Drone deliveries, innovation in carrots and a critical theory of PowerPoint

Short

Favourited: Our roundup of the best stories of innovation from around the web

20th January 2016
Our weekly newsletter is released on Wednesday mornings, featuring a digest of our latest articles and a roundup of our favourite stories of innovation from across the web. Below is some of what we featured in this morning's mailout. You can signup here
  1. Amazon weren’t joking about drone delivery, and have revealed more about what they plan to do (Yahoo)
  2. "Despite extraordinary claims about the total domination of algorithms, protocols, the digital, bits, and information, the material conditions of mundane software use go largely under-recognised as key sites for cultural work." Critically contextualising PowerPoint, a commercial device that has exercised unprecedented dominance on the principal forms of public speech (Computational Culture)
  3. Over 5m jobs will be lost by 2020 as a result of developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics and other technological change, according to World Economic Forum research (Bloomberg)
  4. "There never was an employee who did better work or felt more committed on the strength of a mass memo sent out by a boss. It simply can't happen" (FT)
  5. Are Gates and Rockefeller using their influence to set agenda in poor states? (Guardian)
  6. "It's hard to overstate the ingenuity of the baby carrot, one of the simplest and yet most influential innovations in vegetable history" (Washington Post)
  7. "Could its descendants be conscious?" The world’s first digital animal, born inside a computer, will be a perfect copy of real worm (New Scientist)
  8. How crowdfunded music festivals are offering an alternative to increasingly corporate ones (Indy)
  9. How the NBA is at the forefront of technical innovation in sport (Creative Review)
  10. Stop worrying and learn to love bad architecture (CityMetric)
  11. "Nobody knows what’s going on." The resolution of the bitcoin experiment (Medium/Mike Hearn)


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