Cycles of Knowledg

Cristóbal Sciutto Rodríguez writes in The Inexact Sciences collective blog about Cycles of Knowledge, how various forms of knowledge are represented in different domains, and the agents of those domains who transform knowledge between the forms

POQA

 POQA, a hierarchy of needs for dynamic action and revolutionary thinking

Progress: Movement, change of the status quo, creating new options

Optimism: Belief that things can change, openness to new ideas, avoidance of fear-based decisionmaking

Quality: As good as or better than state of the art, thoughtfulness

Abundance: Availability of every possible option, freedom of choice

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (and similar) still can apply as prerequisites. The needs above can be thought of as a version of Maslow's Self-Actualization.

Google's new campus design proposal

Google's new Mountain View campus: blurring the lines between the natural, the urban and the corporate.

Learn to Program

Starting out or polishing your skills as a web developer is easier than ever with the growing amount of resources available. However, it's not always easy to find these resources and harder to find high quality resources.

To do my part, I've started compiling a list of courses, books and guides for programmers of all skill levels. I hope this may be an aid to programmers and welcome any feedback or additions.

Methods of Control and Automation of Humans by Machines

Business models like Uber are replacing middle management with software.

This is leading, first of all, to a situation where humans are being told what to do by machines (an API). As techniques like machine learning become more and more prevalent, the decision-making as to what humans to dispatch and for which tasks will be made more and more by machines. This is why making sure our artificial intelligence is safe is exceedingly important in the mid-term future.

Secondly, when their workforce is already being controlled by an API, companies have the latitude to move that labor also to machines, making human jobs obsolete. This will also be a big topic in the near to mid future, as robots start to prepare our food, drive our cars, and even greet our hotel guests.

San Francisco, USA

San Francisco. City of fog, startups and good hospitality.

In early March Brad and Matt from sendwithus proposed a crazy idea - that I fly to San Francisco to more actively support company growth during the whirlwind Y Combinator program. I scrambled to book the flights and clear my schedule and I was on my way.

The flights were a long 14 hours, wearing me out by the time we touched down at SFO. An upbeat Matt was waiting for me at the baggage pick-up and we headed back to Fort SWU as it was called, the house in Sunnyvale where I would spend the next weeks. It turns out our awesome teammates had cooked us steaks in the meantime! I would soon find that this great hospitality was just par for the course for these guys.

The next day we started early, squeezing in a couple hours of climbing at Planet Granite before going to pick up Wes, our newest team member. Linley then proceeded to show us a bit of the city, starting with Red's Java House and the Bay Bridge and then making our way to the Golden Gate. Along the way we also stumbled upon the Mozilla offices and checked out the Yoda statue at the Lucasfilm headquarters.

The next few days were spent getting acquainted with the startup life in the suburbs. Coding the new template gallery during the day, cooking together in the evenings and then continuing coding into the night. We played sports, hit the beach and lifted weights together to stay active and got our drink on once or twice with the other startups in the YC batch. My visit coincided with Demo Day, the time for startups to pitch some of the most important investors in Silicon Valley, so we got to hear Matt's presentation evolve from the first musings to the final, polished delivery.

Sunnyvale is right in the middle of the valley so both Apple and Google are just a short drive away. We managed to hit both during my trip, with a tour sampling the excellent lunch at Google as well!

As if that wasn't enough, my mom and her partner took the opportunity of me being on the west coast to drive down for a visit. We did some sightseeing and tried the sharable plates at the Fog City Restaurant.

Overall, a mix of the city sights, great people and geekery all set on the backdrop of the hotbed of entrepreneurship that is the San Francisco Bay Area. My favorite vacation yet.