Squaring the Shakespearean Circle

In the garden of Anne Hathaway’s cottage, Stratford-on-Avon

100 Not Out! — my lockdown diary — is out as a Kindle book. Link

Quote of the Day

“The only reason so many people showed up at his funeral was because they wanted to make sure he was dead.”

• Sam Goldwyn, of his rival Louis B. Meyer

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Padraig McGovern ; Peter Carberry | Two jigs | Connie the soldier & The frost is all over

Link

Long Read of the Day

 The internet is not ready for the flood of AI-generated text

Christopher Brennan’s essay on the way that many of our systems currently focus on engagement makes them particularly vulnerable to the incoming wave of content from bots like GPT-3.

We don’t need hyper-intelligent machines to dramatically change the way that the internet works. In my recent conversations, we talked about the issue of what happens when AI text-generation capabilities are more widespread and can generate what Winston calls “10,000 Wikipedias” worth of text in a very short time. You might have already gotten weary of our current state of “too much content,” but it is about to get far, far worse.

Some of the closest possibilities are commercial. OthersideAI has just raised millions in seed money for a use of GPT-3 that will write automatic emails for salespeople in the style of their choice. Porr, after revealing his blog as automated, wrote about automated copywriting, which could generate several options and then automatically A/B test them to see which gets the most engagement.

My week by Dominic Cummings

Lovely spoof. Excerpt:

Thursday

Boris says he wants to see me at the end of the day. I go into his office and he is sitting behind his desk with Carrie standing next to him.

“What is this, the Pride of Britain awards?” I ask.
“Very good, Dom, very drole,” says Boris, looking shifty.
“Tell him, Boris,” Carrie says.
“Tell him what, Boris?” I say.
“Look Dom, it’s like this. The thing is, if I can speak freely, reductio ad absurdum, and get to the point, ergo propter hoc, as it were. Just to be perfectly clear…” he says.
“Stultus est sicut stultus facit,” I tell him.
“Eh?” he asks.
“Have you not seen Forest Gump, prime minister?” I ask.
“We haven’t got time for that now, let me get straight to the point…” he trails off.
“Tell him, Boris,” says Carrie.
“I will, stop interfering,” he says.
“Me?” I say, surprised.
“No, it’s your job to interfere,” he says.
“Not anymore,” says Carrie.
“Look, I’m dealing with this,” says Boris.
“What? Brexit? Coronavirus? The economy? Levelling-up? China? Barnier? Biden? You aren’t dealing with any of it,” I tell him.
“That’s your job,” he says.
“So, you want me to stop interfering?” I say confused.
“No, I want you to keep on interfering,” he says, now confused himself.
“Tell him Boris,” says Carrie.
“Tell him what, Boris?” I say.
“Look Dom, it’s like this…” stutters Boris.
“You’re fired,” says Carrie.
“I wanted to say that,” says Boris.
“Fired?” I say, incredulously.
“Not fired exactly, it’s more that we are going to have to let you go, Dom,” says Boris, looking at his shoes.

The Light of the Charge Brigade…

…is the lovely heading of a fascinating post on Quentin’s blog.

The British county of Essex is often the butt of jokes here, since it has a few notably unappealing areas, but this is unfair. In general it’s a lovely county with some particularly pretty spots. Just at the moment, though, it has a different kind of jewel in its crown, at least from my point of view, because it’s also home to what looks like one of the coolest car-charging areas on the planet. If you want to see what the future of car travel might be, the place to go is probably the Gridserve Electric Forecourt near Braintree, which opens formally next week.

This is what it looks like:

The really clever thing about this is how familiar it looks. Just like an ordinary service station. Except it isn’t ordinary: all those pump-like devices are electric charging points. There isn’t a litre of petrol anywhere. Making new things look ordinary is the way to get beyond the early adopters of any new technology to reach the mainstream, small-c conservative masses. That was the brilliance of the Toyota Prius hybrid. It looked normal — even boring and safe. Not in the least daring. But in its time it was revolutionary. Now the time has come for fully-electric EVs. And the same applies.

Other, hopefully interesting, links

• An Open Letter to Santa Claus Regarding His Travel Plans. “While I understand that your home is melting and you do not have many Christmases left, it is most imperative that you stay in the North Pole this year. Until the COVID-19 vaccine is released to the public, unnecessary travel for anyone is gravely irresponsible… Link.

• Rusty but intact: Nazi Enigma cipher machine found in Baltic Sea. Link.

• NSF releases footage from the moment Arecibo’s cables failed. Video from two different cameras, with one capturing a close-up of the cables snapping. Link.

This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email a day, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if your decide that your inbox is full enough already!

For hire

Quote of the Day

“I do not believe in Belief… Lord, I disbelieve — help thou my unbelief.”

• E.M. Forster in Two Cheers for Democracy, 1951.

