Welcome to this 93rd issue of our newsletter “Weak Signals and other Trends.” Each week, I sift through hundreds of sources of inspiration to track where we’re heading. If you are a new subscriber to this newsletter, take the time to send me a note and introduce yourself, I love to understand who is reading.
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I am sending this newsletter this Friday from Geneva, Switzerland. This is what I noticed this week, thank you for sharing with those who look into the future.
Estelle.
Competitive Intelligence
How 16 Companies are Dominating the World’s Google Search Results. Monitoring governments’ budget. Census GPT. AI can now forecast the next food crisis. Google Lens app allows you to search for images using your smartphone camera. Search NFTs by ID, Commit hash, of keywords.
We have scheduled the dates for 2023 for our courses. “Advanced Search Techniques for Competitive and Customer Intelligence” will be offered on March 29, 2023. Registrations are now open and we have 4 spots left.
Strategic blindspots
Looking at the familiar with “alien eyes” allows you to unlock new business model opportunities while avoiding risks from strategic blindspots.
How much is the street worth? The $2 Billion Question of Who You Are at Work. Why Patagonia bought a cracker company. A child labor crisis in America. Charting the next wave of agtech value for farmers. Tik Tok is hiring book curators. Amazon sells « decorative books » only. Suspicion machine methodology. Living on stand-by. 60 days to find a job or leave the country. The cost of this meeting. China just set up a new bureau to mine data for economic growth.
Our future
Job search in 2023. Cockroach milk, DN-personalised food, and golden rice: a panorama of the food of the future. Remote workers are 'body doubling’. Snack allows users to create and train AI avatars. Non linear workdays. The new gatekeepers. New “traffic cop” algorithm helps a drone swarm stay on task. How we will write our laws. Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time, from ‘nip nops’ to ‘le dollar bean’. When teens meet friends.
We keep you updated on those trends and more on Twitter.
Weak signals
Weak signals are indicators of a change, a trend or an emerging risk that might become significant for the future. They allow us to run hypothesis, expand our thinking, and challenge assumptions. How will you interpret those in your industry or field of expertise?
Sermon writing. Police in Japan arrested three people for alleged “sushi terrorism”. LinkedIn's new "collaborative articles" feature seeks to encourage discussion by inviting creators to comment on conversations begun by AI. HelloFresh stops sourcing coconut milk from Thailand because it could be a product of forced simian labor. Robots performing Hindu rituals. The rise of decorative books. Earned wage access is growing. TikTok is adding a third feed just for science and math videos. Fujifilm will restore photos damaged by cyclone flooding, free of charge.
Down the rabbit hole
This section highlights a subject that lead me to many useful threads, or a single site, that opened many doors: “A rabbit hole is not a distraction. A rabbit hole is your brain trying to tell you to pay attention to something you’re curious about. Ignore algorithmic rabbit holes” ( by are.na)
This week, I tested Opinionate, a tool that lets you make GPT argue with itself.
Hodgepodge discovery
Articles for curious minds and the polymaths
Paved Paradises. Was Modern Architecture Shaped by the 20th Century’s Obsession with Tuberculosis? Grieving Through Google. What Are Word and Sentence Embeddings? The Art of Patience. Colors or the Meaning of Storm trooper’s white. The FDIC’s data on bank failures since 2001. How Americans heat their homes. On taste. EV ranges. How complex sustems fail.
I like new words, so this site and its list of causation words as an illustration has been a gift.
Numbers
58,000 - GM is offering voluntary buyouts to a majority of its 58k corporate employees in a $2B cost-cutting effort
16.6 - youth hours spent on team sports up to 16.6 hours per week, up from 13.6 hours per week
Feeling good
One diary entry per day in 2023, written by a different person from history. A collection of iphone notes. The art of noticing through journaling.
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Thanks for reading Weak signals and other trends!
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