The Reason We're Going To See A Lot More Older Athletes

Genetic marking, bio-technology and data science. Or, to put it another way, information and execution on the knowledge it provides. JL

Angela Chen reports in The Verge:

More than anything, injury limits the length of athletes’ careers. People end up retiring because they have trouble staying healthy and have too many accumulated injuries. There’s a long list of gene associations with different sports and in the future it may inform how athletes train and contract negotiation between athletes and teams. Athletes and coaches take a more sophisticated approach to athlete performance programs. And there are a number of technologies to monitor athlete training loads.

How Tech Turns Us Into Addicts

It's not just you - and it's not random. JL

Raian Ali and colleagues report in World Economic Forum, photo by Elijah Nouvelag in Reuters:

Digital technologies, such as social networks, online shopping, and games, use persuasive and motivational techniques to keep users returning. These include “scarcity” (status is only temporarily available, encouraging you to get online quickly); “social proof” (20,000 users retweeted an article so you should go online and read it); “personalisation” (your news feed is designed to filter and display news based on your interest); and “reciprocity” (invite more friends to get extra points, and once your friends are part of the network it becomes much more difficult for you or them to leave).

Driving? Your Phone Is Still A Distraction, Even If You Aren't Looking

Mental distraction turns out to be as dangerous as auditory or visual. JL


Christie Aschwanden reports in 538:

What your eyes and hands are doing is only part of the issue — what your mind is doing is at least as crucial.Putting down the phone and talking only via a hands-free system in the car doesn’t solve the distraction problem. Studies that test people in simulators find greater risks from talking on the phone than studies based on real driving patterns

The Smartphone Means Shops Aren't For Shopping Anymore

Retail - ecommerce convergence is here. JL

Courtney Coffman reports in The Atlantic:

Retail stores have become a host for experiences first, and buying things second—if at all.In retail spaces, consumer attention has shifted away from goods on racks and shelves, and toward smartphones and apps instead. In response, retailers face a growing need for elevated in-store experiences that seamlessly mesh with online platforms and web stores. The resulting retail model looks a lot less like previous notions of conspicuous consumption and a lot more like visual culture. Customers no longer kick the tires or shop till they drop. Instead they cultivate virtual feeds and inspiration boards.

Where Are You? It's Harder For Advertisers To Know. For Now.

Given the power of data science, the creatively of data scientists and the economic incentives to build location-based models, it should not take long to build workarounds. JL


Nick Kostov reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Companies spent $17.1 billion on location-targeted ads served to mobile devices in the U.S. in 2017. That (was) 38% of all mobile ad spending. Ad-tech, as well as data-warehouse firms are expected to feel the most impact, which also give consumers the right to know when and where their location data is being processed and for what purpose. Google and Facebook are in a  stronger position because they have direct relationships with consumers, which makes it easier to get user consent. They also don’t have to buy location data from third parties because they can get it from their own apps.

Orlando Airport First In US To Require Face Scans Of All Travelers, Including Americans

But please put those Mickey Mouse ears aside before scanning. JL

Mike Schneider reports in AP:

Florida's busiest airport is becoming the first in the nation to require a face scan of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights, including U.S. citizens. There are no formal rules in place for handling data gleaned from the scans, nor formal guidelines on what should happen if a passenger is wrongly prevented from boarding.

Mobile Apps Are a Must For Brands - As Long As They Don't Annoy Customers

It better be useful - and it better not be too pushy. JL

Janet Morrissey reports in the New York Times:

The brand app is no longer a gimmick to assuage smartphone-addicted millennials. It’s considered a crucial part of a company’s financial strategy. Shoppers in the United States were expected to make $118 billion in retail purchases through their smartphones in 2018, up from $13.4 billion in 2013. (But)  there is little hesitation about dumping a brand app that is slow, crashes, has a poor layout, doesn’t offer exclusive sales or promotions, or pushes too many notifications. Half of those surveyed found 50% or fewer brand apps to be useful. 22% deleted more than half of their brand apps

What the Supreme Court Online Sales Tax Ruling Means For Retailers

It may help in the short term, but be careful what you wish for.  The real competition has been in providing consumers with what they want, which is cheaper, faster, easier to use purchasing mechanisms. And on all of those the online merchants already have an advantage.

