Welcome to this 102nd 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. This week, I received this feedback, which made my day:
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I am preparing this newsletter this week from France. This is what I noticed this week, thank you for sharing with those who look into the future.
Estelle.
Competitive Intelligence
What Is Dark Web Monitoring? How to Delete Your Information From People-Search Sites? Extract Web Data Easily With AI. The future of search is being reinvented with generative AI.
Strategic blindspots
Looking at the familiar with “alien eyes” allows you to unlock new business model opportunities while avoiding risks stemming from strategic blindspots. This section also is about the risks we miss.
Employee-focused cybersecurity. Global Tech Supply Chains are as Complex as a Circuit Board. Clogocracy. Netflix will open a restaurant. Why are products for older people so ugly? A fascinating tale of the hidden labour behind AI. Amazon wants to turn small shops into delivery partners. TikTok is signing deals with logistics firms to create a network of warehouses that can store, pack, and deliver products that are purchased on the app. Google Cloud has a new artificial intelligence tool that prevents money laundering for banks.
Our future
How AI makes virtual try-on more realistic. Fire weather. The future of sound. What we learned by using Artificial Intelligence for trend translation. As the technology becomes ubiquitous, a vast tasker underclass is emerging — and not going anywhere. Zoom is seeking to patent a method for “real-time engagement analytics” in meetings, including tracking how many participants ask for real-time notes to be generated. A co-futurism library. Man trains a chatbot on himself, converses with his digital twin.
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?
Gen Z students in Japan are getting job-market ready with lessons on how to smile again without masks. Domino’s Latest Delivery Tech Will Find Customers. Microsoft is seeking to patent a method of “tracking sources of after-hours activity” in communication apps. Why so much of the world runs on counterfeit software. ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has ordered 100,000 GPU chips, worth $1bn, in 2023 from Nvidia. The moon could get its own timezone.
Down the rabbit hole
This section highlights a subject that led 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 read about annual working hours. So much insight to derive on future competitiveness and health of nations.
Hodgepodge discovery
Articles for curious minds and the polymaths
Emily Dickinson’s Apple Computer House. Google became worse when Reddit went dark. The History of Googie Architecture . What do hand models do all day? Muzak May Get You to Spend More. The Guardian observer style. Linguists have identified a new English dialect that’s emerging in South Florida. What does intellectual humility look like ? Access technologist Chancey Fleet explains how tactile graphics help blind and low-sighted people navigate the world. Pink For Boys and Blue For Girls: Gendered Colors Were Completely Different 100 Years Ago. From notetaking to neuralink and this quote:
The explosion of information available to each of us is demonstrating the cracks in our current processes for accepting, synthesizing, and acting on information. But AI is inaugurating a new information paradigm that the technology is best suited to assist with creating new content from existing information.”
Numbers
33% - Between 33-46% of crowdworkers on Amazon Mechanical Turk used LLMs when completing tasks
3,800% - volume sales of canned wine grew over 3,800 percent from 2017 to 2021
48%- Last year 48 percent of honey bee colonies died
Feeling good
Spotting the bow tie. 7th century teen. The popular world of online trainspotting.
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