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Paul Simon & George Harrison | Here Comes The Sun

Link

Long Read of the Day

Tyler Cowen’s conversation with Zach Carter

This will not be to everyone’s taste. But if you’re interested in Keynes (as I am) and if you’ve read Zachary Carter’s splendid new biography then you’ll love it. What’s particularly good is the fact that Cowen is pretty critical of Keynes, so it’s very much an anti-hagiographical conversation.

Here’s a little sample:

COWEN: I have at least 20 different friends who studied The General Theory, Keynes’s book from 1936, the big famous one. I ask them, “What’s the central message of The General Theory?” They all give me different answers, so I’d like to know, what’s your answer? There’s so much in the book, right? Incredibly rich and multifaceted, but what’s the bottom-line core of The General Theory?

CARTER: You love the hard questions. I wrote in the book that the bottom-line core message of The General Theory is that prosperity is not hardwired into human beings, that it has to be guided through political leadership. I think that traces back, to some extent, to what you were just talking about about India. He views the state and the government, from a very early age, as this sort of guiding hand. In the case of India, it’s a bit paternalistic, but also, domestically, he believes that government is a necessary force to organizing human affairs.

The General Theory — it’s a complicated book. In certain respects, it’s not always consistent with itself, but I think that there’s a political message, which is that political guidance is needed for prosperity to exist, for markets to function. There’s also a reevaluation of what economics is doing and how economics functions. Keynes is not focused on scarcity at this point, and I think Michał Kalecki has written about this.

I think this idea that Keynes is refocusing the nature of economics and economic humanity, from competition for scarce resources towards the idea that uncertainty about the future is the most important psychological condition for economics. If you believe in scarcity as the overriding issue, you’re going to come to different conclusions about how the world works than if you believe uncertainty is the overriding issue. I’m not sure which one of those is the most important, but those are the two that I think are key.

Great stuff.

Digital health passports should not be rolled out on a mass basis until COVID-19 vaccines are available to all, report warns

Digital health passports, sometimes also referred to as ‘immunity passports’, are digital credentials that, combined with identity verification, allow individuals to prove their health status (such as the results of COVID-19 tests, and eventually, digital vaccination records).

As the move to ‘return to normal’ strengthens immunity passports will become valuable and sought after for obvious reasons — like enabling you to travel, get a job, go to the theatre or a film perhaps. So you can write the script for what will happen next — and who will get the lion’s share of the certificates. (Hint: it won’t be the deserving poor.) Which is why an interesting new report from Exeter University is timely. It warns that digital health passports should not be introduced on a mass basis until coronavirus tests are available and affordable to everyone in the country. The same considerations apply to vaccines once these are approved and ready for widespread use.

The Report’s central findings are:

Digital health passports may contribute to the long-term management of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• However, digital health passports pose essential questions for the protection of data privacy and human rights, given that they:

• use sensitive personal health information;

• create a new distinction between individuals based on their health status;

• can be used to determine the degree of freedoms and rights one may enjoy.

• Measures supporting the deployment of such digital health passports may interfere with the respect and protection of data and human rights, in particular the rights to privacy, equality and non-discrimination, and the freedoms of movement, assembly, and to manifest one’s religion or beliefs.

• While public health interests may justify such interferences, policymakers must strike an adequate balance between protecting the rights and freedoms of all individuals and safeguarding public interests when managing the effects of the pandemic.

The research was carried out by Dr Ana Beduschi, from the University of Exeter Law School and is funded by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), as part of UK Research & Innovation’s rapid response to Covid-19.

Stripe: the most important company you’ve never heard of

From Bloomberg:

Private financial technology business Stripe Inc. is in talks to raise a new funding round valuing it higher than its last private valuation of $36 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The valuation being discussed could be more than $70 billion or significantly higher, at as much as $100 billion, said one of the people, who asked not be identified because the matter is private. That would make it currently the most valuable venture-backed startup in the U.S., according to CB Insights.

Stripe was co-founded in 2010 by two Irish lads — brothers John and Patrick Collison. The pair sold their first company for $5 million when they were teenagers and are now worth about $4.3 billion each, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Their company currently has more than 2,500 employees and 14 global offices. An ad on its website suggests that it is poised to become much bigger and more important.

Stripe’s software, which competes with Square Inc. and Paypal Holdings Inc., is used by businesses to accept payments (including payments to Substack authors who charge subscriptions for their blogs). But that turned out to be just the boys’ first act.

Basically, Stripe now aims to become the central platform for financial transactions on the Internet. This is how the shrewd analyst Ben Thompson graphically summarises it on his daily subscription newsletter.

Watch this space. And, no, you can’t buy shares in it. It isn’t a public company.

Other, hopefully interesting, links

• Think really big bridges don’t vibrate in high winds? Think again. Link
• Boom and Bust wins Enlightened Economist Book of the Year. Link

This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email a day, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if your decide that your inbox is full enough already!

Street scene, Arles, 2017

A relic from the days when people could travel freely!