And with their deeper financial pockets, they may now ramp up their growth into physical retail where, again, they have a strong competitive head start in data mining and marketing. JL


Matthew Townsend reports in Bloomberg:

States were already collecting 75% of the potential taxes from online purchases. “What’s driving the success of online players is this is how the consumer wants to shop today.”If the new state sales tax requirement does end up hurting some marketplace sellers, that may actually help Amazon. The company could benefit by selling more of those items directly

How Much Is An Online Ad Worth? Blockchain Might Help Figure That Out

Given the absence of comparable data and credible oversight for online advertising, blockchain might actually be able to help provide accurate assessments. JL

Henry Williams reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Widespread fraudulent practices are inflating measures of the traffic that digital ads attract, leading some advertisers to pay higher rates than they should. The cost of fraud (was) $14 billion in 2017, and will grow to $19 billion this year. “Numbers are being deliberately modified or skewed…to get paid more.”A user-driven registry of trusted advertisers and publishers verifies that the advertiser and publisher behind ads are legitimate.

The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You

Taking time to disconnect and think about the world around us. JL

Zat Rana comments in Medium:

Information technologies have dominated (us). From the telephone to the radio to the TV to the internet, we have found ways to bring us all closer together, enabling constant access.Everything that has  connected us has simultaneously isolated us. We are so busy being distracted that we forget to tend to ourselves. Without knowing ourselves, it’s impossible to find a healthy way to interact with the world around us. Without taking time to figure it out, we don’t have a foundation to built on. Connecting inwardly is a skill nobody ever teaches us.

Google Says Its Artificial Intelligence Is Better At Predicting Death Than Hospitals

Now if it gets better at preventing death they may really be on to something...JL

Rachel Kaser reports in The Next Web:

Google’s Medical Brain team is training its AI to predict the death risk among hospital patients and early results show it has slightly higher accuracy than a hospital’s own warning system. If Google can both smooth the process of entering data and improve the means by which that data is used, it could cut down on human error in medical care. It could also stoke fears of an AI having too much say over who gets what care.

Why Verizon, ATT and Maybe Sprint, T-Mobile Will Stop Selling Phone Location Data To Brokers

The power of public persuasion,if not the behavior of the brokers. JL

Jon Brodkin reports in ars technica:

"After my investigation revealed middlemen selling Americans' location to the highest bidder without their consent or making it available on insecure Web portals, Verizon announced it was cutting these companies off." ATT changed its stance shortly after Wyden's statement. Sprint announced changing their data sharing practices two hours after story published. Several hours later, T-Mobile "ended transmission of customer data to and will wind down location aggregator agreements."

Pew: Internet, Social Media, Smartphone Use Grow In Emerging Markets, Stalled Elsewhere

The primary implication of this report is that market saturation for internet use, social media and smartphone ownership is becoming an unavoidable reality. Growth pockets remain, but the looming question is where future increases in usage and financial impact will come from.

Among the pressures this creates is a recognition that, in order to grow users, tech companies are going to have to accommodate regimes whose use of technology - and behavior generally - may create conflict with the mores of users from western societies, further weakening tech's position with regard to public support. JL


Natasha Lomas reports in Tech Crunch:

Social media use has been flat in many advanced economies. Internet use and smartphone ownership have also stayed level in developed markets vs rising in emerging economies. Digital divides persist related to age, education, income and gender, differentiating who uses the Internet; and who is active on social media. Internet access remains a barrier to growth in many markets. Pulling the plug on social in emerging markets means pulling the plug on business growth.

As Automation Becomes A Reality, Can Anything Be Done To Mitigate the Impact?

