perambulation-intro

Perambulation

Thoughts on data, society, and other things that don't fit neatly into buckets.

On chat as interface

February 26, 2016 – 3:45 pm by Alistair 1 Comment

Musings on the (for now) strange world of chat, where the interfaces are untestable, every use leaves a logfile, each interaction is a survey, and we talk with our cars and bank accounts.

Inbox is the Trojan Horse for your personal AI

February 6, 2016 – 6:12 pm by Alistair 8 Comments

Google’s Mail products are a Trojan Horse with which the company is turning “use the Internet” into “talk with an AI.”

Unlocking our future past

December 16, 2015 – 10:08 pm by Alistair 0 Comments

In a few years, algorithms will be able to describe video content as well as humans can. Unlocking the pent up information in petabytes of video will have wide-ranging impacts on society.

This trifecta drives the next decade of tech

October 15, 2015 – 4:49 pm by Alistair 4 Comments

Big data, smart agents, and new interfaces are cool on their own. But together, they’re a virtuous cycle that shows what the next decade of tech looks like.

Can we fix representation?

August 24, 2015 – 5:54 pm by Alistair 2 Comments

Representative government is broken. But now we’re all connected, maybe syndicates can fix it?

Can tech fix our carrying capacity?

July 31, 2015 – 2:19 pm by Alistair 0 Comments

We humans invent things like sanitation, or disease resistant wheat strains, to increase our carrying capacity. But can new technology features do the same?