Quote of the Day

“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

• TS Eliot

(Except for the poetry of Seamus Heaney, where you get it the instant you read it.)

Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news

Yusuf Cat Stevens | Father and Son | Another Saturday Night | Festival de Viña 2015

Link

Long Read of the Day

The Substackerati

Terrific Columbia Journalism Review essay by Clio Chang about the company that runs the platform on which this (email) edition of my blog, Memex.1.1, is published. It’s a well-informed, nicely critical and beautifully-written piece, well worth your time if you’re interested in media ecology and what is happening to journalism.

Sample:

Substack, established in 2017 by three tech-and-media guys—Chris Best, Hamish McKenzie, and Jairaj Sethi—is a newsletter platform that allows writers and other creative types to distribute their work at tiered subscription rates. Newsletters go back at least as far as the Middle Ages, but these days, with full-time jobs at stable media companies evaporating—between the 2008 recession and 2019, newsroom employment dropped by 23 percent—Substack offers an appealing alternative. And, for many, it’s a viable source of income. In three years, Substack’s newsletters—covering almost every conceivable topic, from Australian Aboriginal rights to bread recipes to local Tennessee politics—have drawn more than two hundred fifty thousand paid subscribers. The top newsletter authors can earn six figures, an unheard-of amount for freelance journalists. Emily Atkin, who runs Heated, on the climate crisis, told me that her gross annual income surpassed $200,000—and among paid-readership Substacks, she’s ranked fifteenth. “I literally opened my first savings account,” she said.

Rising seas predicted to flood thousands of affordable housing units by 2050

Researchers mapped where coastal homes could flood in the US

From the Verge:

Coastal cities in the US could find themselves grappling with a new housing crisis in the coming decades. The number of affordable housing units vulnerable to flooding could triple by 2050 as the planet heats up, according to a new study. That amounts to more than 24,000 homes that could flood at least once a year by 2050, compared to about 8,000 in 2000.

The study, published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, ranks the states and cities at greatest risk. Its authors also unveiled a new interactive map that people can use to see how their hometown might be affected.

I tried to use the interactive map to see if Mar-a-Lago might be inundated, but I’d have needed to get my VPN to switch to a server in the US first and it was early in a busy morning and I concluded that life was too short. S

Still, it’s a nice thought…

Deal, no-deal, maybe-deal…

Fascinating thought from Jonty Bloom…

Ever since the referendum I have said the UK will leave without a deal, the fantasies of the ultras trumping any sensible negotiations in the public interest. But for the first time I see the possibility of a deal because of the Daily Mail and Telegraph, no less.

It will be a bad deal and ignores the pleas, lobbying, research and interests of almost every industry in the UK. But for almost the first time the papers have started noticing that no deal also means; holiday homes can only be used for 3 months at a time, car insurance will soar in price and pet passports will be an expensive pain in the derriere. Those are just three consequences of Brexit, there are many others and although these are similar issues to those hitting business, this time they hit people with votes.

The EU negotiating strategy, “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” has led to this, far cleverer than “give us a deal or we break the law.” But all still depends on whether the PM will realise what is happening and stand up to the ultras. Will he notice in time that people don’t seem to care about other people’s jobs but care deeply about fido’s holidays? Ignoring that would as they say in Yes Minister, be a “brave decision”.

I wonder.

Facebook is still stumped by WhatsApp

How can it monetise it without destroying what makes it work?

Nice piece by Shira Ovide in the New York Times…

Perhaps never before has an online property been so popular and made such little money. More than two billion people worldwide use WhatsApp regularly to text or make phone calls, but it scarcely generates any money for Facebook, which has owned WhatsApp since 2014.

That’s because WhatsApp is mostly a personal communications app, and Facebook doesn’t make money from that group chat with your cousins. This looks set to change. Haltingly, including by agreeing to buy a customer service start-up on Monday, Facebook is trying to use its trademark playbook to remake WhatsApp into an inescapable way for businesses to interact with us.

If Facebook figures it out, WhatsApp could change how we shop and use the internet forever — as the company’s main social network and Instagram did. If not, Facebook will own a spectacularly popular failure. The outcome will set trends for our digital lives and determine which businesses thrive or don’t.

To understand WhatsApp, you need to know about Facebook’s three-step playbook and why it’s breaking down…

What I love about WhatsApp is that it costs Facebook a tone of money to keep it going and yet it can’t wring a cent out of it. My hunch is that if they try to ‘monetise’ it, then a sizeable proportion the masses of people who love and use it will become disenchanted and drift to something else.

Nothing lasts forever.

Other, hopefully interesting, links

• Google Reveals Major Hidden Weakness In Machine Learning. It’s called underspecification, but it’s just the latest of the fundamental problems that the current feeding-frenzy with the technology conveniently ignores. Link.

• Ed Yong’s Must-Read Stories of the Pandemic. Link.

This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe? One email a day, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if your decide that your inbox is full enough already!