How We Need to Have Principles to Protect the Long Term

I like this Seth Godin post about having principles: ‘Principle is inconvenient‘. It reminds us that principles is helping us keeping a longer term and navigating short term temptations. It is all about the short-term vs the long-term.

“A principle is an approach you stick with even if you know it might lead to a short-term outcome you don’t prefer. Especially then. It’s this gap between the short-term and the long-term that makes a principle valuable.”

I also find that principles are a significant help against decision-making fatigue. Strong principles avoid having to use significant resources for taking certain decisions, and this keeps us the right energy to navigate through daily issues.

Be clear on your principles. They are key to the protection of your long-term impetus.

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How Surrounding Yourself With the Right People is Essential to Start Something New

In this interesting post ‘Early Work‘, Paul Graham examines what is holding back people from doing great work. And he identifies that it is mainly “the fear of making something lame“, unremarkable, mediocre.

“Many great projects go through a stage early on where they don’t seem very impressive, even to their creators. You have to push through this stage to reach the great work that lies beyond. But many people don’t. Most people don’t even reach the stage of making something they’re embarrassed by, let alone continue past it. They’re too frightened even to start.”

As Paul Graham mentions there is an increasing institutional support to people starting new things (business angels, incubators…) and this is going in the right direction.

He points out interestingly however that there is another social effect that needs to be overcome: “If you try something ambitious, many of those around you will hope, consciously or unconsciously, that you’ll fail. They worry that if you try something ambitious and succeed, it will put you above them.”

The key is thus as always to surround yourself with the right people to instill the right level of confidence and get the right support to go through the ‘lame’ phase.

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How GPS Became Irreplaceable While Free

We don’t think much anymore how miraculous the Global Positioning System GPS is. Still, it takes a lot of high technology (including relativist time corrections on satellites!) to provide us with what is now an everyday service we depend on. Actually we take it for granted when we would be quite lost without it.

Is GPS now part of the minimum infrastructure that we need as humans, like internet access? It has certainly drastically changed the way we navigate. It started as many technology before from the Cold War military efforts, but has been progressively opened to the civilian uses. For free. Until we can’t now part from it.

Let’s imagine for a minute what would happen if the system went to be fully unavailable. We are all using it one way or the other in our daily lives, and even more so in certain industries like logistics. A lot of the efficiency gains in many activities come from GPS availability.

Still this service is available for free as many services we now take for granted, as a by-product of something developed for military purpose. There is an issue about the US controlling the signal, which is being addressed by other blocks of nations that are launching their own system. This will provide redundancy. It is still amazing that something so useful is available for free.

In the Collaborative Age, a lot of the basic infrastructure becomes increasingly available for free or cheap. Maybe we should be careful not to take it too much for granted and have some backup solutions if they suddenly disappear.

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How Hardware Infrastructure Can Be Vulnerable to Hacking

This Wired article ‘How 30 Lines of Code Blew Up a 27-Ton Generator‘ exposes at length the Aurora experiment in 2007 – how a small file was able to destroy a large diesel generator hardware, demonstrating the vulnerability of hardware to hacking (also in Wikipedia ‘Aurora Generator Test‘). This shows that well thought hacking can be targeted to destroy fully non-digital hardware. What about our vulnerability now that IoT is widespread and most hardware also host a large amount of software?

I find this article worth reading because it shows that hardware destruction was carried out indirectly, analyzing ways of making it dysfunction. It requires a lot of analysis and is not straightforward, but remains impressive as it shows that is could be relatively easy to disrupt heavily the infrastructures we have come to rely on.

It demonstrates that with the right focus and willingness, hacking can have a substantial impact on hardware. This was again demonstrated as well with the famous affair of the destruction of Iranian centrifuge uranium enrichment facilities through hacking.

The scary part is with our increasingly connected hardware – cars, key house control systems – our vulnerability has probably increased many times over the situation a decade ago. There is probably something to be done to ensure that our infrastructures remain secure in the future!

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How Facebook Handling of Political Ads Must Be Better Scrutinized

We can observe that Facebook is increasingly under pressure about its political impact. This interesting Mashable article ‘Facebook wants NYU researchers to stop sharing the political ad data it keeps secret‘ provides insights about how secret the platform is about how it is handling political ads.

Apparently the fact that New York University is conducting research and publishing key statistics on Facebook political ads is not agreeable to Facebook itself who probably would prefer to wash its laundry internally.

