I recently appeared on a podcast with my friend and tutor for my Master’s, Jean-François Nantel, where we talked at some length about web3 and the aspects to take notice of. I really enjoy the format, and I hope you will too. It’s in French, with my ‘Allo ‘Allo accent, but it’s full of interesting tidbits. If you understand French, you should check it out here.

In this essay, I wanted to follow up on some of the things I wrote in Part 1, give a little context, and highlight some of the changes that have happened since. If you’re vigilant, you’ll notice that the world has standardised on Web3 and no longer tends to use Web 3.0. I have complied! I could make a joke about centralisation here, but I’ll resist.

I also wanted to discuss the “other side” of the technology and its use for good. I’m sure this is a more considerable discussion. I might dive into that another time.

I hope you enjoy this essay, tell me if you do or don’t. It’s easy, reply or ping me on Twitter (@virek), or you can find me on LinkedIn.

Web3 Part 1 Follow Up

I wrote in Web 3.0 or Web 1.0 in sheep’s clothing? at a time when I was thinking about all of the different aspects of the web and how they had changed over the years, and what I thought it might become. There’s a lot going on in my brain, and I thought that essay would help me clarify a few things. I’m not sure it did, but even little progress is progress. I guess what it did achieve, though, is that I have a clearer view of the various composite parts of web3.

However, one thing that came out of that reflection is a sceptical view of the unregulated crypto world. I (sort of) didn’t mean for it to sound as negative as it did, but to be fair, If you’ve been following what’s going on in that Wild West corner of the internet, you’ll have noticed that scams, frauds and downright theft are becoming a severe problem, as well as the new trend of crypto-romance scams1.

Another aspect you’ll have no doubt noted is that governments are starting to get serious in their thinking on how to regulate transactions and how to kerb the more significant and larger amounts of energy required to conduct transactions at a fraction of the efficiency of traditional systems. I know that the algorithm is slated to change to reduce the energy requirements substantially, but I doubt that it will have any meaningful effect for a long time yet. Take Ethereum, their planned move to ‘proof of stake’2 from the ‘proof of work’ algorithm started over seven years ago and still hasn’t been completed. Kudos for the foresight from the Ethereum founders, but that particular problem seems to be extremely difficult to solve.

Also, look at this article from the BBC, where they went onsite to see one of the mining farms in Kazakhstan. You might be surprised to learn what is needed and what cost to the environment this trend is. Here’s a link to the full documentary, Our World - Kazakhstan’s Crypto-Boom?

The other aspect that I left hanging without really taking sides on is the state of the current NFT market.

The image above represents what the current NFT market looks like today. And again, you may shrug and tell me that isn’t that what all commerce of art, collectables and the like is? And to some extent, that’s correct. The real value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it. The difference in the current NFT setup is the gambling and Ponzi-scheme structure, as discussed in the last essay:

The other elephant in the room over cryptocurrencies are the obvious parallels to pyramid or Ponzi schemes. Several articles in various reputable media outlets like the FT etc., show how much of the “value” of cryptocurrencies and NFTs is speculation. Speculation that requires new entrants into the market to prop up the value higher up the chain. With the clear Achilles heel, if the supply of those at the bottom of the stack —i.e., those who lose their investments— stop pumping money to the higher level of the stack, the whole thing will most likely come crashing down.

And again, for all the bluster and hype, there is no getting away from the fact that the system is lossy on the whole and has been single-handedly responsible for an increase in efficiency to run anonymous ransomware operations that have been responsible for closing down hospitals, disrupting critical infrastructure, and extorting banks, to the tune of over $5B a year. I urge you to read this lecture from David Rosenthal at Stanford University. This site is an invaluable resource to keep up with some of this.

Suffice to say; I’m sceptical of the solution looking for a problem, aka Blockchain, as it is in its current guise for many reasons; decentralisation (it’s not), energy efficiency (dangerously inefficient), anonymity (not quite), speed (ZX81 rapidity), security (at the whim of someone else currently, as well as contributing to a security nightmare for business and public services).

Following on from the discussion —and criticism— on cryptocurrencies, it would be remiss of me not to talk about Central Bank Digital Currencies or CDBCs. These are digital currencies that have some similarities with cryptocurrencies but are fundamentally different from a technical, regulatory and implementation point of view.

One thing that may have escaped your attention is that the Caribbean has and is at the forefront of this technology. Rather than following the word, we find ourselves leading the world. That in and of itself is, in my mind, proof of the possibilities and opportunities that exists here, despite what you may think. Homegrown digital currency companies like Bitt Inc. are leading the world and are developing projects outside the region to Africa and beyond. We are also the home to the world’s first economic union CDBC. In this context, the question becomes “What can Europe learn from us?” rather than the other at round!

Let’s look at a couple of examples in the Caribbean and what they might mean for people living in the Caribbean.