It may be that there are no really 'big' solutions, but that more individualized approaches - like training - will provide the most cost-effective answers during the transition. JL

Neil Irwin reports in the New York Times:

The emerging wave of digital disruption won’t result in a permanent loss of demand for workers, but rather shifts in what types of work the economy needs. It’s not unlike early 20th-century America’s shift from an agricultural economy to an industrial one, or its shift from an industrial to an information economy. The goal is not to stymie that evolution, but to tilt the balance toward workers as the transition takes place.

Personalized Online Ads Outperform, But Consumers Find Too Many Are 'Creepy'

The data suggest that personalized, often 'retargeted' ads aimed at consumers who have already purchased a similar item outperform others. But questions of advertising tolerance worry marketers.

The reality is that this industry is still in its infancy relative to television and even other forms of digital outreach so customers's attitudes are likely to evolve as they become more familiar with such business models. The question is whether perceptions will become more positive or negative over time. Marketers - even at ad-driven businesses like Facebook - seems to be coming to the realization that self-selection may provide better outcomes than force-feeding reluctant consumers. JL


Austen Hufford reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Click-through rates for retargeted retail advertisements were three times the rates for untargeted ads. 90% of consumers surveyed had seen ads online for a product they had already purchased. Others in the industry have questioned whether such ads are effective, saying this, in its current form, doesn’t drive as many purchase decisions as thought. “Norms in the digital space are still evolving. Marketers and companies don’t really know what the expectations from consumers are.”

The Bigger Cryptocurrencies Get, the Worse They Perform: Bank of International Settlements

It is hard to imagine a greater failure in today's techno-financial economy, than not being scalable. Especially due to the 'fragility' of one's networks. JL


Tommy Wilkes reports in Reuters:

Cryptocurrencies are not scalable and are more likely to suffer a breakdown in trust and efficiency the greater the number of people using them, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS)said. The fragility of the decentralized networks on which cryptocurrencies depend are prone to congestion the bigger they become due to high transaction fees and the limited number of transactions per second they can handle, calling into question the finality of payments. Sovereign money has value because it has users, but many holding cryptocurrencies do so often purely for speculative purposes.

The Personalization Battle Is Reaching Its Cartoonish Extreme

You say bitmoji, I say memoji. Let's call the whole thing off...JL

Christina Bonnington reports in Slate:

For hardware-makers, exclusive animated emoji options entice consumers to buy their newest handsets. Their rise makes sense if you look at the way digital and personal lives have intertwined. “The division between your life and your digital life are merging. Your digital representation of yourself becomes important and your ability to represent and express yourself and interact with people becomes more important.” People get offended over anatomically incorrect emoji: These images are a means of self-expression.

Platforms Faces Paying Billions To Artists As EU Votes To Copyright Music Videos

YouTube is going to get whacked as intellectual property rights for music videos will, if the legislation is enacted, generate an exponential increase in fees for artists. JL

Mark Sweney reports in The Guardian:

A vote by the European parliament to adopt copyright laws will force platforms such as YouTube to seek licences for music videos. Record labels and artists earn more than double the royalties from the sale of 4.1m vinyl records than they did from the 25bn music videos watched on YouTube. Income from music fans who paid for ad-supported services such as Spotify, generated $5.6bn in royalties, or $20 per user annually. YouTube paid $856m (£650m) in royalties to music companies last year - 67 cents per user annually.

How Tech Companies Conquered America's Cities

It used to be said that all politics is local. But in the age of the internet, it may be that all politics is global. Even as cities are growing ever larger, they are starved for funds to keep up with exponential urbanization.

Tech companies - from Alphabet to Uber have stepped into void, offering solutions as a means of capturing data, beta testing new services and folding entire metropolises into their electronic ecosystems. JL


Farhad Manjoo reports in the New York Times:

Techies see cities as beachheads for their revolutions in transportation, logistics, housing and other areas. The industry learned how to woo and to fight City Halls. Corporations are determining the future of cities. They control key services and win battles with governments. Local officials can’t live without tech money, even if tech interests eclipse other priorit(ies). Tech commands greater say because local institutions, from businesses to local newspapers, have lost influence thanks to the internet. Digital media is obsessed with national issues. Local issues are sidelined.

