Category: Technology and Humanity

Made me think: The new Luddites: why former digital prophets are turning against tech

“In 1967 Lewis Mumford spoke presciently of the possibility of a “mega-machine” that would result from “the convergence of science, technics and political power”. Pynchon picked up the theme: “If our world survives, the next great challenge to w...

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In our focus on the digital, have we lost our sense of what being human means? Nice post by Genevieve Bell

“We will need new practitioners to tame and manage the emerging data-driven digital world, as well as those to regulate and govern them. Rather than just tweaking existing disciplines, we need to develop a new set of critical questions and persp...

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Der Feind ist nicht Facebook, der Feind sind wir selbst” (Interview mit Gerd Leonhard, in German)

"Wir sollten Technologie umarmen, aber nicht Technologie werden"Der Futurist und Humanist Gerd Leonhard über eine digitale Ethik."Wir werden in zwanzig Jahren an dem Punkt angelangt sein, wo fast nichts mehr unmöglich ist", sagt Gerd Leonhard im...

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Quick comment from my gig at London Law Expo: being smart is no longer enough (the machines will beat you soon)

 

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AI May Soon Replace Even the Most Elite Consultants (made me think)

“According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a new partnership between UBS Wealth Management and Amazon allows some of UBS’s European wealth-management clients to ask Alexa certain financial and economic questions. Alexa will then answer their queries with the information provided by UBS’s chief investment office without even having to pick up the phone or visit a website. And this is likely just Alexa’s first step into offering business services. Soon she will probably be booking appointments, analyzing markets, maybe even buying and selling stocks. While the financial services industry has already begun the shift from active management to passive management, artificial intelligence will move the market even further, to management by smart machines, as in the case of Blackrock, which is rolling computer-driven algorithms and models into more traditional actively-managed funds.

But the financial services industry is just the beginning. Over the next few years, artificial intelligence may exponentially change the way we all gather information, make decisions, and connect with stakeholders. Hopefully this will be for the better and we will all benefit from timely, comprehensive, and bias-free insights (given research that human beings are prone to a variety of cognitive biases). It will be particularly interesting to see how artificial intelligence affects the decisions of corporate leaders — men and women who make the many decisions that affect our everyday lives as customers, employees, partners, and investors.�

AI May Soon Replace Even the Most Elite Consultants
https://hbr.org/2017/07/ai-may-soon-replace-even-the-most-elite-consultants
via Instapaper

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Update: video and slide-deck from my keynote at Switch.ch: the next 10 years in technology and humanity

Here is the PDF as promised:) 16 MB PDF. More about Switch here.   Switch Gerd Leonhard Keynote next 10 years technology humanity public low res   Some highlights: SaveSave

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Tech Giants, Once Seen as Saviors, Are Now Viewed as Threats (via NYT)

In Europe, however, the ground is already shifting. Google’s share of the search engine market there is 92 percent, according to StatCounter. But that did not stop the European Union from fining it $2.7 billion in June for putting its products above those of its rivals.

A new German law that fines social networks huge sums for not taking down hate speech went into effect this month. On Tuesday, a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain said the government was looking carefully at the roles, responsibility and legal status of Google and Facebook, with an eye to regulating them as news publishers rather than platforms.

This war, like so many wars, is going to start in Europe,  said Mr. Galloway, the New York University professor.

Tech Giants, Once Seen as Saviors, Are Now Viewed as Threats
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/technology/tech-giants-threats.html


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Nice short film featuring Futurist Gerd Leonhard on hyper-connectivity and the human future (CBSi, Qualcomm)

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Opportunity for everyone – great post by google CEO Sundar Pinchai

“These are tough gaps. For instance, the nature of work is fundamentally changing. And that is shifting the link between education, training and opportunity. Young people already feel this. An Economist survey found that less than half of 18- to 25-year-olds believe their education gives them the skills they need to enter today’s workforce. That’s a significant gap that’s only going to become more urgent. One-third of jobs in 2020 will require skills that aren’t common today.�

Opportunity for everyone
https://blog.google/topics/causes-community/opportunity-for-everyone/?utm_source=MIT+Technology+Review&utm_campaign=f406b201c7-The_Download&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_997ed6f472-f406b201c7-154803941
via Instapaper



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My presentation at London Law Expo 2017 (Netlaw Media): Technology, Humanity and the Future

My presentation at London Law Expo 2017 (Netlaw Media): Technology, Humanity and the Future

Here is the deck from yesterday’s talk at London Law Expo Netlaw Media London Technologhy Humanity the future gerd leonhard Public  32MB PDF

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New video: the best moments from Gerd Leonhard’s 2017 keynotes and presentations, all in one clip (AI, TechvsHuman, Digital Transformation ++)

I am delighted to announce the publication of a new short film featuring the best moments from over 100 keynotes during the past 2 years (mostly from 2017), covering my key topics such as the global brain, exponential change, the megashifts, digital transformation, technology vs humanity (and of course, my new book), man-machine symbiosis and the … Continue reading "New video: the best moments from Gerd Leonhard’s 2017 keynotes and presentations, all in one clip (AI, TechvsHuman, Digital Transformation ++)"

