Worldless places; Chaos theory; Posthumans

Issue #369

💡Think

Hey everyone,

I’m many, many weeks late, but something that I haven’t stopped thinking about since Apple’s released their new iPads is…hey, they aren’t a product company. They are a marketing company, convincing you that marginal improvements are worth thousands of dollars, every single year.

Since then, I haven’t been able to stop looking at every company like this, and it’s hurting my brain. Are you genuinely offering a service, or squeezing the lemon for every last drop?

As people in the tech industry, we all have a central desire to offer great user experiences, offer life changing solutions to users, and try to make a positive dent. But perhaps that’s all a facade.

I’m feeling…positive 🤣

Have a great week!
Luis

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📷 Look

Baker Street, London

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📖 Read

❶ Worldless Places And The Reality Of Fictions

This is a pretty dense philosophical analysis of capitalism’s ability to be a universal truth yet have no distinct meaning. It is culture-less, yet accommodates every culture. It is/was the beginning of the future and the end of everything we knew to be unique. It goes into way more depth than this, but this is enough of a taste.

Read this article

❷ Chaos and cause: Science, or a butterfly’s wing

Would you say a roulette wheel is predictable? Probably not, but assuming the butterfly effect is accurate, wouldn’t the conditions of the spin be something maths could solve? Putting Isaac Newton’s laws against John Keats’ mystery, this article looks at chaos theory and tries to understand whether it’s actually true or not.

Read this article

❸ Are the posthumans here yet?

As in, robot humans? Yes. Apparently the first person to get a chip implant happened in…1998! They can control lights and doors, which is perhaps a little underwhelming. This is a short article, but a look into the future, which a lot of people are very willing to embark on.

Read this article

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Bonus round

• Can everyone kindly shut up about AI

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🎧 Listen

Should this creepy search engine exist?

Facial recognition isn’t new, and none of us would be surprised to know how big a business it is in the security (or tracking?) space. But, there are rafts of search engines swimming into view that take it even further.

One in particular, discussed in this podcast, has indexed so much of the internet that it can identify you in photos you didn’t even know you were in. For example, the background of other people’s photos shared at cafes, gigs, or just in the street. We’re not safe!

What’s creepier, is that this one in particular was developed almost entirely by a single person working out of public cafes.

Listen to this podcast (60 minutes)
Spotify – Apple

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Have a great week,
@disco_lu