US States Are Enacting Legislation About Self-Driving Vehicles. No, It's Not Uniform or Coordinated

Herewith, a comprehensive guide to what states have done or are doing.

The federal government is also getting into the act, to say nothing of cities and counties. By and large, it's every legislative entity for itself. JL


The National Conference of State Legislatures reports:

Since 2012, 41 states and D.C. considered legislation related to autonomous vehicles. In 2017, 33 states introduced legislation. In 2016, 20 states introduced legislation. DOT (the US Department of Transportation) provides best practices for state legislatures and best practices for highway safety officials.

The Future of Digital Marketing In a Data Privacy World

Perhaps the most revolutionary development is that brands are recognizing the need to provide value for data.

This can be service or opportunity to win rewards or 'information mileage plans' rather than financial payment, but to build the trust required, the era of 'free data' is ending for those desirous of monetizing customer information. JL


Lara O'Reilly reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Increased data scrutiny “will accelerate” the importance of collecting information directly from consumers. Marketers will have to enhance customer relationships. Providing value for data becomes more important. Brands should offer consumers benefits, recommendations or services based on the information the company has on them. “If we think about this as regulatory compliance, we miss the opportunity. If we figure out how the customer wants to connect, we (can) connect and inspire them."

Why Financial Reporting That Accurately Reflects the Digital Economy Is Needed Now

At a CFO magazine event, one CFO of a Fortune 500 company described GAAP-based financial reporting as a champion race horse compared to a dray horse: finely tuned, beautiful to look at - but good for absolutely nothing useful.  And, it is worth remembering CFO magazine named Enron's Andrew Fastow CFO of the year - just before the company fell apart.

Until financial reporting accurately reflects the reality of digital era financial economics, growth projections, planning, resource allocation decisions and analysts' assessments for all companies affected by technology - which is to say, all companies - will be less than optimal. Smart businesses take a proactive approach to presenting data they believe is important to judge their performance. JL


Vijay Govindarajan and colleagues report in Harvard Business Review:

Financial statements fail to capture the value created by digital companies. An idea with uncertain prospects but some chance of reaching a billion dollars is more valuable than a project with net present value of a hundred million dollars but no massive upside. Risk is a feature, not a bug. Discounted future cash flows (are) impossible to apply to companies run as a portfolio of ideas. Software workers’ and product teams’ time is the company’s most valuable resource. They can always raise financial capital. CFOs consider the calculation of GAAP  a hindrance to resource allocation decisions.

Chatbots Were the Next Big Thing. What Happened?

The relentless tech hype machine inspired lots of companies to think bots were 'the answer.'

Which led lots of smart people to forget that the problem in tech today is that there is no one answer. To anything. JL


Justin Lee reports in Medium:

Chatbots took on several difficult problems and failed all of them. A great bot can be as useful as an average app. When it comes to sophisticated, multi-layered apps, there’s no competition. Machines let us access vast, complex information systems, and graphical information systems were a leap forward. Bots are built using decision-tree logic, where the canned response relies on specific keywords in the user input. Bots are a reflection of the capability and patience of the person who created them; and how many user needs they were able to anticipate. Problems arise when life refuses to fit into those boxes.

Psychology's Trolley Problem Impacts Driverless Car Design. But What If It's Wrong?

How humans react theoretically may be influencing the design and programming of driverless cars.

But new research suggests it's conclusions may be inaccurate. At best. JL


Daniel Engber reports in Slate:

A runaway trolley barreling down a track toward a group of five people. The only way to save them from being killed, is to hit a switch that will turn the trolleyonto tracks where it will kill one person. Trolley dilemmas are interpreted as though they were a valid measure of a person’s tendency toward utilitarian decision-making. (men are more utilitarian than women; millennials more than Gen-Xers.) But recent research finds these only measure the willingness to inflict sacrificial harm. That leaves commitment to the greater good. That explains the fact that trolley studies label psychopaths as utilitarians.

