Category Archives: Issues facing industry

Five for Friday: Blockchain, Digitization, and Disruption (of a sort)

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So we had a pretty straightforward  (and sometimes grammatically incorrect) explanation of blockchain previously that outlined how the technology works and why it is important … well, sort of.  The importance of it doesn’t just lie in pulling the middleman out of the process, and it doesn’t just apply to financial services – a while back I threw out an article about how it was revolutionizing the shipping industry as well.  To follow on to last week’s share, this week I wanted to throw out a few other articles to keep moving us down the path: first is this piece from Infocast that outlines blockchain more technically (it’s from the Director of the IBM Blockchain Labs, so go figure –by the way, he has a series of posts about the topic through Infocast) and then this piece from HBR entitled “The Truth About Blockchain,” and finally, direct from IBM, guidelines for blockchain adoption in the enterprise … again, by Nitin Guar.

While I was perusing HBR this week, I also stumbled across an article from 2012 that I hadn’t seen before entitled “Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century.”  Paired with that in the same issue was a piece about how Big Data was bringing about a management revolution.   I know we’re all already aware of those facts, but it’s still good to take a moment to go back five years later and revisit.  That somewhat sets up this piece from McKinsey out this week around competing in a world of sectors without borders.  IT’s not short, but it is interesting as it outlines how we might continue to see digitization impact and influence the world next.

Also in the news this week were some interesting bits from the world of higher education: first, a piece about MIT and Stanford researchers demoing 3D computing chips capable of both storage and computing, which will dramatically impact the current limitations around compute created by having to move data between chips.  A while back I posted an article about the death of Moore’s Law.  Well, this is the kind of evolution in computing that challenges that notion.  Then there was this piece about how Texas A&M landed a $1.6M grant to study algorithmic decision making.  OK, so what?  Well, first the grant came from DARPA, the folks who brought a few other technology revolutions over the past few decades, and second, because the intent is to lead to machine-based decisions that can also outline the “why” the machine reached the decision.  It’s one more step along that path towards artificial general intelligence I’ve outlined before.

Here’s a great one from Inc. about the twenty things most valued employees do every day.  Key for us is setting forth a vision for our people and then giving them the path towards how we achieve it.

Yes, it’s a tech heavy week, but that’s just sort of where things are in the news coming through my feed, at least with what is catching my eye. More so, it’s a disruptor-heavy week, and  along those lines I’d be remiss if I didn’t include this article about DoNotPay, a bot platform that is helping people get out of paying parking tickets that just released 1000 new bots to help with legal troubles … and gives you a taste of how technology could upend the legal profession.

There’s that great ad by Apple “Here’s to the Crazy Ones” which outlined how people who used and embraced Macs were different.  Apple’s culture revolves around the why they do what they do, not the what.  Many of us are familiar with Simon Sinek’s  book Start with Why, which is based on his TED talk from 2010, “How great leaders inspire action.”  Take some time this morning and watch his follow on, “Why good leaders make you feel safe.”

 

Five For Friday: Blue Apron and the Amazon Effect, Code, Digital Transformations + more

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Well, it’ll continue through a few more news cycles due to the magnitude of it, so best to get it out of the way first … Blue Apron had it’s IPO this week.  Wait, what?  Not what you expected?  Well, here’s the two of that punch: it IPO’ed at $10 a share, 70% off the original forecast high, which analysts think was driven by … you guessed it, Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods.

From the NY Times this week was a great piece on how Tech firms have pushed coding into American classrooms … and, frankly, in classrooms around the world (and elsewhere in the world first).  And while it just turned two year’s old, Paul Ford’s article from Bloomberg entitled What is Code? continues to be a great read and refresher.  While we’re speaking of the world of tech, The Guardian had a piece about Technology startups being hostile to working mothers.  Google has also been in the news this week, but perhaps most interesting to me was this news that the search giant is now the “world’s largest job board.”  Interesting times lie ahead for all those job sites … cause Google will just inherently do it better given the data backing it up.

This might be useful amongst the ranks this week: how to interview engineers from Triplebyte.

Blockchain does continue to make waves, this week with the CEO of Nasdaq driving to modernize Wall Street with it.  And what delivered the best returns for the first half of 2017 to date?  Bitcoin and etheruem.

Last this week is an article from strategy+business about an emerging class of digital leaders that are being embraced by companies across the spectrum.  Digital transformation is going to be the focus for many over the next few years as companies attempt to manage/manipulate/make use of/gain insight from all the data being collected every second of every day … as others figure out how to collect data that is meaningful.  We’re seeing disruption not just come from companies that turn industries on their head, but by companies that are able to glean critical knowledge from the data at their fingertips.  If you’ve got time, I recommend two reads: Digital to the Core (from Gartner), which is at more of a strategic/overview level and Leading Digital, which connects the dots through from strategic to … well, not tactical implementation, but far enough down the path that you should be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This week from TED is Anab Jain, who brings the future to life, creating experiences where people can touch, see and feel the potential of the world to be created. Catch a glimpse of possible futures in this eye-opening talk.

Five for Friday: Wannacry, Attrition, Amazon + more

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A photo by Kristopher Allison. unsplash.com/photos/6x90rJDo-WA

It’s been a few weeks since the WannaCry incident, and while that attack was shut down in a very novel way, it brought to the forefront again how adept hackers are becoming at leveraging our human weaknesses to penetrate networks en masse.  Two articles for you to consider as you start your week in this area: one from Business Insider where a malware researcher talks about the latest evolution in ransomeware, and then this article from strategy+business on how to resist future attacks.

Why do people choose to quit their jobs?  Well, Inc. thinks there’s one sentence that sums up the entire reason.  Then there’s the recent outcome of the culture investigation at Uber, a culture for which Bloomberg posits we’re all to blame.

Good news coming down from the Supreme Court when it comes to Patent Trolls, and the direct results could be a big win for innovation.  And speaking of innovation, how did America become so against it?

Here’s a question to consider: are you even aware of how Amazon is eating the world?  Yes?  No?  Maybe?  Zack Kanter has his own views on it and it makes for an interesting read.  Hint: you know that looming apocalypse in the world of retail and commercial real estate?  Yup, you can than Bezos for that. Especially with this news … every commerical real estate entity just woke up to a very bad morning.

Last is a great piece from The New Yorker, titled “How to Call B.S. on Big Data: A Practical Guide.  It’s short and to the point, and more of a general-life approach to data than anything technical, but I like it because it reminds us that any data can be manipulated to tell a story.  And yes, even machines can be racist – remember Tay?

I’ve recommended Tim Ferriss’s podcasts before, and this week he has a new TED talk where he discusses why we should define our fears instead of goals – check it out.

Now for Something a Little Different …

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I’m establishing a new rhythm for these collections and with that have a need to try a new format with them as well.  This month’s collection is a broad range, and while where I can I’ll bucket certain topics together as I have in the past, there are over 100+ articles that I’ve found interesting enough to read since my last missive and that gets a bit of a challenge from a curation standpoint.  I’m also looking at creating more evergreen content for you similar to what I’ve thrown together on machine learning or artificial intelligence, but more on that another time.