The Caribbean has traditionally suffered from economic underdevelopment, leading to a wholesale stalling of digitisation for the last ten or so years. Where some countries had started their digital transformation that then got a kick in the butt by COVID-19, accelerating those efforts, here, COVID-19 started the process from scratch in most instances. There are several consequences of that economic underdevelopment that I won’t go into here. I’m not an economist, and I’m not sure it’s worth going over old and stale ground. We all know what we’re capable of here and why it hasn’t happened yet too!

However, a couple of things are of interest when talking about the technology of money. According to a CIGI-Ipsos survey in 20173, around 65% of the eligible population (children and adults) were unbanked. A large cash economy has difficulties, notwithstanding a sizeable informal economy that provides no receipts for government or public services, let alone access to ICT-based products and services.

CDBCs promise to resolve some of these structural problems, with access to payments systems and pseudo-banks for people that have traditionally or intentionally avoided the banking system. They also provide security for cash payments, withdrawals, and transfers. That last service is more important in the Caribbean than in other regions due to the distribution of populations around the different territories in the region and beyond.

Additionally, I note that remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean are estimated to be around USD 103 billion4, with Jamaica alone counting for over USD 3 billion. Remittances that are sent need to be transformed into cash, often by relying on convenient but expensive services such as MoneyGram or Western Union. The middleman always gets his cut.

One such CDBC currently in public beta (to use a tech expression) is DCash. DCash is the official CDBC of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU). Having partnered with several of the local banks and businesses in the OECS, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) has launched its pilot program in Antigua and Barbuda, The Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines with Anguilla to join the list after the initial test period.

From a technical point of view, DCash uses an open-source blockchain co-developed by IBM, called Hyperledger Fabric, a “permissioned” blockchain, ensuring only known parties are participants, thereby contributing to the immutability and the reduced risk of fraud and theft of assets on the blockchain. It does remain to be seen if it can scale to multiple thousands of transactions per second that traditional financial systems have been doing for decades. That is just a matter of technological maturity rather than anything else, in my view. No one believed the limited capability of the original iPhone would be the cornerstone of practically all that is digital today, either.

On a regulatory note, CDBCs are regulated and controlled by their issuing central banks by their very nature. In the case of the Sand Dollar —another CDBC that was the world’s first— the Central Bank of The Bahamas (CBB) is the regulating authority. The CBB authorise financial institutions and retailers to accept the Sand Dollar and handle the valuation and volatility of the currency. This should, in theory, provide a basis for trust in the use of the technology.

However, implementing these CDBCs is not easy, as the recent problems with DCash have been highlighted. For context, DCash transactions have been suspended for over a month5, seemingly due to a digital certificate issue. At this point, it would be easy to point out these difficulties and say, “See, it won’t work!”. But to do so is to ignore the substantial potential for a project of this scale and importance. I do not doubt that the currency will be back online soon and that the teething implementation problems will largely be resolved. I am also confident that other issues will be found and will be corrected. I am also a firm believer that the broader adoption by larger countries and currency unions will be streamlined as a direct result of the in-situ PoCs happening in the Caribbean.

If these projects are successful, as it seems they will be, the transformational changes to the Caribbean economy could be profound and in a good way. For example, cross-border trade in digital and physical goods could be unlocked from current restrictions, complexity and costs, not to mention other applications (remember Blockchain Hurricane Protection from CREAD)6. Don’t just take my word for it either, How blockchain accelerates small business growth and development.7

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

Visit the website to read all the archives.

6

I wrote about it here:

The Future is Digital

Digital Commerce. Blockchain (again)

Listen now | If you listened to the podcast version, you’d note I added some music. I broke out my skills in Garageband to make a quick accompanying jingle to spice up the podcast. Let me know what you think. 🎵 On to this week’s topics. I’m astonished I didn’t get roasted for completely dissing Blockchain as a useless technology a couple of weeks ago. I thought I’d t…

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3 years ago · 1 like · Matthew Cowen

After my recent hiatus from writing, I’m feeling good about writing a few essays this year on some of the emerging topics that have captured the imagination of the technorati. I’ll also be diving into some other issues that, whilst not specifically about tech, have such a tech element to them they can be considered tech subjects.

If there is one overriding theme, it is that tech, or digital if you prefer, is sticking its nose into almost everything. As tech enthusiasts, we’ve been used to being sidelined or kept in the corner where we could express our undying love for our tech and not affect anything around us by accident. That is no longer the case.

Too many articles discuss how tech’s disruption has caused more unintended ill than benefits.

Does this mean that all tech is terrible? No, no. Of course not. But what it does mean is that we as tech people need to educate ourselves on nearly everything else to comprehend the world around us we are affecting, and perhaps have some insight into bringing on board those that can help us in their specialist subjects. I’ll get into that some other time, but suffice to say that the future will be equally tricky and fascinating.

Upcoming Podcast

On several occasions, I’ve been a guest on Michele Marius’s podcast, the ICT Pulse Podcast. We recently started recording what we hope will be an interesting conversation around a topic that feels far off for many of us in the Caribbean but is perhaps closer than we realise.

I’ll let Michele announce and release these before giving the game away.

I wanted to say how much I enjoy this format —an open discussion on a specific subject in approximately one hour.