“Not only do you see how much money each campaign is spending; you also get a breakdown of topics the ads for each candidate cover, the dollar amount going into each one, and the specifics of how ads are targeted toward each candidate’s hoped-for voters. It’s not necessarily comprehensive information, since it depends on how much data volunteers are able to gather. But it’s more transparency than Facebook has provided on the political ad spending hosted by the platform.”

Apparently such transparency is a problem to the network, when it should certainly be public knowledge as a way to check that elections are not unduly influenced.

The reticence of Facebook to encourage such research is another clue that something needs to be changed in the way it tends to influence users.

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How Internet Can Also Be Used to Foster Democracy

This worthwhile Guardian article ‘How Taiwan’s ‘civic hackers’ helped find a new way to run the country‘ describes the important gOv experiment carried out there. Using a platform focused on areas of agreement rather than tending to split communities around disagreement it seems that they have built a platform that gives hope that internet can be used to really foster democracy (g0v.asia).

Of course this experiment could only come from Taiwan where the need for democracy is particularly essential due to the ambitions of its mainland neighbor.

The Guardian article explains how this started in 2014, and how important it is now in the local political landscape, with even a minister stemming from this movement.

Interestingly, a cornerstone of the approach is radical transparency about everything in the public sphere – making information and data much more accessible to the citizens.

But the most interesting I find is that “the discussants found themselves in an entirely new kind of online space – exactly the opposite of a social media platform that encourages strife“. “As people expressed their views, rather than serving up the comments that were the most divisive, it gave the most visibility to those finding consensus – consensus across not just their own little huddle of ideological fellow-travellers, but the other huddles, too. Divisive statements, trolling, provocation – you simply couldn’t see these.“

So it quite possible to use Internet in a way that fosters agreement instead of the traditional social networks we have grown used to, that do rather the contrary. This is quite an important message, and I am looking forward to this type of platforms to become increasingly widespread.

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How To Address Your ‘Freedom in the Mountain’ Yearning

Escaping from the turbulent city life to rebuild oneself in a remote, quiet corner in the countryside or in the middle of the mountains is a widespread aspiration, as demonstrated by its popularity in works of fiction in books and on the screen. I must confess I do suffer from it and am hoping to follow this wish as soon as possible, and hopefully quite sooner than retirement. Luckily in this post ‘Find Freedom of the Mountain in Everything You Do‘, Leo Babauta explores how to address this longing at your current home. It’s all about your feeling of freedom.

“What we (and many others) crave is not really the mountain, but freedom. Simplicity and space and the liberating feeling of freedom. We think if we simplify and let everything go and get our lives free of the burdens, we’ll feel free. But what I’ve found is that getting rid of everything and living a simple life doesn’t necessarily give you that freedom.”

“A teacher a few years ago gifted me with a liberating idea: find the freedom in your current life, without having to change a thing.” There is more detail in the post about to achieve this state of freedom in your current situation without moving to this remote un-connected location of your dreams.

Although I believe this post only addresses one side of the yearning (the other side being to live at a slower pace, in a less crowded location and without the traffic jams and dense public transportation), it provides quite an interesting insight into this widespread yearning (I do not agree with the term fantasy used by Leo Babauta).

Anyway it is worth remembering that we can do much to increase our sense of freedom where we are right now geographically or otherwise, and that we should focus on developing it.

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How Begpackers are a Reflection of the Free Culture

This Quartz post ‘The ‘begpacker’ phenomenon shows how fake poverty has become a status symbol‘ addresses the issue of the ‘begpackers’ – typically western young people who travel far and beg their money for travel. I have seen them in Asia as quite a recent trend, begging in very public and central locations, and this is strongly resented by inhabitants of many poorer countries. I believe this is an effect of social media and the habit to get a lot for free.

“In the age of social media, crowdfunding, and hashtags, the dream of free travel has morphed once again, giving us the phenomenon of #begpackers: People who travel backpacker-style on a beggar’s budget, asking for contributions, freebies, and handouts from locals or fellow travelers to as they go.”

While travelling on a shoestring is definitely not new (that’s the motto of the famous Lonely Planet guides), visibly begging in public spaces is. Before, people either depended on their own limited resources, or took some jobs to get more.

The article expands on the fact that begging is a status symbol in the age of social networks. I am not so sure. I would tend to believe that we are getting used to having access to many services for free (in exchange for our data of course) and that as a consequence we don’t necessarily understand that it does not apply fully to the real world, in particular far from home.

