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ANDRÉ CRAMER

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February 2017

Very useful 25min Video on Tech Trends in China: A Whirlwind Tour Through Trends in China (Connie Chan)

In China, a country that leapfrogged the PC era to go mobile-first, the smartphone is the “remote control” of people’s lives… especially given the dominance of messaging/operating-system platforms like WeChat. But this is about more than just WeChat, Alipay, and others — it’s about online-to-offline commerce in general (and the viability of on-demand marketplaces there); the past, present, and future of QR codes; and new forms of social-mobile communication, from livestreaming to stickers to even VR cafes as a vector of early adoption…

Source: A Whirlwind Tour Through Trends in China – Andreessen Horowitz

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Great TEDTalk on the incredible inventions of Intuitive AI (Maurice Conti)

What do you get when you give a design tool a digital nervous system? Computers that improve our ability to think and imagine, and robotic systems that come up with (and build) radical new designs for bridges, cars, drones and much more — all by themselves. Take a tour of the Augmented Age with futurist Maurice Conti and preview a time when robots and humans will work side-by-side to accomplish things neither could do alone…

Source: https://www.ted.com/talks/maurice_conti_the_incredible_inventions_of_intuitive_ai

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Awesome Collection of Long-Reads on the 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017 (MIT Technology Review)

These technologies all have staying power. They will affect the economy and our politics, improve medicine, or influence our culture. Some are unfolding now; others will take a decade or more to develop. But you should know about all of them right now…

Source: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017

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Must-See AndreesenHorowith Video: A Whirlwind Tour Through Trends in China (Connie Chan)

In China, a country that leapfrogged the PC era to go mobile-first, the smartphone is the “remote control” of people’s lives… especially given the dominance of messaging/operating-system platforms like WeChat. But this is about more than just WeChat, Alipay, and others — it’s about online-to-offline commerce in general (and the viability of on-demand marketplaces there); the past, present, and future of QR codes; and new forms of social-mobile communication, from livestreaming to stickers to even VR cafes as a vector of early adoption…

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Is Radical Life Extension Good for Society? (Shelly Fan)

It’s no longer a radical question. The aging literature is replete with treatments that could prolong lifespan by 20-40%, at least in lab animals. Interventions such as caloric restriction, rapamycin and metformin have been studied for decades for their anti-aging capacity. Although there is still some discrepancy in their effectiveness in primates, the biomedical community agrees that they’re promising… 

https://singularityhub.com/2016/12/01/is-radical-life-extension-good-for-society/?utm_campaign=digest&utm_medium=email&utm_source=app

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Great Read: Welcome to the era of Transhumanism (Rich Haridy)

In a compelling webseries from 2012 entitled H+, we were introduced to a future world where much of the population has a hi-tech implant, allowing individuals a direct neural interface with the internet. As often is the case in science fiction, things don’t turn out well for those technological pioneers. A virus infects the implant and chaos quickly descends on a human race that has become biologically fused with technology.

The series was an overt examination of a transhumanist future, with the title H+ being an appropriation of the common transhuman abbreviation…

Source: Welcome to the era of transhumanism

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Awesome Virtual Reality Read: Reveries on The Future of VR (Jason Rosenthal)

As we enter Year 2 of the emergence of Virtual Reality as a consumer platform, we will see many analysts, articles and pundits weigh in on the state of the nascent industry. They will ask things like: Who are the early winners and losers? Is VR already whiffing on the huge expectations set in early 2016? Are we about to enter the trough of disillusionment and can the industry recover from this setback?

I believe that these questions, while fun to ask, read about and debate on Twitter, fundamentally miss the point…

Source: Reveries on The Future of VR

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The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet. It’s the End of the Middle Class (Cade Metz) 

In February 1975, a group of geneticists gathered in a tiny town on the central coast of California to decide if their work would bring about the end of the world. These researchers were just beginning to explore the science of genetic engineering, manipulating DNA to create organisms that didn’t exist in nature, and they were unsure how these techniques would affect the health of the planet and its people. So, they descended on a coastal retreat called Asilomar, a name that became synonymous with the guidelines they laid down at this meeting—a strict ethical framework meant to ensure that biotechnology didn’t unleash the apocalypse… 

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/ai-threat-isnt-skynet-end-middle-class/

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Really good Article tackling the Question if we all live in a simulation: “This cartoon explains why Elon Musk thinks we’re characters in a computer simulation. He might be right.” (Alvin Chang)

We might be characters in a computer simulation. It’s a serious argument. Elon Musk thinks it’s almost certain that we are living in a computer simulation. In short, we are characters in an advanced version of The Sims — so advanced that it creates, well, us.

I understand the instinct to treat the idea as absurd, and to ignore people who suggest these things. It’s what happens when you challenge the common beliefs about reality, kind of like Aristarchus of Samos, who first thought the Earth wasn’t at the center of the universe — almost 2,000 years before Galileo…

Source: This cartoon explains why Elon Musk thinks we’re characters in a computer simulation. He might be right. – Vox

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