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Latest Read: The Four

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway. Scott is a Professor of Marketing at the New York University Stern School of Business. He led startups at Prophet, Red Envelope and L2, which was acquired by Gartner.

The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google by Scott Galloway

Scott has also served on the boards of media companies including The New York Times, Dex Media, Advanstar, Gateway, Urban Outfitters and Eddie Bauer. He joined the faculty of NYU’s Stern School of Business in 2014.

So Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google are deemed by Scott as the Four Horsemen. The data Scott provides is rich at the time of publication. It would be well worth hit time to release a second edition: The Four Horsemen of the Pandemic, as their metrics will be even more amazing to understand how they have grown from 2017. This is amazingly, just four years from the release as well.

Throughout the book Scott addresses his move from private business to teaching at NYU, where the cost of education is $500 per minute.
While reading Scott’s book at the close of 2021, the omicron variant is surging and according to Scott in 2017 their reach (and profits) should be soaring to new gigantic heights.

Surprisingly, Scott not only portions each company in the marketplace they dominate, but also how they are now digging in to complete with one another.

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Latest Read: AI 2041

AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan. Kai-Fu is a leading AI researcher. with a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. He landed at Apple in 1990 for a decade, then went to SGI.

AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future by Kai-Fu Lee

Kai-Fu has previously served as the founding director of Microsoft Research Asia, then president of Google China, He departed to launch Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital firm in Beijing.

Over the course of my career I have grown rather confident that technology predications never really develop as projected. Hence, AI 2041 is no exception. While I do appreciate Chen’s writing skills, these predications are a real miss on the AI front.

In addition, each story begins with a brief note by Kai-Fu followed by Chen’s story. I must admit that I am certainly not really a fan of fiction, yet the detail writing by Chen is striking. Kai-Fu then closes each story with an accurate analysis of AI technologies key to the story.

Chapter Three: Twin Sparrows

Twin Sparrows, is certainly the best written chapter IMHO. The implementation of natural language processing, self-supervised training, and AI education made for a unique story, although straining at times.

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Education Reading Technology

Latest Read: What Happened To You?

What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Dr. Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey. This book will change the way you view not only your life, but the lives of family, colleagues, and friends.

What Happened To You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Dr. Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey.

Bruce is a psychiatrist and senior fellow of the Child Trauma Academy in Houston. In addition, he remains an adjunct professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. In 1987, Bruce began a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Chicago.

Bruce has been a consultant to many high-profile incidents involving traumatized children: The Columbine High School massacre, The Oklahoma City bombing, and The Waco siege.

He also wrote The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog: What Traumatized Children Can Teach Us About Loss, Love and Healing. Elements of that book are indeed discussed in this book as well.

Bruce began his relationship with Oprah in 1989 and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show many times sharing experiences of childhood trauma. Accordingly, Oprah shares her understanding from trauma and adversity from a young age.

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Artificial Intelligence Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Ten Equations That Rule the World

The Ten Equations That Rule the World by David Sumpter. He is a professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. David was awarded the UK’s Institute of Mathematics 2015 prize for communicating mathematics to a wider audience in his research How to Model Honeybee Colonies.

The Ten Equations That Rule the World by David Sumpter

David provides a deep overview of ten equations: Betting, Judgement, Confidence, Skill , Influencer, Market, Advertising, Reward, Learning, and The Universal Equation. Each equation (algorithm) includes stories that certainly provide deeper understanding.

On the other hand, the opening chapter did not really connect with me. The Betting Equation focuses on UK soccer and for reveals how betting odds can be adjusted against reality.

Nevertheless, I am not sure why this did not resonate as the rest of the book is just delightful to read.

In addition, the second chapter, Judgement Equation is the basis of Bayesian statistics and this storyline really stuck with me.

Furthermore, it is great to see David reference The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver within the third chapter, The Confidence Equation.

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Education Globalization Reading Technology

Latest Read: An Ugly Truth

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang. Sheera is a prize-winning technology reporter based in San Francisco. Cecilia covers technology and regulation.

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang

This story of Facebook’s corruption and lack of a moral compass cannot not be any more clearer than this book. In addition, this is a story of greed, control, egos of company leaders. At first glance you may think this is simply not possible.

In contrast, the authors are tapping into current and former employees. All paint a rather horrific picture of Facebooks’ single focus: profits.

Above all, documents and interviews reveal how company wide lack of action weakened American democracy. Furthermore, ignoring the genocide of Rohingya peoples across Myanmar paints a rather shocking picture of Facebook as a company.

A key point certainly overlooked is how Facebook ‘arrived’ at the beginning of the internet’s gilded age. Therefore, no rules applied, just profits whatever the cost. Profit is certainly the only focus for Mark Zuckerberg. On the other hand, attempting to derail his profit focus results with aggressive and sometimes illegal tactics.

Chapter 7: Company over Country

An acknowledgment by Facebook’s security team that Russian spies hacked user accounts of GOP politicians certainly was not a surprise. Yet, the Russians hacked accounts of children from those GOP candidates. This also was certainly very shocking. Accordingly, all this activity was culminating in an internal report to company leadership:

Hence, Facebook did nothing. No notice to American intelligence services. Ultimately Facebook engineers held a rather unique eye on all user interactions.