Tech Disrupts Itself Again: Increased Broadband Speeds, Reduced Latency Disintermediate Game Consoles

Tech continues to eat its own. JL

Jeremy Horwitz reports in Venture Beat:

You won’t need a console or computer Technology advances are going to enable stream(ing) fully rendered games directly over broadband and phone networks, enabling high-end PC-quality games to be played on anything with a modern screen. Global broadband speeds are increasing, and latency  is about to nosedive thanks to soon-to-be-launched 5G. 

The Reason the Next Apple Laptop May Be More iPhone Than Macbook

Strategically, Apple is trying to give its laptops more iPhone-like capabilities which could differentiate it from competitors.

At the same time, this convergence with mobile attributes may revive interest in laptops as iPad - and tablet sales generally - have plateaued and deny Apple the growth it wants from alternative platforms. JL


Christopher Mims reports in the Wall Street Journal, illustration by Sean McCabe:

Laptops, which haven’t been exciting for years, are about to get interesting again. A reason for Apple and its competitors to switch to ARM-based laptops is that mobile processors are gaining capabilities larger computers dont have. Apple is pushing as on-device artificial intelligence, which could enable voice recognition. Apple could deprive cheaper Macbooks of spatial, visual, auditory capturing and processing in mobile devices which might drive customers toward the iPad.

Why Tech Companies Don't See Their Biggest Problems Coming

Early success often breeds overconfidence. JL

Ian Mitroff reports in MIT Sloan Management Review:

Peter Drucker wrote about the failure that ensues when companies succeed quickly and spectacularly. The cascade of great news can make an organization blind to problems that lurk within its business model and are embedded in its culture and structure. Smugness about achievements in IT can make management seem deceptively easy. An ethical crisis can quickly morph into PR and financial crises and into a crisis of confidence in the entire company.

Amazon Acquired Whole Foods 1 Year Ago. How Much Has Changed?

Not as much as everyone - including investors, shoppers and competitors - expected. JL

Sarah Halzack reports in Bloomberg:

Whatever Amazon’s grand vision is for Whole Foods and digital grocery, it seems largely unrealized. Amazon investors appear content to give the company time to keep tinkering. Online grocery has only just reached its tipping point for widespread adoption. There are going to be millions more dollars up for grabs in this channel in the next several years, and habits aren’t yet ingrained for who gets them. Old-school retailers came a long way this year toward positioning themselves to get a piece of the action.

The Reason Google Is Investing $500 Million In JD.com, Alibaba's Toughest Rival

If it looks like an ecosystem...JD also has partnerships with Walmart and Tencent. 

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. JL

Saheli Choudhury reports in CNBC:

The partnership would open a channel for JD.com to sell to consumers outside China. The two tech companies said they would work together to develop retail infrastructure that can better personalize the shopping experience and reduce friction in a number of markets, including Southeast Asia. When retailers partner with Google, it gives their products visibility and makes it convenient for consumers to purchase them online. For the tech giant, its shopping service is important in helping to win back product searches from Amazon and to stay relevant in the voice-powered future of e-commerce.

Twitter Stock Is At Three Year High - Up 155% In last 12 Months. What's Changed?

It's become a viable business, not just a takeover target. JL

Kurt Wagner reports in Re/code:

More people are coming back to the service more frequently. It’s focused on improving, showing you tweets from people you actually find interesting, curated tweets (and) cleaning up its abuse problem. “Execution is improving. ”The company turned its first-ever profit in the fourth quarter of last year and was also profitable in Q1. “This is way beyond Trump. This is becoming the platform of choice for information dissemination and engagement.”

Drone Cops Take Flight In LA. Citizens Aren't Sure They Want Just the Facts, Ma'am.

