Between the Noise🎯 #9: Best TED Talk of 2019, The Most Powerful Person in Silicon Valley & More
Best TED Talk of 2019 : Facebook’s Role in Brexit - and the Threat to Democracy
This TED talk is unique in itself. A journalist comes to the stage & call out executives of Facebook, Google & Twitter with names & tell them how their platforms have broken democracy. She questions whether it's actually possible to have a free and fair election ever again. In current election waves going across India, this might help us understand how a large group of people can be manipulated very easily by Social Media. It’s a real thrill to watch this. (Bonus: Read this article too where she discusses how hard it was for TED executives to put this up in the event where Facebook & Google were their sponsors)
Article: The most powerful person in Silicon Valley (Long Read)
This article is about Billionaire Masayoshi Son (CEO of SoftBank). It tell us about how grand & structured vision Son has for his ‘300-year plan’. SoftBank’s Vision Fund’s minimum investment in startups is $100 million, and in just over two years since its October 2016 debut, it’s committed more than $70 billion. Some of the facts like how Son wanted to meet executives of Arm (A Semiconductor Company) ASAP & that’s why he sent an private jet to fetch them, are mesmerizing. A very long but equally interesting read.
Article: The right to know, or not know, the data from medical research
I wasn’t aware about right to ‘not know’ until I read this. When your clinician wants to tell you about any abnormal findings in your tests and ‘no’ to your clinician, then you are expressing: the right not to know.
For the individual, the important thing is autonomy. For the researcher, it’s the burden of knowledge and a desire to help. For a clinician, it’s do no harm. For policymakers, it’s about where to draw lines: right to know or not know what, exactly?
Podcast: How Spotify Saved the Music Industry (But Not Necessarily Musicians)
Daniel Ek (Founder, Spotify), a 23-year-old Swede who grew up on pirated music, made the record labels an offer they couldn’t refuse: a legal platform to stream all the world’s music. Spotify reversed the labels’ fortunes, made Ek rich, and thrilled millions of music fans. But what has it done for all those musicians stuck in the long tail?
Documentary I liked: The Inventor (HBO)
Since I came across Theranos story I try to read/watch every piece of content created on it. It’s just fascinating to see how world's youngest self-made billionaire, heralded as the next Steve Jobs, who went out to revolutionize healthcare industry by not taking too much of patient bloods to perform multiple tests at a time, is now waiting for a Trial. She persuaded big-fames in US government to come as her company’s board, she delivered report results from other company’s blood testing machines, not from her Theranos own developed machine which she proclaimed to be a game changer in the industry.
Twitter Thread: How a climate activist is trying to save 12,000 year-old forest which is being cut for coal extraction
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