The New York Times has done a great job of creating a data visualisation of the spread of coronavirus pandemic across the United States. It also makes for an interesting illustration of how interconnected our societies now are:
If you’re interested at a more global level, check out the data visualisation from Washington Post.
Kashmir Hill’s account of Robert Julian-Borchak Williams’ wrongful arrest based on facial recognition provides a stark warning of the limitations of facial recognition technology.
Mr. Williams knew that he had not committed the crime in question. What he could not have known, as he sat in the interrogation room, is that his case may be the first known account of an American being wrongfully arrested based on a flawed match from a facial recognition algorithm, according to experts on technology and the law.
Benedict Evans looks at what left Zoom so well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the coronavirus pandemic but also speculates what the next big thing might be
Taking this one step further, a big part of the friction that Zoom removed was that you don’t need an account, an app or a social graph to use it: Zoom made network effects irrelevant. But, that means Zoom doesn’t have those network effects either. It grew by removing defensibility.
Ofcom has just released a report looking at Briton’s habits online. Great if you want a quick snapshot of what people are doing online, how they are served by online content providers and platforms, and their attitudes to and experiences of using the internet.
Whilst we’re on the subject of all things internet, Kaitlyn Tiffany takes a fascinating look at the intersection between My Little Pony and white nationalism…an intersection I wasn’t expecting:
Even a quick glance at the history of My Little Pony fandom serves as a valuable template for how not to build an online community. The fandom was born on 4chan, the largest den of chaos and toxic beliefs available on the internet. In 2012, a message board called /mlp/ was set up because My Little Pony conversation was taking up too much space on boards for TV and comics. It took off because there is nothing 4chan likes better than things spiraling out of control.
London is sometimes portrayed as a godless home of hedonists and technocrats so it’s interesting to find that the city is actually more religious than the rest of the country according to research from Theos:
The proportion of people identifying as religious is 62% in the capital, compared with 53% in the rest of Britain – a profile likely to be driven by immigration and diaspora communities, according to the thinktank’s report, Religious London: Faith in a Global City.
Graphic designer Milton Glaser died recently and you can get an inkling of the importance of his work in this review from Dezeen. What I found more impactful was Glaser’s run through of ten things he had learned which included the following:
Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being skeptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between skepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins. And then in a very real way, solving any problem is more important than being right.
Header image: Michael Takeo Magruder manipulates photographs from the British Library’s collection for the Imaginary Cities exhibition at the British Library, 2019.