Both the LAPD, star of stage, screen and television, and the less well known but no less powerful Los Angeles County Sheriff's office are experimenting with drones - as are many other police departments. In LA, they are quick to assure everyone that their use is purely for safety and rescue purposes, not law enforcement, with all it implies. At least for now.

In a region beset by floods, wild fires and earthquakes, beneficial uses are easily imagined. But citizens remain wary, which raises interesting questions about why  internet privacy largely evokes consumer yawns whilst drones elicit deep-seated hostility. JL


Geoff Manaugh reports in The Atlantic:

The only reason the LAPD obtained drones was that the Seattle PD had found Seattleites were clearly and vocally opposed to their implementation. Seattle police were relieved to get rid of them: “SPD UAVs Leave Seattle to Try to Make It in Hollywood,” read a sarcastic blog post on the Seattle P.D.’s own website. Public unease with law-enforcement drone cameras arrives, ironically, at the same time as “overwhelming support” for the use of police body cameras. This discrepancy raises the question of who—or what—can film a city’s residents and under what investigative circumstances.

How Viacom Is Using Artificial Intelligence To Predict the Success Of Its Social Media Campaigns

The speed with which data become available - and the accuracy of the resultant forecasts is uncanny.

The question, as always with powerful technological data, is the degree to which  managerial interpretation and execution are as incisive as the information on which they are based. JL

Max Willens reports in Digiday:

The technology can tell within eight hours of a post’s publication whether it will perform well relative to its expected results. Viacom can predict how many social posts it will need to reach audience goals and what kinds of posts to use in each campaign. (It) set performance benchmarks for different social media posts by platform and all its brands. The data pipeline, which pulls information from social platforms as frequently as every five minutes, is also designed to give Viacom’s departments easy access to the data.

Reimagining Retail: Why Great Is No Longer Good Enough

Most consumers are now digitally competent. But that will be insufficient for the next generations, now coming into their own money, who are digitally native.

Which means their expectations of merchants' ability to meet consumers' demands may be higher than the companies' ability to fulfill those expectations. It's not that the retailers and big companies don't get it, it's that they are trying to integrate their legacy systems with the new models without going out of business in the process. Some will be able to make the transition. But only some, because the challenges are operational, technological, financial and interpersonal. And that's a lot. JL

Barbara Kahn reports in Knowledge@Wharton:

Take away the pain from the customer experience is what Amazon did really differently, and they made it convenient. They made it frictionless. Their differential advantage is collecting a lot of customer data so that they can constantly simplify, personalize and customize the experience to make it easier for the customer. That ratchets up customer expectations. Winning retailers were the best at something. But they leveraged that to be the best at something else, too. You have to be the best at two things and good enough at everything else.

Big Tech's Stock Market Dominance Is Unprecedented. What Does It Mean For Every Other Business?

What has changed from previous eras of dominance is that the markets - and many of Apple's, Amazon's, Alphabet's, Microsoft's and Facebook's corporate competitors - appear to believe they are unassailable.

The question for the leaders of all the other companies, for investors, customers and employees - is whether this hoovering up of opportunities will continue unabated, given the historical antecedents, and what can be done to optimize their own strategies until the inevitable cyclical changes occur. JL


James Mackintosh reports in the Wall Street Journal:

What’s different is that all five share a single characteristic, of being disruptive tech stocks with grips on their customers. Shareholders have bought that these companies will dominate the market for years, reaping the rewards of spending on R&D and expansion into new areas of business. It requires belief that the nature of business has changed, that big tech have better defenses for profits than companies had in the past, they exploit tech in ways other companies aren’t, and that governments won’t step in. A lot of money is riding on the idea that the big five’s profit margins are impervious to competition, even from one another.

The Reason the Word 'Hack' Has Become Meaningless and Should Be Retired

Hack used to mean something sinister and specific.

