- Robots Will Take Our Jobs (Wired) — I agree with Kevin Kelly that (in my words) software and hardware are eating wetware, but disagree that This is not a race against the machines. If we race against them, we lose. This is a race with the machines. You’ll be paid in the future based on how well you work with robots. Ninety percent of your coworkers will be unseen machines. Most of what you do will not be possible without them. And there will be a blurry line between what you do and what they do. You might no longer think of it as a job, at least at first, because anything that seems like drudgery will be done by robots. Civilizations which depend on specialization reward work and penalize idleness. We already have more people than work for them, and if we’re not to be creating a vast disconnected former workforce then we (society) need to get a hell of a lot better at creating jobs and not destroying them.
- Why Workers are Losing the War Against Machines (The Atlantic) — There is no economic law that says that everyone, or even most people, automatically benefit from technological progress.
- Early Quora Design Notes — I love reading post-mortems and learning from what other people did. Picking a starting point is important because it will be the axis the rest of the design revolves around — but it’s tricky and not always the first page in the flow. Ideally, you should start with the page that serves the most significant goals of the product.
- Free Data Science Books — I don’t mean free as in some guy paid for a PDF version of an O’Reilly book and then posted it online for others to use/steal, but I mean genuine published books with a free online version sanctioned by the publisher. That is, “the publisher has graciously agreed to allow a full, free version of my book to be available on this site.” (via Stein Debrouwere)
ENTRIES TAGGED "Big Data"
Broadening the value of the industrial Internet
Remote monitoring appeals to management, but good applications create value for those being monitored as well.
The industrial Internet makes data available at levels of frequency, accuracy and breadth that managers have never seen before, and the great promise of this data is that it will enable improvements to the big networks from which it flows. Huge systems can be optimized by taking into account the status of every component in real time; failures can…
Want to analyze performance data for accountability? Focus on quality first.
A data-driven investigation of emergency response times by the Los Angeles Data Desk found larger issues.
Here’s an ageless insight that will endure well beyond the “era of big data“: poor collection practices and aging IT will derail any institutional efforts to use data analysis to improve performance.
According to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times, poor record-keeping is holding back state government efforts to upgrade California’s 911 system. As with any database…
Industrial Internet links: smart cities return, pilotless commercial aircraft, and more
Small-scale smart city projects; the industrial Internet as part of big data; a platform for smart buildings
Mining the urban data (The Economist) — The “smart city” hype cycle has moved beyond ambitious top-down projects and has started to produce useful results: real-time transit data in London, smart meters in Amsterdam. The next step, if Singapore has its way, may be real-time optimization of things like transit systems.
This is your ground pilot speaking (The…
Four short links: 1 January 2013
Silicon Beats Meat, Workers against Machines, Quora Design Notes, and Free Data Science Books
14 big trends to watch in 2013
From sensor journalism to lean government to preemptive health care, 2013 will be interesting.
2012 was a remarkable year for technology, government and society. In my 2012 year in review, I looked back at 10 trends that mattered. Below, I look ahead to the big ideas and technologies that will change the world, again. (more…)
Big, open and more networked than ever: 10 trends from 2012
Social media, open source in government, open mapping and other trends that mattered this year.
In 2012, technology-accelerated change around the world was accelerated by the wave of social media, data and mobile devices. In this year in review, I look back at some of the stories that mattered here at Radar and look ahead to what’s in store for 2013.
Below, you’ll find 10 trends that held my interest in…
DARPA and Defense Department look to a more open source future
Retired General James E. Cartwright says the future of warfare needs better human-machine interfaces and adaptable platforms.
As the United States military marches further into the age of networked warfare, data networks and the mobile platforms to distribute and access them will become even more important.
This fall, the (retired) eighth Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described a potential future of…
Making dollars and sense of the open data economy
Is the push to free up government data resulting in economic activity and startup creation?
Over the past several years, I’ve been writing about how government data is moving into the marketplaces, underpinning ideas, products and services. Open government data and application programming interfaces to distribute it, more commonly known as APIs, increasingly look like fundamental public infrastructure for digital…
New data competition tackles airline delays
Airlines face a very costly data problem. A new competition looks to crack it.
The scenario is familiar: a flight leaves the gate in New York on time, sits in…
Four short link: 27 November 2012
Faking with Stats, Praising Coworkers, Medium Explained, and SIGGraph Trailer
- Statistical Misdirection Master Class — examples from Fox News. The further through the list you go, the more horrifying^Wedifying they are. Some are clearly classics from the literature, but some are (as far as I can tell) newly developed graphical “persuasion” techniques.
- Wall of Awesome — give your coworkers some love.
- Dave Winer on Medium — Dave hits some interesting points: Users can create new buckets or collections and call them anything they want. A bucket is analogous to a blog post. Then other people can post to it. That’s like a comment. But it doesn’t look like a comment. It’s got a place for a big image at the top. It looks much prettier than a comment, and much bigger. Looks are important here.
- SIGGraph Asia Trailer (YouTube) — resuiting Sims and rotating city blocks, at the end, were my favourite. (via Andy Baio)
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