First this week, please pay attention: there is an incredibly effective Gmail scam out there right now.  Go read up about it, but essentially, a sender who looks like a trusted contact, sends what looks like a pdf but is actually an image that will take you to a fake google login page and from there, your identity is history. There’s a similar ruse going on with Apple IDs, but there’s less press about it.

If you’ve not heard and you have an iPhone, go update to 10.3 – it’ll save you on average 3gb of space on your phone, although it does convert to a new file format that is troublesome for a few.  Oh, and Apple also acquired Workflow, which is an amazing automation app for iOS devices and they made it free – go check it out.

Ever wonder which country in the world has the happiest people?  No?  Well, ever wondered how the data is analyzed to determine who are the happiest people in the world?  If you said yes, you’re in luck.

Middle management may seem like a thankless job, but according to HBR, it’s also an exhausting one.  It has to do with the constant need to code switch as you deal with different levels of the hierarchy of an organization, and they’ve got some suggestions on how to lessen the toll from it.

Robots, robots everywhere!  Not, necessarily, to the extreme that we see in Asimov’s I, Robot ( the first person to recite the three laws to me gets a prize), but they are becoming more present in our day to day lives.  Heck, I even heard a story of how robots are being tested in D.C. to help “augment” the current food delivery process.  I say augment in quotes because that’s what the company rep in the article said when asked if the robots would replace people.  Well, one person who doesn’t seem to get how robots are going to impact our society in the near term is Steve Mnuchin.  In his mind, robots won’t be displacing U.S. jobs for at least 50 to 100 years.  Problem is, he’s wrong – robots have been replacing humans for a while now.

strategy+business had a good piece recently on the Ten Principles for Leading the Next Industrial Revolution.  I don’t think there’s anything that would surprise you in these principles, but it does put them together in a logical order and is worth exploring.  Ah, and they’ve also replaced “fail fast and often” with “innovate rapidly and openly.”

Deloitte also has an interesting exploration of how the auto industry is going to change in the near and mid-term, and how massive that transformation is going to be.  With more millennials opting out of car ownership and into a sharing economy, the automation of delivery vehicles that we’ll see culminate in the next five to ten years, and the looming death of a generation who have driven car sales most of their lifetime, the auto industry is on a precipice and they’ve done a good job of analyzing and detailing all the possible outcomes.  While many of us aren’t tied directly to the automotive industry, this in addition to the previous piece on the next industrial revolution should get you thinking differently about your own challenges.  By the way, one trend that you’ll find between them has to do with data.  Oh, and stratechery wrote on the same topic with greater brevity and a very different approach, but the same outcome – car ownership is going to change.  It already is.

Speaking of data, here’s something about how big data is helping find the Achilles heel of each individual cancer.

Well, there’s been a little bit of news this last week about how individual privacy on the internet is being betrayed by “235 stooges in Washington” to quote one news source, and while I think we’ve been giving up more and more of our privacy for a long time, if you are concerned about yours, check out this article from Kevin Mitnick on how to go invisible online.  By the way, at a minimum, you should be using a virtual private network (VPN) on your personal devices to keep your personal data from being stolen as you enjoy a coffee at your local Starbucks.  And yes, I know I’ve said this before.  Also, there’s this article from the Pew Research Center on what the public know about cybersecurity.  They even have an interactive quiz.  Also, take a look at what the future of passwords may hold.

Speaking of stolen identity, check out this story on a $30k sting operation one person pulled when hackers stole her website.

Time for a quick video break: this week Fast Company has an interesting (and short) one on how circular runways could lead to more efficient airports.

We’re in the midst of Spring Break season, and with that, Legoland Florida has launched an educational, road-trip friendly app for kids.  It seems pretty cool and is a good indicator of where how we’ll continue to see content and experiences evolve.

Tech will lead to new sub-prime crunch.  That’s a bold headline, even without the missing preposition, and TechCrunch makes the case that while in the past P2P lending rates in the subprime arena have been indicators of coming economic contraction (note:  the overheated economy and tightening labor pools is a more classic indicator), the gist is that more people are going to be pushed into a lower wage earner bucket with a continuing stagnation of salaries (which have been stagnant since the 80s compared to economic growth and corporate profits – just ask a real economist), and that will push the sub-prime market to continue to grow and with that growth, eventually blow up.

OK, so, I’ve written about AI before on many occasions, and with good reason as it is a topic that is getting a lot of press these days.  I took the time to try and explain the differences between narrow and general AI, and as well to keep us all up with how it is intersecting with machine learning.  What this article points out, however, is that that interest in AI and machine learning has created so much different data sets itself that it has started to skew the data and what is “real” about … data, much less the preponderance of actual fake news that is out there.  To quote ”this pairing of interest with ignorance has created a perfect storm for a misinformation epidemic. The outsize demand for stories about AI has created a tremendous opportunity for impostors to capture some piece of this market.”  Oh, and then there’s the latest about how AI will change everything … again.

Also speaking of data, here’s an interesting article about how Charity: Water is using it to connect donors to the people they are helping.

A fun article (maybe) that relates to the world of AI and algorithms: When Machines Go Rogue.  To wit, complex systems have lots of parts, and that means there are lots of ways they can fail.  Also note, however, that there are lots of redundancies for that reason.

Google has been in the news little of late, from a big headline standpoint, but one interesting read is their approach to creating the next Silicon Valley.  Oh, and then there was the demise of Google Fiber.

In case you’re interested, here’s a look at Goldman Sachs’ Annual Report.  It’s a treasure trove, as most annual reports are, at the direction the company is going … especially when you read between the lines.  While on the topic of Goldman, take a read as to why the firm is going on a buying binge for delinquent mortgages … again (2008 sound familiar?).

I’ve written a lot about how we need to change how we are recruiting and hiring women.  Here’s an article about the need to change our strategy around this, and for obvious reasons – we’ve seen a desire by millennials to change how we work, and how we work is, in fact, changing.  Let’s not hold women to a standard and antiquated version of the workplace when we’re willing to accommodate others.

Take a moment, if you will, and go look at Business Insider’s list of the most powerful female engineers in 2017 and what they are working on.

Thank the Boston Globe for this one: the biggest threat facing middle-aged men isn’t smoking or obesity … its loneliness.  I know it’s a little off-topic, but given the audience of these missives, I thought it relevant.

There’s been a lot of news lately about the new Amazon play into the grocery business, and how they plan to make it so that we not only ever have to wait in lines, but we never even have to talk to another person!  (Now do you see my reference to loneliness above?).  Well, the ‘zon is trying to break into that $800 billion market with a splash, what with their foray into physical stores after online has failed in that domain for them.  Read about the genesis of that journey here.  And speaking of Amazon, check out why ad agencies are so afraid of what Bezos might be planning next given the 60% jump in revenue from advertising last quarter.

