Zag To The Zig #43 :: Sexy onions, blockchain tomatoes and winner-takes-all-carrots
Hello to all of you. Hope you’re doing well. It’s almost lunch time when I’m writing this, so somehow there’s a food-related theme to this Zag To The Zig. Bon appétit.
In the Tech Basement this week
I liked this in-depth blogpost about how TikTok puts the algorithm central, in order to put the user central. That means actually creating nuanced points of friction in the user interface (no infinite scroll for instance), in order to feed the data machine. (note: it’s ok to skim through the beginning).
On a similar topic, I enjoyed this free-styling interview on AI and creativity with the machine intelligence design manager at Adobe. Against Prediction!
There should be doubt as to what the tool is for. That’s where it becomes creative.
Breitling is improving its digital guarantee offering for their luxury watches with a blockchain-based digital passport.
A few weeks ago I recommended a client to not take the Digital Together trend (virtual work, gaming,…) too seriously just yet. For their industry it would only make sense once broader adoption started to happen. With the caveat: once it goes, it possibly explodes.
And then, things like Facebook Horizon (first step to the virtual Metaverse) and Amazon Explore (remote guides,…) start popping up.Speaking of Amazon, they filed a patent application for a wearable that captures your speech to analyse emotion.
In the Salon
When I give talks, I tend to include silly, out of order examples. To keep it entertaining, but also to make a blatant point. That’s one of the reasons why I liked Mark Manson’s article on 8 Logical Fallacies. Combining margarine and divorce rates? Hats off. 👒🎓🧢
The other reason is that he explains stuff-that-we-kind-of-know in very simple language. So you can re-use it to make yourself smarter. That’s what self-help authors (like Manson) are good at.Hard to compute when we see other people as potential disease carriers right now, but talking to strangers has surprising benefits. 🗣️
In the Economy Room
🧐 Quite a finding. This study claims that the promise of winner-takes-it-all rewards (rather than shared rewards) creates better innovation. Risk FTW. 🧐
In the Kitchen
There’s no such thing as ethical grocery shopping. This grim story on the rather effed-up culture of shrimp production made me feel that I should balance that with the more hopeful approach of Provenance. They are using blockchain-based processes to track the provenance and fairness of tomatoes.
In the Ethics Corridor
This report on Stakeholder Capitalism by B Corporation gives an interesting update on the promise that those top 180 CEOs made at the Business Roundtable last year: less focus on profit for shareholders, more focus on impact on stakeholders.
Nice words, but hard to put in practice. The report digs out a not-so-good case from Marriott (put workers on temporary employment while paying out 160 million in dividends), but also highlights the bold move from Danone to legally become a Public Benefit Corporation.If you have/run/build a website and you’re interested in privacy, then do read this story about how a website for transgender soldiers unknowingly shared data with 21 advertisers. Good practice: try something like BlackLight. I, for one, disabled the ShareThis plugin on my website. 🗜️
Random ZTTZ
I’m too sexy for your feed. Facebook’s sexy-algorithm needs a bit of tweaking after it flagged this as ‘inappropriate content’. Who said AI can’t get creative?
🏁 End note: 1 thing I’ll be doing this week
To be honest, I’m not a huge podcast fan, but I will be listening to more episodes of ’The Most’, a series of interviews on art, culture, music & fashion by friend of ZTTZ Dominique Nzeyimana. We went to see the (very good) exhibition of Klaas Rommelaere this weekend and listening to her interview with the artist beforehand really lifted the experience.