New Viewpoints – Page 6

Employment, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News, Startup

The Office of the Future Is No Office at All

May 26, 2019

Everyone works remotely at software-development company GitLab, even its CEO

As collaboration tools improve, letting distant teammates work together seamlessly, some are questioning whether an office is necessary.

GitLab Inc. is extreme, even for Silicon Valley: It has no headquarters and everyone works remotely, even the CEO.

The software-development startup, which has more than 600 employees in 54 countries, plans to raise its headcount to about 1,000 by year-end. Its far-flung workers rely on internal tools and cloud-based services to collaborate, communicate and contribute to projects.

The idea is to remain headquarters-free even after GitLab’s initial public offering, planned for late 2020, giving it flexibility to cut costs and hire people world-wide as opposed to relying on expensive talent hubs and office space, said Sid Sijbrandij, the company’s chief executive and co-founder.

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Analysis, Future, Historical Perspectives, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The peculiar blindness of experts

May 14, 2019

Credentialed authorities are comically bad at predicting the future. But reliable forecasting is possible.

The bet was on, and it was over the fate of humanity. On one side was the Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich. In his 1968 best seller, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich insisted that it was too late to prevent a doomsday apocalypse resulting from overpopulation. Resource shortages would cause hundreds of millions of starvation deaths within a decade. It was cold, hard math: The human population was growing exponentially; the food supply was not. Ehrlich was an accomplished butterfly specialist. He knew that nature did not regulate animal populations delicately. Populations exploded, blowing past the available resources, and then crashed.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

AI Ethics: Seven Traps

May 7, 2019

The question of how to ensure that technological innovation in machine learning and artificial intelligence leads to ethically desirable—or, more minimally, ethically defensible—impacts on society has generated much public debate in recent years. Most of these discussions have been accompanied by a strong sense of urgency: as more and more studies about algorithmic bias have shown, the risk that emerging technologies will not only reflect, but also exacerbate structural injustice in society is significant.

So which ethical principles ought to govern machine learning systems in order to prevent morally and politically objectionable outcomes? In other words: what is AI Ethics? And indeed, “is ethical AI even possible?”, as a recent New York Times article asks?

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

What will Bitcoin look like in twenty years?

May 2, 2019

Prediction is a tricky business.

It’s so easy to be wrong and so hard to be right.

But that’s exactly what we’ll do here. Since we’re rapidly approaching the ten year anniversary of Bitcoin’s whitepaper publication, I’ll attempt to project out twenty years to see the evolution of Bitcoin, blockchain, alternative cryptocurrencies and decentralization.

This is the type of article that will look unbelievably foolish or incredibly brilliant when I’m old and gray.

I don’t care. I’m going for it anyway.

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Famous Inventor, Historical Perspectives, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

A 23-year excavation into the life of Leonardo da Vinci

April 26, 2019

Met curator Carmen Bambach reveals what she has learned about the world’s most famous Renaissance man.

Carmen Bambach, curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, spent 23 years studying the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci. The culmination of her research, a 2,200-page, four-volume book, Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered, will be published by Yale University Press this summer.

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Higher Education, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Colleges are upending majors

April 20, 2019

Princeton commencement, 1909. Photo: Paul Thompson/FPG/Getty Images

In 1869, at Harvard, Charles Eliot invented the college major as we know it — each student would be channeled into a specialized area of study, and move on to a stable, lifelong job.

The big picture: A century and a half later, American colleges pump out some 4.5 million new bachelor’s degrees every year, but the context — the present and future of work — has changed entirely.

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brains, Business, Employment, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The importance of foresight : Why intuition and imagination will be critical in the future of work

April 17, 2019

In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman refers to the parts of our brain, where he suggests there are two competing intelligence at play.

He specifies one area affiliated to “system 1” which is known to be an area relying on speed in decision making and on emotion in information perceiving. System 1 is based largely on our instinct and intuition unconsciously stored by past experiences that are often rapidly available to memory. The second area is affiliated to “system 2” which is known to be an area for slow and deliberate decision making and more rational in information perceiving. This area takes in information based on our conscious appraisal of current events, and our stored episodic long-term memories, which are slowly available to memory. Why do we care?