So why are employees at Apple and Google more productive?  Is it the swanky digs?  The free lunches?  The compensation packages?  Nope, it’s what they do with their star performers and their internal development programs.  Note: companies that lack development programs will always play in the minor leagues.  Along with that is this article about why the best employees quit, even when they love their job.

I just like the title of this article (because it’s true): iteration is not design. The point, really, is that while iteration is a great design tool, it doesn’t create great design because it can’t innovate, solve usability problems, or create delight.

SXSW has come and gone for another year, and as always there was a flurry of “new” and “hot” technology this year mixed in with weird films and lots of bands.  According to Forbes, AI dominated the SXSW conversation this year; while CNET has a good round-up of everything that happened and WIRED claims that tech is finally trying to clean up the mess it made.

Uber has been in the news of late, and while I’m sure a lot of you have already seen many articles about all that has passed, there are a few I think are important because of what they mean for the future of the company: did Uber steal their driverless car tech from Google? (If they did, there’s a company big enough to take them down). Doubtful?  Check out this timeline.  Then there’s this piece from Pando about the economic evidence that shows that Uber isn’t as innovative as we all claim it is.  And Newsweek had something to say on the matter as well and The Verge asks if Uber can be saved from itself.  And while The Guardian states that every time we take an Uber we’re spreading its social poison, one of the most interesting tidbits to come out in my mind is that Uber has been using a fake app to get around legal blocks in certain markets.  You know what really annoys me, though?  The lack of the umlaut.  Seriously, is it that hard to have a stinking umlaut in your brand?

Seriously, not to make light of all the news that has come out, it’s clear that Silicon Valley has a “bro” problem, and Über epitomizes it, even with their recently released diversity report and bringing Arianna Huffington in to clean up their image.  That’s going to be tough given all that has passed.  This goes back to the fundamental question, mind you, of why is Silicon Valley is so awful to women.

This article does a good job of exploring why sexism/harassment/discrimination is such a rampant issue in Silicon Valley.

There’s a new project at Google where they are using facial recognition software to measure gender equality in films.

Would you spend $25bn to acquire 100m new customers?  Well, Mukesh Ambani did, with the goal of transforming the telecom market in India.  And transform it he did.

So, Warren Buffet sold basically his entire stake in Wal-Mart recently, and we’re seeing a continued downward spiral with brick and mortar retail stores as more and more shopping is done online.  So what’s next for the American Mall? Oh, and if that trend continues, there will be a collapse of commercial real estate in the next few years.

Viacom may be onto something in the VR space with its new VR experience, The Melody of Dust.

There’s a really interesting conversation with Chris Anderson on how and why we should close the loop on all the new and old systems that are out there and how ongoing innovation is making that possible.  It’s worth a read.

Last time around I spent some time talking about Moore’s Law and Quantum Computing (note to self: that may be a good future deep dive), but this time around there’s an article from Quartz about how two small changes may make your phone battery last forever, even if Moore’s Law won’t.  Or, better put, how the desire to have longer lasting devices that don’t catch on fire may finally force manufacturers to think differently about design.

Another interesting piece of telecom news came out recently: NYC is suing Verizon for failing to provide fiber broadband to all its households.

We all spend so much time in meetings, and while we can’t control how others run their meetings, we can certainly control how we run ours.  HBR has a great article on that point, and, in fact, it was refreshing to see their take as it reinforces how annoyed I get when I go to a meeting without a set agenda and clear purpose.

Let me follow that up with two articles from HBR on something completely different: blockchains, how safe they are, and how they’ll move beyond finance.  Along with that is this piece from the NY Times about how blockchain is a better way to track everything from pork chops to peanut butter.

Seeking Alpha did some analysis lately on Seagate and why the hardware provider will continue to face end market challenges.  I read it as “without innovation, Seagate will decline.”

It looks like the worlds of voice recognition, AI, and Alexa is being taken on by a small outfit in Japan, whose IM Line is working on a virtual assistant to topple Amazon and its market dominance.

Oh, and remember that little glitch a few weeks back with the internet because of an errant keystroke in an AWS data center?

Elon Musk has started investing (as have others) in how we turn people into cyborgs.  No, really.  The flip side of that is using humans to teach AI to “perform” smarter.

Something else AI might lead to?  The useless class.

I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of doom and gloom out there, like this old topic made new again: medical devices are the next security nightmare.  I say old because I’m pretty sure I talked about this around this time last year.

Snap recently had their IPO, and was it a day.  This piece from the New Yorker highlights the trouble with all the SV IPO optimism.

McKinsey has a really great study that’s just come out that is all about connecting talent with opportunity in the digital age.  It’s a good read, especially with some people predicting that Big Data will make human recruiters obsolescent as early as next year … which I think is a stretch.

Almost last this week is this article on LinkedIn that captures twelve lessons on leadership from the Navy SEALs.  Most salient: there is no such thing as a bad team, just bad leaders.

So last I’ll leave you with two TED talks: the first, Dan Bell taking us through the inside of America’s dead shopping malls and the second with Joy Buolamwini on how she is fighting bias in algorithms.

Preview of Gartner’s 10 Strategic Tech Trends for 2017 + more

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While the “official” tech trends for 2017 won’t be announced until the Gartner Symposium next week, I was able to track down a preview which I’ll share later – we’ll see how accurate they are.  But first, some of the news from this week:

Bill Gates has some thoughts on how he thinks the public and private sectors needs to interact with one another when it comes to innovation and as well where he thinks we need to be focusing our efforts to innovate.

ING, a major Dutch lender, has plans to replace 5,800 jobs with machines as part of what they calling a “digital transformation.” A few years back, it was posited that the banking industry was ripe for “computerization,” and now ING and others (including Commerzbank in Germany) are making good on those predictions.  Along with that is this article from HBR on three ways work can be automated and this other one on how technology will replace us all.  Oh, and it’s obviously not just happening in banking today – take a look at the latest eBay acquisition.

As I’ve noted before, Facebook decided to fire its human news editors and The Intersect has done some initial tracking and analysis to prove that since that change, Facebook has repeatedly trended fake news.  No real surprise there, given the level of maturity of AI and how far machine learning needs to come, but still a fair warning for those who rely on social media or entertainment mediums for their news.

Speaking of AI, Deepmind, a world leader in artificial intelligence research and its application for positive impact, has a post this week about some recent work they did around creating a differentiable neural computer.  Their hope was to create a learning machine that could organize information into connected facts and then use those facts to solve problems, which they were able to do.  Then there’s this article on how vector space mathematics helps machines spot sarcasm.  Next thing you know we’ll have Deep Thought at our command. But don’t worry, it hopefully won’t destroy the world.

I honestly don’t even know how to correlate this next article to anything fantastical in the world simply because it seems so incredulous – I tried to make a correlation to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Men In Black, but I’ll just leave this here: apparently the tech industry is becoming ever more consumed as to whether our existence is actually an algorithm.  Follow on to that the desire of two tech billionaires to destroy the universe.  While we’re talking about destroying the universe, take a moment to read this summary of The McFuture podcast’s interview with Jeremy Rifkin, as well as this piece on the future of cities.