Look out for it on your podcast app of choice soon, and do give us some feedback or pointers into things we may have missed or poorly explained. I’d love you to contribute.

Web 3.0

There has been a lot of interest of late over this thing called Web 3.0. It is hard to accurately describe what it is precisely because no one definition exists. Web 3.0 is whatever you want to suit your world view of the tech environment. I wanted to jot some initial thoughts I’ve had and submit them for discussion. I don’t pretend to be an expert in all of this. I’m trying to figure this out too. I’m just doing it out in the open here, from the perspective of a longtime tech expect.

Of course, there are some common elements in all definitions, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Most people agree that Web 3.0 is a collection of new technologies that will provide a fundamentally different experience on the internet from the world of Web 2.0. Some of those technologies you’ll have heard of or even have dabbled in, like Cryptocurrencies, NFTs and VR/AR.

“But Juanita never comes to The Black Sun anymore. Partly, she's pissed at Da5id and the other hackers who never appreciated her work. But she has also decided that the whole thing is bogus. That no matter how good it is, the Metaverse is distorting the way people talk to each other, and she wants no such distortion in her relationships.” — Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

I’ve avoided the early 90’s noun coined by Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash, Metaverse, purposefully because I have a feeling that, for the moment, it is just one massive land grab on the internet to get it “out there” that you are the most critical player in this field. Again, I’m not judging it as a concept. Even I declared having seen a part of the future when Marshmallow performed in Fortnite to 27 million fans in my essay The New Reality. Still, it is a little cynical in my view for companies to pretend that is it the next big coming purely for the benefit of themselves solely.

I’ll leave you with one last thought. I wrote about Fortnite hosting a live mega-concert for Marshmellow, with something like 10.7 million concert-goers — not counting the countless Twitch streamers (estimated at a total of 27 million people all told). I wondered then, as I do now, how could this technology be used for more “serious business” purposes. I was a regular attendee of Microsoft Conferences over the last 13/14 years, conferences that attract up-to 25 000 attendees in one place I have a badge and a letter to prove it 🏅. So how could Microsoft replace these conferences with an entirely digital experience? One thought that comes to mind is precisely that blueprint trialled by Fornite.

However, let’s start with the technology.

Web 3.0 is based on three technologies slowly gaining ground in capability and notoriety. Blockchain (and hence cryptocurrencies and NFTs), Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality. I am starting with the former in this essay.

Despite different use cases and outcomes, I tend to group Cryptocurrencies and NFTs in essentially the same basket. I know they’re not the same but bear with me. These technologies are based on Blockchain tech, and honestly, I genuinely think that Blockchain is interesting tech with some compelling use cases:

the underlying technology of these currencies is actually quite interesting and has place for use in Digital Transformation, hence why I’d like to talk about it in this week’s issue. That technology is, of course, Blockchain, or as it was originally known as, Block Chain. — Blockchain ≭ Cryptocurrency

Blockchain’s current problem is that it is both slow and energetically inefficient. Scaling Blockchain to applications that require hundreds of thousands of transactions per minute (banking anyone?) is currently a pipe-dream, despite advances being made regularly. But a little like Linux Desktop, it’s always ‘coming soon’. From an energy standpoint, it seems a little immoral to me that extraordinarily greedy systems, from an electrical perspective, operate without the slightest regard for the environment.

Take a look at what happened in Kosovo and in China,1 2 where the governments have banned crypto mining because of the strain on the electrical grid and illegal electrical supply diversions being employed by the less scrupulous. There are attempts at cleaning the face of this technology. For example, an initiative to carbon offset NFTs is a thing3 but is unlikely to have broad appeal or affect the energy requirements of Blockchains materially.

The other elephant in the room over cryptocurrencies are the obvious parallels to pyramid or Ponzi schemes. Several articles in various reputable media outlets like the FT etc. show how much of the “value” of cryptocurrencies and NFTs is speculation. Speculation that requires new entrants into the market to prop up the value higher up the chain. With the clear Achilles heel, if the supply of those at the bottom of the stack —i.e., those who lose their investments— stop pumping money to the higher level of the stack, the whole thing will most likely come crashing down.

We should additionally consider the two central tenants of the “reason” for Blockchain. Decentralisation and Immutability.

Starting with the latter, immutability is the unique property of an entry in the distributed ledger (we’ll get to that in a minute) that, once written, is permanent. That is, it can’t be altered. Let’s look at that a little closer.

The most popular Blockchain of the moment is Ethereum. Countless projects have been built on Ethereum to mint and distribute stable coins, CBDCs, NFTs and unbacked cryptocurrencies. Late last year, a bug was discovered in Polygon, a scaling project of Ethereum. It was such a severe bug as to allow all assets to be put at risk of being taken away. Stolen is the technical term. Twenty-four billion dollars were at stake.4 And, Polygon paid bug bounties that amounted to nearly $3.5 million5, but not before 2 million dollars were lost. This is not a one-off either. Several “hard fork” instances have had to be enacted to save the Blockchain from total pillage, thus resetting the original assets to $0.

And good luck in getting redress if it’s your asset that was stolen.

