The mission of my newsletter is to weekly identify key stories that illustrate the changes in our world during this unprecedented time of exponential progress. Expect stories about software, renewable, artificial intelligence, education, politics, equality and economics. I search for stories which illustrate exponential, non-linear change.
This week: the plunging cost of electric vehicles, Tesla’s new home battery, how mobile advertising is taking over all advertising, Putin’s weird troll machine and rethinking education. Builders’ notes, which is of particular interest for product people, looks at the Apple Watch and rethinking Uber.
The not-so-far future
Super-investor Albert Wenger pulls us out of our tech bubble to consider the increasingly worrying political tensions across the world. Is it 1870 or 1914 all over again?
Finland’s radical educational plans
The Scandinavian country already has phenomenal educational outcomes. Now it plans to ditch subject teaching in favour of cross-disciplinary exploration.
The Remarkable plunge in the cost of electric vehicles
A new study suggests that battery-powered vehicles are close to being cost-effective for all.
Transistor production has reached astronomical scales
A look at Moore’s Law in action: the first humanly-created thing that we are producing at a volume we normally only see at cosmological scales.
Tesla will announce a new product at the end of April that’s not a car, CEO Elon Musk recently announced without revealing any further details. Even so, most people are expecting the secret product to use some of the technology developed by the company for its electric vehicles.
Airbnb will soon book more rooms than the world’s largest hotel chains
The elegant market place model for room sharing - AirBnB the big winner will soon sleep more guests than that world’s largest hotel chains.
Mobile ad spend gets to more than half of all digital ad spend
Another example of exponential growth - in less than 9 years, mobile advertising will have taken more than 50% of the growing market of digital ads.
Builder's notes
Detailed, delightful insight into the manufacturing precision behind the Apple Watch
This is what free, ad-supported Uber rides might look like
It doesn’t matter who pays, so long as it is paid for. Here product specialist, Andrew Chen, explores what an ad-supported logistics platform might look like.
Department of dystopias
Inside Putin's professional trolls
Here is a fascinating view into the propaganda machines of the future: Russian pro-Government social media trolls.
The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust
Hidden in an unknown corner of China is a toxic, nightmarish lake created by our thirst for smartphones, gadgets and green tech, discovers Tim Maughan.
End notes
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