Reputation, reputation, reputation
Online reputation—for workers, sellers and buyers—is becoming increasingly important. But it’s hard to find all the places that reviews for different people and companies exist online. RepStamp wants to create an aggregated online reputation for sellers.
You know what else is getting a reputation? Your phone number. You’re gonna wanna read this one.
Corporate America may love robots in the workplace—but they don’t want to pay for advertising that is only consumed by bots. So they’re funding a startup to fight bots that consume ads. Maybe they should just starting paying all of us to watch them?
Sharing, Solidarity & Sustainability
“We rescue people not banks”
Peers.org is setting up city networks to connect people who are interested in leading the sharing economy. Is your city on the list? Are you interested in helping people start food service businesses? One sharing economy way to do that is by forming a kitchen incubator.
Is the co-op movement a political movement? This essay argues that it should be.
These Canadians banded together cooperatively to buy and operate a mountain ski resort.
The Singularity Approaches
A 3D printer that uses fresh ingredients, instead of plastic filaments, and prints food? Hello, Star Trek TNG.
Watch this guy teach a robot how to manipulate a knife so it doesn’t scare nearby humans.\
From Partners
Students at UNLV are building an incubator to help build a worker-owned Las Vegas. They’re currently trying to raise $900 to travel to a conference that’s being held by the USW and Mondragon. Can you kick in a couple of bucks?
Rolling Jubilee recently announced that they’ve bought & forgiven $13.5 million in medical debt.
Geeking Out
A 3D printer in Austin shot and killed two workers who were trying to print a gun, and injured a third. No, I did not make that up.
I’m not always sure I understand what tech folks are talking about when they talk about “natural language search,” but here’s one experiment in figuring it out.
What’s Going on in the Workforce?
I can’t wait until Larry McMurtry writes the seminal novel about robots herding cows in some steampunk-esque version of the Wild West…
Maybe there’s hope for higher ed after all…the father of MOOCs isn’t satisfied with his own product.
Maveric Media recently released a documentary about all the ways work is changing in the UK, particularly when it comes to technological unemployment. Here’s a segment of it that talks about how the retail sector, in particular, is changing. On a related note—Sears is turning some of its shuttered department stores into data centers.
Could Artificial Intelligence help generate leads for investigative journalists? Enquiring minds want to know…
Here’s a good first-person blog post, written by a musician, about the “tentacles” that the music industry has developed to find artists and give them exposure, but no money.
Final Thoughts
(In the future) “Refusing to make money off your own data might be as political an act as refusing to drive a car or eat meat.”
~Evgeny Morozov