This brings us to the second tenant, decentralisation.

The growing backlash against “Big Tech” has fuelled a view that stripping any one entity of absolute power is the answer to abusive centralisation. Meta (who are you kidding Facebook?), Alphabet (née Google), Apple and Microsoft, amongst others, are all accused of abusing their power and essentially rent-seeking6 their users.

The idea behind decentralising the Blockchain is to prevent it from being domiciled on any one platform or property. The apparent advantages are resilience and allegiance. By definition, a distributed system is more resilient as failures in any single node are unlikely to disrupt the whole. Similarly, by decentralising the system, if one participating actor becomes abusive or otherwise falls out of favour, it’s easy to turn off the tap and squeeze them out of the system.

But what most people don’t realise is that this distributed nature of Blockchain is mostly a myth, and at best, being grossly overstated.

The issue lies in using the APIs necessary to build Blockchains such as the aforementioned Ethereum. There is only a tiny amount of APIs used currently, with prevalent ones like Alchemy being used by many. These APIs oversee the read/writes to the ledger. Other APIs used to pull information from the Blockchain are developed and run by a minuscule population. That is, a lot of trust is being placed on a tiny group for pretty much all Blockchain interaction.

Additionally, if you want to buy or sell assets, like NFTs, again, only a handful of platforms exist currently. You may have heard of OpenSea, for example. They account for around 95% of the NFT market.

Then ask yourself the question about where all this stuff runs? On the cloud, of course. But who’s cloud? Amazon’s and Microsoft’s, for the most part.

There are instances of whole markets becoming inoperable —i.e., no trading, no consuming— during AWS cloud outages.7 Thankfully they are not that often, but when they do occur, the inconvenience is enormous.

Then remember where the actual data for the NFT is stored. Generally on someone’s shared drive on a cloud drive service (at best) or a home-built server somewhere, god forbid.

This doesn’t sound as decentralised as perhaps you first thought.

To be clear, I’m playing Devil’s Advocate here deliberately to inform you and to provoke discussion. I’m crypto-neutral for the time being. I can see huge benefits, particularly to the unbanked or the vulnerable that are slowly being excluded from taking part in society. I can see the “value” of digital assets in the same way a 16th Century oil painting by some obscure bloke can be worth millions. Why not?

But without proper oversight, redress in the case of fraud/theft and backing from governments, I can only see risk and potential for propping up devastating illegal activity with my blessing. It’s no surprise drug dealers are turning to crypto. I can’t morally take that position and refuse to prop up Ponzi schemes.

In the following essay, I’ll get into the other aspects of Web 3.0, namely AR, VR and a few additional thoughts. Let me know if you have anything to contribute. It would be my pleasure.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interested in digital tech and its effects. Feel free to contribute. A little share from time to time would also be most appreciated.

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Visit the website to read all the archives. Have a great day.

I have been on a hiatus for the last few months for several reasons. Most notably, I caught the dreaded writer’s block and wasn’t able to write anything that wasn’t regurgitated and ill-thought-out junk. In my defense, I’ve been doing a few projects that have taken up a lot of my time and pulled my focus away from this endeavor. More on that in the future, perhaps.

I know as a writer on the internet, that shouldn’t matter. I should churn out post after post because that’s how the online world works if you want the algorithm to work. Sadly, that’s not how I work or align my priorities. I’ve always strived to provide value in my writing and analysis, and I have largely succeeded in doing that. But these past few months have been complicated for myriad reasons (global pandemic, anyone?).

I think I’m getting back on track, and I hope to kick-start the writing again as it is something that I profoundly enjoy in that masochistic way only writers will understand. It drives me crazy, and it is such a cognitive effort for someone with a condition like mine, but I am compelled to do it for better or for worse.

When I started this newsletter, I had ambitions of producing something that organisations across the Caribbean could rely on for timely, nuanced, and practical analysis of the burgeoning field of Digital Transformation. That didn’t quite work out, and my writing struggled to find its target and nail it head-on. That has more to do with my mental state rather than the quality of my writing, or at least that’s what I tell myself.

I tried to diversify the offering by narrating the writing via podcast that I started in February 2020. Initially, it went well, but eventually became a burden, requiring a lot of time to put something together that was both ‘listenable’ and digestible —I don’t have the most Radio DJ friendly voice in the world—, for what was, on average, around two thousand words each time. That translates to around 10-15 minutes when I speak at my usual pace.

But as I learned, most people don’t realise that 10-15 minutes of recording is around 3,4, or even 5 hours of editing, structuring, chaptering, imaging, and uploading. It is not something you can do if you have many other priorities in life. I also learned that despite assurances to the contrary, the download/listen rate was low compared to the open/read rate of the raw text in email form.

I’m not sure what to make of that because the idea of the podcast was to make it more available and easier to consume, but it didn’t add anything to what I’d built with the text-only newsletter. So I decided to drop it and see if that affected anything. It didn’t. Perhaps I should do it as YouTube… I’m kidding.

So what does all this mean going forward?

