Link – Page 230 – Amalgamated Contemplation

Abundance Authors Diamandis and Kotler Answer Your Questions – Freakonomics Freakonomics

We recently solicited your questions for Peter Diamandis, founder and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, and journalist Steven Kotler. They are co-authors of the new book Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think. Below are their answers about the need for jobs (it’s not what you may suspect), the distribution of wealth, and the technological breakthrough that led the price of aluminum to plummet.

Our problem is not that we don’t have enough stuff—it’s that we don’t have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.

Source: Abundance Authors Diamandis and Kotler Answer Your Questions – Freakonomics Freakonomics

The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) | WIRED

The National Security Agency’s immensely secret project in the Utah desert will intercept, analyze, and store yottabytes of the world’s communications—including yours.

Source: The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) | WIRED

Toronto cops threw the (Face)book at her

Artist Lizz Aston used to think her picture on Facebook helped business until Toronto Police used it as an online suspect lineup.

Source: Toronto cops threw the (Face)book at her

Why wasn’t their database of drivers’ license photos sufficient? Is this why you shouldn’t have real pictures of yourself online? Is this a breach of privacy/trust? Is it permissible for someone to choose to share something with “everyone but the state”?

Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas

A New Search Engine

Replace Email

Replace Universities

Internet Drama

The Next Steve Jobs

Bring Back Moore’s Law

Ongoing Diagnosis

Source: Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas, by Paul Graham

I will be very disappointed if none of these are in the future.

Is Technology A Zero-Sum Game? | TechCrunch

History suggests that Jack Welch’s philosophy that “a company should be #1 or #2 in a particular industry or else leave it completely” is even more applicable to the tech industry, where the top player can build a sustainable and ever-growing business but everyone else is practically better off getting out.

Source: Is Technology A Zero-Sum Game? | TechCrunch

Is this a problem born, or intensified, by turning people and the data about them into the product with profit margins determined by our willingness to be exploited/manipulated combined with the asymmetry of information about how the exploitation/manipulation is happening?

From comments:

I think a core issue that is not raised, is that if the data is so valuable, why do more people not insist on reaping the rewards of sharing their data?

— anonymous