting sweet videos of their living room dance parties. And she also posts distinctly less sweet videos. “Don’t you tell me that our healthy children are putting you at risk,” she rages into the camera while her daughter naps in the back seat of her car.

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, autism spectrum disorder, deplatforming, en.wikipedia.org, false memory syndrome, Frances Oldham Kelsey, glass ceiling, helicopter parent, Jeff Bezos, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, scientific mainstream, Skype, social contagion, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, TikTok, unpaid internship

“Social media,” was Haidt’s immediate reply.¹¹ As Twenge wrote for The Atlantic, “It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades. Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.”¹² The iPhone was released in 2007. By 2018—a decade later—95 percent of teens had access to a smartphone and 45 percent reported being online “almost constantly.”¹³ Tumblr, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube—all very popular with teens—host a wide array of visual tutorials and pictorial inspiration to self-harm: anorexia (“thinspiration” or “thinspo”), cutting, and suicide. Posting one’s experiences with any of these afflictions offers the chance to win hundreds—even thousands—of followers.¹⁴ Anorexia, cutting, and suicide have all spiked dramatically since the arrival of the smartphone.¹⁵ Teenage girlhood in America is practically synonymous with the worry that one’s body does not measure up.

…

But the questions and wonder and panic that attend adolescence do not ease up merely because they have no friend to ask. And so they take their questions somewhere else. For up to nine hours a day, today’s teens slip down a customized internet oubliette, alone. They browse glamorous pages that offer airbrushed takes on the lives of friends and celebrities and internet influencers. They tunnel into YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and Tumblr, imbibing life advice from the denizens that await them. “If they’re questioning their sexuality, for example,” Ayad told me, “rather than giving it some time and seeing, okay, ‘Who do I develop a crush on? Do I want to hold this girl’s hand?’ ” members of Gen Z head for the internet.

…

She played it for my class, but everyone in the class made me feel bad. They were grossed out.” That was 2012; Emre was merely ahead of his time.² There are more than a dozen social media sites and online forums that facilitate the discovery of a trans identity. YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, DeviantArt, and TikTok are all popular hubs for sharing and documenting a physical transformation, seething over transphobia, celebrating the superpowers conferred by testosterone, offering tips for procuring a prescription, and commiserating about how hard it is to be trans today. Trans influencers have a few classic mantras.

The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back by Jacob Ward

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, AI winter, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Amazon Mechanical Turk, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Broken windows theory, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Trump, drone strike, endowment effect, George Akerlof, George Floyd, hindsight bias, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeffrey Epstein, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Lyft, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, natural language processing, non-fungible token, nudge unit, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, QAnon, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, selection bias, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, smart cities, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Levy, survivorship bias, TikTok, Turing test

Already, we’re beginning to see what algorithmic curation produces on, say, social media. As the journalist Kat Tenbarge wrote in an essay about the blandness of the influencers that rise to the top of TikTok, “Teens are plucked from obscurity by an algorithm to become overnight influencers. It’s a cycle that has already bred endless controversy, pervasive relevancy, and… invasive mediocrity.”2 While TikTok is a showcase of exceptional creativity from all over the world, its most famous performers often don’t stand out in any particular way—they’re beautiful, but they don’t shine as dancers or singers, and they’re usually mimicking moves invented by other creators, and moving their lips to songs written and performed by other singers.

…

Today, we’re much more likely to be able to develop a system that truly can predict which comics are going to make it. And by doing so, we’ll be flattening out what makes individuals special in a landscape of statistics, leaving behind writers too weird for Wattpad and the people from the wrong part of Sacramento, and rewarding bland, affable TikTok stars, artists who make art like other popular artists, and the dullest possible version of Jonathan Winters. By using AI to make choices for us, we will wind up reprogramming our brains and our society. Leaning on AI to choose and even make art, or music, or comedy will wind up shaping our taste in it, just as it will shape social policy, where we live, the jobs we get.

Being You: A New Science of Consciousness by Anil Seth

AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, backpropagation, carbon-based life, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, Drosophila, en.wikipedia.org, Filter Bubble, GPT-3, GPT-4, John Markoff, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, mirror neurons, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Pierre-Simon Laplace, planetary scale, Plato's cave, precautionary principle, Ray Kurzweil, self-driving car, speech recognition, stem cell, systems thinking, technological singularity, TED Talk, telepresence, the scientific method, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, TikTok, Turing test

‘deepfake’ technologies: To ‘deepfake’ is to generate a realistic but fake video, usually of a human face, using machine learning to combine a source and a target video. In a widely disseminated example from 2017, the deepfake method was used to create convincing videos of Barack Obama saying things that he did not say (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ54GDm1eL0). A series of TikTok videos deepfaking Tom Cruise, released in 2021, raises the bar substantially (https://www.theverge.com/22303756/tiktok-tom-cruise-impersonator-deepfake). vast uncontrolled global experiment: The AI researcher Stuart Russell eloquently describes the threats posed by current and near-future AI, as well as ways to redesign AI systems to avoid them, in his book Human Compatible (2019).

…

compelling auditory examples: Chris Darwin has some excellent examples of sine wave speech online at www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/Chris_Darwin/SWS. I use another example in my 2017 TED talk: www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality. There are also auditory equivalents of The Dress. One example is a sound which some people hear as ‘Yanny’ and others as ‘Laurel’ (Pressnitzer et al., 2018). In 2020 a TikTok video appeared in which an ambiguous tinny noise from a cheap toy can be heard either as ‘green needle’ or ‘brainstorm’, depending on which words you are reading (time.com/5873627/green-needle-brainstorm-explained). perceptual experience is built: See de Lange et al. (2018) for a review of experiments showing how expectations shape perception.

The New Snobbery by David Skelton

assortative mating, banking crisis, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, call centre, centre right, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, critical race theory, David Brooks, defund the police, deindustrialization, Etonian, Extinction Rebellion, financial deregulation, gender pay gap, glass ceiling, housing crisis, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, knowledge economy, lockdown, low skilled workers, market fundamentalism, meritocracy, microaggression, new economy, Northern Rock, open borders, postindustrial economy, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Richard Florida, Right to Buy, rising living standards, shareholder value, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, TED Talk, TikTok, wealth creators, women in the workforce

Such caricatures might be as seemingly benign as noting that rugby players are much more polite to the referee than footballers (ignoring the fact that the oval-ball game has also involved eye-gouging, testicle-grabbing and fake-blood scandals), or it could be something more insidious. TikToks mocking working-class people in the UK have become an increasingly popular part of the Chinese app, with the ‘TikTok Chavs’ group having millions of views and over 300,000 followers. As Owen Jones has pointed out, cultural demonisation of the working class could be the kind of crude caricature of Vicky Pollard in Little Britain. That programme prompted the Sunday Telegraph to publish a remarkable opinion piece called ‘In Defence of Snobbery’, which lambasted the ‘non-respectable working classes: the dole scroungers, petty criminals, football hooligans and teenage pram pushers … there is a delicious relief to be had from laughing at them’.4 A right-wing columnist even wrote for The Times that Pollard represented ‘several of the great scourges of contemporary Britain … pasty-faced lard-gutted slappers who’ll drop their knickers in the blink of an eye’.5 The facts that teenage pregnancy has been in sharp decline since the mid-1990s and that teenage drinking has also dramatically fallen haven’t got in the way of this caricature taking hold.

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation by Kevin Roose

"World Economic Forum" Davos, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, automated trading system, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, business process, call centre, choice architecture, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, disinformation, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, fake news, fault tolerance, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Freestyle chess, future of work, Future Shock, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Google Hangouts, GPT-3, hiring and firing, hustle culture, hype cycle, income inequality, industrial robot, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, lockdown, Lyft, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Narrative Science, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, off-the-grid, OpenAI, pattern recognition, planetary scale, plutocrats, Productivity paradox, QAnon, recommendation engine, remote working, risk tolerance, robotic process automation, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, work culture

Like bicycles, computers could help us get places faster, and reduce the effort needed to move ideas and objects around the world. But these days, many of our devices (and the apps we install on them) are designed to function less like bicycles, and more like runaway trains. They lure us onboard, tempting us with the possibility of rewards—a new email, a Facebook like, a funny TikTok video. Then, once we’re in, they speed off to their chosen destination, whether it’s where we originally wanted to go or not. That these forces are largely invisible doesn’t make them any less real. The algorithms that power platforms like Facebook and YouTube are many times more powerful than the technology that sent humans to the moon, or even the technology that allowed us to decode the human genome.

…

But mostly, it was an amazing two days, filled with the kinds of small, subtle pleasures I hadn’t experienced in years. I woke up at dawn, brewed strong coffee, and went for long hikes. We read books, did the crossword puzzle, and fell asleep to the sound of a crackling fire. I felt like a nineteenth-century homesteader, if the homesteader periodically worried that he was missing some good TikToks. * * * — In the end, Catherine’s thirty-day phone detox plan did reduce my screen time. My average daily phone use plummeted from nearly six hours a day to just over an hour, and I picked up my phone only about twenty times a day, roughly 80 percent less than I had at the beginning. But it produced some other, harder-to-measure benefits, too.

Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire by Bruce Nussbaum

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, declining real wages, demographic dividend, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fail fast, Fall of the Berlin Wall, follow your passion, game design, gamification, gentrification, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, industrial robot, invisible hand, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Gruber, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, lone genius, longitudinal study, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, Max Levchin, Minsky moment, new economy, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, QR code, race to the bottom, reality distortion field, reshoring, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, six sigma, Skype, SoftBank, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, supply-chain management, Tesla Model S, The Chicago School, The Design of Experiments, the High Line, The Myth of the Rational Market, thinkpad, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, We are the 99%, Y Combinator, young professional, Zipcar

Charles Adler presentation in the author’s Parsons course Design at the Edge, spring 2012. 87 The first Kickstarter projects: Ibid. 87 Between its launch in 2009 and October 2012: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/stats, accessed October 4, 2012. 87 which had an operating budget: http://www.arts.gov/about/budget/ appropriationshistory.html, accessed October 19, 2012. 87 A campaign for new watches: “Transform Your iPod Nano into the World’s Coolest Multi-Touch Watches with TikTok + LunaTik by Scott Wilson and MINIMAL,” Kickstarter campaign site, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ 1104350651/tiktok-lunatik-multi-touch-watch-kits. 87 San Francisco–based studio raised: “Doublefine Adventure,” Kickstarter campaign page, accessed September 11, 2012, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doublefine/ double-fine-adventure?ref=live. 88 JOBS Act, new legislation: Mark Landler, “Obama Signs Bill to Promote Start-Up Investments,” New York Times, April 5, 2012, accessed September 11, 2012, hhtp://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/us/politics/obama-signs-bill-to-ease-investing-in-start-ups.html; Ryan Caldbeck, “How the JOBS Act Could Change Startup Investing Forever,” TechCrunch, March 16, 2012, accessed September 11, 2012, http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/16/ crowdfundingstartups/. 88 We all hold a number: I am deeply indebted to my wife, Leslie M.

…

If Kickstarter continues to grow at this rate, it will soon rival the National Endowment for the Arts, which had an operating budget of $146 million for 2012. But Kickstarter doesn’t finance just art and music. A campaign for new watches based on the iPod nano music player (you snap it into a special wrist band) raised nearly $1 million; the resulting products, TikTok and LunaTik, sold tens of thousands for their designer, Scott Wilson, at his company Minimal in Chicago. Printrbot, an inexpensive 3D printer, raised $830,827. A San Francisco–based studio raised more than $3 million to create Double Fine Adventure, an online game. Kickstarter changed what it means to be a creator and a capitalist, a maker and a patron.

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, business cycle, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, full employment, George Floyd, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, mouse model, Nate Silver, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, QAnon, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Bannon, the scientific method, TikTok, transcontinental railway, zoonotic diseases

stepped on Page’s foot: Doug Stanglin, “Fact check: Devastating 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre wasn’t worst U.S. riot, isn’t ignored in books,” USA Today, June 17, 2020. “a hell of a night”: Michael C. Bender, “Trump Talks Juneteenth, John Bolton, Economy in WSJ Interview,” Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2020. TikTok pranksters: Taylor Lorenz, Kellen Browning, and Sheera Frenkel, “TikTok Teens and K-pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally,” New York Times, June 21, 2020. “We’ve tested now”: “Speech: Trump Holds a Political Rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” Factbase, June 20, 2020. “Accounts of the Tulsa riot”: Lisa D. Cook, “Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Patents, 1870 to 1940,” Michigan State University, June 2012.

…

Trump had chosen as his venue the BOK Center, which had only 19,000 seats, and clearly that wouldn’t be enough. Spillover spaces were set aside at the nearby convention center and an outdoor stage was constructed. But when the president arrived, the BOK Center was glaringly empty. Only 6,200 people showed up; a group of TikTok pranksters had subverted the turnout by falsely requesting tickets. The outdoor stage was hastily taken down. Trump was enraged by the dismal turnout but delivered his usual blustery speech. “We’ve tested now twenty-five million people,” he said. “When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people, you’re going to find more cases.

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, ASML, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bioinformatics, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boston Dynamics, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, ChatGPT, choice architecture, circular economy, classic study, clean tech, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, drone strike, drop ship, dual-use technology, Easter island, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, energy transition, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, Extinction Rebellion, facts on the ground, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, future of work, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, global pandemic, GPT-3, GPT-4, hallucination problem, hive mind, hype cycle, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, lab leak, large language model, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lewis Mumford, license plate recognition, lockdown, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, meta-analysis, microcredit, move 37, Mustafa Suleyman, mutually assured destruction, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Nikolai Kondratiev, off grid, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, plutocrats, precautionary principle, profit motive, prompt engineering, QAnon, quantum entanglement, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, satellite internet, Silicon Valley, smart cities, South China Sea, space junk, SpaceX Starlink, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Fry, Steven Levy, strong AI, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, tail risk, techlash, techno-determinism, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, the long tail, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, TSMC, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, warehouse robotics, William MacAskill, working-age population, world market for maybe five computers, zero day

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT In another widely publicized incident Melissa Goldin, “Video of Biden Singing ‘Baby Shark’ Is a Deepfake,” Associated Press, Oct. 19, 2022, apnews.com/​article/​fact-check-biden-baby-shark-deepfake-412016518873; “Doctored Nancy Pelosi Video Highlights Threat of ‘Deepfake’ Tech,” CBS News, May 25, 2019, www.cbsnews.com/​news/​doctored-nancy-pelosi-video-highlights-threat-of-deepfake-tech-2019-05-25. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT If you want to watch TikTok @deeptomcruise, www.tiktok.com/​@deeptomcruise?lang=en. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT A bank in Hong Kong Thomas Brewster, “Fraudsters Cloned Company Director’s Voice in $35 Million Bank Heist, Police Find,” Forbes, Oct. 14, 2021, www.forbes.com/​sites/​thomasbrewster/​2021/​10/​14/​huge-bank-fraud-uses-deep-fake-voice-tech-to-steal-millions.

…

Everywhere you look, technology accelerates this dematerialization, reducing complexity for the end consumer by providing continuous consumption services rather than traditional buy-once products. Whether it’s services like Uber, DoorDash, and Airbnb, or open publishing platforms like Instagram and TikTok, the drift of mega-businesses is toward not participating in the market but being the market, not making the product but operating the service. The question now becomes, what else could be made into a service, collapsed into the existing suite of another mega-business? In a few decades, I predict most physical products will look like services.