Given all the news about cutting cords the past few weeks, Business Insider decided to outline how we can expect to see wireless technology evolve over the next ten years.

Wondering where the top talent in the tech industry will land next?  Fast Company has a good overview of past trends and what we can expect for 2017.

Apparently, at Gartner’s recent event in Cape Town, Stephen Prentice gave a preview of the expected trends for 2017.  As you recall, between 3D printing and machine learning, there was a robust list of predictions last year (which I revisited a few weeks ago).  While the preview of 2017’s trends features some of the same entries, there are a few new ones as well:

Conversational systems

Prentice says that conversational AI systems will form part of the so-called “Digital Mesh” – along with the next two entries on the list.

Prentice noted that there are expected to be at least 25 conversational AI systems by 2018, citing examples already such as Siri, Cortana and Amazon‘s Echo.

“These are generation one systems… They don’t always sort of seem to understand properly, what we say. But like all technology, it’s going to improve and it’s going to improve very rapidly,” Prentice explained. He adds that we could see these systems not only comprehending what we say, but what we mean.

Augmented and virtual reality

The past 12 months have seen virtual reality and augmented reality make headlines, such as Oculus Rift and the Gear VR for the former and Pokemon Go for the latter. Prentice expects this to continue its growth.

“The mobile phone, given its location-based capabilities, its cameras, its inertial sensors and so on, is becoming a very powerful tool for augmented reality,” Prentice elaborates. He adds that distracted smartphone users are even getting guidance in the form of “traffic lights” installed in Sydney pavements.

As for virtual reality, Prentice notes that we’re seeing more powerful VR headsets, being used for everything from immersive experiences, molecular modeling, and healthcare therapy.

Digital twin

“Every physical object in this environment is going to have a digital equivalent. As we do things to the physical object, the data from that is being collected… and that’s being replicated in a digital equivalent,” Prentice explains. However, Prentice says that over time, things might flow in the other direction (i.e. manipulation of digital objects having a real-world effect).

Prentice gives the example of having one wind turbine in the real-world, but using the digital world to test the effect of having many wind turbines. He also cited NASA testing new technologies as one example of the digital twin concept.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning

“If you asked me for a personal point of view… which one stands out as the most significant, the most disruptive, I would have to say… it’s machine learning and advanced artificial intelligence,” Prentice elaborates.

“Over the last couple of years, and largely due to the impact of machine learning technologies, we’ve seen artificial intelligence give us capabilities, achieve things that, even a couple of years ago, we would’ve said were impossible,” he adds. He cites the example of DARPA’s autonomous vehicle challenge from just a decade ago, taking place in a desert and seeing many cars failing. And now the likes of Google and other companies are testing self-driving cars on public roads.

“The imminent expectation is that self-driving vehicles will be commonplace – not the majority – by the middle of the next decade.”

Prentice says that AI systems tasked with doing a specific thing are reaching a point where they can often be better than humans. But there are still reasons to use humans instead.

“In some cases, they’re (the AI system) is expensive. In some cases, it’s just a lot easier to have a person doing it. In some cases, there are regulatory reasons,” the Gartner analyst says.

Intelligent applications

When you combine AI and machine learning with applications, you get intelligent applications, Prentice explains.

These applications come in a variety of forms, such as robots, drones, chat bots/Siri/Cortana, smart sensors and smart appliances.

One specific example cited by Prentice includes a machine that visually analyses burger buns to improve quality.

Another example was the use of IBM’s Watson as a virtual advisor at Memorial Sloan Kettering, helping doctors determine treatment for cancer.

Intelligent things

“One of the challenges, in fact, is when we try to forecast the number of intelligent things being connected to the network, the reality is the vast majority of them have not yet been invented,” the Gartner representative noted. “They’re in categories that we don’t even think of.”

Some examples of intelligent things include intelligent MRI scanners and stethoscopes. The former could adjust settings based on the patient’s dimensions and details, while the latter is able to detect minor variations in vitals.

Adaptive security

This was one of the trends predicted for 2016, but Prentice says that this will continue to occur next year. He adds that adaptive security will entail the use of AI to help identify threats.

“Let’s be quite clear: the cyber threat is growing all the time. The more devices out there, the more weak points there are,” Prentice says.

“So this is an arms race, and it’s an arms race that, I have to say, the good guys are never going to win. Because the bad guys have access to exactly the same technology as the good guys and they don’t feel compelled to comply with the rules and regulations…”

However, it’s not all doom and gloom, as Prentice points to the auto industry’s recent focus on security as an example of manufacturers prioritizing the issue.

Blockchain and distributed ledger

“Blockchain is one of these things that’s at the peak of hype,” Prentice notes, before adding that it was providing a “decentralized, secure ledger of transactions”.

“It’s about adding trust, in an automated sense, into what is an otherwise untrustworthy environment,” he says, before stressing that it wasn’t “irrevocable”.

What about businesses wanting to use Blockchain technology? Prentice says you should be investigating the technology now.

“But at the same time, anything you do today… you should be expecting to replace in 18 months’ time.”

So if the technology is going to be changing that rapidly, why not investigate it later?

“That is an option, but we don’t believe that it’s a smart option. This is going to be an important technology, gaining some understanding into what it can do and how you might apply it, is going to be important,” Prentice explains.

Mesh app and service architecture

Gartner sees a future of “mesh type things, cloud-based servers… a lot of bots… small chunks of code… linking together in a variety of different ways”.

Prentice says that this type of architecture will allow for a different level of flexibility and faster development pace.

Digital technology platforms

When talking about digital technology platforms, Prentice said there were several main areas to take into account. These were internal systems (such as accounting systems, traditional IT), customer-facing systems (CRM, social media, websites) and the internet of things. And all of these systems will feed you or your company with intelligence.

Prentice also suggested a future where smart AI bots will become the customer. “My bot is going to be ordering products and services from your bot. So a lot of your customer relationship management is going to be turned on its head,” he added.

Prentice cautioned businesses against building an entire ecosystem of digital technology platforms on their own, calling on firms to find a “one-stop” solution instead.

Last this week is a TED talk by Jim Hemerling that speaks of five ways to lead in an era of constant change.  He contrasts the difference between how we view self-transformation versus organizational change – one we get excited about, the other we dread.

Uber’s Driverless Cars go live, Apples, Apples everywhere, Revisiting Gartner’s Top Ten for 2016 + more

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As we get close to Q4 in 2016 and the release of Gartner’s Top Ten Tech Trends for 2017, I thought it’d be good to take a look back at what they predicted for 2016  to refresh our memories plus share a few articles from the world this week.  First, the news:

Uber is now letting riders experience their autonomous cars in Pittsburg.  This article highlights what the experience is like – while the writer felt safe for most of his drive, he was glad he could override the technology a couple of times as well.  It’s pretty cool to see the technology being leveraged, including LiDar on every vehicle.

