Some quick quotes from
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Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
Ericsson, Anders; Pool, Robert
Citation (MLA): Ericsson, Anders, and Robert Pool. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016. Kindle file.
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that I really liked
Each short quote is preceded by the words “Highlight” & indication of the location in the book.
Notebook Export
Can Carbon-Dioxide Removal Save the World?
https://www.NewYorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/can-carbon-dioxide-removal-save-the-world #BECCS, “which stands for bio-energy with carbon capture & storage,” actually removes #CO2 from the atmosphere, while generating energy: plant trees & burn them w/ C-capture.
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“BECCS, which stands for “bio-energy with carbon capture and storage,” takes advantage of the original form of carbon engineering:
photosynthesis. Trees and grasses and shrubs, as they grow, soak up CO2 from the air. (Replanting forests is a low-tech form of carbon removal.) Later, when the plants rot or are combusted, the carbon they have absorbed is released back into the atmosphere. If a power station were to burn wood, say, or cornstalks, and use C.C.S. to sequester the resulting CO2, this cycle would be broken.”
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Choke-Proof Food That Tastes Like the Real Thing
https://www.theAtlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/choke-proof-food/546572/ QT: “The most intriguing product…may be #engay food. Engay is Japanese for swallowing, something that can become…difficult as people age: More Japanese now die…from choking than…traffic accidents.”
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“The most intriguing product, though, may be engay food. Engay is Japanese for “swallowing,” something that can become increasingly difficult as people age: More Japanese now die each year from choking than in traffic accidents.
Instead of settling for, say, a cup of Ensure-brand pudding, throw some cooked salmon in a blender. Then, with a little help from modern chemistry, mold the resulting pink puree back into the shape of a fillet, and add “grill” marks with a propane torch. Presto: salmon that looks like it was plated in a restaurant and almost tastes that way, minus the flaky texture.”
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18 exponential changes we can expect in the year ahead
https://www.TechnologyReview.com/s/609868/18-exponential-changes-we-can-expect-in-the-year-ahead/ Might be the year of the #Buddha. Quote: “Buddha’s relevance will be driven by a greater awareness of mindfulness & contemplation in our dopamine economy.”
What $AMZN Alexa pays the people building its skills
https://www.CNet.com/news/amazon-alexa-economy-echo-speaker-google-assistant-siri Strange “pseudo-compensation” to encourage app development.
Market-based or at the whims of the central planner?
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“Wilson unexpectedly joined a new Alexa economy, a small but fast-growing network of independent developers, marketing companies and Alexa tools makers. They’re working to bring you voice-activated flash briefings, games and recipes through Amazon’s Echo speaker, Alexa’s primary home. By doing so, they hope to define the 3-year-old Alexa platform and make money from voice computing’s surging popularity.”
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http://old.post-gazette.com/healthscience/20030414numberman0413p5.asp
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Most people can remember between five and nine digits; unusual folks might recall 15 to 18.
Imagine the surprise of Carnegie Mellon University researchers in the late 1970s when they came across a student who could master 82 digits. …
A track and cross-country runner, Steve Faloon was accustomed to timed runs and, when forced to remember a string of numbers, tended to break them down into segments recognizable to him as typical times for a quarter mile, a mile, two miles, 10 kilometers, etc.
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QT:{{”
“Users can use Paper.li to tap into, and curate, some of today’s most trending topics from sources such as Facebook, Twitter, YoutTube and Google+ and other areas across the web. The program also allows anyone to share their curated content on social media platforms, and while the overall function of Paper.li is very similar to Storify, the way information is presented is quite different.”
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https://www.itbusiness.ca/news/storify-is-no-more-but-a-few-alternatives-exist/97764 https://paper.li/
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“In response, Wakelet (a free tool that provides similar functionality to Storify) is quickly stepping up to give Storify users a new, free “home” for their content with no technical work-arounds or effort required.”
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How Storify Users Can Keep Their Content Before the Company Deletes It
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-storify-users-can-keep-their-content-before-the_us_5a4d10cce4b0df0de8b06eb6
Even Amazon, a Colossus, Has Its Limits, by @mims
https://www.WSJ.com/articles/the-limits-of-amazon-1514808002 Quote: “Imagine the data-collecting power of $FB wedded to the supply-chain empire of $WMT — that’s $AMZN.” But I thought Wal-mart was pretty good at data collection & analytics!
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All of these moves fit into Amazon’s core mission as a data-driven instant- gratification company. Its fanaticism for customer experience is enabled by every technology the company can get its hands on, from data centers to drones. Imagine the data-collecting power of Facebook wedded to the supply-chain empire of Wal-Mart—that’s Amazon. “}}
#Estonia, the Digital Republic
https://www.NewYorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/estonia-the-digital-republic Great description of an advanced nation built on a public rather than private computing infrastructure (X-road). Systems built on a national ID card. Laws & tech explicitly protect personal info even from a casual glance.
QT:{{”
““Let me show you how,” Beljuskina said, and led me into a room filled with medical equipment and a computer in the corner. She logged on with her own I.D. If she were to glance at any patient’s data, she explained, the access would be tagged to her name, and she would get a call inquiring why it was necessary.
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“Instead of setting up prisoner transport to trial—fraught with security risks—Estonian courts can teleconference defendants into the courtroom from prison.”
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Lift99, which houses thirty-two companies and five freelancers, had industrial windows, with a two-floor open-plan workspace. Both levels also included smaller rooms named for techies who had done business with Estonia. There was a Zennström Room, after Niklas Zennström, the Swedish entrepreneur who co-founded Skype, in Tallinn. There was a Horowitz Room, for the venture capitalist Ben Horowitz,”
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“In what may have been the seminal insight of twenty-first-century Estonia, Martens realized that whoever offered the most ubiquitous and secure platform would run the country’s digital future—and that it should be an elected leadership, not profit-seeking Big Tech. …
“Kaevats told me it irked him that so many Westerners saw his country as a tech haven. He thought they were missing the point. “This enthusiasm and optimism around technology is like a value of its own,” he complained. “This gadgetry that I’ve been ranting about? This is not important.” He threw up his hands, scattering ash. “It’s about the mind-set. It’s about the culture. It’s about the human relations—what it enables us to do.””
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