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking by Michael Bhaskar

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, call centre, carbon tax, charter city, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cognitive load, Columbian Exchange, coronavirus, cosmic microwave background, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, cyber-physical system, dark matter, David Graeber, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, discovery of penicillin, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, energy security, energy transition, epigenetics, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, Eroom's law, fail fast, false flag, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, GPT-3, Haber-Bosch Process, hedonic treadmill, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, hive mind, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, invention of the steam engine, invention of the telegraph, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, James Watt: steam engine, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, liberation theology, lockdown, lone genius, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megacity, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, minimum viable product, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Gell-Mann, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, nuclear winter, nudge unit, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, post-truth, precautionary principle, public intellectual, publish or perish, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, rent-seeking, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, skunkworks, Slavoj Žižek, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, techlash, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, total factor productivity, transcontinental railway, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, When a measure becomes a target, X Prize, Y Combinator

Yet globalisation has homogenised the world. We wear the same clothes (jeans, suits and baseball caps), eat the same foods (pizza, noodles, beer, cola), work for and buy from the same companies (Apple, Walmart, VW, Nestlé) watch the same films (Disney), speak the same languages (English), worship the same idols (TikTok, Pokémon, the Beatles). Societal interchange has become so immediate and total that everything blurs into a single culture where only the far interstices are free of the bland blend. Exchange of ideas and cultures will inevitably start to diminish. We will, at a global level, experience a kind of cultural combinatorial exhaustion.

…

The bio-frontier is likely to continue moving at pace, with massive ramifications. Again, beyond these envisaged uses lies a universe we cannot yet see or even imagine. There are a near-infinite array of possible proteins. Scientists working on biotech can no more envisage all the applications than Turing and von Neumann could have foreseen TikTok, Wikipedia and phishing attacks. But we can be confident that tools like AI or synthetic biology will not remain walled off in an airtight canister labelled ‘technology’; rather they will have a major and unpredictable impact on things like markets, bureaucracies, ideologies and aesthetics. AI and biotech may seem the opposite ends of a spectrum, but some of the most dramatic tools could arrive at their intersection, another trans-disciplinary loop with profound impact for the human mind and frontier.

…

Outside the usual Western channels a colourful trade has transformed the cultural landscape. Precision-tooled Korean K-pop; Bollywood musicals and Nollywood films; Japanese anime; Brazilian and Mexican telenovelas; Turkish dizi, popular and exportable historical epics; competitive gaming competitions dominated by Ukrainian teens; Chinese social media smashes like TikTok or WeChat. Now that the West no longer dominates culture, the creative menu is exploding – readers around the world enjoy Haruki Murakami, Han Kang, Mario Vargas Llosa and Orhan Pamuk. Filmmakers like Bong Joon Ho, Alejandro González Iñárritu or Alfonso Cuarón, video game visionaries and auteurs like Hideo Kojima and Shigeru Miyamoto, Nobel-winning life scientists like Shinya Yamanaka and Tu Youyou (China's first woman to win such an award, its first for physiology).

System Error by Rob Reich

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, AI winter, Airbnb, airport security, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, artificial general intelligence, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Ben Horowitz, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, deplatforming, digital rights, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, financial innovation, fulfillment center, future of work, gentrification, Geoffrey Hinton, George Floyd, gig economy, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information security, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Lean Startup, linear programming, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum wage unemployment, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, move fast and break things, Myron Scholes, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, NP-complete, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, Philippa Foot, premature optimization, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, spectrum auction, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, strong AI, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, traveling salesman, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, trolley problem, Turing test, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ultimatum game, union organizing, universal basic income, washing machines reduced drudgery, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, When a measure becomes a target, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, you are the product

Though the theft of your identity may lead to a long, unpleasant call with a credit agency, the use of your personal data for behavioral ad targeting or algorithmic product recommendations imposes no immediate or visible cost on you. Sharing your daily activities or life history on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok yields all sorts of good feelings in the near term as you connect with family and friends. But the potential privacy harms to you are difficult to understand and thus rarely weigh heavily on the minds of those who post freely on social media. Even if you could perfectly forecast the consequences of your privacy decisions, the evidence suggests that people still struggle to formulate stable preferences and act on them.

…

Twitter’s choice to suspend Trump’s account was just the most prominent and consequential attempt to respond to a problem it had grappled with for years. It’s a problem that affects far more people than just prominent politicians or attention-seeking celebrities. Every single day the large social networks—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp (both owned by Facebook), YouTube (owned by Google), Snapchat, and TikTok—must decide what text, audio, images, and video are permissible to post and share with others. And sometimes those decisions defy expectations. In the fall of 2017, as the #MeToo movement was gaining traction, a female writer for Samantha Bee’s late-night talk show named Nicole Silverberg posted online a list of the different ways in which “men need to do better.”

…

Prior to the advent of the Web, people would often seek out information from trusted sources. We would decide what information we wanted and then make an effort to get—to “pull”—what we were seeking. With social networking and other content platforms, we’ve accepted a “push” model for getting information. When we go on Facebook, Twitter, or TikTok, it’s not often that we’re looking for something specific. Rather, we’re looking to be shown what’s “interesting”—what our friends are doing, reading, watching, or saying. Information is being “pushed” at us, and we have little say in or understanding of how that information is chosen for us as we scroll through an endless list of postings.

Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin, Cory Doctorow

Aaron Swartz, AltaVista, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, book value, collective bargaining, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate personhood, corporate raider, COVID-19, disintermediation, distributed generation, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, Firefox, forensic accounting, full employment, gender pay gap, George Akerlof, George Floyd, gig economy, Golden age of television, Google bus, greed is good, green new deal, high-speed rail, Hush-A-Phone, independent contractor, index fund, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, John Gruber, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microplastics / micro fibres, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, Network effects, New Journalism, passive income, peak TV, Peter Thiel, precision agriculture, regulatory arbitrage, remote working, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech bro, tech worker, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, time value of money, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Turing complete, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, WeWork

Today the platform hosts literally billions of videos, making it a natural first port of call for anyone looking for music videos, tutorials on making hollandaise, or the latest football highlights. This is a deep data moat: it would be hard for a competitor to build up a library to match it. Having said that, however, YouTube is not immune to competition. It does not have creators locked in anywhere near as tightly as Amazon and Apple, for instance. That’s evident in the popularity of TikTok, downloaded over three billion times in its first few years online. If YouTube goes too far in ripping off the individuals and businesses who supply its content, they can take it elsewhere. YouTube’s platform gives the most popular streamers the ability to communicate with tens of millions of subscribers—including passionately loyal fans willing to evangelize on their behalf.

…

As we described in chapter 16, it’s particularly easy to envisage one for ebooks, owned by and showcasing local authors and frequented by customers who want an alternative to Amazon—at least if we can strip away the DRM stranglehold that keeps publishers and readers locked in. We can imagine one for online video too, where popular YouTubers and Tik-Tokers jointly own their creativity via their own platform (though not in the EU, where that filtering law might require them to spend $100 million on additional start-up costs!). And it’s even possible to imagine scaling up co-op music platforms like Resonate to a much larger number of artists and listeners, especially if new entry into this market could be facilitated by something like the rethought compulsory license we sketched out earlier.

…

Google, 200 O’Reilly, 27 Oremus, Will, 236 organizing, 178–79, 248–49 Oron, Gadi, 67 orphan works, 189, 192–94 OverDrive, 241, 242 Pandora, 217 Pascal, Francine, 187 payola, 82 PCs (personal computers), 201 Pelly, Liz, 67, 80, 81, 241, 244 Penderecki, Kyzysztof, 66 Penguin, 35 Penguin Random House, 2, 34–35 The People’s Platform (Taylor), 14 Perry, Katy, 64 Peters, Marybeth, 185 Phoenix Computers, 201 Platform Capitalism (Srnicek), 230 Platform Cooperativism Consortium, 229 platforms, 14–15 playlists, music streaming, 78–84, 143–44 podcasting, 84–88 policy, corporate influence on, 94 Polone, Gavin, 107 Postmates, 166–67 poultry processing, 96 press publishers’ right, 233–34 Prince, 52, 62, 187 print-on-demand, 181 privacy, 137 private equity, 91–93, 249–50 producer cartels, 173 productivity gains, 253–54 Proposition 22, 249 Public Enemy, 62 public interest, 14 public ownership models, 242–44 Rabble, 240–41 radio broadcast industry: about, 89; local content, 90; ownership concentration, 90; private equity and leveraged buyouts, 91–93; regulation, 93–95; revenues, 90–91, 93 Random House, 32, 33, 34, 35 RapCaviar, 78 RealMedia, 26 reciprocity, 93 Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), 55, 64, 185–86 recoupment, 53, 59, 69, 163, 169, 219, 221–22 regulation: antitrust, 146–51; costs, 137, 144; decline of systems of, 145–46; EU mandates, 257–58 regulatory capture, 92–93 remote work, 15 rentiers, 118–21 rent-seeking, 119 residual remuneration rights, 173–77, 214–16 Resonate, 237–38 Reuters Institute, 236 reversion rights, copyright, 183–95 right-wing radio culture, 94–95 Rimes, LeAnn, 55 Robinson, Joan, 10, 173 Robinson, Nathan, 233 Rodgers, Nile, 54, 164 Rolling Stone, 47 Rosen, Hilary, 185–86 Ross, Orna, 157 Rowdy (Joshua Rowsey), 241 royalties, streaming, 66, 68–69, 221–28 RSS, 86, 122 safe harbor laws, 125–27, 134 sampling, music, 61–63 Sanctuary, 57 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 163 Sargent, John, 30 Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act, 185 Saudi royal family, 102 Scheiner, Bruce, 122 Scholz, Trebor, 237 Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 161–62, 212–13 Science Fiction Writers of America, 159 Screen Actors Guild, 16 self-publishing, 32–33, 215–16 Shatzkin, Mike, 35 Shazam, 73 Sheeran, Ed, 64 Sherman, Cary, 55 Shirky, Clay, 44–45 Shockley, William, 165–66 Shuster, Joe, 180 Siegel, Jerry, 180 Simon & Schuster, 34–35 Simson, John, 71, 93, 225–26 SiriusXM, 56 Slack, David, 108 Smashwords, 22 social media, and music industry, 56 Social Security Act, 150 Softbank, 102 songwriting, 69–70 Sony Music Entertainment: and artist mistreatment, 79, 221; and copyright, 188; dominating position of, 56; and recoupment, 59; and Spotify, 73, 75, 161; Spotify contract, 70–73 SoundCloud, 72–73 SoundExchange, 71 South Africa, 189 Spotify: about, 2, 11, 12, 18, 56; and Epidemic Sound, 81–82; and major labels, 73–75, 181; market share and profit, 83; Marquee initiative, 82; model, 67; and music licensing, 218; playlist culture, 79–84, 143–44; podcasting, 86–88; Sony contract, 70–73 Srinivasan, Dina, 43 Srnicek, Nick, 230 Stafford, Bill, 62 Statute of Anne (1710), 182–83 statutory licensing, 220–28 Stiehm, Meredith, 105 Stocksy, 229–30 Stoller, Matt, 34–35, 46 Stone, Brad, 21 streambait, 80 Stringer, Rob, 79 Stross, Charlie, 28 structural remedies, 148–49 StubHub, 101 Superman, 180 surveillance capitalism, 36 Swift, Taylor, 76, 169–70 switching costs, 7, 18, 26, 28, 31, 92, 119, 144, 249–50 synchronization rights, 219 tacit collusion, 31 talent agents and agencies, 104–9, 175–76 Taylor, Astra, 14, 229 Teachout, Zephyr, 149 Telecommunications Act (1996), 90 television media, back end financials, 109–11 Tencent Music Entertainment, 83, 84 Thicke, Robin, 63–64 third-party cookies, 231–32 This Is Spinal Tap (film), 188 Ticketmaster, 98, 100, 101 Tidal, 160, 239 TikTok, 136 Timberg, Scott, 47, 110–11 TLC, 55 Towse, Ruth, 16 Tracks, 240–41 transparency rights: Audible, 154–59; audit power, 164–65; data disclosure, 161–63; enforceability of regulatory transparency, 163–67; Kindle Unlimited, 159–60; music streaming, 160–61; Netflix, 160; normalization of, 164 Turner, David, 67, 68, 80, 164, 224 21st Century Fox, 2 Uber, 48–49, 102, 166–67, 171, 249 UK Competition and Markets Authority, 43, 45, 50 UK Musicians’ Union, 68 unions, 173–74, 248–49 United Talent Agency, 104, 106 universality, 198–99.

The Smartphone Society by Nicole Aschoff

"Susan Fowler" uber, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, carbon footprint, Carl Icahn, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, cloud computing, correlation does not imply causation, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, degrowth, Demis Hassabis, deplatforming, deskilling, digital capitalism, digital divide, do what you love, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, financial independence, future of work, gamification, gig economy, global value chain, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Googley, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, John Perry Barlow, knowledge economy, late capitalism, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum wage unemployment, mobile money, moral panic, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nomadland, occupational segregation, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, Patri Friedman, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, pets.com, planned obsolescence, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, technological determinism, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, transcontinental railway, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, Vision Fund, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, yottabyte

The dissident journalist Liu Hu has been deemed “untrustworthy” and tarred with a social credit so low that he is banned from purchasing plane or train tickets, taking out a loan, or using social media.19 China also has one of the strictest internet censorship regimes in the world. In 2017, images of Winnie the Pooh were banned from social media after users compared Xi Jinping, the president of China, to the honey-loving bear. Apps like TikTok, a short-video app, will now be held responsible for content that violates any of the country’s one hundred types of “inappropriate” content.20 The People’s Republic doesn’t just administer the “great firewall of China”; recently a man who compared Xi to a “steamed bun” on a private chat app was sentenced to two years in prison.

…

See surveillance Square, 148 stalkerware apps, 25 Standing Rock, 103–4, 110 start-ups, 120–21 status-consciousness, 62 Sterling, Alton, 20 stewardship, 56–57 stimulation, digital, 66 stingrays, 96 Stoppelman, Jeremy, 43–44 Stop the Killing, 20 storytelling, 115–16, 120 subcontracting, multitier, 31 Substitute Phone, 8 Sullivan, Andrew, 132 Sunrise Movement, 103–4, 152, 179n22 “superstar firms,” 42–43 surveillance: big data and, 84; by government, 81, 137–38, 144, 148–49; by law enforcement, 96–97, 137–38, 176n28; by Uber, 127 surveillance capitalism, 8 sustainability, 151–52, 154–55 SVR (Silicon Valley Rising), 147 Syrian war, 90 Tahrir Square, 92 task app, mobile, 32 “tasker,” 30 TaskRabbit, 30 tax evasion by titans, 49–50 taxi drivers, 146, 178–79n5 Tea Party, 105 technological determinism, 12, 131–32, 140–41 “technology shabbats,” 133 technophilanthropy, 56–57 tech refuseniks, 67 tech start-ups, 120–21 Tech Workers Coalition, 148 teenagers, sexting by, 25–27, 35 telemedicine, 10 television, 11–12 temp workers, 31–32 Tencent, 4, 42 terrorists, 95 tether, smartphones as new, 3–7 texting, 5, 6 Thatcher, Margaret, 118 Thiel, Peter, 45, 81, 124 Thoreau, Henry David, 133 TikTok, 95 “time bind,” 30 time-tracking tools, 69 Tinder, 23–24, 25, 63 Tin Dog, 23 titans of cyberspace, 37–57; and antitrust investigations, 52–53; emerging criticisms of, 45–50; and fake news, 50–51; funding by, 55; lobbying by, 55– 56; old titans vs., 37–38; and personalization, 53; philanthropy by, 56–57; power of, 39–40, 54–57; rise of, 38–45; and search algorithms, 51–52 Tometi, Opal, 101–2 tracking: government, 94–95; and privacy, 70–71, 81; of workers, 32–33 transcendentalists, 133 Transdr, 23 transhumanism, 123 translation, 10 Trump, Donald: election of, 13; and fake news, 50; inauguration of, 107; and North Dakota pipeline, 110; small donors to, 105; tweets by, 87–88, 92–93, 175n14 trust, 8 truth, 8 Twitch, 41 Twitter: addiction to, 69; content on, 60; microcelebrities on, 60; as news source, 50; as new titan, 42, 45; sharing on, 84; time spent on, 60; use by politicians of, 87–88, 92–93 230 Fifth, 62 Uber: app jobs at, 30–33, 153; data collection by, 84; and new capitalism, 119, 126– 27; as new titan, 42; vs. taxi drivers, 146, 178–79n5 Uber-X, 33 Ukraine, 95 union(s), 147, 154 Union Pacific Railroad, 80 United Kingdom, 32–33 United We Dream, 104 unjust relationships, 137–38, 152–54 unpaid labor, 73–79, 84–85, 153 Upworthy, 53 urban poor, access to high-speed internet by, 29 USAID, 95 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 21, 148 Utah Data Center, 81 Utopia, 124–25, 132 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 39, 44, 54 venture capital firms, 121 Verily, 41 Verizon, 42, 71 Vestager, Margrethe, 52, 150 Vice Media, 106 videos, 5 Vietnam, 95 virality in politics, 81 virtual signaling, 109, 111 Vonnegut, Kurt, 129–30 voter outreach, 89 Wages for Housework, 85 walking lanes for phone users, 3 Walmart, 33 warehouse workers, 31–32, 33, 35, 46 Warren, Elizabeth, 45 Waymo, 41 Way of the Future, 123 wealth hierarchies, 28–29, 35 WeChat app, 4 Weinstein, Harvey, 108 Weyl, E.

