Friday’s Finds

Every second Friday I review what I’ve noted on social media and post a wrap-up of what caught my eye. I do this as a reflective thinking process and to put what I’ve learned on a platform I control: this blog. Here are what I consider the best of Friday’s Finds for 2016.

Quotes

@Tom_Peters: “Presidents rarely get good advice. Every ‘presenter’ presents a totally biased solution–often suppressing competing evidence.”

@atduskgreg – “Machine learning is automated bureaucracy. It spits back the systemic biases we feed it in feature vectors, training sets, reward functions.”

“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.” —H.L. Mencken, via @normsmusic

@HughCards: “As the Internet makes everything cheaper, access to real networks (Harvard, Wall St., Silicon Valley etc) gets even more expensive.”

“Power not only corrupts, it addicts.” —Ursula Le Guin, via @ndcollaborative

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” —Marcus Aurelius — via @MickFealty

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” —Stephen Biko, Speech in Cape Town, 1971, via @marick

“We talk and we share and we point out what is true. The answer to bad speech is more speech” — @Snowden on TechCrunch

Visualization for understanding is a powerful way to communicate complex or new ideas. Used effectively and openly, visualization can help us progress in our collective understanding.

Here are some examples of visualizations for understanding that I have recently found through my professional social networks.

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Purposeful play. Play equals trust. A space where we can take risks. Only by taking risks do we get to learn about ourselves & each other.” —@ImSporticus

“Most metrics ignore: Collaboration, Relationship-building, Capacity-building, Knowledge generation, and Kindness” —@4KM

“Remember when people thought the Internet, social media, twitter, etc. would strengthen democracy & undermine authoritarians? Oh well.” —@StephenWalt

“You know it is a tribe when it only learns to protect itself or profit, not to civilise.” —@gpetriglieri

“‘Fake news’ is lazy language. Be specific. Do you mean: A) Propaganda B) Disinformation C) Conspiracy theory D) Clickbait” —@7im

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.” —John Adams (second President of the United States of America)

“I used to think the 21st century’s biggest problem was too much information about other people. Now I think it may be too little empathy.” —@cstross

“Do not debate fascists. Their goal is not to win, it’s to shift the Overton Window of acceptable discourse.” —@JasonLouv

“Call it the clash of globalizations: the paranoid dehumanization of its losers vs the technological dehumanization of its winners.” & “Provincial masculinity is crumbling under the cultural and economic blows of globalization. Nationalism is its natural tool to strike back.” —@gpetriglieri

“Facebook + Twitter cannot take credit for changing the world during events like the Egyptian Uprising, then downplay their influence on elections” —@karenkho

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” —Marcus Aurelius — via @MickFealty

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” —Mark Twain — via @holdengraber

“I’ve been plugging  A Guide to Crap Detection a lot because so many information sources are inadvertently or deliberately wrong or misleading.” —@hrheingold

“In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, ‘Now shut up and obey me.’ People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business.” —Max Weber

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“I was about 60 when I began seeing my own experiences adding up to me.” — Alice Parker, via @OnBeing

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” – Ursula K. Leguinn, via @jacobinmag

“There is no energy crisis, food crisis, or environmental crisis. This is only a crisis of ignorance.” – Buckminster Fuller, via @decasteve

“How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?” – Howard Zinn, via @HaymarketBooks

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

@ZCichy: “I don’t use Facebook. When I explain why to friends/family: I sound like a nut job. Acceptance of no privacy has been socially normalized.”

“History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.” – Alexis de Tocqueville – via @TheSchoolofLife

“We are facing an extreme surge of irrationality, and irrationality always moves in the direction of intolerance.” – Rebecca Goldstein – via @BrainPicker

@WorkEssence: “‘Liquid workforce’ is about as appalling a term as ‘human capital’ – we’re just people, working, making choices”

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Power not only corrupts, it addicts.” – Ursula Le Guin, via @ndcollaborative

“You are reading a book,” the car said. It pulled over and stopped. “This road is paid for by advertising boards. Look at them to proceed.” – by @MicroSFF AKA Micro Science Fiction & Fantasy Stories

A Walking Tour of New York’s Massive Surveillance Network – via @jafurtado

[Ingrid] Burrington points out that infrastructure is often designed to be ignored. The field guide, with its cheerful drawings of manhole covers and cable markings, turns the infrastructure into something ordinary and familiar, not intimidating, and not some magical process by which videos and images appear in your phone.

“If it’s effective, it’s invisible,” she says. “But if it’s taken for granted, we lose the ability to make decisions about how it’s used.”

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

@BrentToderian – “ In my recent work with cities all over the world, this may be the message that’s resonating the most lately: The truth about a city’s aspirations isn’t found in its vision. It’s found in its budget.”

@JmalinowskiR – “Governance is one thing. Good democratic governance needs a sound basis, participation, transparency, accountability, political responsibility …”

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause & reflect” – Mark Twain – via @DebraWatkinson

@RalphMercer – “Passion distorts reality, common sense enables the status quo, it is the balance between the two we need to strive for.”

Chimpanzees choose cooperation over competition: Study challenges distinctiveness of human cooperation

“It has become a popular claim in the literature that human cooperation is unique. This is especially curious because the best ideas we have about the evolution of cooperation come straight from animal studies. The natural world is full of cooperation, from ants to killer whales. Our study is the first to show that our closest relatives know very well how to discourage competition and freeloading. Cooperation wins!”

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