One thing, I refuse to let this newsletter die. I think it has the seeds of something good and has an opportunity to provide value for its readers. Additionally, I hope to change things up a little and make it both easier on you and easier on me to produce. As I hinted above, writing is something I have to do, but I struggle with it for many reasons, some cognitive and some motivational. I want to find a better formula for research, writing, and delivery.

I’m not entirely sure what that is for the moment, but I have a few ideas, and I’m actively discussing things with people I trust.

If all goes well, I’ll re-launch in the new year. I plan to provide even more detailed analysis and more value down the line. However, I thought I’d take this opportunity to solicit a little feedback to gauge how you’d like the newsletter to be organised.

There’s a (very) short questionnaire here:

Feedback

The first question helps me get a sense of length and frequency preferences?. More frequent? Less so? More text? Less text?

The second question is open for general feedback, and I’m cool with all suggestions. I’m leaving it open until the 16th of January 2022.

Please, if you can, spare a minute to click the button, even if it’s only to answer the first question.

Regardless, thanks for reading. It means a lot to me.

I’ll be back sooner rather than later. In the meantime, may I wish you a Happy New Year 2022.

Matthew

In this essay, I explore the meaning and consequences of Computational Computing. It’s a deep reflection on the state of tech currently and a work in progress. Some of it might not be coherent or have a conclusion, but it is all how my mind is thinking about the world today.

I have to say, overall, I’m more optimistic than I am pessimistic. Not that you could tell from this piece. 😁

What do you think? Hit reply or post in the comments.

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We’re entering the era of computational everything.

For many of us in the IT industry or those of us who are closely related to tech, it comes as little surprise. But what is surprising is just how much “computational” is enhancing and augmenting our capacity as humans.

Steve Jobs famously said that computers were bicycles of the mind. He quoted a study in Scientific American, where the Condor was outclassed by a human using a bicycle in terms of efficiency (distance travelled versus calories used). Humans were classed well below average without the bicycle. This is what computational-everything is exactly like.

Much of what we do today, and have been doing over the last couple of decades or so with computers, has largely relied on skill. Your raw talent or your tenacity have generally determined if you have become highly skilled or an expert in your chosen domain. Malcolm Gladwell’s 10000 hours principle.

But computational doesn’t mean computing. Let’s have a look at what I mean by computational.

Computational beginnings

Before computers were the ubiquitous tools we all interact with in modern times, with much work completed manually. Simple tools developed over hundreds, if not thousands of years, enhanced calculations and reduced errors. From the abacus to the slide rule, these basic augmentation systems had a profound impact on human’s ability to complete more and more complex tasks.

Moving forward, the first computers —in the modern sense of the definition— like ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) or CNC (Complex Number Calculator)1 pathed the way for people and businesses to exploit their powerful and rapid algorithms to produce results faster and with fewer errors than teams of humans. Business ledgers rapidly took advantage of the new possibilities and these have essentially stayed the same since then. Accounting applications today, despite being much faster, are ostensibly no different from the early versions, save a few bells and whistles.

Modern computers, or more precisely modern CPUs, have evolved to such an extent that an entirely new way of computing is now possible. Hence, the term Computational chosen

And once again, ARM is at the forefront of this revolution in computational implementations. Based on ARM designs, Apple’s in-house designed and developed M1 processors that were recently revealed and are used in its line of Mac computers as well as the new iPad Pro features a 16-core Neural Engine —the hardware required for Machine Learning. The computational advantages, the bicycle for the mind if you like, are startling, allowing developers and scientists to imagine uses beyond what used to be possible.

We’re starting to see today’s applications gain some of that capability in mundane productivity applications like Microsoft Word or in writing augmentation applications like Grammarly. Translations tools are only just starting to show their promise, and tools like DeepL produce text so good that only the pickiest natives can spot errors…in multiple languages too!

The bicycle for writing, the bicycle for … Just about anything we will do on computers is upon us.

Computational photography

A few years ago this new era of computational photography kicked off with the introduction of applications that could suggest ameliorations and more for your photos. Apps designed to enhance your meh photos into something presentable.

Portrait Mode, Studio Lighting, these computational photography aids, let us take photos of subjects in ways that were prohibitive or expensive. Computational photography has only just started to scratch at the surface of what is going to be possible. Take a look at framing for example. Framing is an integral part of photography skills. Learning how to Frame an image is often the difference between a good photo and a great photo.

New devices and apps will soon tell you ‘how’ to frame the image. The phone fine-tuned to analyse in realtime the image touching the sensor and calculating in a matter of a split-second that the tree on the left would look better a little less at the edge, or that the face orientation would be better slightly turned more to the right and aligned on the right ⅔ line, prompting you to tell the subject to turn a little right.

That’s not all. The apps will post-process previously taken photos with the eye of a seasoned expert, extracting not only the optimal image quality based on exposure, temperature, and a few other basic metrics easily adjusted, but by image enhancements using Machine Learning to digitally enhance otherwise lost parts of the scenery (Pixelmator already does this to some extent). But it will frame the photo better, suggest or automatically apply a degree of touch up only the most trained and experienced could do in hours of work, in a fraction of a second. The edit notes all saved so that any one or more, separately can be removed or modified manually.