The income and poverty report for 2015 came out this week, and good news: we’re as rich as we were in 1998.  Aside from the cheeky and insightful analysis from the New Yorker, there is good news in the report, although tempered.  I’ve not had a chance to finish it yet, but you can find the entire thing here if you’d like to dig in.

I, apparently, need to get a job with Wells Fargo … well, no, I don’t because I missed the window to cash in on a $124M bonus package for defrauding customers, costing the company a nearly $200m fine.

Microsoft beat Facebook in, of all places, Github with open source code submissions.  Why is that a big deal?  Well, this is the company that, under Gates and Ballmer, tried their hardest convince CIOs that open source was rife with issues.  Well, under Nadella that has changed.

There are two articles worth a look this week from HBR: to succeed in tech, women need more visibility and how cybersecurity is every executive’s job.  Definitely take the time to read the first article, as it points to an ongoing epidemic of sorts for tech companies: the highest-profile losses in tech are those at the senior level. Women at these levels “often are less satisfied with their careers, perceive that they are unlikely to advance at their current organizations, or believe they must change jobs in order to reach the next level.”

A round up of some Apple articles for the week: first, I’ve downloaded iOS 10 and between the price of the 7 for lack of innovation and some of the “features” of that new OS, it might be enough to push me off the platform, but at least I was able to get it to install.  Next, apparently the “boys” of 1 Infinite Loop are rethinking autonomous cars.  I used quotes there because then there’s this piece on leaked emails that shows how Apple is still a sexist and toxic workplace for women.  There are a few others, including how Apple will leverage ear buds to make Siri smarter, that the age of Apple is over, and what’s next for Apple now that smartphone sales continue to decline, much less stratechery’s look at beyond the iPhone.  But I feel like I buried the lead there – Cook may be much admired, but there’s critical work to be done at Apple to get rid of the “bro” culture that we thought was only an epidemic as Unicorns.

There’s a good piece this week about the state of computer science education in the United States.  While it’s important to look at how primary education is filling the pipeline of secondary education in computer science (and, thereby, industry), we also need to face the reality that we’re moving towards a degree-less future in development in part and figure out how to enable future success without straddling another generation with unnecessary debt.

Tesla and Elon Musk have been in the news of late (what with the acquisition of Solar City).  Curious about the future of the company?  Check it out here.  Hint: we’re back to autonomous cars.

For those afraid of AI, Venture Beat has an opinion piece this week about how it can actually save us from future stock market failures.

Now for Gartner:

Gartner defines a strategic technology trend as one with the potential for significant impact on the organization. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to the business, end users or IT, the need for a major investment, or the risk of being late to adopt. These technologies impact the organization’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives.

The top 10 strategic technology trends for 2016 are the device mesh, ambient user experience, 3D printing materials (hmmm), information of everything, advanced machine learning, autonomous agents and things, adaptive security architecture, advances system architecture, mesh app and service architecture, and IoT platforms

 The Device Mesh

The device mesh refers to an expanding set of endpoints people use to access applications and information or interact with people, social communities, governments and businesses. The device mesh includes mobile devices, wearable, consumer and home electronic devices, automotive devices and environmental devices — such as sensors in the Internet of Things (IoT).

While devices are increasingly connected to back-end systems through various networks, they have often operated in isolation from one another. As the device mesh evolves, we expect connection models to expand and greater cooperative interaction between devices to emerge.

 Ambient User Experience

The device mesh creates the foundation for a new continuous and ambient user experience. Immersive environments delivering augmented and virtual reality hold significant potential but are only one aspect of the experience. The ambient user experience preserves continuity across boundaries of device mesh, time and space. The experience seamlessly flows across a shifting set of devices and interaction channels blending physical, virtual and electronic environment as the user moves from one place to another.

 3D Printing Materials

Advances in 3D printing have already enabled 3D printing to use a wide range of materials, including advanced nickel alloys, carbon fiber, glass, conductive ink, electronics, pharmaceuticals and biological materials. These innovations are driving user demand, as the practical applications for 3D printers expand to more sectors, including aerospace, medical, automotive, energy and the military. The growing range of 3D-printable materials will drive a compound annual growth rate of 64.1 percent for enterprise 3D-printer shipments through 2019. These advances will necessitate a rethinking of assembly line and supply chain processes to exploit 3D printing.

 Information of Everything

Everything in the digital mesh produces, uses and transmits information. This information goes beyond textual, audio and video information to include sensory and contextual information. Information of everything addresses this influx with strategies and technologies to link data from all these different data sources. Information has always existed everywhere but has often been isolated, incomplete, unavailable or unintelligible. Advances in semantic tools such as graph databases as well as other emerging data classification and information analysis techniques will bring meaning to the often chaotic deluge of information.

 Advanced Machine Learning

In advanced machine learning, deep neural nets (DNNs) move beyond classic computing and information management to create systems that can autonomously learn to perceive the world, on their own. The explosion of data sources and complexity of information makes manual classification and analysis infeasible and uneconomic. DNNs automate these tasks and make it possible to address key challenges related to the information of everything trend.

DNNs (an advanced form of machine learning particularly applicable to large, complex datasets) is what makes smart machines appear “intelligent.” DNNs enable hardware- or software-based machines to learn for themselves all the features in their environment, from the finest details to broad sweeping abstract classes of content. This area is evolving quickly, and organizations must assess how they can apply these technologies to gain competitive advantage.

 Autonomous Agents and Things

Machine learning gives rise to a spectrum of smart machine implementations — including robots, autonomous vehicles, virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and smart advisors — that act in an autonomous (or at least semiautonomous) manner. While advances in physical smart machines such as robots get a great deal of attention, the software-based smart machines have a more near-term and broader impact. VPAs such as Google Now, Microsoft’s Cortana and Apple’s Siri are becoming smarter and are precursors to autonomous agents. The emerging notion of assistance feeds into the ambient user experience in which an autonomous agent becomes the main user interface. Instead of interacting with menus, forms and buttons on a smartphone, the user speaks to an app, which is really an intelligent agent.

 Adaptive Security Architecture

The complexities of digital business and the algorithmic economy combined with an emerging “hacker industry” significantly increase the threat surface for an organization. Relying on perimeter defense and rule-based security is inadequate, especially as organizations exploit more cloud-based services and open APIs for customers and partners to integrate with their systems. IT leaders must focus on detecting and responding to threats, as well as more traditional blocking and other measures to prevent attacks. Application self-protection, as well as user and entity behavior analytics, will help fulfill the adaptive security architecture.

 Advanced System Architecture

The digital mesh and smart machines require intense computing architecture demands to make them viable for organizations. Providing this required boost are high-powered and ultraefficient neuromorphic architectures. Fueled by field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) as an underlining technology for neuromorphic architectures, there are significant gains to this architecture, such as being able to run at speeds of greater than a teraflop with high-energy efficiency.