Deadly Quiet City: True Stories From Wuhan by Murong Xuecun

Boris Johnson, citizen journalism, coronavirus, COVID-19, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, global pandemic, lockdown, megacity, Ponzi scheme, QR code, social distancing, TikTok

Medical fees must be paid in advance, and if payment for continuing treatment is not made, hospitals take extreme measures, like holding back medicines or initiating legal action. Liu Xiaoxiao panics for two days but cannot think of anything better than making a public appeal for assistance. He sets up a Douyin account (the Chinese version of TikTok) and posts a short video every day, mostly about food. On 28 March it is black rice porridge, on 29 March it is egg broth, on 30 March, soft noodles. In the videos, Liu Xiaoxiao wears a black face mask as he ladles spoonful after spoonful into Liu Shiyu’s mouth. There is background music as he explains his story.

…

A nurse tells him that the doctors are busy issuing death certificates. Then the nurse walks over to her colleagues, and, in the cold hospital corridor filled with the smell of disinfectant, the nurses, dressed up like aliens, sing and dance to the beat of happy music while filming a video for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Gangcheng remembers that scene well. On one side of the corridor, doctors are signing death certificates; a little further on is a recently deceased person whose corpse has not yet cooled. On the other side, young nurses are singing and dancing. ‘Some people will not be able to understand. They may think that someone has just died, so how can they do that?

The Startup Wife by Tahmima Anam

Anthropocene, Black Lives Matter, cryptocurrency, DeepMind, driverless car, family office, glass ceiling, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, index card, lockdown, microdosing, nudge theory, post-truth, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Stanford marshmallow experiment, stealth mode startup, TED Talk, the High Line, TikTok

“Describing people as ‘chill’ as if it’s a compliment. Like ‘Yeah, I’m so into that guy, he’s so chill.’ How? How is being super-relaxed a quality one seeks in a partner? The only people I really need to be super–chilled out are pilots.” “Or air traffic controllers.” “Yeah, but in a focused and uptight way.” “I don’t understand TikTok,” Cyrus said. “I don’t understand Reels,” Jules said. “What is the point if everything keeps disappearing?” “Reels don’t disappear. Stories do. Keep up.” I said. “So I got a letter today from some people in Missouri,” Cyrus said. I gathered the game was over. Cyrus started reading the letter aloud: “‘My wife and I grew up watching Little House on the Prairie and we both have this yearning to kneel beside our bed at night and say some kind of prayer.

…

Eight THE RAISE Cyrus won’t do any interviews. He won’t speak to the press, the networks, the bloggers, the influencers. He will only talk to the WAIs. Yes, that is what they are called. It’s pronounced “wise,” of course. We didn’t call them that, they decided to name themselves. They have uploaded photos and Medium posts and TikToks about their rituals, and some of those posts have gone moderately viral. They have printed T-shirts and hats. They have authored Instagram stories and videos and clickbait. The press is hungry. They want to know the story behind the story—how we built the platform, how the three of us met. Mostly they want to interview Cyrus, but Cyrus refuses, so Jules does it instead.

Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Francis de Véricourt

Albert Einstein, Andrew Wiles, Apollo 11, autonomous vehicles, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, circular economy, Claude Shannon: information theory, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, credit crunch, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, DeepMind, defund the police, Demis Hassabis, discovery of DNA, Donald Trump, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, fiat currency, framing effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, game design, George Floyd, George Gilder, global pandemic, global village, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Higgs boson, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, microaggression, Mustafa Suleyman, Neil Armstrong, nudge unit, OpenAI, packet switching, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen

One need not feel powerless before a great force but can stand alongside it, provided the conditions instill a sense of fearlessness. Pluralism, the objective, can only exist if there is confidence, not fear. But who possesses such confidence? 9 vigilance we must remain on guard not to cede our power In the spring of 2020, as America’s Covid-19 lockdown began in earnest, a series of short TikTok videos went viral on social media. The chaotic word salad sounded familiar, as did the raspy voice: “We hit the body with a tremendous—whether it’s ultraviolet, or just very powerful light.” But the words emanated from the youthful, dynamic Sarah Cooper, lip-synching the proposed Covid-19 remedy of Donald Trump.

…

She Exposes Him,” New York Times, June 25, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/magazine/sarah-cooper-doesnt-mimic-trump-she-exposes-him.html. The authors thank Cooper for her help in producing this account. Cooper quote: Shirley Li, “Sarah Cooper Has Mastered the Trump Joke,” Atlantic, May 8, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/05/comedian-behind-viral-trump-pandemic-tiktok-sarah-cooper/611329. See also: Sarah Cooper and Sarah Cristobal, “Comedian Sarah Cooper on How Her Viral Trump Parodies Came to Be,” InStyle, July 10, 2020, https://www.instyle.com/news/sarah-cooper-essay-trump-impressions. Heytea’s success: Farhan Shah, “Heytea Founder Neo Nie on the Ingredients to the Brand’s Success,” Peak, July 23, 2020, https://www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg/interviews/heytea-founder-neo-nie-business-success/; Li Tao, “How Chinese Tea-Drink Brand Heytea Saves Millions in Marketing Costs Thanks to Its Millennial Customers,” South China Morning Post, August 28, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/tech/start-ups/article/2161529/how-chinese-tea-drink-brand-heytea-saves-millions-marketing-costs.

Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History by Alex von Tunzelmann

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", anti-communist, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, British Empire, colonial rule, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Donald Trump, double helix, Easter island, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, George Floyd, global pandemic, Google Earth, lockdown, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Suez crisis 1956, the map is not the territory, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, W. E. B. Du Bois

For Colston’s statue, there could be no justice more poetic. Videos and images went viral on social media. Many were exhilarated. ‘THEY WILL ALL FALL’, said American rapper Ice Cube on Twitter. ‘SPLOSHITY BYE YOU DEAD RACIST’, tweeted the account for Momentum Bristol, a left-wing youth movement. On TikTok, a user created a video of herself captioned ‘Edward Colston waking up in Bristol Harbour’, set to lyrics from the track ‘Rain’ by British rappers Aitch x AJ Tracey: ‘What’s going on, why am I wet?’ Another Twitter user mocked up a fake opinion piece purportedly written by Edward Colston’s statue: ‘Unhand me at once, impudent whelps!

…

Edward Colston’s statue reconsidered’, Open Democracy, 29 August 2016; Ellie Pipe, ‘New Plaque on Colston statue declares Bristol slavery capital’, Bristol 24/7, 17 August 2017; Martin Booth, ‘Colston statue given ball and chain’, Bristol 24/7, 6 May 2018; Tristan Cork, ‘100 human figures placed in front of Colston statue in city centre’, Bristol Live, 18 October 2018. 26Quoted in Tristan Cork, ‘Theft or vandalism of second Colston statue plaque “may be justified” – Tory councillor’, Bristol Live, 23 July 2018; for the golliwog story, see David Ward, ‘Golliwog stunt leaves Tory in a jam’, Guardian, 6 September 2001. 27For a longer discussion of this, see Roger Ball, ‘The Edward Colston “corrective” plaque: Sanitising an uncomfortable history’, published by the Bristol Radical History Group, n.d. [2019], https://www.brh.org.uk/site/articles/the-edward-colston-corrective-plaque/. 28Tristan Cork, ‘Second Colston statue plaque not axed and will happen but mayor steps in to order a re-write’, Bristol Live, 25 March 2019. 29Catherine Shoard, ‘John Boyega’s rousing Black Lives Matter speech wins praise and support’, Guardian, 4 June 2020. 30Twitter: @beardedjourno: ‘Historic scenes in Bristol as protesters kneel on the neck of the toppled statue of Edward Colston for eight minutes. blacklivesmatter’, 7 June 2020, 3:13 p.m. Photograph included in tweet. See also Luke O’Reilly, ‘Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol topple statue of slave trader Edward Colston’, Evening Standard, 7 June 2020. 31Twitter: @icecube, 7 June 2020, 5:09 p.m.; @MomentumBristol, 7 June 2020, 16:05 p. m.; TikTok: rhianna_jay, ‘bristol really ran up on edward colston’; Twitter; @DrFuck_, 8 June 2020, 9:22 a.m.. 32Twitter: @sajidjavid, 7 June 2020, 5:36 p.m.; 10 Downing Street statement quoted in ‘Edward Colston: Bristol slave trader statue was “an affront’”, BBC News, 8 June 2020; statement by the Society of Merchant Venturers, 12 June 2020, https://www.merchantventurers.com/news/statement-from-the-society-of-merchant-venturers/. 33Councillor Richard Eddy quoted in Tristan Cork, ‘Edward Colston was “a hero” for Bristol says outraged Tory councillor’, Bristol Live, 9 June 2020; Robinson quoted in Joel Golby, ‘A bat signal has gone out to Britain’s proud patriots: save our statues’, Guardian, 10 June 2020; Will Heaven, ‘Why Edward Colston’s statue should have stayed up’, The Spectator, 7 June 2020. 34David Olusoga, ‘The toppling of Colston’s statue is not an attack on history.

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, algorithmic bias, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Charles Babbage, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, Gabriella Coleman, global pandemic, green transition, housing justice, informal economy, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Julian Assange, lab leak, lockdown, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Minecraft, nuclear winter, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, Piers Corbyn, post-truth, pre–internet, QAnon, real-name policy, Russell Brand, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Snapchat, social contagion, Steve Bannon, survivorship bias, TikTok, trade route, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks

As late as January 2020, one senior UK television executive mentioned to me that their channel’s policy was still to make no mention of QAnon so as not to ‘boost’ it. I urged them, not entirely successfully, to reconsider. 42. This is a very short summary of what’s known as the ‘attention economy’: Asher Joy, ‘The Attention Economy: Where the Customer Becomes the Product’, https://journal.businesstoday.org, 18 February 2021. 43. Except arguably TikTok, but this wasn’t a major network until after this period. 44. Not coincidentally, they waited until he had lost a presidential election: Dylan Byers, ‘How Facebook and Twitter decided to take down Trump’s accounts’, www.nbcnews.com, 14 January 2021. 45. ‘Trump refuses to disavow QAnon conspiracy theory’, www.ft.com, 15 October 2020. 46.

…

The post (and many like it) was removed by Twitter eventually, but has been recreated as part of this excellent Washington Post story: Jessica Contrera, ‘A QAnon Con: A Wayfair sex trafficking lie pushed by QAnon hurt real kids’, www.washingtonpost.com, 16 December 2021. 19. Daniel Funke, ‘How the Wayfair child sex-trafficking conspiracy theory went viral’, www.politifact.com, 15 July 2020. 20. EJ Dickson, ‘A Wayfair Child-Trafficking Conspiracy Theory Is Flourishing on TikTok, Despite It Being Completely False’, www.rollingstone.com, 14 July 2020. 21. Funke, ‘How the Wayfair’. 22. This video is still available on Facebook, where Mumin (now an adult) still regularly posts: www.facebook.com/100011665152188/videos/1157816001283894. 23. Russell Goldman, ‘Half of All Autistic Kids Will Run Away, Tragedy Often Follows’, https://abcnews.go.com, 1 May 2013. 24.

Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business by Julie Battilana, Tiziana Casciaro

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Andy Rubin, Asperger Syndrome, benefit corporation, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, British Empire, call centre, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, deep learning, different worldview, digital rights, disinformation, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, feminist movement, fundamental attribution error, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, Greta Thunberg, hiring and firing, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, mega-rich, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, School Strike for Climate, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tacit knowledge, tech worker, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, zero-sum game

Their pitch to potential clients is simple: pay us and we can make people do what you want, buy your products, sign up for your services, even vote for you in the next election. People at YouTube, Apple, Netflix, and Amazon decide how the site will make recommendations on what you should watch next. People at Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and TikTok decide how algorithms select the content that goes in their newsfeeds. They decide what news we see first online, what posts show up in our newsfeeds, what products pop up when we browse a website, and whom we match with on dating applications. As Twitter’s cofounder Jack Dorsey acknowledged when he testified in front of Congress in 2018, “Every time someone opens up our service, every time someone opens up our app, we are implicitly incentivizing them to do something or not to do something.”

…

., 237n73, 238n79, 255n50 structural design, 20, 29, 38–39, 165, 192 surveillance, 43, 139, 151–52, 163, 190 drones, 154–55 nyob, 159 Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), 128–30, 176 Sweeney, Tim, 113 System Justification Theory (SJT), 98–100 systemic racism See racism Taylor, Breonna, 92 technology markets, 163 Teresa, Mother, 56 territorial behavior, 53 Thomson, John Arthur, 102 Thoreau, Henry David, 124 Thunberg, Greta, 56, 120 Tiananmen Square (Beijing), 57 TikTok, 153 Tilly, Charles, 238n1, 241n32 Timms, Henry, 141 tokenism, 169 Tolkien, J.R.R., ix–x triple bottom line, 176 Trithemius, Johannes, 142, 143 trust competence, 62–63, 195, 224n76 familiarity, 63 similarity, 63 warmth, 62–63, 224n76 Tufekci, Zeynep, 138 Twitter, 153, 184 Uber, 179 unions, 11–12, 111–15, 134, 157–58, 178, 236n71 See also Alphabet Workers Union unique control, 3 Up & Go, 179 Up With Women, 5–8 U.S.

Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, call centre, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, demand response, Donald Trump, emotional labour, fake news, financial independence, Firefox, gamification, gig economy, Google Chrome, helicopter parent, impulse control, Jean Tirole, job automation, job satisfaction, Lyft, meta-analysis, Minecraft, New Journalism, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, social distancing, strikebreaker, TaskRabbit, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, uber lyft, working poor

Digital work tools have made it possible for many of us to work from home, but rather than making our lives easier, this has created the pressure to be constantly available to our employers. We get our news from phone apps and social media sites rather than printed papers, making it harder than ever to get away from upsetting images and distressing information. Even the online spaces that are supposed to bring us pleasure and entertainment, such as Instagram and TikTok, guilt us with advertisements for weight-loss products, intricate home-improvement projects, and complicated beauty regimens. Everywhere we turn, we’re told we’re not enough. And when we finally disconnect from this constant stream of shame and pressure, we often feel guilty for “disappearing” on our colleagues, family, and friends.