Computational audio

Just this week, Apple introduced Spatial Audio to its music streaming service Apple Music. Spatial audio enhances the separation between voices and instruments to provide a more “inside the music” feel to your listening. For now, these tracks are limited to a few thousand in the catalogue, with more on the way soon. But in the not too distant future, computational audio will be capable of real-time post-processing to enhance the audio you feed it.

Suddenly old tracks or tracks recorded on the master tapes in mono will gain stereo or spatial audio simply by request.

Currently, Spatial Audio is a bit hit-and-miss, as it requires a good mix from a good producer. Not all are that good. Soon, computational audio for music tracks will auto-analyse and re-mix music to sound better with little human intervention.

Other forms of audio, hearing aids, or headphones, will all gain capabilities that augment the experience. Purists may baulk at this, possibly with reason, but it is an inevitability that will be widely welcomed by those that are just looking for a decent sound. Those with hearing issues will rejoice.

The computational audio applications don’t stop at playback, recording may be fundamentally affected too. Microsoft and Apple both include microphones that automagically enhance the voice audio for online meetings. Possibly exacerbated by the pandemic, but the perfect testbed for even more integration of CPU and microphone to provide a better and simpler recording experience. 

Anyone who has run a podcast will tell you how the microphone setup is important for the sound quality of the recording and hence the quality of the show.

Apple’s WWDC keynote featured just such an application with Voice Isolation mode. It showed a leaf blower just behind the video conferencer being completely obscured by the computational audio application. A “coming soon” feature that can only get better and processor and programming experience increase. Conversely, it also features Wide Spectrum mode for when you want all the sounds included.

Computational everything

And this is where this essay is leading. Too much time, effort, or words spilt on Artificial Intelligence, and how the robots are going to take over the world do us no good. In some sense, yes they are, of course. But that doesn’t automatically mean the world will be ruled and driven entirely by them. What it means is rather more subtle. Possibly more of the framework I outlined above. By having computational everything, much of our lives can be enhanced and augmented, the bicycle for…, if you wish.

Autonomous cars are a long way off still, by computational driving is already here and will get better. Lane Assist, Park Assist and the various cruise-control augmentations are nothing, if not computational driving.

Even the most mundane of products can be augmented by liberal CPU usage. Your washing machine for example designed to reduce the water and detergent required simply applying ML to the load in the drum. Analysing (chemically) the water coming in, the type of detergent, the clothes, and their makeup, Cotton or other, this bicycle for washing machines would substantially contribute to more efficient usage of scarce resources and perhaps even better control the rejected “dirty” water.

Without writing a list-ickle, I’m sure you yourself can see a plethora of bicycle of the … applications.

Computational evil

It would be remiss of me not to discuss the negative side of this coming wave. As in all technology, not only does it enhance those with good intentions, but also those with bad intentions. And those with evil intentions get to ride on the bicycle too.

Augmented, or enhanced, everything means exactly that. Enhanced crime. Enhanced Racism. Enhanced Sexism, etc. You cannot have the good without the bad.

The Internet has shown us this.

I’ve been an Internet fanboy for as long as I can remember —at least, as long as I learnt there was a big network of computers that we could all use, connecting us closer together.

It was fun in the 90s. I had to connect from the university network, JANET, to NIST (National Institue of Standards and Technology), then out to the big bad world of what was still essentially ARPANET.

The World Wide Web was still in an experimental state in CERN. I hadn’t even heard of it at that point. We used the Internet like animals; terminal commands, long waits, FTP, Gopher, WAIS, and Usenet, none of the graphically oriented interfaces that we see today. As I fell in love with the Internet and I stumbled upon an early copy of Wired Magazine in 1993, imported into my native UK. I fully bought into the idea that the Internet was nothing but good for the world.

It would connect us, it would open our eyes to other things, would educate us, and it would even feed us. It would completely revolutionise the way the world works, for the better. It was the bicycle for the social experience.

I had no idea at the time that the very fact that the world became more and more connected, actually drives us more and more apart.

We, as humans, can comfortably ingest, process, and analyse only a few cognitively demanding elements simultaneously. At school, you would have only a handful of friends, and only one or two you could call a best friend. If like me, you were in a large secondary school of around a thousand pupils, it was overwhelming to be in a general assembly (with the whole school in one room). The morning going to school, with its never-ending procession of pupils arriving, break time with the crowd pilling out of the building to run around on the playground. All these people surrounding us are too much for one human to get to know, either intimately or on a cursory level.

The Internet completely explodes that model, and we are confronted with tens of thousands, if not millions of possible interactions whilst connected. Twitter, Facebook, Clubhouse, and their indifference of their capacity to overwhelm us is creating a different type of human culture that is, in my view, detrimental to the world. Polarisation, populism, the immediacy of need. These are all consequences that are not propice for the sain development of the world and a direct result of Computational Socialising. 