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Alibaba founder Jack Ma says to be a successful leader you need EQ, IQ, and LQ

“Ma, a former teacher, says he always warns government leaders to also “pay attention to education,� because right now we’re teaching children the wrong thing: that machines are better than humans. He believes this mindset will cost young people jobs in a future dominated by AI and computing.�

Alibaba founder Jack Ma says to be a successful leader you need EQ, IQ, and LQ
https://qz.com/1082709/alibabas-jack-ma-says-successful-leaders-need-eq-iq-and-lq-baba/
via Instapaper

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My presentation at ATEA Focus in Helsinki, today: technology, humanity and the future (download the Pdf)

Here it is, as promised. 15 MB PDF. More details on the event here. No worries – it’s not in Finnish:) atea focus helsinki technology humanity Gerd Leonhard public deck low res Gerd Leonhard Futuristi, kirjailija Gerd Leonhard jakaa visioitaan ja käytännön viisauttaan ihmiskunnan tulevaisuudesta ja teknologiasta, digimuutoksesta, tekoälystä ja robotiikasta, mediasta, markkinoinnista ja mainonnasta … Continue reading "My presentation at ATEA Focus in Helsinki, today: technology, humanity and the future (download the Pdf)"

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Facebook’s war on free will – powerful Franklin Foer / TheGuardian story (made me think – a lot)

“But we shouldn’t accept Facebook’s self-conception as sincere, either. Facebook is a carefully managed top-down system, not a robust public square. It mimics some of the patterns of conversation, but that’s a surface trait.

In reality, Facebook is a tangle of rules and procedures for sorting information, rules devised by the corporation for the ultimate benefit of the corporation. Facebook is always surveilling users, always auditing them, using them as lab rats in its behavioural experiments. While it creates the impression that it offers choice, in truth Facebook paternalistically nudges users in the direction it deems best for them, which also happens to be the direction that gets them thoroughly addicted. It’s a phoniness that is most obvious in the compressed, historic career of Facebook’s mastermind.”

Facebook’s war on free will
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/19/facebooks-war-on-free-will
via Instapaper

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Matt Haig (The Guardian:) I used to think social media was a force for good. Now the evidence says I was wrong (must read)

“Kurt Vonnegut said: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be.” This seems especially true now we have reached a new stage of marketing where we are not just consumers, but also the thing consumed. If you have friends you only ever talk to on Facebook, your entire relationship with them is framed by commerce. When we willingly choose to become unpaid content providers, we commercialise ourselves. And we are encouraged to be obsessed with numbers (of followers, messages, comments, retweets, favourites), as if operating in a kind of friend economy, an emotional stock market where the stock is ourselves and where we are encouraged to weigh our worth against others.”

I used to think social media was a force for good. Now the evidence says I was wrong | Matt Haig
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/06/social-media-good-evidence-platforms-insecurities-health
via Instapaper


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Video and slides from my keynote at The Economist Innovation Forum 2017 in Berlin: Technology, Business, Digital Ethics (updated)

Here is the deck, below (PDF 20MB), More about the event here.  Business Technology and Digital Ethics Gerd Leonhard @Economist Innovation Forum Berlin 2017 Public Deck Update August 18th 2017: here is the entire video (presentation and interview with Tom Standage).    Note: you can download audio-only, MP3 versions of most of my talks via … Continue reading "Video and slides from my keynote at The Economist Innovation Forum 2017 in Berlin: Technology, Business, Digital Ethics (updated)"

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CBSi / CNet just published a nice short video with me speaking about the gigabit society and human purpose

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Technology is increasingly cheating the world (not just ‘eating’ it as Mark Andreessen likes to say)

  SaveSave SaveSave

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We’re spending so much time trying to become robots that we’re forgetting how to be human (Scott Hartley via qz.com)

Totally my topic ;)

"The drumbeat of science, technology, engineering, and math has picked up tempo, but a crisis of culture has emerged from its cadence. As we embark ever more aggressively on the path to master machines, we are forgetting the very foundations of what it means to be human.”

We’re spending so much time trying to become robots that we’re forgetting how to be human
https://qz.com/1070296/were-spending-so-much-time-trying-to-become-robots-that-were-forgetting-how-to-be-human/
via Instapaper

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Technology will not save the world — we will (very thoughtful read via the FT)

“Technology is marvellous, but it has had little or nothing to do with the best things about the world. And it will play a minor role in casting out humanity’s worst demons: poverty, ignorance and madness. What do I mean by the best things? The outlawing of racism; rights for disabled people; emancipation for women. The primacy of reason; the dwindling of superstition. Democracy, social security, animal rights, greater life expectancy and, yes, capitalism.

We are better at judgment than any machine we will be able to make for a very long time to come. Technology is only the agent of our desires

Marc Demarest”

Technology will not save the world — we will
https://www.ft.com/content/416a773e-8e31-11e7-9580-c651950d3672
via Instapaper

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