…

See gig economy surrender (tattoo), 41, 42 Swift, Taylor, 30 Sylvia: Grace’s relationship with, 157–58, 159, 164 T Tamms Correction Center, 199–200 Taylor (coder): and achievements are not self-worth, 110–11, 112–13 technology and increase in workday/workweek, 76 and influence/prevalence of Laziness Lie, 26, 32–33 remote work and, 79–80 and why you feel lazy, 35 working less and, 76, 79–80 See also digital age/tools; gig economy; Internet; social media Thompson, Rickey, 29, 196 TikTok, 33 time how you spend your, 168–69 See also cyberloafing Tobia, Jacob, 186 Tobias, Andrew, 105–6 Tom (Riley’s husband): and relationships, 165–67, 171–72 Towler, Annette, 56, 73–74, 78, 82, 85–86, 94, 96, 103 transgender people, 109, 137, 168, 186 TV shows: and influence/prevalence of Laziness Lie, 28–29 Twitter, 113, 118, 125, 129, 136, 144, 145, 147, 153 U unemployed people, 13 Upswing Advocates, 62–63 V vacations, 64, 212 values clarification of, 169–71 definition of, 169 and origins of Laziness Lie, 23 ranking of, 170 and relationships, 169–71, 182 Van Bavel, Jay, 84 veterans: healing of, 68 visual arts: and why you feel lazy, 33–35 W warning signs/system ignoring of, 20–21 and influence/prevalence of Laziness Lie, 36 and rethinking laziness, 49–57 and tenets of Laziness Lie, 20–21 and working less, 75, 96 See also specific sign wasting time.

I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict by Kenneth Payne

Abraham Maslow, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, AlphaGo, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, Boston Dynamics, classic study, combinatorial explosion, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cuban missile crisis, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, driverless car, drone strike, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, functional programming, Geoffrey Hinton, Google X / Alphabet X, Internet of things, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, language acquisition, loss aversion, machine translation, military-industrial complex, move 37, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, RAND corporation, ransomware, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, semantic web, side project, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, strong AI, Stuxnet, technological determinism, TED Talk, theory of mind, TikTok, Turing machine, Turing test, uranium enrichment, urban sprawl, V2 rocket, Von Neumann architecture, Wall-E, zero-sum game

No one can know how much information there is, but we can be sure that it’s expanding rapidly. The internet is partly responsible. Think of the many thousands of pages of information that Facebook sends if you ask for everything it holds on you. Now add in all the WhatsApp chats you’ve ever had, and the Instagram stories. Then there’s TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. Every story, every picture, every purchase. What about all the GPS signals your car navigation system clocks up as you drive? With 5G cellular networks arriving soon, the information deluge will increase again, as the ‘internet of things’ becomes a reality that even determined luddites cannot avoid.

…

A-10 Warthog abacuses Abbottabad, Pakistan Able Archer (1983) acoustic decoys acoustic torpedoes Adams, Douglas Aegis combat system Aerostatic Corps affective empathy Affecto Afghanistan agency aircraft see also dogfighting; drones aircraft carriers algorithms algorithm creation Alpha biases choreography deep fakes DeepMind, see DeepMind emotion recognition F-117 Nighthawk facial recognition genetic selection imagery analysis meta-learning natural language processing object recognition predictive policing alien hand syndrome Aliens (1986 film) Alpha AlphaGo Altered Carbon (television series) Amazon Amnesty International amygdala Andropov, Yuri Anduril Ghost anti-personnel mines ants Apple Aristotle armour arms races Army Research Lab Army Signal Corps Arnalds, Ólafur ARPA Art of War, The (Sun Tzu) art Artificial Intelligence agency and architecture autonomy and as ‘brittle’ connectionism definition of decision-making technology expert systems and feedback loops fuzzy logic innateness intelligence analysis meta-learning as ‘narrow’ needle-in-a-haystack problems neural networks reinforcement learning ‘strong AI’ symbolic logic and unsupervised learning ‘winters’ artificial neural networks Ashby, William Ross Asimov, Isaac Asperger syndrome Astute class boats Atari Breakout (1976) Montezuma’s Revenge (1984) Space Invaders (1978) Athens ATLAS robots augmented intelligence Austin Powers (1997 film) Australia authoritarianism autonomous vehicles see also drones autonomy B-21 Raider B-52 Stratofortress B2 Spirit Baby X BAE Systems Baghdad, Iraq Baidu balloons ban, campaigns for Banks, Iain Battle of Britain (1940) Battle of Fleurus (1794) Battle of Midway (1942) Battle of Sedan (1940) batwing design BBN Beautiful Mind, A (2001 film) beetles Bell Laboratories Bengio, Yoshua Berlin Crisis (1961) biases big data Bin Laden, Osama binary code biological weapons biotechnology bipolarity bits Black Lives Matter Black Mirror (television series) Blade Runner (1982 film) Blade Runner 2049 (2017 film) Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire blindness Blunt, Emily board games, see under games boats Boden, Margaret bodies Boeing MQ-25 Stingray Orca submarines Boolean logic Boston Dynamics Bostrom, Nick Boyd, John brain amygdala bodies and chunking dopamine emotion and genetic engineering and language and mind merge and morality and plasticity prediction and subroutines umwelts and Breakout (1976 game) breathing control brittleness brute force Buck Rogers (television series) Campaign against Killer Robots Carlsen, Magnus Carnegie Mellon University Casino Royale (2006 film) Castro, Fidel cat detector centaur combination Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) centre of gravity chaff Challenger Space Shuttle disaster (1986) Chauvet cave, France chemical weapons Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) chess centaur teams combinatorial explosion and creativity in Deep Blue game theory and MuZero as toy universe chicken (game) chimeras chimpanzees China aircraft carriers Baidu COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) D-21 in genetic engineering in GJ-11 Sharp Sword nuclear weapons surveillance in Thucydides trap and US Navy drone seizure (2016) China Lake, California Chomsky, Noam choreography chunking Cicero civilians Clarke, Arthur Charles von Clausewitz, Carl on character on culmination on defence on genius on grammar of war on materiel on nature on poker on willpower on wrestling codebreaking cognitive empathy Cold War (1947–9) arms race Berlin Crisis (1961) Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) F-117 Nighthawk Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) joint action Korean War (1950–53) nuclear weapons research and SR-71 Blackbird U2 incident (1960) Vienna Summit (1961) Vietnam War (1955–75) VRYAN Cole, August combinatorial creativity combinatorial explosion combined arms common sense computers creativity cyber security games graphics processing unit (GPU) mice Moore’s Law symbolic logic viruses VRYAN confirmation bias connectionism consequentialism conservatism Convention on Conventional Weapons ConvNets copying Cormorant cortical interfaces cost-benefit analysis counterfactual regret minimization counterinsurgency doctrine courageous restraint COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) creativity combinatorial exploratory genetic engineering and mental disorders and transformational criminal law CRISPR, crows Cruise, Thomas Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) culmination Culture novels (Banks) cyber security cybernetics cyborgs Cyc cystic fibrosis D-21 drones Damasio, Antonio dance DARPA autonomous vehicle research battlespace manager codebreaking research cortical interface research cyborg beetle Deep Green expert system programme funding game theory research LongShot programme Mayhem Ng’s helicopter Shakey understanding and reason research unmanned aerial combat research Dartmouth workshop (1956) Dassault data DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) dead hand system decision-making technology Deep Blue deep fakes Deep Green DeepMind AlphaGo Atari playing meta-learning research MuZero object recognition research Quake III competition (2019) deep networks defence industrial complex Defence Innovation Unit Defence Science and Technology Laboratory defence delayed gratification demons deontological approach depth charges Dionysus DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) dodos dogfighting Alpha domains dot-matrix tongue Dota II (2013 game) double effect drones Cormorant D-21 GJ-11 Sharp Sword Global Hawk Gorgon Stare kamikaze loitering munitions nEUROn operators Predator Reaper reconnaissance RQ-170 Sentinel S-70 Okhotnik surveillance swarms Taranis wingman role X-37 X-47b dual use technology Eagleman, David early warning systems Echelon economics Edge of Tomorrow (2014 film) Eisenhower, Dwight Ellsberg, Daniel embodied cognition emotion empathy encryption entropy environmental niches epilepsy epistemic community escalation ethics Asimov’s rules brain and consequentialism deep brain stimulation and deontological approach facial recognition and genetic engineering and golden rule honour hunter-gatherer bands and identity just war post-conflict reciprocity regulation surveillance and European Union (EU) Ex Machina (2014 film) expert systems exploratory creativity extra limbs Eye in the Sky (2015 film) F-105 Thunderchief F-117 Nighthawk F-16 Fighting Falcon F-22 Raptor F-35 Lightning F/A-18 Hornet Facebook facial recognition feedback loops fighting power fire and forget firmware 5G cellular networks flow fog of war Ford forever wars FOXP2 gene Frahm, Nils frame problem France Fukushima nuclear disaster (2011) Future of Life Institute fuzzy logic gait recognition game theory games Breakout (1976) chess, see chess chicken Dota II (2013) Go, see Go Montezuma’s Revenge (1984) poker Quake III (1999) Space Invaders (1978) StarCraft II (2010) toy universes zero sum games gannets ‘garbage in, garbage out’ Garland, Alexander Gates, William ‘Bill’ Gattaca (1997 film) Gavotti, Giulio Geertz, Clifford generalised intelligence measure Generative Adversarial Networks genetic engineering genetic selection algorithms genetically modified crops genius Germany Berlin Crisis (1961) Nuremburg Trials (1945–6) Russian hacking operation (2015) World War I (1914–18) World War II (1939–45) Ghost in the Shell (comic book) GJ-11 Sharp Sword Gladwell, Malcolm Global Hawk drone global positioning system (GPS) global workspace Go (game) AlphaGo Gödel, Kurt von Goethe, Johann golden rule golf Good Judgment Project Google BERT Brain codebreaking research DeepMind, see DeepMind Project Maven (2017–) Gordievsky, Oleg Gorgon Stare GPT series grammar of war Grand Challenge aerial combat autonomous vehicles codebreaking graphics processing unit (GPU) Greece, ancient grooming standard Groundhog Day (1993 film) groupthink guerilla warfare Gulf War First (1990–91) Second (2003–11) hacking hallucinogenic drugs handwriting recognition haptic vest hardware Harpy Hawke, Ethan Hawking, Stephen heat-seeking missiles Hebrew Testament helicopters Hellfire missiles Her (2013 film) Hero-30 loitering munitions Heron Systems Hinton, Geoffrey Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The (Adams) HIV (human immunodeficiency viruses) Hoffman, Frank ‘Holeshot’ (Cole) Hollywood homeostasis Homer homosexuality Hongdu GJ-11 Sharp Sword honour Hughes human in the loop human resources human-machine teaming art cyborgs emotion games King Midas problem prediction strategy hunter-gatherer bands Huntingdon’s disease Hurricane fighter aircraft hydraulics hypersonic engines I Robot (Asimov) IARPA IBM identity Iliad (Homer) image analysis image recognition cat detector imagination Improbotics nformation dominance information warfare innateness intelligence analysts International Atomic Energy Agency International Criminal Court international humanitarian law internet of things Internet IQ (intelligence quotient) Iran Aegis attack (1988) Iraq War (1980–88) nuclear weapons Stuxnet attack (2010) Iraq Gulf War I (1990–91) Gulf War II (2003–11) Iran War (1980–88) Iron Dome Israel Italo-Turkish War (1911–12) Jaguar Land Rover Japan jazz JDAM (joint directed attack munition) Jeopardy Jobs, Steven Johansson, Scarlett Johnson, Lyndon Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) de Jomini, Antoine jus ad bellum jus in bello jus post bellum just war Kalibr cruise missiles kamikaze drones Kasparov, Garry Kellogg Briand Pact (1928) Kennedy, John Fitzgerald KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) Khrushchev, Nikita kill chain King Midas problem Kissinger, Henry Kittyhawk Knight Rider (television series) know your enemy know yourself Korean War (1950–53) Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie Kubrick, Stanley Kumar, Vijay Kuwait language connectionism and genetic engineering and natural language processing pattern recognition and semantic webs translation universal grammar Law, Jude LeCun, Yann Lenat, Douglas Les, Jason Libratus lip reading Litvinenko, Alexander locked-in patients Lockheed dogfighting trials F-117 Nighthawk F-22 Raptor F-35 Lightning SR-71 Blackbird logic loitering munitions LongShot programme Lord of the Rings (2001–3 film trilogy) LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) Luftwaffe madman theory Main Battle Tanks malum in se Manhattan Project (1942–6) Marcus, Gary Maslow, Abraham Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Matrix, The (1999 film) Mayhem McCulloch, Warren McGregor, Wayne McNamara, Robert McNaughton, John Me109 fighter aircraft medical field memory Merkel, Angela Microsoft military industrial complex Mill, John Stuart Milrem mimicry mind merge mind-shifting minimax regret strategy Minority Report (2002 film) Minsky, Marvin Miramar air base, San Diego missiles Aegis combat system agency and anti-missile gunnery heat-seeking Hellfire missiles intercontinental Kalibr cruise missiles nuclear warheads Patriot missile interceptor Pershing II missiles Scud missiles Tomahawk cruise missiles V1 rockets V2 rockets mission command mixed strategy Montezuma’s Revenge (1984 game) Moore’s Law mosaic warfare Mueller inquiry (2017–19) music Musk, Elon Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) MuZero Nagel, Thomas Napoleon I, Emperor of the French Napoleonic France (1804–15) narrowness Nash equilibrium Nash, John National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Security Agency (NSA) National War College natural language processing natural selection Nature navigation computers Nazi Germany (1933–45) needle-in-a-haystack problems Netflix network enabled warfare von Neumann, John neural networks neurodiversity nEUROn drone neuroplasticity Ng, Andrew Nixon, Richard normal accident theory North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) North Korea nuclear weapons Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) dead hand system early warning systems F-105 Thunderchief and game theory and Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (1945) Manhattan Project (1942–6) missiles Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) second strike capability submarines and VRYAN and in WarGames (1983 film) Nuremburg Trials (1945–6) Obama, Barack object recognition Observe Orient Decide and Act (OODA) offence-defence balance Office for Naval Research Olympic Games On War (Clausewitz), see Clausewitz, Carl OpenAI optogenetics Orca submarines Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) pain Pakistan Palantir Palmer, Arnold Pandemonium Panoramic Research Papert, Seymour Parkinson’s disease Patriot missile interceptors pattern recognition Pearl Harbor attack (1941) Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) Pentagon autonomous vehicle research codebreaking research computer mouse development Deep Green Defence Innovation Unit Ellsberg leaks (1971) expert system programme funding ‘garbage in, garbage out’ story intelligence analysts Project Maven (2017–) Shakey unmanned aerial combat research Vietnam War (1955–75) perceptrons Perdix Pershing II missiles Petrov, Stanislav Phalanx system phrenology pilot’s associate Pitts, Walter platform neutrality Pluribus poker policing polygeneity Portsmouth, Hampshire Portuguese Man o’ War post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Predator drones prediction centaur teams ‘garbage in, garbage out’ story policing toy universes VRYAN Prescience principles of war prisoners Project Improbable Project Maven (2017–) prosthetic arms proximity fuses Prussia (1701–1918) psychology psychopathy punishment Putin, Vladimir Pyeongchang Olympics (2018) Qinetiq Quake III (1999 game) radar Rafael RAND Corporation rational actor model Rawls, John Re:member (Arnalds) Ready Player One (Cline) Reagan, Ronald Reaper drones reciprocal punishment reciprocity reconnaissance regulation ban, campaigns for defection self-regulation reinforcement learning remotely piloted air vehicles (RPAVs) revenge porn revolution in military affairs Rid, Thomas Robinson, William Heath Robocop (1987 film) Robotics Challenge robots Asimov’s rules ATLAS Boston Dynamics homeostatic Shakey symbolic logic and Rome Air Defense Center Rome, ancient Rosenblatt, Frank Royal Air Force (RAF) Royal Navy RQ-170 Sentinel Russell, Stuart Russian Federation German hacking operation (2015) Litvinenko murder (2006) S-70 Okhotnik Skripal poisoning (2018) Ukraine War (2014–) US election interference (2016) S-70 Okhotnik SAGE Said and Done’ (Frahm) satellite navigation satellites Saudi Arabia Schelling, Thomas schizophrenia Schwartz, Jack Sea Hunter security dilemma Sedol, Lee self-actualisation self-awareness self-driving cars Selfridge, Oliver semantic webs Shakey Shanahan, Murray Shannon, Claude Shogi Silicon Valley Simon, Herbert Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP) singularity Siri situational awareness situationalist intelligence Skripal, Sergei and Yulia Slaughterbots (2017 video) Slovic, Paul smartphones Smith, Willard social environments software Sophia Sorcerer’s Apprentice, The (Goethe) South China Sea Soviet Union (1922–91) aircraft Berlin Crisis (1961) Chernobyl nuclear disaster (1986) Cold War (1947–9), see Cold War collapse (1991) Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) early warning systems Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) Korean War (1950–53) nuclear weapons radar technology U2 incident (1960) Vienna Summit (1961) Vietnam War (1955–75) VRYAN World War II (1939–45) Space Invaders (1978 game) SpaceX Sparta Spike Firefly loitering munitions Spitfire fighter aircraft Spotify Stanford University Stanley Star Trek (television series) StarCraft II (2010 game) stealth strategic bombing strategic computing programme strategic culture Strategy Robot strategy Strava Stuxnet sub-units submarines acoustic decoys nuclear Orca South China Sea incident (2016) subroutines Sukhoi Sun Tzu superforecasting surveillance swarms symbolic logic synaesthesia synthetic operation environment Syria Taliban tanks Taranis drone technological determinism Tempest Terminator franchise Tesla Tetlock, Philip theory of mind Threshold Logic Unit Thucydides TikTok Tomahawk cruise missiles tongue Top Gun (1986 film) Top Gun: Maverick (2021 film) torpedoes toy universes trade-offs transformational creativity translation Trivers, Robert Trump, Donald tumours Turing, Alan Twitter 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 film) Type-X Robotic Combat Vehicle U2 incident (1960) Uber Uexküll, Jacob Ukraine ultraviolet light spectrum umwelts uncanny valley unidentified flying objects (UFOs) United Kingdom AI weapons policy armed force, size of Battle of Britain (1940) Bletchley Park codebreaking Blitz (1940–41) Cold War (1947–9) COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) DeepMind, see DeepMind F-35 programme fighting power human rights legislation in Litvinenko murder (2006) nuclear weapons principles of war Project Improbable Qinetiq radar technology Royal Air Force Royal Navy Skripal poisoning (2018) swarm research wingman concept World War I (1914–18) United Nations United States Afghanistan War (2001–14) Air Force Army Research Lab Army Signal Corps Battle of Midway (1942) Berlin Crisis (1961) Bin Laden assassination (2011) Black Lives Matter protests (2020) centaur team research Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Challenger Space Shuttle disaster (1986) Cold War (1947–9), see Cold War COVID-19 pandemic (2019–21) Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) culture cyber security DARPA, see DARPA Defense Department drones early warning systems F-35 programme Gulf War I (1990–91) Gulf War II (2003–11) IARPA Iran Air shoot-down (1988) Korean War (1950–53) Manhattan Project (1942–6) Marines Mueller inquiry (2017–19) National Security Agency National War College Navy nuclear weapons Office for Naval Research Patriot missile interceptor Pearl Harbor attack (1941) Pentagon, see Pentagon Project Maven (2017–) Rome Air Defense Center Silicon Valley strategic computing programme U2 incident (1960) Vienna Summit (1961) Vietnam War (1955–75) universal grammar Universal Schelling Machine (USM) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), see drones unsupervised learning utilitarianism UVision V1 rockets V2 rockets Vacanti mouse Valkyries Van Gogh, Vincent Vietnam War (1955–75) Vigen, Tyler Vincennes, USS voice assistants VRYAN Wall-e (2008 film) WannaCry ransomware War College, see National War College WarGames (1983 film) warrior ethos Watson weapon systems WhatsApp Wiener, Norbert Wikipedia wingman role Wittgenstein, Ludwig World War I (1914–18) World War II (1939–45) Battle of Britain (1940) Battle of Midway (1942) Battle of Sedan (1940) Bletchley Park codebreaking Blitz (1940–41) Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (1945) Pearl Harbor attack (1941) radar technology V1 rockets V2 rockets VRYAN and Wrangham, Richard Wright brothers WS-43 loitering munitions Wuhan, China X-37 drone X-drone X-rays YouTube zero sum games

Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex by Rachel Feltman

COVID-19, disintermediation, double helix, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Internet Archive, longitudinal study, Louis Daguerre, Louis Pasteur, microbiome, moral panic, Pepto Bismol, phenotype, placebo effect, stem cell, TikTok, University of East Anglia, white flight

From the biological realities of our carnal acts to our generally acceptable methods of courtship, the world of sex is the furthest thing from static. Instead, sex is a shimmering spectrum of colorful moving targets. Before we dive in, here’s a quick disclaimer: I’m not going to literally attempt a speed run of all of history to get you from point A (the dawn of dicks) to point Z (the four hours it took the TikTok algorithm to diagnose me as a bisexual cis-woman who’s kinda “meh” about gender and married to a nice man with floppy hair). There’s just too much. I’m also not a historian, let alone one specializing in the history of sex or in queer studies; I’m more of a great-at-finding-fun-facts-for-cocktail-parties girl, but in a professional capacity.

…

As a college professor of mine once bluntly put it in an attempt to fluster us spawnless youngsters, humans are biologically pointless until they have kids. And, you know, there’s something to stop and unpack there, because—ew, right? Not cool. We know that there’s more to being human than propagating our genes. We live and love and laugh and make TikTok videos and write poetry; we feel and make others feel; we take care of one another; we fuck up monumentally and make war and peace and create culinary abominations like the KFC Double Down. That’s what separates us from other animals, or at least most of them. And we’ve got plenty of people on the planet, so it’s perfectly reasonable for some of us to ditch that biological imperative entirely.

Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us About Economics and Life by Alan B. Krueger

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", accounting loophole / creative accounting, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, autonomous vehicles, bank run, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Bob Geldof, butterfly effect, buy and hold, congestion pricing, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, digital rights, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, endogenous growth, Gary Kildall, George Akerlof, gig economy, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, Live Aid, Mark Zuckerberg, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, moral hazard, Multics, Network effects, obamacare, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Samuelson, personalized medicine, power law, pre–internet, price discrimination, profit maximization, random walk, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, Skype, Steve Jobs, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, too big to fail, transaction costs, traumatic brain injury, Tyler Cowen, ultimatum game, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Successful artists and businesses will continue to take advantage of complementary activities, such as live performances and selling merchandise, find ways to price-discriminate without offending fans in order to maximize revenue, and avoid incurring unnecessary costs. Music will always affect listeners’ moods, and scientists may find new and better ways of treating patients with musical therapy. A journalist in China recently asked me, “What does your book have to say about the latest hit app, TikTok?” To be honest, I had never heard of TikTok, a fast-growing social media platform for creating and sharing short videos, with five hundred million users. But I explained that a lesson of this book is that consumers demand quick and convenient service, which is why streaming platforms such as Apple, Amazon, and Spotify have been able to attract users from sites offering free pirated music, and that music is a social activity that spreads through networks.

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price

Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, basic income, Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, David Graeber, defund the police, Donald Trump, emotional labour, George Floyd, Greta Thunberg, impulse control, independent contractor, job satisfaction, meta-analysis, multilevel marketing, neurotypical, phenotype, QAnon, randomized controlled trial, remote working, Rubik’s Cube, seminal paper, theory of mind, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, universal basic income

However, meeting an Autistic adult and having a positive interaction with them often opens up neurotypical people’s minds, and makes them more receptive to learning about Autism. One avenue for practicing self-disclosure without risking IRL rejection is on social media. On social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, Autistic teens and adults have gone viral with videos of themselves reacting to new music with their “masks” off. One such video depicting a nineteen-year-old Autistic woman stimming while wearing headphones became hyperpopular in July 2020; it’s been viewed by more than 10 million people and shared far and wide.[4] Comments on the video are almost entirely supportive and curious, and the video’s creator, Jay, has followed up with numerous other short clips educating her followers about Autism acceptance.

…

BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 2 Sasson, N. J., & Morrison, K. E. (2019). First impressions of adults with autism improve with diagnostic disclosure and increased autism knowledge of peers. Autism, 23(1), 50–59. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 3 https://www.distractify.com/​p/jay-will-float-too-tiktok#:~:text=Source%3A%20TikTok-,Jay%20Will%20Float%20Too’s%20Latest%20TikTok,Lesser%2DKnown%20Aspect%20of%20Autism&text=On%20July%2028%2C%20a%20TikTok,grappling%20with%20the%20sheer%20cuteness. BACK TO NOTE REFERENCE 4 https://nicole.substack.com/​p/a-little-bit-autistic-a-little-bit.

IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives by Chris Stedman

Albert Einstein, augmented reality, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, context collapse, COVID-19, deepfake, different worldview, digital map, Donald Trump, fake news, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, financial independence, game design, gamification, gentrification, Google Earth, Jon Ronson, Kickstarter, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Minecraft, move fast and break things, off-the-grid, Overton Window, pre–internet, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, sentiment analysis, Skype, Snapchat, statistical model, surveillance capitalism, technoutopianism, TikTok, urban planning, urban renewal

And I could share it in real time, instead of safely from a distance, after the fact, in service of a lesson. *** Now in my thirties, on the other side of those difficult few years, I’m still Pretty Online. Gaps remain, to be sure; I don’t fully understand what’s up with WhatsApp, and the only TikTok I acknowledge is Kesha’s. (Actually, I take that back. Somehow, over the course of writing this book, we all decided some TikToks are pretty funny.) But I continue to tweet most days, and the pink circle alerting users that there’s content on my Instagram story—where temporary photos and videos are stored for twenty-four hours, so basically it’s Snapchat but embedded in your Instagram—is generally active, pointing the way to videos of Tuna stretching and screenshots of what I’m listening to on Spotify.

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World by Alan Rusbridger

airport security, basic income, Bellingcat, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, crisis actor, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, George Floyd, ghettoisation, global pandemic, Google Earth, green new deal, hive mind, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Murray Gell-Mann, Narrative Science, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Nicholas Carr, ocean acidification, offshore financial centre, post-truth, profit motive, public intellectual, publication bias, Seymour Hersh, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Bannon, tech baron, the scientific method, TikTok, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, yellow journalism

Journalists had done the hard graft, learned the trade, practised their craft – and then along came a seventeen-year-old filming in her bedroom who called herself an ‘influencer’, with a vast audience and revenues to match. Who did they think they were? Most reporters would never have heard of Arshdeep Soni, a twenty-four-year old TikTok (and Instagram and YouTube) star with a cool seven million followers, who was ‘working with’ Burger King and a select number of record labels. Or the Harfin family from Edinburgh, with their two million followers, who discreetly drop clients’ names into their videos. Or Jeffree Star (née Jeffrey Lynn Steininger Jr), who has built a beauty empire through YouTube, attracting more than 16 million subscribers and earning an estimated $18 million in 2018.

…

Zoomers are the least likely demographic to read a newspaper cover to cover, and are much more likely to find their news on social media or news apps, where the most-viewed content appears first. Mainstream media are starting to cotton on: the BBC’s Religion Correspondent Sophia Smith Galer – self-dubbed ‘the TikTok whisperer’ – uploads frequent content to the video app and also created a ‘Learn the facts about Covid-19’ click-through banner which appeared at the bottom of any related content. Fake news also hits Gen Z particularly hard, but perhaps not as hard as it hits millennials, who are much more likely to use fake news hothouses such as Facebook.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab, Peter Vanham

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

There, tech start-ups and innovators are incubating products for China's increasingly tech-savvy and wealthy consumers and businesses. Shenzhen again is a leader in this field, but other locations, including Beijing's Zhongguancun neighborhood in the Haidian district (where ByteDance, the creator of TikTok, was launched), Shanghai's Zhangjiang hi-tech zone, and others are also contenders. The Price of Progress If you cross the Sham Chen River today, you enter a concrete jungle, the sprawling metropolis that is Shenzhen. But on a hot day in summer, you will hardly see more people in the street than you might have in the sleepy fishing village that preceded it.

…

Currently in Singapore, the prevailing notion is that the programs may be uncommon, but they are also worth the cost. One of the features of the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution, the reasoning goes, is that it's hard to predict the labor market of the future. Who thought some of the most successful twentysomething professionals today would be YouTubers playing videogames or influencers making 10 second TikTok movies? When looking at the Singaporean model, there is another important feature to note. It's been achieved by a triad of stakeholders: government, companies, and unions. Since 1965, this trifecta has had a heavy hand in all labor market and industrial policy decision-making. And it did so without major disruptions in economic activity.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

There, tech start-ups and innovators are incubating products for China's increasingly tech-savvy and wealthy consumers and businesses. Shenzhen again is a leader in this field, but other locations, including Beijing's Zhongguancun neighborhood in the Haidian district (where ByteDance, the creator of TikTok, was launched), Shanghai's Zhangjiang hi-tech zone, and others are also contenders. The Price of Progress If you cross the Sham Chen River today, you enter a concrete jungle, the sprawling metropolis that is Shenzhen. But on a hot day in summer, you will hardly see more people in the street than you might have in the sleepy fishing village that preceded it.

…

Currently in Singapore, the prevailing notion is that the programs may be uncommon, but they are also worth the cost. One of the features of the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution, the reasoning goes, is that it's hard to predict the labor market of the future. Who thought some of the most successful twentysomething professionals today would be YouTubers playing videogames or influencers making 10 second TikTok movies? When looking at the Singaporean model, there is another important feature to note. It's been achieved by a triad of stakeholders: government, companies, and unions. Since 1965, this trifecta has had a heavy hand in all labor market and industrial policy decision-making. And it did so without major disruptions in economic activity.

Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral by Ben Smith

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AOL-Time Warner, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, deplatforming, Donald Trump, drone strike, fake news, Filter Bubble, Frank Gehry, full stack developer, future of journalism, hype cycle, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Larry Ellison, late capitalism, lolcat, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, moral panic, obamacare, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, public intellectual, reality distortion field, Robert Mercer, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, sentiment analysis, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, skunkworks, slashdot, Snapchat, social web, Socratic dialogue, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, subscription business, tech worker, TikTok, traveling salesman, WeWork, WikiLeaks, young professional, Zenefits

The problem was that many of those were good-news stories about Arianna’s friends, or reflections of one of Kenny’s political angles. Editors kept a running list of them to keep on the front page and passed it from hand to hand at shift change, the only way to bypass the new algorithmic pressure. Versions of Breanna’s charts are now everywhere. Virtually every media company, from TikTok to The New York Times, uses a similar system. But these were dark arts back then. Serious journalists sneered nervously at the idea that you’d allow your news judgment to be replaced by crude clicks—that is, by the fast-shifting attention of your audience. When visitors came through the office, Kenny or Jonah would tell Breanna to turn her screen to the wall.