I wish I had understood this when I was first becoming charmed with the Internet. Perhaps I could have contributed to doing something to protect us from its inevitable negative consequences. Funnily enough, it was all there then for us to see. Read Neuromancer, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

It’s a dystopian view of the Computational Everything world I’m discussing in this essay.

I hope you liked the topic. Let me know.

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

I got on Clubhouse so you don't have to

I recently got an invitation to Clubhouse from a friend. Thanks, you know who you are 🙏 I have some ...er, thoughts. Read on for those.

I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news first as is customary. There’s no podcast version of this essay yet. It’s actually a very time-consuming process, and I’ve had a lot on my plate recently. Furthermore, the stats show that it isn’t as popular as some had led me to believe. I’m thinking of changing up the format and doing a more “traditional” podcast that complements these essays, but I haven’t quite finished thinking that through. I’d love a regular partner to podcast with. Let me know if you’re interested.

Now on to the good news … well, for me anyway. I got my first COVID-19 vaccine today and looking forward to the next dose. It’s the least one can do to protect the vulnerable around me. I hope you get yours soon too.

On to this week’s essay.

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Thoughts on Clubhouse

I got on to Clubhouse, so you don’t have to. It is actually a fascinating idea but one I can’t quite adhere to fully for numerous reasons, some of which I’ll dive into here. 

But first, whenever I jump into a room on Clubhouse, there is literally nothing that couldn’t be better served in podcast format. The ability to stop/start when you like, the offline capability and the accompanying show notes that often point you to supporting materials, are all clearly missing from Clubhouse. This has been confirmed by the fact that many presenters are actually recording and publishing their “talks” through podcasts and YouTube post-room.

In fact, that’s the primary reason I got on the platform, to try to understand its relation to podcasts and to see if it would disrupt them as so many have been predicting. I’m happy to say that no, Clubhouse will not put a nail in the coffin of podcasts any time soon. If anything it is more like to become the model on which conference panel discussions get digitalised (and subsequently marginalised in value). There’s scope for the democratisation and digitalisation of many of the panels that are hosted around the world. COVID-19 has accelerated the acceptance of that reality. As a panel host/guest speaker invested in that market, i.e., if it’s your main job, I’d be worried about where well-paid work will come from in the next couple of years.

In fact, I’d go as far to say that if the platform becomes very popular, it could decouple live panel discussions from conferences and even kill off local discussion in-person forums. And like any platform on the internet at internet scale, the problem quickly becomes discovery. How do you find out about those interesting and informative conversations? How do you stop from getting placed in a social bubble (remember you’re linked to your contacts)? What part does moderation play in this?

But what is Clubhouse? I think a good way think about it is a cross between a phone-in radio show from a small town, populated by procrastinators, narcissists, and grifters. Its sudden popularity has meant that it is the latest target for dollar store wisdom mongers, snake oil merchants and outright fraudsters. That is not to say that there aren’t any interesting and enlightening discussions taking place on the platform, of course there are, just like we’ve seen on TED. But boy, there’s a lot of absolute crap out there too! If you do join, just beware of the VCBS and the pathetic rich-splaining like ‘Ooh look at me, I’m a millionaire’ or “Get More Clients in 2021”. I think I’ve said enough.

Clubhouse

From an analytical point of view, I can see it as an ancillary service in digital conferencing —something that despite trying, we still haven’t cracked meaningfully, particularly the conference-goer interaction space. You’ve all been there, when the filthy mic gets passed around the hall in the Q&A session. You’ve probably all spent time in a Zoom-like conference wanting to get to talk to the panel/presenter and couldn’t because the tools don’t allow for that yet. Using Clubhouse as a digital alternative might possibly be very compelling.

The big question, of course, is how is Clubhouse going to monetise. I’ll put that to bed immediately because there is only one proven solution to qualitative tools on the Internet. Ads. Only businesses pay for quality (ahem) software. Consumers wilfully (or ignorantly) allow spying to be performed on their footsteps in cyberspace for that to be monetised later using some flaky and downright fraudulent claims on accuracy and ROI. And so it will pass. Clubhouse will become Clubhouse + ads. The funding round mostly from A16z practically guarantees this. They have bet big and will want big returns or nothing.

There is also a technical and practical dilemma for Clubhouse too. How it can interject adverts without the speakers announcing “This room is sponsored by …” —something I’m not even sure is possible in the T&Cs. (Note to self: Check the terms for advertising clauses). If it is audio, i.e., the primary reason you get on the platform, then having your favourite show interrupted by an advert about a website builder or better yet, the next “hot” Clubhouse room is so user hostile that I can only imagine adverts inserted as you enter or leave a room. Interstitial adds are super agressive and frictional to the point that many of us might reduce the use of the app. The other option is visual ads either static of video-based. Again, this is a tricky prospect as many people open the app, join a room and turn the screen off listening on headphones, the phone’s speaker or AirPlay-ing it to the voice in the box. I mean, where’s the moat? How is this different from live-feed podcast?

