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| Tucked away on the top shelf of my study is my battered (mostly) high school sci-fi collection |
"Set aside the aliens and the spaceships," the Economist says, "and much contemporary science fiction is concerned with themes such as the impact of artificial intelligence, the danger of ecological collapse, the misuse of corporate power and the legacy of imperialism."
American sci-fi authors are unafraid to tackle subjects such as gender politics, while Chinese authors provide a window into the cultural dynamics of that nation. Microsoft, Google, and Apple have all employed sci-fi writers as consultants to stretch the thinking of their executives.
If you want to get started, here's Amazon's 100 sci-fi and fantasy books to read in a lifetime. If this list seems overwhelming, start with this recent profile in The New Yorker, "How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real."
His 2019 edition tackles the question of China's technology efforts, which look spectacular from certain perspectives but about which he is unimpressed. Yes, China leads on mobile payments and infrastructure projects such as high-speed rail, but "much of China's technology stack is built on American components, especially semiconductors. Failure to develop more foundational technologies," Wang writes, "has meant that the US has had an at-will ability to kneecap major firms."
Discussions that focus on speculative Chinese leadership in AI, quantum computing, and biotech--initiatives which remain more "science projects than real, commercial industries"--distract from the country's weakness in established technologies, Wang concludes.
However, where China may lag in product innovation, it is surging ahead in process innovation. China's domination of manufacturing allows it to capture "marginal process knowledge" which will put the nation in "a better place to develop the next technological advancements."
3. One of the most humbling of all digital experiences is to play a game of Scrabble against a computer. Unless the game is set to the "kindergarten" level, the computer effortlessly lays down words like chutzpah (77 points) and jezebel (75 points). And then, there's the threat of oxyphenbutazone, worth 1,458 points.Back in the material world, ever wonder where all of those smooth wooden tiles are made?
VTDigger published a fascinating three-part article about the plant in Fairfax, Vermont, that manufactured the tiles for twenty years before Hasbro closed the facility in 1998 and production moved to Shanghai.
Innovation themes run throughout the article, from the invention of the game by Alfred Butts--whose source of inspiration was Edgar Allen Poe's story, "The Gold Bug"--to the reinvention of the plant as a maker of artisanal maple syrup by Runamok Maple.
4. Investors bet $10.7 billion on AI startups in 2019. Numbers one and three, Vacasa and TripActions, raised nearly $600 million dollars to help improve business travel and the vacation-home experience. The MIT Technology Review offers nine charts that illustrate how quickly AI is growing.
I stuck "artificial intelligence" into Google's Ngram Viewer. The search ends in 2008, but it helps explain why there remains skepticism about the current pace of AI development: it seems like we've been there before.
5. In "Gone But Not Forgotten," Rich Duprey of the Motley Fool remembers six retailers that collapsed in the 2010s. His article reads like a list of our favorite aunts and uncles: Blockbuster, Borders, Radio Shack, Sports Authority, Toys R Us, and Sears.
Few sectors demonstrate the destructive aspect of "creative destruction" better than retail. Each of the six retailers seemed like an unassailable fixture in their prime, much like Amazon seems today.Derek Thompson of The Atlantic reviewed the retail apocalypse in 2017, saying we'd built too many malls, consumers were shifting to online shopping, and many were also trading material goods for experiences. As a source of innovation, that last trend may hold promise in the future, especially as virtual reality (VR) begins competing for consumer time and dollars.
6. I subscribe to a newsletter from Exploding Topics. The growth of searches for Sustainable Finance was featured in January:
7. Americans recognize that our sense of space has changed across generations. In many modern homes, for example, the master bath is as big as the master bedroom used to be. Churches built in the first half of the twentieth century have pews designed to seat six people comfortably but now (based on our girth and need for elbow room) will only seat five.
One less obvious aspect of VR that may prove rich in innovative opportunities is its impact on our sense of space, highlighted in this interesting letter to the editor in a recent New Yorker (responding to Patricia Marx's "Taking Virtual Reality for a Test Drive"):
8. I admit, I hesitated to post this video, "Meet Joe King" from the Internet Archive. Distributed in 1949 by Harding College, produced by John Sutherland, and underwritten by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this cartoon uses once common terms (such as "coolie," meaning "laborer") and images (especially of females and Asian characters) that are now offensive. But the video helps to unlock a world from which many of our ideas about capitalism and consumerism emerged.
Famous for voicing the adult Bambi for Disney in 1942, Sutherland produced nearly 50 films that used humor to make the case for capitalism as it emerged after WWII and felt the need to counter New Deal policies introduced during the Great Depression.
Understanding the "cultural code" of our parents and grandparents makes it possible for today's innovators, especially those struggling with how to create a sustainable world when fellow consumers won't tolerate a compostable Sun Chips bag if it is too loud.
Here a just a few of my takeaways:
- Joe is the king of the world not because Americans are "supermen," but because "the American way of doing things makes you the luckiest guy in the world." Joe learns that labor, capital, and management are all necessary components of "the greatest production team of its kind."
- The film uses humor, often slapstick, in a way that suggests it needs to win over a skeptical audience.
- Joe has a strong NYC accent, perhaps in tribute to Alfred Sloan. (I profile Sloan in chapter 11 of Innovation on Tap, noting, "Six feet tall and just 130 pounds . . . [Sloan] listened in meetings 'with the extra intentness of the deaf,' and sometimes made his audience smile when he chimed in with the Brooklyn accent he never entirely lost.")
- Competition creates "the greatest good for the greatest number." Old jobs are destroyed but better ones always emerge to improve the lot of the American worker.
- As "America the Beautiful" is cued, King Joe learns that Americans are 7 percent of the population but drive 72 percent of all automobiles and own most all the refrigerators in the world--having ice whenever they like. He is, after all, the luckiest guy in the world.
The video runs a little over nine minutes. Enjoy this look back, remembering that all of this consumer baggage now belongs to us.
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9. The only thing I don't like about Nicholas Carr's blog is that he doesn't post often enough, although if he's working on a new book instead, it's a fair trade.
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| Ed Sullivan with the Beatles, 1964 |
We have, all of us, proven an endless demand for stupidity on the web; now, Carr says, there is an endless supply of shamelessness. And it's all being sliced, diced, and served up by AI.
If you've never tried TikTok and are of a certain age, Carr says, the antecedent is the Ed Sullivan Show. "Squeeze old Ed through a wormhole and give him a spin in a Vitamix, and you get TikTok."
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from The Occasional CEO https://ift.tt/2QCjfRT Notes on Innovation (January 2020) - Entrepteneur Generations
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