What company is the next Facebook? How about time-based voting power? Can robots become conscious? These and other questions answered
The weekdays are all about news, interviews and analysis to keep up to date with the latest events in tech and help you understand the industry. The weekends? That is the time for ideas.
We have curated five articles from across the tech media landscape that e27 believes are more about industry thought-leadership than hard news.
Enjoy!
[The New York Times]Why Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook
Remember the mini-controversy when grandma got on Facebook? Or someone under the age of 16? Or when teenagers stopped posting to save themselves from snooping parents? (On a sidenote, that fact might have given birth to Snapchat). Now, those are just accepted as parts of the network.
The New York Time’s tech columnist Farhad Manjoo thinks he has spotted another company heading for this future: Instagram. Any e27 reader can put 2+2 together on this idea: The next Facebook might be…owned by Facebook.
[Harvard Business Review] What If Investors Who Held Their Shares Longer Got More Voting Power?
The argument is pitched towards corporates, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds (Temasek makes an appearance) but I see no reason it can’t be adapted to VCs and startups. It rewards investors who find diamonds in rough whilst simultaneously protecting startups from investor shenanigans later in their lifecycle.
Also Read: [Discussion] What is more important for startup success? The product? Or the founder?
The most basic form of the idea is this: A company will issue 100 shares per day over 10 years. So a company has 365,000 shares to give away. Let’s say two investors invest the same dollar value but one expects returns in 2 years while the other is willing to wait for ten years. The ‘ten-years’ investor would sell 73,000 shares to the ‘two-years’ investor leaving the influence at 292,000 to 73,000. As the article states:
“The interests of the investors who have provided the company with more valuable capital will swamp its influence — appropriately.”
[Wired] TED Day Three: The Mind-Scrambling TED Talk I Won’t Stop Sharing
Can AI ever be developed to become conscious? No. According to Cognitive Neuroscientist Anil Seth, who spoke at TED’s keynote event this week. According to Seth, being conscious is deeply intertwined with being a living creature.
“My research shows that consciousness has less to do with pure intelligence and more to do with our nature as living and breathing organisms,” he said.
Can an sea cucumber beat the world champion GO player? No. But it is still far more conscious than that computer.
[e27] Growth of cloud services in Asia Pacific is looking good, but will talent gap become a deal-breaker?
A new report said Asia outperforms the rest of the world when it comes to cloud infrastructure (If anyone visits Seoul and then Los Angeles, this would not be overly surprising).
Also Read: Meet the VC: Rahul Khanna of Trifecta Capital says India still suffers from a trust deficit
However, there is also a huge gap between the top performing locations (Hong Kong) and the bottom (Vietnam). In the West, the difference between say, Germany and Brazil, is not as steep. So, is this a problem for Asia’s cloud industry?
[The Guardian] How eBooks lost their shine: ‘Kindles now look clunky and unhip’
Do you know what I carry around in my backpack? A copy of Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes. It makes my commute home the best part of my day. Do you know what I have on my desk, untouched but waiting my love? A copy of Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.
Do you know what I have sitting on my shelf, gathering dust with no apparent use in sight? My Kindle.
—
The post 5 articles about ideas to enjoy over the weekend appeared first on e27.
Source: e27