- Your Filter Bubble is Destroying Democracy (Wired) "The global village that was once the internet was has been replaced by digital islands of isolation that are drifting further apart each day. From your Facebook feed to your Google Search, as your experience online grows increasingly personalized, the internet’s islands keep getting more segregated and sound proofed. Without realizing it, we develop tunnel vision. Our digital social existence has turned into a huge echo chamber, where we mostly discuss similar views with like-minded peers and miserably fail to penetrate other social bubbles that are often misled by fear and xenophobia. The social bubbles that Facebook and Google have designed for us are shaping the reality of your America."
BUSINESS/FINANCE:
- How Finance Gutted Manufacturing (Boston Review) "In the radical downsizing of American manufacturing, changes in corporate structures since the 1980s have been a powerful driver, though not one that is generally recognized. Over the first decade of the twenty-first century, about 5.8 million U.S. manufacturing jobs disappeared. The most frequent explanations for this decline are productivity gains and increased trade with low-wage economies. Both of these factors have been important, but they explain far less of the picture than is usually claimed. To better understand the decline of American manufacturing, we need to go back well before the last decade to see how changes in corporate structures made it more difficult to scale up innovation through production to market.
- Intel’s Strategy for AI Chips is Smart But Still Lags Nvidia, Analysts Say (Fortune) "'While only 0.1% of all servers are dedicated to AI, the AI market will grow 12x in the next four years,' he wrote on Friday, making it a 'positive' for all three players." and Intel Looks to a New Chip to Power the Coming Age of AI (Wired)
LISTEN TO THIS:
- Glenn Beck: We're Being 'Conned' By Both Polarizing Parties (NPR)
NEWS:
- All around the world, nationalists are gaining ground. Why? (Economist) "The new nationalism owes a lot to cultural factors, too. Many Westerners, particularly older ones, liked their countries as they were and never asked for the immigration that turned Europe more Muslim and America less white and Protestant. They object to their discomfort being dismissed as racism."
- How the Iranian-Saudi Proxy Struggle Tore Apart the Middle East (NYT) "The history of their rivalry tracks — and helps to explain — the Middle East’s disintegration, particularly the Sunni-Shiite sectarianism both powers have found useful to cultivate. It is a story in which the United States has been a supporting but constant player, most recently by backing the Saudi war in Yemen, which kills hundreds of civilians. These dynamics, scholars warn, point toward a future of civil wars, divided societies and unstable governments."
- Priebus: Citizens of certain countries will be barred (Politico) "For countries where trouble might be festering, he said: 'We’re going to temporarily suspend immigration from that country, or region, until a better vetting system is put in place.'" and Reince Priebus calls questions about Trump’s conflicts of interest “ridiculous” (Vox) "But in TV interviews on Sunday morning, both Vice President-elect Mike Pence and future Chief of Staff Reince Priebus shrugged the matter off, saying, essentially, that Americans should just trust them."
- Report: Outgoing President Shuts Down Border Aerial Surveillance Program (Breitbart)
SPORTS:
- What’s the Matter With College Basketball? (NYT) "The doomsayers will tell you that the sport has become too slow and mechanical and low scoring, thanks to coaching that banishes improvisation and enforces deliberate, often-excruciating-to-watch play. "
TECHNOLOGY:
- The Simple Economics of Machine Intelligence (Harvard Business Review) "Machine intelligence is, in its essence, a prediction technology, so the economic shift will center around a drop in the cost of prediction. Interpreting the rise of machine intelligence as a drop in the cost of prediction doesn’t offer an answer to every specific question of how the technology will play out. But it yields two key implications: 1) an expanded role of prediction as an input to more goods and services, and 2) a change in the value of other inputs, driven by the extent to which they are complements to or substitutes for prediction."
- These 6 new technology rules will govern our future (WaPo) "The only refuge will be in fields that are creative in some way, such as marketing, entrepreneurship, strategy and advanced technical fields. New jobs we cannot imagine today will emerge, but they will not replace all the lost jobs. We must be ready for a world of perennially high unemployment rates."
- Why South Korea Just Turned Down a Request from Google (Fortune) "South Korea, whose 1950-53 war with North Korea ended without a peace treaty, argues that if it allowed such data to leave the country, the locations of military facilities and other sensitive sites could be revealed."
- Police are using software to predict crime. Is it a ‘holy grail’ or biased against minorities? (WaPo) "'Predictive policing' represents a paradigm shift that is sweeping police departments across the country. Law enforcement agencies are increasingly trying to forecast where and when crime will occur, or who might be a perpetrator or a victim, using software that relies on algorithms, the same math Amazon uses to recommend books."
- The Next Generation of Ransomware Might Leak Your Data, Not Destroy It (FastCompany)
- Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It. (NYT)
BOTTOM OF THE NEWS:
- One swab from the surface of your smartphone can tell scientists all about your lifestyle (WaPo) "The method draws on an understanding that the outermost layer of human skin carries chemical components drastically affected by the body’s inner chemistry and external, environmental factors."
- Enjoy draft beer anywhere with this portable tap (Mashable)
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