 Mesh App and Service Architecture

Monolithic, linear application designs (e.g., the three-tier architecture) are giving way to a more loosely coupled integrative approach: the apps and services architecture. Enabled by software-defined application services, this new approach enables Web-scale performance, flexibility and agility. Microservice architecture is an emerging pattern for building distributed applications that support agile delivery and scalable deployment, both on-premises and in the cloud. Containers are emerging as a critical technology for enabling agile development and microservice architectures. Bringing mobile and IoT elements into the app and service architecture creates a comprehensive model to address back-end cloud scalability and front-end device mesh experiences. Application teams must create new modern architectures to deliver agile, flexible and dynamic cloud-based applications with agile, flexible and dynamic user experiences that span the digital mesh.

 Internet of Things Platforms

IoT platforms complement the mesh app and service architecture. The management, security, integration and other technologies and standards of the IoT platform are the base set of capabilities for building, managing and securing elements in the IoT. IoT platforms constitute the work IT does behind the scenes from an architectural and a technology standpoint to make the IoT a reality. The IoT is an integral part of the digital mesh and ambient user experience and the emerging and dynamic world of IoT platforms is what makes them possible.

I was in the midst of a conversation with a colleague yesterday when we both noticed an ant on the wall next to us.  We both watched it for a few moments before I “helped” it to the ground so it could get where it was going faster.  It reminded me of this TED talk by Deborah Gordon where she explores how ant life provides a useful model for learning about many other topics, including disease, technology, and the human brain.

Math is Racist, The End of the Bossless Workplace?, The Robot Economy + more

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There are a trio of interesting articles to challenge ourselves with first this week: first from Cathy O’Neil via CNN (and other sources) about how math is racist and algorithms and big data are helping to perpetuate the poverty gap.  From targeted advertising and insurance to education and policing, O’Neil looks at how algorithms and big data are targeting the poor, reinforcing racism and amplifying inequality in her new book “Weapons of Math Destruction.”  Second up is one where researchers found that when artificial intelligence judges a beauty contest, white people win.  The why and the how behind racial preference is being programmed in to the AI platforms is what’s interesting.  Those first articles and the thought process that follows then brings into question the last, or at least, the real impact that artificial intelligence has on customer service – there is a great deal of potential, for sure, but companies have to be wary that their AI doesn’t then created a different, biased experience based on race and gender.

Vanity Fair this week has an exclusive look at how the Theranos house of cards came tumbling down.  It’s a story of silos and secrecy, among other things, and how silos and secrecy got in the way of any defense Theranos and Holmes, the founder, could mount.

Speaking of broken cultures, Inc. has an article this week about startup culture being broken and what to do about it now.

While there is some question as to the all-powerful nature of the mighty Blockchain, this article from Bloomberg unpacks what magical properties it might have.

With the Rio Olympics having come to a close, we get to the real question of the day: if we were to hold the Olympics of Programming today, which country would win and what would the US’s medal ranking be?  You’re likely not surprised to discover it isn’t even close to the top ten.  Not that it needs reinforcement, but we need to add coding to the curriculum earlier in the US.

While Uber is dominant by a wide margin in the US market, there are others out there seeing success in Europe and elsewhere, like Gett, an Israeli ride sharing company that looks to strengthen its hold on Europe and slowly make its way into the US.

As we awake to news of an earthquake off the shores of North Korea, it might bring to mind “the big one” we all fear – most people think of the San Andreas fault or if you’re from the Midwest, like me, the New Madrid fault line.  The New Yorker has an article on another: the Cascadia subduction.  It’s a really well written piece with a good look at the science and impact of that big one.

Many of us have heard about the “great experiment” at companies like Medium, Zappos, and GitHub in holocracy, where an organization is completely flat and there are no leaders.  There are champions and detractors alike, and one of those champions was Chris Wanstrath of GitHub, which started as a bossless culture in 2008 but who two years ago gathered the employees of his software startup to inform them they were all getting bosses.  That said, GitHub still pushes the traditional structure and is experimenting as they can and holocracy at Zappos has for all intents and purposes failed – just ask those leaving the company.  The obvious bigger question lies around how big is too big for a completely flat structure and when do the benefits get outweighed by the faults?

Popular Science does a great job profiling Chris White, the man who lit the dark web, this week, and how data mining is helping cops bust open online human trafficking.  On the subject of online predators, if you’re a parent (or not), take the time to read this article about the subject from the Washington Post.

There’s a pair of articles this week from Bloomberg about the state of the world economy this week: first, how manufacturing and now services are signaling fractures in the US economy and then how Saudi Arabia is on a cost-cutting spree looking to cut $20 billion in projects this year due to slow economic growth and low oil prices.

John Kotter’s name comes up frequently in the world of business and with good reason given his impact on how we run organizations and get organizations to change.  Organizational change management can be a tough nut to crack even when you have intent about it (and organizations fail to change when they ignore it), and this week strategy+business asked Kotter what his required reading was when it comes to change, and the list is short but insightful.  Also from s+b this week is this article on fostering online trust.

Well, the unthinkable has come to pass: the FCC has abandoned the set top box in favor of apps.  It’s not a surprising shift, just surprising that a government entity is an early adopter of sorts.  This shift should be a boon for consumers and cable providers alike.  Time will tell.

So, headphone jacks.  That seems to be the big news everyone is taking away from the Apple event Wednesday and with good reason.  While there are proponents and detractors, one of the bigger complaints is how one can’t charge their phone while using corded headphones.  Maybe Apple is becoming a company focused solely on increasing revenue and not innovation anymore, but recall that when the original iPod came out it didn’t work with most headphone because the jack was set so deeply in the device.  That changed, and it’s likely that wireless charging is what we can expect with the iPhone 8.

Ransomware continues to be an epidemic, but enSilo has a plan that should eliminate 70% of those attacks – learn more from Fortune.

There’s an interesting article from Fast Company about how Microsoft is trying to find and hire autisctic coders.

Last this week is an opinion piece this week outlining how the robot overlords aren’t, in fact, bearing down on us nor will the implementation of robots lead to mass unemployment as some naysayers have claimed.  While an opinion, there is plenty of data to back it up through the article.  Thea reality is that the robots are coming and we need to start planning and training our workforces now to avoid the feared obsolescence of the future.  Along with that, The Guardian explores how our three life stages will not survive much longer.

Speaking of progress, the politics around any progress brings about risk in many ways and on many levels.  Instead of avoiding that risk, however, journalist Jonathan Tepperman says we might even want to think riskier. He traveled the world to ask global leaders how they’re tackling hard problems — and unearthed surprisingly hopeful stories that he’s distilled into three tools for problem-solving featured in this TED talk.

Transportation as a Service, Apple vs. the EU, Delta gets smart about luggage + more

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Last week there was a bit a news around Uber losing a bit of money in the first half of 2016.  This week, news came out about Google’s own efforts to undercut Uber in San Francisco in the ride-sharing game leveraging its Waze app.  That goes a ways to explain why David Drummond exited from Uber’s board, and this week Stratechery has a great article on the evolution of transportation as a service.  Mind you, Google would be wise to focus on first/last mile issues like Uber and Lyft, and at the same time might not avoid “doing evil” in that pursuit.