…

., 221–22, 225 Super Bowl (2004), 38 Swamp Dogg, 217 Swisher, Kara, 298 Syed, Nabiha, 251 T Talese, Gay, 222 Talley, André Leon, 89 Tapper, Jake, 250, 252, 253 Tasty, 265, 273 Tate, Ryan, 142 Tea Party, 134, 152, 156, 187 TechCrunch, 86, 147 Tejava, 7 The Terror (French Revolution), 262 text messaging, 253–54, 262 Thiel, Peter, 85–86, 141, 234, 263 Thinking and Drinking, 98–101 Thomas, Owen, 85–86, 234 Thompson, Mark, 219, 227–28 Thomson, Katherine (“KT”), 79–82, 83, 104, 108, 117, 148 Thomson, Robert, 272 Thrillist, 69 TikTok, 105 Time, 2, 6, 85 Times Select, 224 Time Warner, 149, 269 Tkacik, Moe, 91–92, 94–97, 98–101 Today, 3–4, 8, 67 Tonight Show, 50 Treadstone, Timothy (Baked Alaska), 265, 275, 290–97, 298 Trend Page, 123 trolling, 24, 50, 242, 262, 294 Trotter, J.

The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order by Rush Doshi

"World Economic Forum" Davos, American ideology, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, autonomous vehicles, Black Lives Matter, Bretton Woods, capital controls, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, defense in depth, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, drone strike, energy security, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, financial innovation, George Floyd, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, global value chain, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Kickstarter, kremlinology, Malacca Straits, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Network effects, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, positional goods, post-truth, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, reserve currency, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, special drawing rights, special economic zone, TikTok, trade liberalization, transaction costs, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, undersea cable, zero-sum game

Finally, senior Chinese propaganda officials have written that platforms were the “lifeblood” of information flows, and that “whoever owns the platforms will seize the initiative in propagating views and in dominating public opinion.”55 Just as the United States would have concerns over Russian ownership of Facebook, so too must it be equally concerned about China’s ownership of major platforms like TikTok because they offer enormous opportunities for manipulation of information flows and domestic politics. Accordingly, encouraging restrictions on autocracy-owned social media apps like TikTok—including forced divestiture or de facto bans— are inexpensive and necessary to blunt Chinese efforts in the information space. Building American Order Blunting Chinese order building at low cost may work in many domains, but it is not sustainable without efforts to simultaneously reinvest in the foundations of American order.

…

See also specific places terrorism, 124–25, 187–88 Thailand, 95–96, 202–3, 204–5, 236 Thatcher, Margaret, 268–69 think tanks, 42–43, 281–82 Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), 290 threat perception, 53–58 “three evils,” 127–28, 129–30 Tiananmen Square Massacre and arms embargo, 95–96 and China’s military modernization, 69–70, 71, 72, 73, 91, 95–96 and China’s use of regional institutions, 104–5 and Chinese nationalism, 27 and Deng’s “Tao Guang Yang Hui,” 59–60 impact on China’s trade strategies, 134–35, 137, 138, 139–41, 142, 147–48 impact on post-Cold War strategy, 48–50, 51–52, 55–56, 59–60 and military building strategies, 194–95 and multipolarity discourse, 162 and overview of China’s grand strategy, 4 and political blunting strategies, 102, 112, 118 and US asymmetric strategies, 308–9 Tibet, 307–8, 312–13 TikTok, 322–23 torpedo technology, 47, 84, 85, 86, 198–99 “Towards an Asia Pacific Economic Community” (report), 101–2 Track II dialogues, 108–9, 123–24 trade relations and China’s grand strategy, 147–56 and China’s use of APEC, 151–52 and China’s use of regional institutions, 117–18 and China’s use of WTO, 152–56 and economic blunting strategies, 141–44, 151–56 explaining China’s behaviors, 136 He Xin on, 134 impact of “the trifecta,” 137–41 and implementation of China’s blunting strategy, 66 and normalization of relations with US, 134–36, 144–56 and US asymmetric strategies, 309–10 See also economic strategies trade war with China, 43–44, 155–56, 263 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 273–74, 328–29 Treaty of Shimonoseki, 1 “trifecta.”

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Benchmark Capital, blockchain, Blue Bottle Coffee, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cryptocurrency, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Frank Gehry, growth hacking, Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Minecraft, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, Peter Thiel, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, TikTok, Tony Hsieh, Travis Kalanick, ubercab, Zipcar

The group in charge of Instagram’s direct messaging was transferred to report to the Facebook Messenger team. In late 2019, Zuckerberg made a cameo appearance at an Instagram-branded conference and took a selfie with the crowd. Internally at Facebook, he was talking about using Instagram to take on TikTok, the Chinese app that had replaced Snapchat as the top threat to Facebook’s dominance. The frequency of advertising on Instagram had increased. There were more notifications too, and more personalized recommendations about who to follow. Being part of the Facebook “family” meant making compromises to bolster the bottom line—and to account for the growth rate slowing down on the main social network.

…

., 227 Snoop Dogg, 4, 71, 98, 138 early IG account of, 35–36 Socialcam, 109 social media as amplifier of issues, 278 as both reflection and modifier of user behavior, 233, 234–35 bullying on, 40, 41, 135, 161, 163, 218–19, 248 FB’s dominance of, 88, 121, 124, 151, 209 user passivity on, 234 see also news media social media companies, xvii, 109–10, 203, 232 see also specific companies Social Network, The (film), 15, 67, 107 social networks, 88 follower-based vs. friend-based, 20, 80 interest-based, 20, 21, 210 virality and, see virality Sony, 167 South by Southwest technology conference, 55 #sp, 236 Spacey, Kevin, 152 Spain, IG in, 226 spam, 80, 226, 260 Spectra photo filter, 23 Spiegel, Evan, 112–14, 115–16, 123, 179, 191, 194, 195, 199–200 Zuckerberg and, 116–17, 200, 201–2 see also Snapchat; Snapchat Stories Spotify, 45 Square, 15, 46, 65 Squires, Jim, 120 Stanford Mayfield Fellows Program, 5, 12, 46 Stanford University, 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 20, 24, 47, 173 Starbucks, IG account of, 35 startups, xx, 14 see also specific startups State of the Union address (2012), 47 status updates, 1, 12, 15 Stein, Robby, 194, 201 storytelling, xviii @strawburry17, 171 Streep, Meryl, 152 Stretch, Colin, 225 Stuart Weitzman, xix Styles, Harry, 130, 133 suicide, suicidal content, 40, 41, 42, 270, 277–78 Sun, Fei Fei, 156 Sutro photo filter, 23 Swain, David, 154 Swank, Hilary, 192 Sweeney, Shayne, 32, 37, 53, 71, 75–76, 79 Swift, Taylor, 47, 131, 204, 217, 218–19, 231 Syracuse University, 232 Systrom, Diane, 3 Systrom, Doug, 3–4 Systrom, Kate, 3, 192 Systrom, Kevin, xxii, 31, 69–70, 94–95, 123–25, 146, 153, 159–60, 180, 193, 225, 245, 260, 261, 277 at Academy Awards, 191–92, 204 analytics and, 226–27 art history and Renaissance as interests of, 3, 106 celebrities’ relationships with, 46, 133–34 childhood of, 3–4 Clinton and, 207–8 competitiveness of, 107–8 Cox and, 257, 267–68, 272 cycling by, 185, 186, 205–6 deejaying by, 4, 10 disillusioned with FB’s grow-at-all-costs culture, xvii Dorsey and, 6–7, 15–16, 19, 60, 84 early mobile websites built by, 9–10; see also Burbn early prediction of IG success by, 29 in effort to preserve IG’s brand, 159–60, 176, 177–78, 184–85, 209, 217–20 in Florence, 3, 4–5, 19, 21 and FTC investigation of IG sale to FB, 75, 76 at Google, 8–9, 23, 37, 58, 62, 194 IG founded by, see Instagram IG posts by, 31 IG sold to Facebook by Krieger and, see Facebook, Instagram acquired by IGTV and, 257, 264, 265–66, 267 in increasing conflict with FB, 214, 249, 252–53, 262–63, 268–69 Krieger’s relationship with, 11–12, 13, 16–17, 22–23, 33, 107, 254 Kutcher’s friendship with, 46, 133 leadership philosophy of, 18 at Middlesex boarding school, 134 Monday leadership meetings of, 107 at Nextstop, 9–10, 11 at Odeo, 5–6, 7, 12 1 million followers of, 187 perjury allegations against, 86, 98–99 photography passion of, 2, 4–5 Pope Francis’s meeting with, 195–96 Porch and, 130–31, 132–33, 135, 147–48, 166, 195, 245 post-IG, 277 as pressured by Zuckerberg to build IG’s business model, 163–65, 167 problem solving by, 18, 32 as public face of IG, 33 re-sharing disallowed by, 140 in resignation from IG, xxii, 272–75 similar background of Zuckerberg and, 106–7 simplicity valued by, 18, 20, 21, 24, 27, 45, 54, 102, 119, 160, 180, 189, 191, 199, 205 Snapchat and, 188, 190, 192, 202–3, 217 at Stanford University, 7, 8, 24 Stories opposed by, 190, 191 study abroad of, 3–5 on Tim Ferriss Show, 87 #trashcangate and, 181–82 well-being initiative of, 249 Zuckerberg’s 2005 meeting with, 1–3 Zuckerberg’s relationship with, 7, 38, 95, 104–5, 107–8, 163–64, 216–17, 251, 252–53, 256, 262, 264, 266–68, 269–70 tagging friends, 7, 90 tagging photos, 95 TaskRabbit, 17 tastemaking, tastemakers, xviii, xxi, 144, 237 see also influencers Tatum, Channing, 149–50 Tatum, Everly, 149 #taylorswiftisasnake, 218 #tbt, 155 TechCrunch, 34, 35, 36 technology industry, 28 teens, 243 on FB, 117, 184 finsta accounts of, 182–83, 184 on IG, 118, 170 IG’s analytic tools used by, 275–76 IG Stories and, 203 as key to the future of IG, 154, 171, 184 and pressure to post the best, 114, 170, 172, 188–90, 248 Snapchat and, 115 technology use by, 114 unspoken social rules among, 182, 184 Zuckerberg’s resolve to better understand, 116 Teigen, Chrissy, 243 Telegram, 246 terrorism, terrorists, 249, 261 Tesla, 22 That ‘70s Show, 44 TheFacebook.com, 1, 7 growth of, 2 see also Facebook @thefatjewish, xx @theskinnyconfidential, 237 Thiel, Peter, 191, 193 #thinspiration, 41 This American Life (NPR show), 188 Threadsy, 17 Thrive Capital, 66, 70 Throwback Thursday, 155 TikTok, 277 Timberlake, Justin, 203, 204 Time, 38–39 Tim Ferris Show, 87 Tinder, 19 TMZ, 136 Toffey, Dan, 52, 53, 73, 141, 143 Totti Candy Factory, 242 Toy Story (film), 180 Transocean Ltd., 113 #trashcangate, 181–82, 204 travel, IG’s influence on, 169, 241, 242 Trigger, Kaitlyn, 79 trolls, internet, 41, 219, 251 Trump, Donald, 207, 208, 210, 211, 224, 258 FB leveraged by, 212–13 Trump, Ivanka, 70 Trump International Hotel, 70 Tumblr, 19, 103, 170 Tuna (dog), 141–42, 153 Tuna Melts My Heart (Dasher), 142 24 Hour Photo, 117 Twitter, xviii, xxi, 9, 17, 19, 31, 39, 130, 137, 151, 160, 170, 192, 225, 232, 239, 248 Academy Awards and, 151, 204 in attempt to buy IG, 25, 46, 48–49, 55–56, 86, 109 Benchmark Capital investment in, 36 chronological order of posts on, 19, 117 content policing and, 43 Dorsey at, 14, 25–26, 46–47 early investors in, 23 fake news on, 225 as follower-based network, 20 founders’ discord at, 14 free speech ethos at, 37, 156–57 growth rate of, 216 IG blocked from access to, 84, 99 IG photo sharing to, 37 IPO of, 98, 148, 149, 150–51 Niche acquired by, 165 Obama’s account on, 126 140–character limit of, 110, 128 Periscope acquired by, 64 retweet button of, 20, 44, 152, 157, 234 status updates at, 15 #tweetups and, 34 as unwilling to edit content, 220 user anonymity on, 41 verification on, 132 Vine acquired by, 64, 109, 157 Williams at, 14, 46 Zuckerberg’s attempted purchase of, 57 Twttr, 7 Tycho (Scott Hansen), 34 Tyga, 238 U2, 126 Uber, 36, 45, 222 UberCab, 23 Underwood, Teddy, 120–21 “unicorns,” 61 Van Damme, Tim, 51–54, 73 Vanity Fair, 158, 192 #vanlife, 229 venture capitalists, 2–3, 11, 15, 24, 36–37, 55, 56, 109, 116, 191 Vergara, Sofia, 236 Verge, 216 verification, 231–32, 279 as status symbol, 132–33 Verrilli, Jessica, 46 VidCon, 219 Viddy, 109 Vine, 64, 109–10, 111–12, 122, 124, 157, 165, 171, 265 violence, violent content, 40, 41–42, 97, 223, 249, 261 virality: of fake news, 225 on FB, 162, 209, 211, 215, 251, 260 re-sharing and, 20, 43–44, 140, 152, 210 risky behavior and, 240, 243–45 sharing and, 140, 152 social networking and, 44 on Twitter, 151, 239 Vogue, 118, 195, 231 IG-related cover of, 156, 157 VPN (virtual private network), 122 Wall Street, 74, 102, 150, 151, 164, 266, 267 Wall Street Journal, 102, 118, 122 Warner Bros.

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future by Sebastian Mallaby

"Susan Fowler" uber, 23andMe, 90 percent rule, Adam Neumann (WeWork), adjacent possible, Airbnb, Apple II, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, Bob Noyce, book value, business process, charter city, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, deal flow, Didi Chuxing, digital map, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Dutch auction, Dynabook, Elon Musk, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, family office, financial engineering, future of work, game design, George Gilder, Greyball, guns versus butter model, Hacker Ethic, Henry Singleton, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, income inequality, industrial cluster, intangible asset, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, junk bonds, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, liberal capitalism, Louis Pasteur, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, Masayoshi Son, Max Levchin, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, microdosing, military-industrial complex, Mitch Kapor, mortgage debt, move fast and break things, Network effects, oil shock, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plant based meat, plutocrats, power law, pre–internet, price mechanism, price stability, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, quantitative easing, radical decentralization, Recombinant DNA, remote working, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Metcalfe, ROLM, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, software is eating the world, sovereign wealth fund, Startup school, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, super pumped, superconnector, survivorship bias, tech worker, Teledyne, the long tail, the new new thing, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, two and twenty, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban decay, UUNET, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, Vision Fund, wealth creators, WeWork, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, Y Combinator, Zenefits

Wang Xing, for his part, progressed from billionaire to deca-billionaire, and his company became Sequoia Capital’s most lucrative investment ever, surpassing even Google.[77] By 2019, admittedly, Meituan-Dianping had been eclipsed. But Sequoia’s new gold medalist was another Chinese venture, ByteDance, operator of a wildly popular short-form video app named TikTok. In the summer of 2016, Gary Rieschel packed his suitcases in Shanghai. He had known when to arrive, and now he knew when it was time to leave. An American outsider could no longer add much to China’s venture industry. Chapter Eleven Accel, Facebook, and the Decline of Kleiner Perkins In the early years of the twenty-first century, in the shadow of the tech bust, an entrepreneur named Kevin Efrusy joined Accel.

…

After all, venture capital is all about disrupting entrenched corporate power: it is the enemy of monopoly. The challenge to Amazon comes from younger VC-backed firms: upstart consumer brands such as Glossier that collect payments with the help of other upstarts such as Stripe. Similarly, the challenge to Facebook comes from the next generation of social-media platforms: the Sequoia-backed TikTok or the a16z protégé Clubhouse. Nor does the fact that Facebook has swallowed two prominent past challengers, Instagram and WhatsApp, undermine this point. For one thing, competition authorities, responding to the increasing skepticism of Big Tech, may block Facebook’s acquisition of future challengers.