As it stands today, Clubhouse is just a feature waiting to be copied by the big boys in the classroom. Twitter and Facebook have started doing just that. They’re unlikely to stop until they can kill off the disruptor before it gets a foothold or be told to stop by legislation. It’ll most likely be achieved through two strategies; using their already hard-won networks and graphs, and out-featuring the features of the product for nothing more than is little more personal data.

I wrote this passage a few weeks ago as I was taking notes using Clubhouse:

Just as an aside, a note about building the network. Clubhouse requires, yes requires, you to upload your entire contacts list if you want to invite someone to the party. You get two invites when you’re successfully integrated. If you store contact details on any European citizen (regardless of where you like), you are defect breaking GDPR laws unless you’ve got permission from the person being invited. I make no judgement, I inform. Think about that for a minute. I currently have 1346 contact cards on my Mac (some are old or defunct), but Clubhouse wants 1300+ just to send two invites. I suspect around 800 or more of those contacts are EU citizens; therefore I’d be breaking the law over 800 times.

That paragraph is meaningless today, as the app has been updated to allow an invitation to be sent to individual phone numbers thus avoiding the wrath of the EU for now. Who knows if they’ll go after those who have already broken the law. 🤷‍♂️ For them, Clubhouse has provided means by which you can delete the contacts you uploaded. Looks a bit like shredding the papers before the inspectors to me. As far as I’m aware, French authorities have opened an investigation to determine if there was indeed a breach of law by Clubhouse.

I doubt much will come of it, though. But it is a sign of the very different times in which startups in the tech industry are trying to get off the ground, of which they will be no doubt acutely aware.

Podcast: Innovative disruption discussion on ICT-Pulse

You may well recall that I have been a guest on the ICT-Pulse podcast a couple of times in the past; well, a while back, Michele Marius released an episode we recorded together with Tunde Mottley, where we talked about the state of innovation in the Caribbean, and what we perceived as confusion between Smart and Digital. I’ll write about the second topic in the future, but I thought the first topic would be good to expand upon here. The format of the podcast is to propose a question and then discuss it unscripted. My proposed question was:

Does our size, complexity, lack of investment and poor data preclude the Caribbean from truly innovative disruption in business?

This is a multi-layer question and one that can’t be answered in one paragraph, and to be honest, depending on how many words I end up writing past this point, I might break it up in the smaller essays. 😰

What got me thinking about this in the first place is the evidence of a complete lack of popular services we take for granted in parts of the US and Europe. The Uber’s, the JustEat’s and Deliveroo’s of the world are all absent here. Even the well-implanted franchises like McDonald’s and KFC don’t offer the same services as their counterparts in other regions. Why is that?

When you take the Caribbean basin in total, some 44 million people, it could be equated to around ⅔ of the population of the UK or France. Those are big markets and provide plenty of scope for business development. A market of 44 million people should be comparable in terms of GDP, but according to my research, that is far from the case.

Of several structural issues, the Caribbean is a disparate, separated geography that makes it counterproductive to large-scale development. The 44 million people are spread over 31 countries separated by sea, language, currency and political persuasions that break the Caribbean down into small chunks that on their own cannot command the scale of funding, development and potential sales to attract investors.

Our banks and our investors have no appetite for the types of funding required to produce the kinds of startups —that once built could be exported across the globe— because they refuse to bet money the way the likes of Andreessen Horowitz does. They want an immediate return on their cash and guarantees that are inexistent in the startup world. That is not how much of the new world of business that understands internet assumptions are built.

Benedict Evans revealed in 2016 some startling figures that enlightened us on how returns on VC were broken down. Around half of the investments returned less than the initial investment, i.e., made a loss. Perhaps even more surprisingly, approximately 6% of investments returned 10x, which made up 60% of all returns.

Without attempting to oversimplify, and to be fair it is more complicated than these aggregate figures suggest, it would appear that investors would need to accept significant losses but keep going to find those breakout projects that return well above expectations, paying for all the other bets. We have no organisations/investors that have the stomach for that here.

When we look at companies that are flying high, take DoorDash —not to be confused with Deliveroo that is having a bad time on the FTSE—, it’s the leading to-the-door food delivery service in the US, but in its recent IPO prospectus, DoorDash notes that it made 149 million US$ from revenue of 1.9 billion US$. And that is after losing hundreds of millions of dollars over the last few years. Clearly, there’s potential in a market that can afford these kinds of losses over multiple years until the internet-sized scale tips things in their favour. With a population of 300 million and essentially, one jurisdiction, the incentives are clear and easy to spot.

Where do our innovators and entrepreneurs stand in the local markets? Multi-jurisdictions, multi-currencies, multiple languages and cultural differences would not seem propitious for development in the digital economy.

The 44 million in the Caribbean living in a digital divide that is still marked, together with a just-getting-going digital economy, can we build lasting value-added services? The internet is only part of the solution. Until the other pieces are in place, there will be slow growth and no breakthrough innovation. I wish I had a few billion to spend! I know we don’t lack ideas or the technical chops to wow the world, my research has shown me that over the last few years. And, the Caribbean has done it before1. It can do it again.

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1 Search for “History of Reggae Music”