s02e13 · 1 August 2015
The Watsons; 2015 (2)
This issue documents what IBM's Watson cognitive computing tools reveal about the newsletter's own voice—analyzing yesterday's writing for personality traits (skeptical, efficiency-driven, empathetic) and tone distribution (mostly social rather than emotional or analytical)—while also surveying a week of technological developments that blur the line between the mundane and the unsettling. The connecting thread is technology operating at the level of intimate personal data: wearables tracking security breaches, distributed ledgers enabling autonomous organizations, satellite imagery monitoring human rights, and algorithms that claim to understand who we are based on our word choices. There's an implicit question running through the piece about what it means when technology doesn't just change what we can do, but starts claiming knowledge about who we are.
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0.0 Sitrep
Technically, it's Saturday 1 August, at 12:36am. But because I haven't gone to sleep yet (which itself is because of all the caffeine), this still counts as Friday July 31st's newsletter. So there. A short one today, because Foocamp.
Content and trigger warning: Low. There are zero or trace references to advertising in this episode.
1.0 The Watsons
IBM has a thing called Watson Developer Cloud[0] that "uses cognitive computing to solve complex problems". I tried giving it yesterday's episode to see what its personality insights[1] and tone analyzer[2] would make of my off-the-cuff writing.
Here's how the Watsons described my personality:
Your Personality*
You are inner-directed, skeptical and can be perceived as inconsiderate.
You are unconcerned with art: you are less concerned with artistic or creative activities than most people who participated in our surveys. You are intermittent: you have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time. And you are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them.
Your choices are driven by a desire for efficiency.
You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider independence to guide a large part of what you do: you like to set your own goals to decide how to best achieve them.
*Compared to most people who participated in our surveys.
For tone - and even after reading the docs, I'm still not quite sure how to read the results - the Watsons thought that 88% of yesterday's newsletter was in "social tone", of which I was "open", "agreeable" and "conscientious", and then 8% of it was in "writing tone" (240 analytical words, 28 confident words, 115 tentative ones) and only 2% "emotional" (71 cheerful words, 25 negative words and 11 anger words) which I have to admit seems a bit surprising given that I was writing about advertising, but there you go.
If you know me, feel free to send me a note as to how right you think the Watsons were.
[0] http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/
[1] https://watson-pi-demo.mybluemix.net
[2] https://tone-analyzer-demo.mybluemix.net
x.0 2015 (2)
People are wearing tiny computers on their wrists that instantly tell them if the security of any of their online accounts has been breached[0]. A new software framework based on a distributed ledger that enforces contracts and payments has launched with a tutorial that includes creating a democratic autonomous organization[1]. Computer security is still hard, which means that the network-enabled computer in a sniper rifle has been exploited to allow remote control[2]. Aggregated location data from smartphones now helps people understand when businesses are busiest[3]. A concert was shut down because it posed a significant public safety risk despite the performer appearing via hologram[4]. We might be closer to figuring out how people who were born with 95% of their brain matter missing able to lead normal lives and score IQs over 100[5]. The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded a USD 4.3 billion contract to rebuild medical records[5]; about double the total venture funding that the world's biggest social network received[6]. A well-known actor is funding a private effort to use satellite imagery to monitor human rights abuses in Sudan[7].
[0] http://macrumors.com/2015/07/30/dashlane-one-tap-password-changer/
[1] https://www.ethereum.org
[2] http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-can-disable-sniper-rifleor-change-target/
[3] https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/QY1c97V25Tz
[4] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chief-keef-hologram-concert-20150725-story.html
[5] http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116
[6] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/facebook
[7] http://www.satsentinel.org
OK. 12:45am. Bedtime. Up early for super busy weekend.
Notes, as ever, welcomed.
Best,
Dan