Let’s remember that having access to so much for free is not actually for free, and that there are ethical boundaries that should not be crossed in relying on others to get along for free.

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How Office Space Remains Essential

There are lots of opinions on how office space will evolve as a result of the Covid-19 crisis (which is probably an accelerator of trends more than a trigger). In this interesting post ‘The Case For Space (Office Space, That Is)…‘ Mich Joel, who worked mainly in the advertising industry, explains why office space is definitely not obsolete.

In creative endeavors that require creative teamwork, nothing will replace working together physically. And moreover, “In the agency world, your office is your culture.” Building a strong, differentiated culture requires physical contact.

“Offices are where innovation happens. Offices are where we socialize to build better work. Offices are where new ideas get sparked. Offices are where we learn more about ourselves by watching others. Office are where culture is born and thrives.”

Future offices may be different, and some professions may more decidedly into more virtual offices, but nothing will replace physical offices for many professions in particular for creativity or where teamwork is essential (engineering, projects for example). Virtual work cannot emulate the informal interactions of the physical office and it will remain essential several days a week. It is extremely visible when it comes to the difficulty of onboarding newcomers since the start of confinement.

The office space is not obsolete or dead. It may need to evolve, but remains essential to value and culture creation.

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How Building Companies Is Still Needed Beyond Freelancer Networks

In today’s collaborative economy, there is a real question in certain service industries of the interest of building corporations instead of just relying on a network of freelancers. This post by Valeria Maltoni ‘Why Build a Company‘ sheds some light on this important question: in fact, only established companies can act in a longer timescale, and this remains a social requirement.

Corporations are of course needed when substantial capital investment is required like in the heavy or light industry of the Industrial Age; but in the services economy where capital investment is minimal, the question remains open and controversial. I know quite a number of organisations that rely mainly on animating freelancers to deliver services. On the other hand, I have build my own service companies as being mainly companies with partners and employees, and if we do use freelancers, it is only sparingly to complement rare competencies.

Valeria Maltoni makes an excellent point about timeframes. “The destiny of our species depends on our ability to survive on different time scales.” And companies have a different scale (years) compared to freelancers (days, months). Their project is to developing something over years and even sometimes generations.

She quotes “Corporations are entities that can transform and dissipate socially useful energy throughout society“. “Building a company is creating the vessel to hold value“, and this value can have many dimensions beyond the financial. In building my companies I certainly take a longer time view to deliver some kind of long standing value to the world.

Even in the Collaborative Age, the core of corporations to develop and keep value on the longer term will remain required. There may be more freelancers and people flowing from project to project, but some longer-term value receptacles must remain.

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How to Detect Mistakes in Statistical Analysis

This extremely useful paper reminds us of common statistical mistakes made in articles and papers: ‘Ten common statistical mistakes to watch out for when writing or reviewing a manuscript‘.

Those are:

  • absence of an adequate control condition or group
  • interpreting comparisons between two effects without directly comparing them as a full group
  • inflating the number of units of analysis
  • spurious correlations (example single weird value)
  • using too small samples
  • circular analysis (retrospectively selecting features of the data to characterize the dependent variables, resulting in a distortion of the resulting statistical test)
  • too much flexibility of analysis
  • failure to correct for multiple comparisons in exploratory analysis)
  • over-interpreting non-significant results
  • confusing correlation and causation

Quite a useful checklist to use the next time you review a paper based on statistical analysis!

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How the Gap Created by IT Proficiency Will Increase

In the debate about how future employment will look like, this The Conversation post takes a clear side: ‘Don’t fear a ‘robot apocalypse’ – tomorrow’s digital jobs will be more satisfying and higher-paid‘.

Based on research, the authors have found that “workers in occupations that rank higher in IT intensity earn more than demographically similar peers in other occupations – and that this earnings gap has been growing.” – and that the wage gap is more related to IT intensity than actual study level. Also, the authors have found that “jobs that require greater interaction with technology tended to score higher in quality, particularly in terms of measures like career advancement.”

This paper seems to me quite biased and carry actually the inverse conclusion of its title. One can expect that of course, people will advanced IT skills will be quite well compensated and will have high job satisfaction in a more automated future. But this only serves to prove that the gap between this new elite and the rest of the population will increase. It does not address the fate of the employees which job can be easily automated and delegated to robots, or who do not have the right IT proficiency.

Increasing the IT proficiency across the young generation is certainly a priority. Making sure IA does not upend our society is another that needs to be deeply understood.

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