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Alzheimer's Disease, Machine Learning, new technology, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Five key ideas you need to understand now if you want to be ready for the world of 2030

April 14, 2019

With a new series of the BBC science podcast Futureproofing on air this month, presenter Timandra Harkness explains how to get ready for the world of the future.

Just a building that keeps the rain out and your clean underwear in? Think again. The home of 2030 will be smart, connected and emotional.

“Our notion of home will change drastically,” says Sce Pike, CEO of Oregon-based IOTAS. “The notion of home is no longer four walls and a roof and a place, a location, but actually something that travels with you throughout your life.”

How does it do that? By learning your preferences and your habits, and automatically adjusting the light, heat, even your TV channels, before you have to ask. “It’s about how that home reacts to you and makes you comfortable,” says Pike.

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Bitcoin, Computer Security, New Viewpoints, privacy, Science & Technology News

How a Bitcoin evangelist made himself vanish, in 15 (not so easy) steps

March 19, 2019

In October 2017, a SWAT team descended on Jameson Lopp’s house in North Carolina. Someone — it still isn’t clear who — had called the police and falsely claimed that a shooter at the home had killed someone and taken a hostage. After the police left, Mr. Lopp received a call threatening more mayhem if he did not make a large ransom payment in Bitcoin.

To scare off future attackers, Mr. Lopp quickly posted a video on Twitter of himself firing off his AR-15 rifle. He also decided he was going to make it much harder for his enemies — and anyone else — to find him ever again.

Mr. Lopp, a self-described libertarian who works for a Bitcoin security company, had long been obsessed with the value of privacy, and he set out to learn how thoroughly a person can escape the all-seeing eyes of corporate America and the government. But he wanted to do it without giving up internet access and moving to a shack in the woods.

Many celebrities and wealthy people, wary of thieves, paparazzi and other predators, have tried to achieve Mr. Lopp’s vision of complete privacy. Few have succeeded.

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Crazy Stuff, cutting edge, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

Physicists reverse time using quantum computer

March 19, 2019

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology teamed up with colleagues from the U.S. and Switzerland and returned the state of a quantum computer a fraction of a second into the past. They also calculated the probability that an electron in empty interstellar space will spontaneously travel back into its recent past. The study comes out March 13 in Scientific Reports.

“This is one in a series of papers on the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics. That law is closely related to the notion of the arrow of time that posits the one-way direction of time: from the past to the future,” commented the study’s lead author Gordey Lesovik, who heads the Laboratory of the Physics of Quantum Information Technology at MIPT.

“We began by describing a so-called local perpetual motion machine of the second kind. Then, in December, we published a paper that discusses the violation of the second law via a device called a Maxwell’s demon,” Lesovik said. “The most recent paper approaches the same problem from a third angle: We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time.”

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Coding, Education, Higher Education, Internet, New Viewpoints

How to get a world-class education for free on the internet

January 26, 2019

As crucial as a university degree has become for working in the modern economy, it is not the only route forward into a wildly lucrative and satisfying career—just ask famous dropouts Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg.

In the future, a single bachelor’s degree in a particular subject will no longer suffice for many of us anyway. As robots and automation sweep the global workforce, hundreds of millions of people—the majority of whom do not have the time or money to go pick up a brand-new four-year degree—will have to “re-skill” in order to land new jobs. The question that employees and employers alike face is how to get that done quickly, efficiently, and, most importantly to many, cheaply.

The internet, luckily, is already a booming resource. Whether you find yourself seeking new employment mid-career, curious about alternatives to a college education, or simply are interested in learning for learning’s sake, Quartz At Work has compiled some of the most dependable, high-quality materials you can access to learn anything on the internet.

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Business, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The ‘Right to Repair ‘ movement is gaining ground and could hit manufacturers hard

January 19, 2019

The EU and at least 18 U.S. states are considering proposals that address the impact of planned obsolescence by making household goods sturdier and easier to mend.

European Union member states are this week voting on dishwasher efficiency and repair. If that sounds as dull as, well, dishwater, then you need to consider the last time your own dishwasher broke. With the right rules in place, it would be a cheap and easy fix. However, you’re not allowed to fiddle with the machine because it would invalidate the warranty. So, instead, you go and buy a new model and throw the old one on the dump.

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