Archive for the ‘Required Reading’ Category

On pondering the merit of yet another new iPhone purchace – to which the only benefit I can see is a better camera – I got to thinking about how one might justify the purchase.  

They ain’t cheap. I already have a museum grade collection of digital devices. And the one of got is ok enough. 

But here’s the difference between this purchase and most – I live on my phone.  According to Instant, between two and four hours per day. And I take a heap of photos.  Thousands per year in fact. 

So unlike a Tuxedo – which maybe gets used 40 times in ten years – maybe, just maybe, upgrading every year makes all the sense in the world. 

Once it was the PC we could justify upgrading due to all that added power and functionality.  Now it seems it’s the phone.  

Some suggestions for a friend so thought I’d share here:

• Ground Control: In the Ferry Building – on the side facing the street. Three minute walk to amazing coffee.
• Hills Bros, 19 Food & Coffee 5 Martin Place, Sydney. 7-4.30 Mon-Fri – in the Lobby of the building. Very clever food and amazing coffee. Same people that own Reuben Hills. 10 min walk from hotel.
• Cross Cafe, 155 Clarence St, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia – amazing food
• Reuben Hills Cafe, 61 Albion StreetSurry Hills, Sydney, 2010 – great coffee and food.
• Reformatory Caffine Lab, 17-51 Foveaux Street, Surry Hills, New South Wales
• Gumption, Strand Arcade – awlays a line, always great.
• Sensory Lab, Bondi Beach – St Ali gang’s Sydney hangout.

• Good list here: https://concreteplayground.com/sydney/best-of/the-eight-best-specialty-coffee-spots-in-sydney/

What are your faves?

What we get exposed to on a daily basis is insane. The media looks to capture our attention through a non-stop barrage of anger, violence and poison. Reading headlines – which seem to ebb and flow hourly – you’d think civilization is collapsing. It’s not. Information is collapsing our consciousness. Ray Kurtzweil said it well today:

“People think the world is getting worse. … That’s the perception. What’s actually happening is our information about what’s wrong in the world is getting better. A century ago, there would be a battle that wiped out the next village, you’d never even hear about it. Now there’s an incident halfway around the globe and we not only hear about it, we experience it.”

I’m not sure how many people attended our AGM in Wellington last year.  Had to be over 1,000.  This year we went virtual so the room in Sydney has less than 100 people in it.

This has to be a good thing:

• People from over 15 countries engaged live
• Xero offices tuning in and some have shareholders dropping by for morning tea – so good and much more human
• Saves money and time – and better for the environment
• People seemed OK asking questions online and the smaller room was great

Interestingly, over 500 people tuned in over the web from more than 15 countries.

Wonder why more don’t do this? Thoughts?

Brilliant piece by Tim on how technology will Augment us. Kevin Kelly made this point well at Cannes – the best chess player isn’t the best machine – its the best machine and best human player together.

Sure, there will be jobs that are entirely replaced (not looking good for truck drivers or warehouse workers). But for jobs where efficiency or productivity are less important, such as in science, the arts and human experience, – they will be primarily a human territory. “You don’t rank Picasso on how many paintings per hour he is putting out,” Kelly said. AI is not man versus machine, it is humans working with machines. “The best medical diagnostician in the world is not Watson and it’s not a human doctor, it is a team [of humans and AI],” he said, adding: “You will be paid by how well you work with AI.”

Augmentation isn’t about elimination, it is about creation. That’s where the action will be. Tim puts it well:

Technology lets us rethink the very structure of how we do things. Consider, for example, the way that Uber and Lyft have transformed urban transportation. There were connected taxicabs long before Uber — but all they did was to recreate the old process. What we got for our connectivity was a credit card reader in the back, and a small screen showing us ads. What Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick realized was that humans were now augmented by location-aware smartphones, and so you could completely rethink the way you summoned a car. It would be utter magic to someone from the past — that you can click on your phone, and summon a car to where-ever you are, and to know just how long it will take for a car to pick you up.

But when Uber started talking about self driving cars, they lost the plot and started talking only about cutting costs and eliminating workers. Rather than crowing about how they’d finally get rid of those pesky drivers, they should have been talking about an experiment that they’ve run since 2014, delivering flu shots. “Sure, we won’t always have drivers. But just imagine how many other jobs we can restructure and make more magical and on demand once the transportation is even cheaper and more convenient!

Kevin Kelly’s book is well worth a read.

And, somewhat shamelessly, you can read more in Augmented…