Speaking of cars, did you know that earlier this year for the first time the net adds of connected cars surpassed that of smartphones in the US.  This all points to how connected cars are going to become revenue machines, or so says TechCrunch, and I think they’re on to something.

If you haven’t guessed yet, I’m a bit of a geek and I like learning about obscure or trivial things.  I like it when writers connect disparate concepts in new and insightful ways.  While these aren’t obscure, this article from Business Insider that walks through the seventeen equations that changed the world was right up my alley.

If you hadn’t heard, there’s a strike today in India which has shut down most of the country.  The strikes were driven by the belief that Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister, is pursuing anti-labor policies.  Entire cities have been shut down, with transportation and banks hit hardest.  On top of that, add this article about how Tata and Infosys are starting to feel the Brexit heat and you start to see the potential storm that could hit India’s economy.

There was a great interview this week from recode with Quip CEO Bret Taylor, not just because it explores his belief that companies die when they are afraid to fail, but also for his statement that you have to aggressively recruit a diverse workforce from the start or you will fail at employee diversity.  Popular Science has a piece this week that speaks to hiring diversity in Silicon Valley as well.

I gave an overview a while back on artificial intelligence and the difference between narrow and general intelligence.  The reality is we just don’t know how far we are out from having AGI, which is likely the next internet or iPhone level innovation.  The New Yorker’s Om Malik explores the hope and hype of AI this week, and the thing that struck home for me most was this “computers do the best they can (that is being consistent, objective, precise), and humans do our best (creative, imprecise but adaptive).”  That’s the best description I’ve heard of the disconnect, and the reason why even when we achieve AGI the human race is so interesting – because we’re imprecise but adaptive.

Along with that is this article on how Facebook is trying to catch up with Google in open-sourcing AI code and then an inside look at how artificial intelligence and machine learning work at Apple.

The first software startup was founded in 1892.  Well, not really, but that kind of hyperbole catches the eye, doesn’t it?  Well, GE is that software startup, and while they just started their push to be competitive with Google and Microsoft a few years ago, they’re serious about it, to the tune of billions of dollars and thousands of people.

Speaking of click bait and hyperbole, ever wondered how government agencies can hack into your smartphone?  Well, here’s a story of how hackers from the NSA got caught doing exactly that.

You may have heard the news this week that the EU has levied a 13 Billion Euro tax on Apple for back taxes.  Apple’s response?  That the EU can either have their back taxes or jobs, but not both.  Robert Reich explores why it is so difficult for governments to stand up to Apple (and others), while The New Yorker walks through how Apple created Ireland’s economies, “real and fantastical.”  If you are wondering how Apple and others avoid paying taxes, Wired has you covered, while 9to5 Mac discusses how tone deaf Tim Cook’s response to the findings are.

There’s an interesting question that keeps popping up: why is consumer tech ignoring baby boomers?  While millennials are an important market share, the people with the money are their parents, and yes, millennials may end up inheriting a gob smacking amount of wealth, it seems short sighted to keep ignoring a generation with money to spend today for the generation that will spend money tomorrow.

Mark Zuckerberg is not a happy man this week.  You’ve likely heard about the latest SpaceX rocket explosion, and that that rocket had a Facebook satellite as its payload.  Apparently, Zuck is “deeply disappointed” that the satellite was lost, although likely not because of the $195M price tag.  Nope, it’s more to do with his mission to bring internet access to Africa, and his belief in Nigeria’s tech industry.

Did you hear the one about Amazon leasing its own fleet of airplanes?  What about the drones (even pizza delivery!)?  To date Amazon has been great business for UPS and FedEx, but the times they may be changing.

Here’s an interesting fact for you this week: 90% of software developers live outside of Silicon Valley.  It only makes sense when you think about it, but often we don’t.  What about this: in five years, the Midwest will have more startups than Silicon Valley.

So, oddly, airlines are finally catching up with warehouses and supply chain management in that Delta is using RFID tags to track baggage.  The eventual hope is that RFID tags will be incorporated into luggage at manufacture so that we, the consumer, can register our bags ourselves to take that burden off the airlines, but we’re a bit away from that.  It’s nice to see that at least one airline is finally catching on.

We all have biases, conscious or sub, and when we do become aware of them, then we face the challenge of overcoming them.  In this TED talk, Vernā Myers looks closely at our attitudes towards out-groups and how we can move towards the groups that make us uncomfortable.

Ag Unicorns, Leadership Perils for Subject Matter Experts, A Deficit of Leadership + more

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While there’s an abundance of articles out there about any numbers of startups in a multitude of verticals, but we don’t often hear much about the agricultural space.  Since 2008, however, a lot of acquisitions have been taking place, with the “Big Six” ag companies spending upwards of $31B in the past eight years.  What there investing in skews towards digital ag, with the hopes that new technology will allow farmers to make better decisions real-time and tie them to their providers data platform.  That all makes sense, as using data to drive decisions is why big data is and will continue to be dominant, but what makes it hard for big Ag companies is that many times they have to sell to farmers who are using aging infrastructure and technology.  The key challenge? Finding ways to enable farmers to both better leverage their existing equipment while building platforms that takes some of the burden off their shoulders.

There are many chat platforms out there today that one wouldn’t think the sale of Yahoo’s properties to Verizon would have chat users concerned, but apparently the messenger platform is used by more than just consumers; apparently the world of crude oil trading depends on it for both gossip and contracts.

If you’ve never heard of Jet.com until this last week when Wal-Mart announced they’d pay $3.3B for the company, I’m not surprised.  I’d only heard about it because of this guy who put up $18k to “win” a stake in the company.  Well, he’s now $20M richer for his investment, and L2 has a hilarious analysis/analogy that outlines why Wal-Mart would spend so much for a company that, well, has produced so little.

So Uber made some headlines last week, and there’s also some fallout from the Didi deal already: it may line the company up for anti-trust scrutiny.  Also, Quartz asked the question that no one else has: with Uber on an unending ascent and investors clamoring to get in, what does it look like to short it?

Many times we see subject matters experts thrust into leadership positions with little forethought or training.  I think the typical thought process is that if an individual is thriving at the work they are doing, they would be the best person to lead and mentor others because they could then pass that knowledge on.  strategy+business tackles this topic this week, with the three perils SMEs face when they lead: the ability to break free of their comfort zone and then “helicopter,” the ability to “code switch” (or avoid reverting to jargon), and the need to “lead up” to a boss or other person up the hierarchy who may have little expertise with a very specific and technical problem.  We work with seasoned practitioners every day who are likely challenged by these very pitfalls and it provides us with the opportunity to serve them through mentoring.

HBR has two head’s up articles for us this week: the first is about “smart drugs” and how they’re likely going to start showing up in our organizations.  The second, how our diversity programs may be helping out women but not minorities (or vice versa).

