Today’s wondermissive is available to all our readers. 85% of my annual subscribers renew for a second year. That should be a good enough reason to become a member TODAY→ 🔮 Hardware and research; generative AI; Tiktok and the Internet; ecstasy & sunken servers++
I’m Azeem Azhar. I convene Exponential View to help us understand how our societies and political economy will change under the force of rapidly accelerating technologies. If you’re not a member, consider joining. This week, EV members and I discussed whether the TikTok-Oracle deal heralds the new Internet. Most are cautious. Here are some takeaways:
Just as I went to bed, the news that Trump had agreed to the Oracle deal broke. Jane Li points out that the structure mirrors the deals Apple & Microsoft have in China. Strangely, Oracle’s Larry Ellison thinks he won the deal because his firm has the best cloud platform. (For history nerds, Oracle’s last consumer product was the PowerBrowser from 1996. It was a desktop web browser. I found it particularly intriguing because it embedded a local web server so you could dish out web pages from your client device. You can see a video walkthrough of it here. Commentary in Japanese. Sorry!) The near future💯 A brilliant essay on the “hardware lottery”, the ergodicity of software and how tools make or break research. Super relevant for the future of AI. If you are going to read one piece this weekend, make it this one. Brief commentary and summaries here and here.
Follow up with this essay looking into the implications of the shift to digital therapy in China. Once overwhelmingly taboo, mental health services are now booming. Dept of decarbonisation: 411.28ppm | 3,539 daysEach week, I’m going to remind you of the CO2 levels in the atmosphere and the number of days until we reach the 450ppm threshold. The latest measurement (as of September 17): 411.28 ppm; September 2019: 408.5 ppm; 25 years ago: 360 ppm; 250 years ago, est: 250 ppm. Share this reminder with your community by forwarding this email or tweeting this. 👍 Peak oil: demand could fall by at least 10% this decade, and by as much as 50% over the next two decades. The Business Roundtable, one of the US’ most prominent business groups, “supports a goal of reducing net US GHG emissions by at least 80% from 2005 levels by 2050”. (This is the same group which made a limp-wristed claim about the purpose of the corporation last year. You should listen to my discussion with Rebecca Henderson where we touch on these issues.) Chart of the week
Downers are up. Uppers are down. Meth remains resilient. Short morsels to make you smart despite all👽 Is there life on Venus? Here is the fab (scientific paper) detailing the findings this week. Two companies to keep an eye on (for different reasons!): The first is Ping An, China’s second-largest insurer, which is about to spin off and float four unicorns with a combined value of just under $82 billion; the second is Sandvine Inc., the American tech firm that helped the Belarusian government shut down the internet during the disputed presidential election. 🌊 In 2018 Microsoft’s Project Natick sunk 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage to the floor of the Scottish Sea. The project team claim that the underwater data centre had just 1/8 of the failure rate of a land-based data centre. 😬 Gen Z vs. Silicon Valley. Can a group of young tech enthusiasts build a new system? Portland has passed a groundbreaking ban on facial recognition in private and public spaces. 😆 Do not post your boarding pass on Instagram. The former Australian PM had to learn this lesson the hard way. Hilarious. 💸 Had income distribution remained constant since 1975, the median full-time worker in the US would be making $92,000 a year in annual earnings, versus $50,000 as is. IMPORTANT TAKE The ISS is open for business. First up: beauty product marketing. End noteNo chipmunks were saved this week. Our humblest apologies! A — What you’re up to—notes from EV readers Rodolfo Rosini wants to know about your facemask habits. Participate and share! Andrea Coravos is releasing a landmark, open-access project that will serve as an industry guide for successfully developing and deploying digital clinical measures across clinical research, clinical care, and population health surveillance. Michael Sulmeyer, an adviser to US Cyber Command, on how to compete in cyberspace. Ted Lechterman joins Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics in AI. Congrats! Ryan Rodenbaugh breaks down the defining characteristics of Super Apps. Share your news and projects with other readers. E-mail marija@exponentialview.co with details.
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