Roundup: Longitudinal research, hi-tech and lo-tech Sci-Fi, and machine learning updates
March 23, 2018
100 years people research at Google - putting the long into longitudinal research Carrie B
https://hbr.org/2014/03/googles-scientific-approach-to-work-life-balance-and-much-more
If you don't already know about Google's 100 year-long people and culture research projects, here it comes...
A rant about technology - Murray S
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Note-Technology.html
This rant about "hard" vs. "soft" science fiction reminds us that almost everything in the world is technology and technology is just how society functions. People who gate-keep the SF community because a given story doesn't have spaceships or lasers or whatever are missing the point; Hi-tech and lo-tech SF are basically the same thing: stories about people.
Aside from being a nice rant about SF what the article reminded me of are the similar debates we have in the tech industry about the technologies we use. We're all trying to build something that hopefully makes the world better (perhaps only for a small subset of the world and a localised definition of better, but still…) and whatever tech we use to get us there is the right tech. It doesn't matter if it's the newest, shiniest, top-of-hacker-news, not-quite-1.0 thing, or if it's something that's been around for ages and is much maligned by our peers. If it works, solves the problem, and we can keep delivering with it then it's good technology.
Machine Learning updates - Martyn E
https://www.youtube.com/user/keeroyz/videos
I attended a hackday at Guy's and St Thomas' earlier this week and one of my team mates was really into machine learning. I'd love to say we did some really cool hacking with AI to solve healthcare problems but alas the challenges called for more prosaic solutions. He did send me a few links to get me up-to-speed (I know nothing!) and this was amongst them. Regular, accessible updates on whats going on in Machine Learning. Thanks to Alex Y.Chan
Track of the Week - Tim H
Hysterical! Typical 80s. He can’t sing or dance. He can’t even mime. And he was fantastic live, very entertaining.