…

See Facebook Theranos, 339–42 Thiel, Peter, 198–215 Facebook and, 198, 199, 207, 208–9 Founders Fund, 208–15, 291, 296, 358, 403, 444n, 445n Musk and, 205–6, 211, 214–15 opposition to VC mentoring, 209–11, 290 PayPal, 198, 201–4, 206–9, 211, 214, 444n power law and, 8, 9, 209, 210–11, 221, 277 Stripe investment, 378, 455n 3Com, 100–107, 114, 138, 390 Tickle, 252 Tiger Global, 278–88, 337 Baidu, 452n Ctrip, 285–86, 448n DST, 276–77, 287, 452n Facebook, 273–78, 288, 452n hedge fund/venture hybrid model, 283–86, 299–300, 326, 378 Private Investment Partners fund, 284–86 SenseTime, 393 Sina, Sohu, and NetEase, 279–82 Tiger Management, 278, 281, 337 TikTok, 248, 388 Tilbury, Charlotte, 332 Time (magazine), 12, 20, 150, 339 Tokopedia, 324 Torvalds, Linus, 20 Toshiba, 94 Toys “R” Us, 64 TPG Capital, 358, 360 Traitorous Eight, 17–18, 21, 25, 28, 31–39, 53, 67, 423n Treybig, Jimmy, 69–72, 86, 102 T.

The Science of Hate: How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do to Stop It by Matthew Williams

3D printing, 4chan, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic bias, Black Lives Matter, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, dark matter, data science, deep learning, deindustrialization, desegregation, disinformation, Donald Trump, European colonialism, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, gamification, George Floyd, global pandemic, illegal immigration, immigration reform, impulse control, income inequality, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microaggression, Milgram experiment, Oklahoma City bombing, OpenAI, Overton Window, power law, selection bias, Snapchat, statistical model, The Turner Diaries, theory of mind, TikTok, twin studies, white flight

The bad press related to the rise of Islamist and far-right extremism on their platforms was a motivating factor, as was the global coverage of attacks on high-profile black and female users. But they represent only a fraction of companies operating in this space, and many of the alternative sites, like TikTok, Reddit, Gab, Voat, Telegram and Discord, are yet to engage. Figure 18 shows the numbers from the fifth evaluation of the scheme (4 November to 13 December 2019). Almost all participating companies reviewed the majority of notifications sent to them within twenty-four hours, and 71 per cent of these posts were removed, which showed a slight decline on the year before.§§ In 2016, when monitoring first began, only 40 per cent of participating companies reviewed the majority of notifications sent to them within twenty-four hours, and 28 per cent of these posts were removed.

…

., 1n suffering, 1, 2 suicide attacks, 1, 2, 3, 4n, 5, 6 superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), 1, 2 superordinate goal, 1 superordinate ingroup, 1, 2 suppression mechanism, 1, 2, 3 surveys, 1, 2 survival, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Sutcliffe, Peter, 1 Sweden, 1 symbolic threats, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 synagogues, 1 Syria, 1, 2, 3, 4 systemic bias, 1 Tajfel, Henri, 1 Tarrant, Brenton, 1, 2, 3 Tay (chatbot), 1, 2, 3 Taylor, Breonna, 1 Tbilisi, 1 tech giants, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 technology, 1, 2, 3 Telegram, 1, 2 television, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 terror, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 terrorism: events that remind us of our mortality, 1; far-right hate, 1, 2; feeling hate together, 1; Google searches, 1; group threat, 1, 2, 3; hate counts, 1, 2; Kansas shooting, 1; online hate speech, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; predicting hate crime, 1; profiling the hater, 1; religion versus hate, 1; steps to stop hate, 1, 2; subcultures of hate, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5n, 6; trauma and containment, 1, 2; trigger events, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; YouTube algorithms, 1 The Terrorist’s Handbook, 1 Terror Management Theory (TMT), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Tétouan, 1 Texas, 1, 2, 3, 4 Thaipoosam Cavadee (Hindu festival), 1 Thatcher, Margaret, 1, 2 theory of mind, 1, 2 Thomas, Daniel, 1 ‘thoughtcrime’, 1 threats: author’s brain and hate, 1, 2, 3, 4; beyond threat, 1; brain and hate, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; context and threat, 1; cultural machine, group threat and stereotypes, 1; defence mechanisms, 1; disengaging the amygdala autopilot, 1; evolution of group threat detection, 1; feeling hate together, 1; fusiform face area, 1; group threat and hate, 1; hacking the brain to hate, 1; hate and feeling pain, 1; human biology and threat, 1; locating hate in the brain, 1; neutralising the perception of threat, 1; online hate speech, 1, 2, 3, 4; parts that edge us towards hate, 1; parts that process prejudice, 1; predicting hate crime, 1; prepared versus learned amygdala responses, 1; processing of ‘gut-deep’ hate, 1; recognising facial expressions, 1; religion versus hate, 1; society, competition and threat, 1; steps to stop hate, 1, 2, 3; subcultures of hate, 1, 2, 3; threat in their own words, 1; tipping point, 1; unlearning prejudiced threat detection, 1 thrill-seeking offenders, 1 TikTok, 1 Till Death Us Do Part, 1 tipping point: author’s experience effects, 1; identity fusion and hateful murder, 1; overview, 1, 2; predicting the next hate crime, 1; seven steps to stop hate, 1; tipping point from prejudice to hate, 1 TMT, see Terror Management Theory Tokyo, 1n tolerance: filter bubbles and bias, 1; group threat, 1, 2; religion versus hate, 1, 2; steps to stop hate, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; white flight, 1 torcidas organizadas (football hooligans), 1 trackers, 1 transgender people, 1, 2n, 3, 4 translation, 1 trauma: the ‘average’ hate criminal, 1; group threat, 1; hate as container of unresolved trauma, 1; hate speech harm, 1; overview, 1; predicting hate crime, 1; prepared versus learned amygdala responses, 1; subcultures of hate, 1, 2, 3; tipping point, 1, 2; understanding the ‘exceptional’ hate offender, 1, 2, 3 tribes, 1, 2n, 3, 4, 5, 6 trigger events, 1; events and hate online, 1; events and hate on the streets, 1; events that challenge our values, 1; events that remind us of our mortality, 1; micro-events and hate, 1; online hate speech, 1, 2, 3, 4; our psychology and trigger events, 1; overview, 1; predicting hate crime, 1; religion versus hate, 1; trauma and containment, 1; uncovering the triggers of hate, 1 trolls, 1, 2n Trump, Donald: Cambridge Analytica, 1; Charlottesville rally, 1; ‘Chinese virus’, 1, 2; far-right hate, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; hate counts, 1, 2, 3; Kansas shooting, 1, 2, 3; and Mexicans, 1, 2, 3; and Muslims, 1, 2, 3, 4n, 5, 6n; police and race, 1; trigger event of election, 1; Twitter, 1, 2, 3, 4; YouTube algorithms, 1 trust, 1, 2, 3 Tsorionov, Dmitry ‘Enteo’, 1, 2 Tunisia attacks, 1 Turks, 1, 2 The Turner Diaries, 1 twins, 1 Twitter: far-right hate, 1, 2, 3, 4; filter bubbles and bias, 1; how much online hate speech, 1, 2; Japan care home attack, 1; online hate speech and social media companies, 1; online hate speech and the law, 1, 2; rise of the bots and trolls, 1, 2; Salah effect, 1; trigger events, 1, 2; Trump, 1, 2, 3, 4; why online hate speech hurts, 1 Uematsu, Satoshi, 1, 2, 3 UKIP, see United Kingdom Independence Party ultra groups, 1 ultrasound, 1n uncertainty, 1, 2, 3, 4 unconscious bias, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 unemployment, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 United Kingdom (UK): Copeland nail bombing, 1; COVID-19 pandemic, 1; cultural machine, 1, 2; Duggan shooting and riots, 1; extreme filter bubbles, 1; football fans, 1; group threat, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; hate counts, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; hate speech harm, 1; how much online hate speech, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; online hate speech prevention, 1, 2, 3; online news, 1; protections from hate, 1; Sophie Lancaster, 1; trauma and containment, 1, 2; trigger events, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), 1, 2n, 3, 4 United Nations, 1, 2 United States (US): Charlottesville rally, 1, 2, 3n, 4; cultural machine, 1, 2, 3; far-right hate, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; Google searches, 1; group threat, 1, 2, 3, 4; hate counts, 1, 2, 3; housing projects, 1; Jim Crow era, 1; Kansas shooting, 1; Muslims ban, 1, 2n; office workers, 1; online hate speech, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; online news, 1; police and hate, 1; pyramid of hate, 1; steps to stop hate, 1; subcultures of hate, 1, 2; trauma and Franklin, 1; trigger events, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Unite the Right, 1, 2 University of Toronto’s Behavioural Research Lab, 1, 2 University of Virginia, 1 uptake of post, 1 ‘us’ and ‘them’: brain and hate, 1, 2, 3, 4; group threat, 1, 2, 3, 4; HateLab Brexit study, 1; religion versus hate, 1; subcultures of hate, 1; tipping point, 1; what it means to hate, 1, 2, 3 vaccination, 1 values, 1, 2, 3, 4 Van Bavel, Jay, 1n, 2 vandalism, 1 Vaughn, James Clayton, Jr, see Franklin, Joseph Paul ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), 1, 2 victimisation, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 victims, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 video content, 1, 2 Vidgen, Bertram, 1, 2 Vietnam War, 1 violence: brain and hate, 1, 2, 3, 4; far-right hate, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; group threat, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; online hate speech, 1; police bias, 1; steps to stop hate, 1; subcultures of hate, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; trauma and containment, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; what it means to hate, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 VKontakte, 1 vmPFC, see ventromedial prefrontal cortex Voat, 1, 2 Vorherrschaft Division, 1 Vote Leave campaign, 1 voting, 1, 2 vulnerability, 1, 2, 3, 4 Wallace, Hunter, 1 Wall Street Journal, 1 Walmart shooting, 1 war, 1n, 2, 3 War of Independence, 1 warrior psychology, 1 washing, 1 Washington Post, 1 Waterfield, Peter, 1, 2 Watson, Paul Joseph, 1, 2, 3 webpage content, 1 Weibo, 1 WEIRD societies (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic), 1 Weizenbaum, Joseph, 1 Westminster attack, 1, 2, 3 West Yorkshire, 1, 2, 3 white flight, 1, 2 Whitehouse, Harvey, 1 white matter, 1, 2 white nationalism, 1, 2 white people: far-right hate, 1, 2; Google searches, 1; steps to stop hate, 1, 2, 3, 4; subcultures of hate, 1, 2; trauma and containment, 1, 2; trigger events, 1, 2, 3, 4 white supremacists: far-right hate and Charlottesville, 1, 2, 3, 4; Google searches, 1; predicting hate crime, 1; subcultures of hate, 1, 2; trauma and Franklin, 1, 2; trigger events, 1, 2 Whitman, Charles, 1 Will & Grace, 1, 2 Wilson, Timothy, 1 witnesses, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 women, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Woolwich terror attack, 1, 2 working class, 1, 2 World Health Organisation, 1 World Trade Center (WTC), 1, 2, 3 xenophobia, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Xiaoice (chatbot), 1 Xu, Professor, 1 Yaxley-Lennon, Stephen (Tommy Robinson), 1, 2, 3, 4 Yiannopoulos, Milo, 1, 2 Yorkshire, 1, 2, 3, 4 young people, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 YouTube: algorithms, 1; far-right hate and Charlottesville, 1, 2, 3; filter bubbles, 1; online hate speech, 1, 2, 3, 4; Russia, 1 Zuckerberg, Mark 1 Vigil for Srinivas Kuchibhotla, who was murdered by Adam Purinton on 22 February 2017.

Emotional Ignorance: Lost and Found in the Science of Emotion by Dean Burnett

airport security, Asperger Syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, call centre, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, COVID-19, double empathy problem, emotional labour, experimental economics, fake it until you make it, fake news, fear of failure, heat death of the universe, impulse control, lockdown, longitudinal study, meta-analysis, microbiome, mirror neurons, neurotypical, New Journalism, period drama, pre–internet, Snapchat, social distancing, theory of mind, TikTok, Wall-E

But, despite all these reasonable points, it still felt wrong, to share my father’s funeral, on Facebook! Even writing that sentence is weirdly jarring. I use Facebook to publicise my work, post jokes or memes, and share pictures of my notorious cat. Using it to broadcast my father’s funeral service? That was unsettling. Why, though? Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and more are omnipresent parts of the modern world. I’m a member of several such sites, as is a significant chunk of humankind.1 Nonetheless, sharing something so profoundly emotional as my father’s funeral service via social media felt like a step too far. However, I’m aware that not everyone feels the same.

…

How’s a bunch of code on a hard drive or server meant to do better? There’s also another factor at work. Modern technology may be advanced enough to represent or mimic emotions, but we humans often experience negative emotional reactions when it does that. While we can be seriously moved by a heartfelt Facebook post or Twitter thread, a powerful Instagram or TikTok video, here we recognise that the emotion being shared originated from another human, so our brains instinctively fill in any gaps resulting from the medium. But if emotional information stems from an artificial source, i.e. is produced rather than just distributed by technological means, we often feel discomfort and dislike, regardless of what it’s trying to convey.

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future by Noreena Hertz

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, Asian financial crisis, autism spectrum disorder, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Broken windows theory, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, Cass Sunstein, centre right, conceptual framework, Copley Medal, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, dark matter, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Fellow of the Royal Society, future of work, gender pay gap, gentrification, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greta Thunberg, happiness index / gross national happiness, housing crisis, illegal immigration, independent contractor, industrial robot, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jessica Bruder, job automation, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, lockdown, longitudinal study, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, meta-analysis, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Pepto Bismol, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Oldenburg, remote working, rent control, RFID, robo advisor, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Great Good Place, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, Wall-E, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, WeWork, work culture , working poor, workplace surveillance

11 Add to these festivals like Vienna’s Donauinselfest, Brazil’s Rock in Rio or Rabat’s Mawazine, each of which in 2019 attracted more than 700,000 visitors, and it’s clear just how strong the appetite for shared live experiences has become.12 Even as life was being designed to be ever more contactless and technology was enabling us to substitute ‘real’ relationships for those with YouTubers, TikTokers and Alexas, and even as we were being urged to ‘join the conversation’ via Twitter, or ‘share a moment’ on Snapchat and migrate more and more of our conversations online, in those millions of festival-goers we saw evidence of something else. A burgeoning counter-movement of people for whom virtual interactions weren’t enough, and who, in response to their growing feelings of disconnection and atomisation, were actively breaking out of their own digital bubbles and seeking out community in analogue, face-to-face forms.

…

See ‘Rising Levels of Hate Speech & Online Toxicity During This Time of Crisis,’ Light, 2020, https://l1ght.com/Toxicity_during_coronavirus_Report-L1ght.pdf; see too Elise Thomas, ‘As the Coronavirus Spreads, Conspiracy Theories Are Going Viral Too’, Foreign Policy, 14 April 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/14/as-the-coronavirus-spreads-conspiracy-theories-are-going-viral-too/; Queenie Wong, ‘Coronavirus sparks a different kind of problem for social networks’, CNet, 25 March 2020, https://www.cnet.com/news/on-twitter-facebook-and-tiktok-racism-breaks-out-amid-coronavirus-pandemic/?ftag=CAD-03-10aaj8j. 42 For the interplay of race and loneliness, see, for instance, British Red Cross, ‘Barriers to Belonging: An exploration of loneliness among people from Black, Asia and Minority Ethnic Backgrounds’ (British Red Cross, 2019), 12, original report available for download at https://www.redcross.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/we-speak-up-for-change/barriers-to-belonging#Key%20findings; ‘Loneliness and the Workplace: 2020 U.S.

