Issue #16 · May 25th, 2016 · View in your browser

**It's been a long time since I—

Driverless trucks are coming and it's going to change lots of things**. Decrease in cost of transport will result in cheaper goods. We'll get better delivery times too, since driverless trucks can drive 24/24. Also increased fuel efficiency which will reduce costs even more. Good times. Then we'll have 1.6m unemployed people and roadside businesses like motels, diners and gas stations that will probably go bust. Bad times. Are truck drivers the milkmen of yore? How are we going to take care of this part of the population? [TechCrunch]

If you are a regular (i.e addicted) Twitter/Facebook user, you probably won't be able to put a dent in the universe. Just like food engineers created McDonald's fries and processed maplewood smoked bacon, software engineers and designers created highly-addictive products that magically require our constant attention. As Matthew Crawford notes, it's interesting to notice how asceticism—news feed blocker extensions, etc.—is having a renaissance in our age of unhinged capitalism. [New York Times]

Our brains don't work like computers. We don't process information or store memories (!). Humans have been employing technology metaphors to explain how our brains work for millennia. That's basically all we can do. Since computers are the latest advancement, it's the metaphor we're stuck with (much like the “humours” inspired from the 3rd century BCE hydraulic systems). [Aeon]

• Neuroskeptic: The Myth of The Brain [VIDEO]

Philosophy is one of the less diverse humanities discipline. “Indeed, of the top 50 philosophy doctoral programs in the English-speaking world, only 15 percent have any regular faculty members who teach any non-Western philosophy.” Promoting diversity in Philosophy departments across the globe sounds like a necessary endeavour in an age of growing globalisation. It'll benefit everyone. [The Stone]

Charlie Brooker (British satirist and creator of Black Mirror) makes a compelling argument against dancing. Sorry, what? “See, I’m awkward at the best of times. Expecting me to coordinate my movements in time to music, in what amounts to an unofficial public assessment of perceived sexual competence, is astronomically cruel. Push me onto the dance floor and I’m like a pig repeatedly losing its footing, a malfunctioning distress signal made flesh.” [The New Yorker]

The Eternal Magic of Beirut: The NYT Magazine sent Michael Specter to the Lebanese capital. He wrote an interesting piece which focuses on matters of identity, that he deems Beirut's great intellectual passion. It always feel weird when Westerners write about Beirut, but he captures some things quite well. [NYT Style Magazine]

Bots won't replace apps and the conversational UI is overrated. At least that's what Dan Grover, product manager at WeChat (arguably the keenest company on this bot thing) thinks. The problem with bots is that it takes more time to complete the same action as normal touch/tap, save for the “humanness” of the interaction. Bots exist because mobile OSes are not evolving fast enough to solve people's problems. Old apps will be instead replaced with better, AI-augmented apps. But not chat bots. [Dan Grover]

*Thanks and have a nice week, 

Ulysse*