S04E01: A New Season, A Fresh Start

Sitrep: I started to write this Friday morning at 8:50am, on the train from Berlin to Cologne to talk at tonight's ThingsCon Salon about trust & tech generally and the Trustable Tech mark specifically, and for a full workshop day along the way. I'm finishing it on the way back, Saturday around noon. In between, Cologne has been both sweltering hot (36C / mid-ninetees F) and absolutely lovely. Now I'm zooming across the Rhine sparkling in the sun, and through the former coal and steel towns of the Ruhrpott, afloat on the fuzzy warm feeling of having spent some intense time with a fantastic group of friends of collaborators.

This is the first episode of season 4 of Connection Problem. The seasons structure I cribbed of course from Dan Hon, and it's been working very well for me. I'd ask you consider this one a teaser of sorts, the real season is likely not going to start for another couple of weeks. We've had some life changes that haven't afforded me the time to sit down and write quite as comfortably as before; among other things M has started working again after her parental leave (🙏) and we're currently on a somewhat intense shift system to get both our work done and also take care of little K until daycare starts—which in Berlin is around the 1 year mark. We got lucky and despite a serious shortage of daycare spots found a good one right for that time, but it means bridging another few months until that kicks off and in the meantime it means all hands on deck even more than before, and the kind of buffer that allows for a half hour of writing (or, y'know, sleeping) is what gets eaten first thing. I'm not complaining—it's fantastic, especially to be spending more time with the little one!—but it means the newsletter might be a little less regular for the next couple of months. All I'm saying is, I'm easing back into it.

My reading list has been overflowing with interesting stuff. But a lot of it has been covered (or found its way to me via) some of my favorite newsletter which I've mentioned a zillion times before and am happy to plug anytime again. If you haven't subscribed to them, you're missing out: Sentiers by Patrick Tanguay, Orbital Operations by Warren Ellis, Connected Rights by David Meyer, Exponential View by Azeem Azhar and Stratechery by Ben Thompson are all beloved regulars in my inbox. I'll share some more soon.

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As always, a shout out to tinyletter.com/pbihr or a forward is appreciated!

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Single issue

For the last few months (and the next few) I've been focusing on the Trustable Technology mark, the ThingsCon trustmark for IoT (supported by the good folks at Mozilla who invited me to be a fellow for the year; full disclosure: my partner works for Mozilla). I believe it's for the first time that I have something (more or less) concrete to talk about, and a story to tell, and just overall one thing to talk about rather than a narrative to distill out of weak signals. Less pattern recognition, more here's a thing I'm creating, watch me make the sausage.

I'm at the start of a bit of a road show for the trustmark to expose more folks to it and get feedback; more people to kick the proverbial tires. So I find myself giving variations of the same talk: A few times so far, many more times before the end of the year. As a frequent event curator I've seen both speakers who write everything from scratch every time and find a new story for each event, and those who tell the same story over and over. It's an interesting feeling to switch from the first to the latter model for a while, to try that on and see how it fits. I don't think one is better than the other—each has their place—but they feel very different.

I'm not quite sure how to phrase it, but maybe this helps: A new talk at every event is a bit like thinking out loud, like performing a new song at a small club somewhere: You don't quite know what you'll get and it might not be flawless but it's surely interesting for all parties involved. The same narrative at every event is like performing a song you've played a million times; even if you've heard and played it before it's always fresh as you zoom in to enjoy the improvisation. It's more like a jam session where you explore the well-established themes but try to get something new and fresh out of them every time, drop some deep cuts, incorporate something you've heard or seen just before.

Anyway, I'll be talking trustmarks for a while. Last night's slides here, last night's video lost to the AV gods.

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Things I encountered and found interesting

OH: "Artificial intelligence isn't intelligence, it's just crazy stochastics!"

Bot crazy: China is crazy about robots even if they don't work, says the NYTimes. The server bots need humans to do the actual serving, the mind-reading based remote control doesn't read any minds, but it might all still help speed up innovation. I scratched my head a little reading this, but there might be something there. Not sure yet.

AI blues: Germany is falling behind on AI and knows it (Politico). So Merkel is supposedly doubling down on emerging tech. Hah! Really she's just met some AI researchers; Germany is still falling behind on emerging tech and fast, because Germany has been mostly good at selling machinery. High tech machinery no doubt, but if it doesn't need a container ship to move Germany isn't selling it successfully. But here's the money quote: "'I'm used to bad news," Merkel said, according to a participant's recollection" in the closed door meeting.

False positives: The ACLU has tested Amazon's commercial facial recognition system, Rekognition. The results do not look good: "Amazon’s face surveillance technology is the target of growing opposition nationwide, and today, there are 28 more causes for concern. In a test the ACLU recently conducted of the facial recognition tool, called “Rekognition,” the software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress, identifying them as other people who have been arrested for a crime." Talk about false positives…

Smart Cities as actors / comfort with machines: Editing the ThingsCon report The State of Responsible IoT (out later this month) gave me the chance to learn a lot more about some thinking that appears to be emerging out of TU Delft around Thing-based design, meaning: Considering connected (algorithmically powered, machine learning powered, etc.) things as actors in the design process. As in, taking their agency into account, if you will. I just happened upon a 2012 talk by Saskia Sassen about smart cities as actors, and her talk is amazing, and side by side these things have sent me off into mental tangents of all sorts. But back to Sassen's talk: "How do we find comfort with machines," Sassen asks. Her presentation about smart buildings and cities is totally worth revisiting. "We don't want this kind of collapse because so much complexity in a quasi-closed system. These technological systems are clearly not completely closed. But they are sufficiently closed that they are subject to an obsoleteness that a city in its incompleteness can actually avoid, can navigate." 💥Boom!

Neon signs/retro futures: Hong Kong's iconic neon signs are disappearing. Here's a lovely collection.

A pre-history of weeknotes: Matt Webb has written a lovely piece on weeknotes, of which this newsletter here certainly feels like a version. (For my work I write monthnotes these days, but still fondly remember the weekly writing of notes...)

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On that note, I wish you an excellent weekend.

Yours truly,
Peter

PS. Please feel free to forward this to friends & colleagues, or send them to tinyletter.com/pbihr

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Who writes here? Peter Bihr explores the impact of emerging technologies — like Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence. He is the founder of The Waving Cat, a boutique research, strategy & foresight company. He co-founded ThingsCon, a non-profit that fosters the creation of a responsible Internet of Things. In 2018, Peter is a Mozilla Fellow. He tweets at @peterbihr. Interested in working together? Let’s have a chat.

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This picture and the one at the top and via Unsplash (Ryoji Iwata, Dan 7th).