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal

2021 United States Capitol attack, Airbnb, airport security, Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, basic income, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, circular economy, clean water, climate change refugee, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Community Supported Agriculture, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, fiat currency, future of work, Future Shock, game design, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, index card, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mason jar, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microbiome, Minecraft, moral hazard, open borders, pattern recognition, place-making, plant based meat, post-truth, QAnon, QR code, remote working, RFID, risk tolerance, School Strike for Climate, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, stem cell, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, The future is already here, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, universal basic income, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator

Can you hear the difference? I will howl until the whole world howls. Howl with me. Other people started posting their own howling videos. In some of them, the person filming would pan the camera, and you could see they weren’t alone. Small groups were gathered, howling together. Howling became the number one trend on TikTok. Signs began appearing in public spaces. Some read, “Gather here to howl.” Others read, “Howling is not allowed. Please do not disturb our neighborhood.” Some restaurants and stores put up notices welcoming howlers. Others kicked them out. The noon howl sounded a certain way. It was sorrowful, mournful, heartbroken, angry, and wild.

…

It can take the form of an online discussion forum, with hundreds or even thousands of people all imagining the same future scenario, contributing myriad different personal stories and possibilities and building on each other’s ideas. Or it can take place “in the wild,” as we say at the Institute for the Future. Participants can post their thoughts and stories about how the scenario might affect their lives and communities wherever they normally share online—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Medium, Twitch, anywhere!—and include a scenario hashtag, for example, #AlphaGalCrisis. This creates a distributed story, bits of future scattered across the internet in a way that evokes William Gibson’s observation quoted earlier: “The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.”

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future by Julia Hobsbawm

8-hour work day, Airbnb, augmented reality, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cal Newport, call centre, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Graeber, death from overwork, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, digital nomad, driverless car, emotional labour, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Greensill Capital, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Ocado, pensions crisis, remote working, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snow Crash, social distancing, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Upton Sinclair, WeWork, work culture

The next phase is likely to be more focused on enabling better real-time but remote collaboration.24 Josh Greene, who used to be in the senior leadership team at WeWork before creating Groove,25 his own start-up, makes the point about how technology away from an office needs to mimic the old norms of when people sat side by side: People don’t feel part of anything in their work or not enough, and hybrid working increases this alienation. We’re focusing on building a more informal, more evolved kind of interface for people to connect with each other as during real-time online use. I like to say it’s like Slack for the TikTok generation. People’s expectations are now mobile, their expectations are immersive, their expectations are customisable, which factors in feedback, ideas, a jam over twenty minutes of coffee or its digital equivalent. People want profound, small, short interactions and new social platforms which mimic those interactions and networks as consciously designed as possible.

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside by Xiaowei Wang

4chan, AI winter, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, business cycle, cloud computing, Community Supported Agriculture, computer vision, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, drop ship, emotional labour, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Garrett Hardin, gig economy, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, Huaqiangbei: the electronics market of Shenzhen, China, hype cycle, income inequality, informal economy, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, Internet of things, job automation, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, land reform, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, multilevel marketing, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer lending, precision agriculture, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, SoftBank, software is eating the world, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, technological solutionism, the long tail, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, vertical integration, Vision Fund, WeWork, Y Combinator, zoonotic diseases

A good seller builds an energetic rapport with the viewer, just like Kristie with her Krazy Kultured pearls. The popularity of livestream is deeply tied to your income bracket. Few elite urbanites, whose lives are dictated by the rhythms of white-collar work, consistently watch livestream, although most will use the Douyin (TikTok) app to watch short, recorded videos. Kuaishou’s meteoric rise as one of the most popular apps in China is due precisely to its stronghold in rural areas. A large-scale study on Kuai by the anthropologist Chris Tan shows that Kuaishou’s users are typically under twenty-five, without a college degree, living in rural or low-tier cities.

Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness by Tim S. Grover, Shari Wenk

COVID-19, Elon Musk, fake it until you make it, fear of failure, Jeff Bezos, TikTok

An employee is complaining to everyone that he deserves a raise and promotion, but his sales are the lowest on the team? WTF will point that out. Someone is upset because she didn’t get a pat on the back for doing something she was supposed to do? WTF is there to remind her: You’re supposed to do that, it’s your job. The boss spends most of his workday making TikTok videos? WTF will be stopping by. Be your own WTF Department. Hold yourself accountable. If you’re not winning, if you’re going to bed every night and waking up the next day hoping things will be better, if you’re spending more time creating a false image of yourself as a winner than investing in ways to stop being a loser, it’s time to drink up the truth.

Working Hard, Hardly Working by Grace Beverley

Cal Newport, clockwatching, COVID-19, David Heinemeier Hansson, death from overwork, glass ceiling, global pandemic, hustle culture, Jeff Bezos, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Paradox of Choice, Parkinson's law, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, stop buying avocado toast, TED Talk, TikTok, unpaid internship, work culture

It’s people talking about us all the time, so that we formulate opinions of what it’s like to be part of this generation and this working world without even knowing what we think ourselves. We are being inspected from all angles, binoculars out, waiting for the whole of Gen Z’s age bracket to join the workforce, to see what we’re really like, whether we can really work or whether all we know are TikTok dances. We’re allowing ourselves to be told who we are and what we want, and letting that speak for us before we even know what we want to speak about ourselves. But we have every right to reject this rhetoric, to clarify how we work in this world of interconnectivity and distraction, to redefine what purpose and productivity and everything in between means to us.

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future by Ben Tarnoff

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic management, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, business logic, call centre, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, computer vision, coronavirus, COVID-19, decentralized internet, deep learning, defund the police, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, disinformation, Edward Snowden, electricity market, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial intermediation, future of work, gamification, General Magic , gig economy, God and Mammon, green new deal, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Leo Hollis, lockdown, lone genius, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Menlo Park, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, pets.com, profit maximization, profit motive, QAnon, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, smart grid, social distancing, Steven Levy, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, techlash, Telecommunications Act of 1996, TikTok, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, undersea cable, UUNET, vertical integration, Victor Gruen, web application, working poor, Yochai Benkler

., The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021 [1993]). 93, In short, in the early … The other important development at Google in this period was the launch of AdSense in 2003, which extended the AdWords model into the wider web by enabling site owners to sell space to advertisers and split the money with Google. See Levy, In the Plex, 103–8. 93, The innovations of 2002 … “Black boxes inside …”: Shoshana Wodinsky, “It Doesn’t Matter Who Owns TikTok,” Gizmodo, August 7, 2020. For more on ad auctions, see Shengwu Li, interview by Logic, “The Art of Eyeball Harvesting: Shengwu Li on Online Advertising,” Logic, January 1, 2019. Google plans to upend the existing web advertising ecosystem by eliminating support for third-party tracking cookies from its popular Chrome browser and introducing a new ad-targeting technique, which is expected to be implemented in 2023; see Shoshana Wodinsky, “Google’s Quest to Kill the Cookie Is Creating a Privacy Shitshow,” Gizmodo, June 11, 2021.

Walled Culture: How Big Content Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Keep Creators Poor by Glyn Moody

Aaron Swartz, Big Tech, bioinformatics, Brewster Kahle, connected car, COVID-19, disinformation, Donald Knuth, en.wikipedia.org, full text search, intangible asset, Internet Archive, Internet of things, jimmy wales, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, non-fungible token, Open Library, optical character recognition, p-value, peer-to-peer, place-making, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, rent-seeking, text mining, the market place, TikTok, transaction costs, WikiLeaks

These are the modern so-called ‘influencers’, who typically earn a cut of advertising that is placed alongside their material. Influencers who gain a large following on social media might also garner lucrative sponsorship deals. However, earning an income in this way places creators at the mercy of the major platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Creators have no control over the percentage of advertising revenue that they receive, and are subject to arbitrary decisions about what can and cannot be posted. Accounts can be shut down without apparent cause, and with few rights to challenge such decisions, as Giblin has pointed out: “Creators shouldn’t have to choose between Big Content and Big Tech.

Still Broke: Walmart's Remarkable Transformation and the Limits of Socially Conscious Capitalism by Rick Wartzman

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, An Inconvenient Truth, basic income, Bernie Sanders, call centre, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, Donald Trump, employer provided health coverage, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, George Floyd, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, Marc Benioff, old-boy network, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, shareholder value, supply-chain management, TikTok, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor

Under his direction, the company would, in time, winnow its foreign presence; buy the e-commerce site Jet.com for more than $3 billion—and then shut it down; otherwise rev up its online business by introducing new services and expanding its stable of third-party sellers; unveil a subscription program, akin to Amazon Prime, called Walmart+; build local fulfillment centers—compact warehouses powered by robotics and artificial intelligence—right in its stores; dive into digital advertising; cultivate customers on TikTok, the viral video app; venture into the metaverse and the worlds of cryptocurrency and nonfungible tokens; deliver products by drone and driverless truck; put groceries right into people’s fridges while they weren’t home; open health clinics and offer medical insurance; launch a financial technology startup; buy the menswear company Bonobos; buy and sell the women’s apparel company ModCloth; beef up its fashion brands by hiring a creative director, Brandon Maxwell, who, as Vogue observed, was in a coterie of designers who typically took on engagements in Paris or Milan, not Bentonville; and much, much more.

Makers by Chris Anderson

3D printing, Airbnb, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apple II, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Buckminster Fuller, Build a better mousetrap, business process, carbon tax, commoditize, company town, Computer Numeric Control, crowdsourcing, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deal flow, death of newspapers, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, DIY culture, drop ship, Elon Musk, factory automation, Firefox, Ford Model T, future of work, global supply chain, global village, hockey-stick growth, hype cycle, IKEA effect, industrial robot, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, inventory management, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Menlo Park, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, planned obsolescence, private spaceflight, profit maximization, QR code, race to the bottom, Richard Feynman, Ronald Coase, Rubik’s Cube, Scaled Composites, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, slashdot, South of Market, San Francisco, SpaceShipOne, spinning jenny, Startup school, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, Whole Earth Catalog, X Prize, Y Combinator

Other examples include Scott Wilson, a former creative director at Nike. With his connections, he didn’t need crowdfunding for his idea for a special strap that could turn an iPod Nano into a wristwatch. But he chose that route anyway because he wanted the direct feedback and simplicity of the Kickstarter process. His TikTok+LunaTik proposal raised nearly a million dollars. Sixty days after his Kickstarter fund-raising period closed in December 2010, Wilson shipped more than twenty thousand of the watch cases. What Wilson avoided by going this route was the prosaic path of corporate product development: layers and layers of approval processes, which tend to favor the conventionally tried and true over real innovation.

The Rise of Carry: The Dangerous Consequences of Volatility Suppression and the New Financial Order of Decaying Growth and Recurring Crisis by Tim Lee, Jamie Lee, Kevin Coldiron

active measures, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, backtesting, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, currency risk, debt deflation, disinformation, distributed ledger, diversification, financial engineering, financial intermediation, Flash crash, global reserve currency, implied volatility, income inequality, inflation targeting, junk bonds, labor-force participation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Lyft, margin call, market bubble, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, negative equity, Network effects, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, rising living standards, risk free rate, risk/return, sharing economy, short selling, short squeeze, sovereign wealth fund, stock buybacks, tail risk, TikTok, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, yield curve

For many of today’s most interesting companies, their cumulative advantage—not their technology or superior products (let alone oil reserves or car factories)—is their greatest asset, and even more tellingly, their cumulative advantage is often explicitly invoked as being at the heart of their bull case. Outside the business world, franchises and sequels seem to be spreading unstoppably across all entertainment markets; recent years have seen the invention of the “Instagram influencer” and the rise of new forms of celebrity on YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, and more. And today the youngest self-made billionaire 188 THE RISE OF CARRY in history built her empire off the back of a reality TV show that was primarily popularized by a leaked sex tape. The central thesis of this book is that cumulative advantage effects in financial markets are more pronounced today than at any other point in the postwar period: the carry regime.

Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal

Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, barriers to entry, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Big Tech, bitcoin, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, commons-based peer production, context collapse, continuous integration, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Heinemeier Hansson, death of newspapers, Debian, disruptive innovation, Dunbar number, en.wikipedia.org, eternal september, Ethereum, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, Guido van Rossum, Hacker Ethic, Hacker News, Induced demand, informal economy, information security, Jane Jacobs, Jean Tirole, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kubernetes, leftpad, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, node package manager, Norbert Wiener, pirate software, pull request, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, Ronald Coase, Ruby on Rails, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social graph, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, tacit knowledge, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Nature of the Firm, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, two-sided market, urban planning, web application, wikimedia commons, Yochai Benkler, Zimmermann PGP

Cassidy Williams is a software engineer who teaches React development. She also writes a weekly newsletter, live-codes on Twitch, has a Patreon with its own private channel hosted on chat app Discord, offers classes on the online learning platforms Udemy and Skillshare, and posts viral fifteen-second videos on the social video app TikTok, as well as to her nearly 90,000 followers on Twitter. There is no other social platform more prominently associated with developers than GitHub. And yet, Williams’s GitHub profile reveals hardly anything about her, except that she must be popular for something, given that she has a few thousand followers.

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader by Colin Lancaster

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset-backed security, beat the dealer, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, Carmen Reinhart, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, Edward Thorp, family office, fear index, fiat currency, fixed income, Flash crash, George Floyd, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, index arbitrage, inverted yield curve, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, National Debt Clock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, oil shock, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, social distancing, SoftBank, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, The Great Moderation, TikTok, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, value at risk, Vision Fund, WeWork, yield curve, zero-sum game

It’s no wonder that they gulp down every OxyContin pill they can get their hands on. “Now I get why everyone is on Instagram,” the Rabbi says. “Why?” Jerry asks. “You can make things seem better than they really are,” he says. He goes on. “The new American dream: Get a million followers and make it big. Five minutes of TikTok fame. My mom wanted me to be a doctor or an accountant. That was her dream. She still doesn’t know what I do. She thinks I’m a stockbroker.” “Your bedside manner would have sucked,” I say. “Yeah, and there’s no way I could get a million followers. I’m not photogenic enough. I’d be screwed if I were growing up today

How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement by Fredrik Deboer

2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, Bernie Sanders, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, David Brooks, defund the police, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, effective altruism, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, George Floyd, global pandemic, helicopter parent, income inequality, lockdown, obamacare, Occupy movement, open immigration, post-materialism, profit motive, QAnon, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, social distancing, TikTok, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, We are the 99%, working poor, zero-sum game

The case was represented, by people across the political spectrum, as a bellwether. What signaled a new era was not merely that Depp won his case and was awarded a decision in the millions of dollars but rather that there was a large pro-Depp movement online, particularly among young women on the social media video app TikTok. The pro-Depp sentiment went viral, and the age and gender makeup of those who championed it cut directly against assumptions about who would most likely support #MeToo. There was a time when it would have been unthinkable for hashtags in support of accused abusers to trend on Twitter, but pro-Depp topics trended on a daily basis during the trial.

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Charles Babbage, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, deep learning, deskilling, digital rights, discovery of DNA, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, flying shuttle, friendly AI, gender pay gap, global village, Grace Hopper, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, housing crisis, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, lockdown, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microdosing, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, off grid, OpenAI, operation paperclip, packet switching, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, Plato's cave, public intellectual, QAnon, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, spinning jenny, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tech billionaire, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, TikTok, trade route, Turing test, universal basic income, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, Y Combinator