I was trawling the collapsed and locked answers on Quora. Again. I followed a trail of breadcrumbs that led me to Birth of the Global Mind, a Tim O’Reilly presentation for Clock of the Long Now.
News of the Long Now
Jeff Bezos has many to fish to fry; a hand in many kettles. One of the more abstract is his Clock of the Long Now project. The Long Now has a speaker series, for members only, of course. Publishing magnate Tim O’Reilly was on the agenda. The following excerpts are drawn from his lectures, interleaved in responsive-reading style, with thoughts of my own.
Deconstructing Tim O’Reilly
The Web has become the leading platform for harnessing collective intelligence. Wikipedia is a virtual city.
No, not really. It doesn’t make Wikipedia bad, nor a failure, but Wikipedia does not resemble a virtual city, even for those with a vivid imagination. I don’t think active Wikipedia editors would describe it as anything more than a fractious, yet somewhat functional online community.
Through device automation, Apple has imbued retail clerks with superpowers in its stores.
Apple Geniuses are NOT imbued with superpowers! They aren’t treated as poorly as Amazon.com warehouse workers, but conditions aren’t so good for Apple retail employees. I have read many complaints about low wages and long hours. Most Apple retail clerks are temporary workers, i.e. no benefits nor job security. Nice word choice, "clerk"
. It is distinctively redolent of a not-so-great, not-so-new world. Clerks weren’t a fixture of the recent past, but rather, Victorian England and the 19th, or even 18th centuries.
Medicine for the masses
Watson, the AI that beat human champions at “Jeopardy,” is now being deployed to advise doctors in real-time, having read ALL the scientific papers.
I hope not! Artificial intelligence and machine learning are increasingly used to reduce head count, at all levels. In a clinical health setting, that means automating the functions of everyone from the CEO to managers to physicians, pharmacists and registered nurses. The Carl Icahn School of Big Data Medicine can explain it better than me. Peruse the meeting notes from their October 2013 convocation with The Atlantic. The Icahn Medical School was formerly known as Mount Sinai, in case you’re unfamiliar with the new name, as I was. Continue reading