Tech reading for the weekend
The internet followed by the World Wide Web were utopian in their origins. What was once the preserve of the few is now used by billions. Wikipedia is one the great creations made possible. Today what we see ranges from ‘fake news’, hate speech with many great educational opportunities from Future Learn to the Khan Academy. All content jostles for space. Who then decides what we see? Who are the content police? Cloudflares Matthew Prince posted a thoughtful piece ‘Why We Terminated Daily Stormer’ (16/08/17)
Coming down to more routine matters. Once upon a time in the enterprise software space we kept hearing about companies who had gone Google. How many have stayed Google? Some but is their a shift? This article biased as it is is still worth reading. It gives an insight into why users might prefer Office 365 ‘Major university switches over 35,000 students from Gmail to Office 365’ (MSPower User 14/-8/17)
The success of the Internet is built on protocols. When I read Taylor Pearson excellent round up notes ‘The State of Cryptocurrency: Mid-2017 Edition’ (Hackernoon, 16/08/17) makes me think about how the internet started.
The layers of the blockchain currently being built are comparable to the current TCP/IP layer and HTTP/application layer of the internet. (Elizabeth Stark )
I sometimes struggle to understand the Blockchain and the Bitcoin currency it allows but Taylor explains it well with humility and encourages me to learn more.
Having been a Foursquare Swarm user for many years I enjoyed reading how it’s revealing itself as life logging app. Product designer Greg Dougherty does a great job describing ‘How we designed Foursquare Swarm 5.0 Revamping our lifelog app’ (10/08/17) One feature that Swarm could lose is the coin rewards. If Swarm wants to become more about life logging then it needs to cut the noisy distractions like the coin drop.
Finishing off not with a film but instead my favourite TV series; Halt Catch Fire. Series four starts today. The characters are grappling with the growth of the internet. The series is like a tech history capsule as it alludes to so many tech developments with a huge amount of personal drama. People get hurt, betrayed, lose their life and money but through it all the technology leads them on. Get up to speed. Check this out
Have a great tech weekend.