We often talk about how the developing world depends not on a PC but their mobile devices for internet access, a variety of transactions, and social connectedness, but we don’t have to look at South Africa or India to see this at play, we can look in our own back yard.  Today, Latino families in the U.S. are much more likely to have a mobile device versus a PC at home.  To me, that means we need to stop catering to a declining population and start pushing more towards a mobile versus desktop interface even in the developer world if we want to win at digital.

Remember Gopher protocol?   Here’s a great article about the rise and fall of it.

It’s funny that this summer has seen many naysayers about Augmented Reality and then Pokemon Go happened.  People didn’t need a headset of any kind, and it’s been almost addictive to its users along with leading some players to interesting scenarios.  What’s next?  Well, it may lead to a change in our zoning laws and even, maybe, selling the “digital rights” to your own home.   Here’s also a great look at how AR can speed up construction projects.

Not to debunk a good thing, but for all the hype we’ve been hearing about 5G, here’s a good reality check for what it will take to make it happen.  Hint: we’re gonna need a whole lot of investment in infrastructure.

There are a lot of naysayers out there who say that Apple has lost its former glory, that the company will never have another iPhone.  Well, yes, of course they won’t.  The iPhone was what is considered innovation on par with the Internet or man flying, the horseless carriage.  It only makes sense that a company would get one of those, not a slew.  Instead of looking for the next iPhone, Apple is in it for the long game, and that game is looking pretty good.

For those who wondered what happened to Here, one of the remnants of Nokia after the sale of its mobile device IP to Microsoft (which has been completely written off at this point), they’re out looking for investment after being bought by a consortium of German auto makers.  Now, this may seem like an odd non-sequitur, however if you look at who the buyers were versus who once owned the mapping technology, and the trend in the industry for who is purchasing mapping entities as a whole (outside of Google, ESRI, Digital Globe and the other big names), more and more of these acquisitions are by either automakers or those who depend on routing (like Uber and their continued purchases).  I’m well removed from this world at this point, but it’ll be interesting to see how the metadata these companies collect are then translated to effective autonomous routing (the backbone of autonomous cars).  Better said, it’s not really about the maps anymore.

I’ll end this week pointing to this excellent piece by Jon Lonsdale about the deficit of leadership we face today, and that while we may have many people who are good managers, maybe even good leaders, there is a lack of great leaders in Silicon Valley.  That’s not just an epidemic there, however – it’s hard to find truly transformational leaders this day and it has me curious as to why.

The barrage of today’s work place has led people to become more and more miserable and disengaged at work.  In this talk by Yves Morieux, Morieux discusses six rules to simplify work.

Uber “exits” China, Growth and Developing Economies, Minecraft and the Future of Work + more

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This last week we learned that Uber, who invested heavily trying to win in the China market, has decided to sell that investment to its competitor in the market, Didi Chuxing.  Now, while Uber “lost” while Didi won, in the end Uber is ending up with a $1B cash infusion from Didi and an ~18% stake in Didi that is worth another $7B, what the Uber venture in China was valued.  Now, some might view this as a smart move on Uber’s part, as it allows Uber to shift its expansion efforts to other markets while maintaining a stake in China, but the Wall Street Journal notes that Uber, like many other Western tech companies before it, faced the same issues of favoritism for the local competitor and obstacles being thrown in their way by the Chinese government.  By selling to Didi, it allows Uber to remain competitive in China through this new partnership, but is also allowing Didi access to Uber’s algorithms.  That said, there are other threats out there to Uber than just unfavorable governments, from driver-owned apps to Uber itself.

Apple, by far, is one of the best marketing companies in the world today.  Yup, you heard me, not technology, but marketing.  They create their message in a way that creates an identity people want to be part of.  Yes, they make great technology to boot, but also encouraged all of us to think different in the process.  What about the world of public relations at Apple though?  Well, in this article from HBR, Cameron Craig talks about four key rules: keep it simple, value reporters’ time, be hands on, stay focused, and prioritize media influencers.  While we might not be dealing with the press on a day to day basis, these rules reinforce how we as leaders should interact with our people, perhaps worded like this: keep it simple, value our people’s time, be hands on (without micromanaging), stay focused, and prioritize people over all else.

Lithium ion batteries are something we use every day and are all well aware of their capacity issues,  Well, as odd as it is for me to be this excited about, lithium-air batteries might finally have reached a point where they are no longer theory.  What does that mean for us?  Lighter batteries that will have twice the charge capacity of the batteries of today and will last longer as well.

VB has a good follow up on chat bots this week – yes, they’re the most hyped tech add in this year, but this article gives an update on how bots are progressing as well as some of the challenges faced in the UX design.

Michael Spence may not be a name you’re familiar with, but he is a nobel laureate in Economics and wrote this week on the growth models of developing countries and how robotics and technology will again shift the way and where things are manufactured.  The slow growth were seeing in advanced countries is likely to persist, and that will tempt developing countries to pursue quick fixes, fixes that would burden those economies in the long run.  One of Spence’s points is that “entrepreneurial activity is vital to translate economic potential into reality.”  That’s my long set up for another two articles on tech in Africa, one about a day in the digital life on that continent, the other about how fintech is building the African financial market (not disrupting it).

Interesting things are going on in Dubai, where AstroLabs, a tech incubator, has set up a coworking space that allows companies to obtain free-zone company licenses, without which entering that market would be a huge hurdle.  It’s the first incubator of this sort to gain traction in that region, and it will be interesting to see how companies are able to leverage it to test out the Dubai market.

For those of us not paranoid enough, Motherboard has done a good job this week of capturing some of the things we should be scared of from a hacking standpoint thanks to the internet of things.  They posit that the IoT will soon see the first large scale disaster due to hacking.  For those of us that follow the infosec space, this isn’t a shock.  Motherboard goes on to have a collection of articles about the current state of hacking you can find here.

Microsoft’s Nokia purchase is leading to even more job cuts.  Yahoo is on a hiring frenzy despite layoffs.  Our brains are on a new drug and it’s called our phone.  A radical change to how kids learn everywhere might come from an online school.  This may be the smartest thing Facebook has ever done.

Last, Jim Fowler, the CIO at GE, has some interesting observations on how Minecraft predicts the future of collaborative work.  He posits this will happen in four ways: we will live inside our designs, we will work on platforms that attract skill and unleash creativity, through collaboration, no problem becomes too difficult to solve, and last, science and technology education will be more like games and less like school, making them both more engaging and exciting.  Also critical, though, is easy access to technology and data and the freedom to find the best way to use it.

I stumbled across a great TED talk this week by John Green titled “the nerd’s guide to learning everything online.”  To Green (who starts his talk with a story about a made up town), we all need to find out how learning works best for us.  He didn’t understand, when he was younger, why people would put nooses around their necks and then head off before it was daylight out to something that seemed to make them miserable.  As a child, if education led to that, why would he want education? Eventually he did, but it took a different kind of school for him to do so.  Check it out.