But between 'growth hacks,' 'life hacks,' and virtually anything else in the digital age that requires a modicum of ingenuity, the term has been hijacked to the point where using it is a 'hack' of linguistics. JL


Matthew Hughes reports in The Next Web:

The most egregious abuse of the term “hack” comes from the BBC’s Dougal Shaw. In a recent video of his, called “My lunch hack,” Shaw demonstrates that it’s cheaper to make your own sandwich each day than it is to buy a pre-packaged sandwich from the supermarket. Shaw calls that a hack. And that’s not the worst example. I haven’t touched on “life hacks” yet. The term is nebulous. It means nothing and anything. From turning a Pepsi can into a keyring is cool (a stretch to call it a hack), to shit that result in house fires, like making grilled cheese sandwiches by turning a toaster on its side.

Machines Learn Language Better When They Understand Words' Meaning

Understanding content and context could be a major advance for machine learning and for the enterprises hoping to use it. JL


Devin Coldewey reports in Tech Crunch:

Computer systems understand what people say, but they have trouble with words that have multiple or complex meanings. Taking the whole sentence into account in the meaning of a word allows the structure of that sentence to be mapped more easily. Systems using the method improve on the latest natural language algorithms by 25%. A more context-aware style of learning, can be integrated easily into existing commercial systems. In search, to determine intention, requires an accurate reading of the query.

Why the Future of Farming Is Moving Indoors

Technology and the data it generates offers more efficiency, productivity and cost effectiveness.

This means a more economically sustainable, environmentally friendly and potentially healthier outcome. JL


Aimee Lutkin reports in the World Economic Forum, photo in Reuters by Edgar Su:

Indoor farming has become far more popular in recent years, as technology has become even more precise, allowing large amounts of greens and fresh produce to be produced in urban environments with both minimal space and far smaller amounts of water than on a traditional farm. "Agritechture," meaning combining agriculture, technology, and architecture so the process of growing food is more integrated into people's lives.

Google Reboots Ad Tools To Give Users More Control Over Their Data. Will It Make a Difference?

Incremental improvements are better than none. But the larger issue is that Google and Facebook control much of the advertising and data usage environment online.

Unless that changes, consumers will continue to receive the information those companies want them to, even if, within that limited field, they have somewhat more influence. JL

Chris O'Brien reports in Venture Beat:

Facing growing questions about how personal data is used to target advertising, Google today announced a series of updates to its advertising tools designed to help users better understand why they see certain ads and help them control the experience. Users will be able to go into their Google account, click on Ad Settings, and scroll through the list of factors that are considered as algorithms figure out which ads to serve up.Users can click on the categories to get more detail, and can remove certain ones if they wish.

Automation Has Made Spaces Originally Designed For Humans More Awkward. It's a Problem

Spaces are being designed for machines, rather than for people.

Given the investment in all those time-saving, transaction-easing devices it makes some sense, but since people are still the customers - so far - could it have deleterious longer term effects. JL


Carolina Miranda reports in The Atlantic, photo by Brian Dawson in Bloomberg:

Automation has also changed how people shop, park, fly, and, in the process, it has reshaped the architecture that contains those experiences—making them more efficient, but also putting machines above people. "Architecture is losing places where you interact with people.” They are places where people come to transact with machines. It’s all about speed and efficiency. (But) “it’s seemingly trivial encounters that are important to society and their health. We have to remember the value of those little encounters as we automate them all.”

How Jeff Bezos Makes the Right Decision 30 Years In Advance

Because he stays focused on what he believes will matter to his customers 30 years in advance. Which is even simpler to imagine - and harder to execute - than it sounds. JL


Zat Rana reports in Quartz:

He was on an entirely different time-horizon. He didn’t care to win over a period defined by the media or Wall Street; he relentlessly focused on tomorrow. A long horizon stops you from making short-sighted choices and it gives you more control over the unpredictability of randomness. Bezos has a simple rule: “Focus [your vision] on the things that won’t change.”At Amazon, this means customer obsession. They don’t try to hop on every new fad because they don’t know which one will still matter. They do know that in 20 years, customers will still want faster deliveries and cheaper products.