Who Will Provide Maps for Meta?

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A very obvious component of AR glasses is mapping/GPS and businesses. That is where immense profits lie – basically McDonald’s offering you two hash browns for $2 when you walk by. It will literally pop-up on your glasses. Next level marketing.

Google and Apple already have mature maps operations. The upside of AR is so great that if a partnership forms between Meta and either of those, then it is very win-win.

However, Apple and Google own the phones. It is more profitable to buy staff from Meta and make their own AR glasses, and then use their own maps infrastructure.

There will be three plays, and a market for two. Apple and Google will be ready to pounce, with both quite possibly having products ready to launch ASAP. Meta is the runt in this scenario. No maps app of their own. No phone operating system. They are already spending mega-bucks on other things (metaverse, AI), and this could ruin them if they proceeded. But in theory they could create their own maps app, or buy some weird 3rd-tier app from Germany. They could potentially venture into the phone space, getting a Chinese company to manufacture the phones in the US, with a Meta-owned fork of Android. It would primarily be a brand play, hoping to leverage the brand equity of something that has already peaked, by combining it with the trust and assurances of an old friend. No tracking, nothing foreign. A solid phone (sold at a discount because AR advertising will be bank), with minimal branding. More like a Lexus made by Toyota than a “Facebook Phone”.

Apple will win. They will avoid the gimmicky miss-steps by being last to launch.

Too Big To Fail – A Rule of Thirds

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A recent tech outage – Crowdstrike bringing down Windows systems – showed us yet again how fragile we are with important infrastructure. Because of just-in-time processes and finely optimised systems, some failure that is truly tragic will only be noticed afterwards. To mitigate this, and improve redundancy greatly, and save society from monopolies and provide jobs and lessen inequality… we only need one rule.

In nominated critical industries (there will be many), no business and no system can have more than one-third market share.

An easy example is computer operating systems. They need to make sure they never have more than 33% share in any industry, for example airline booking systems. Neither can computer manufacturers, RAM makers, microchip makers, hard drive makers. At least 3 software companies must make the booking systems, and they cannot share code.

Bananas are mostly Cavendish in Australia – that needs to change.

Achieving this rule is actually very easy. Dominant players charge more, degrade quality or remove features until they lose appeal enough for some other to have inroads.

The problem we have today is industries are like a game of chicken, and the less resilient you are, the more potential upsides and downsides. It is risk for profits, and sometimes a race to the bottom. Recently some emerging car companies failed because interest rates went up. They were too finely leveraged.

There are industries controlled by a few (meat-packers in the US, supermarkets in Australia) which only has one advantage – market efficiency to enrich their owners. Every else about their duopolies (or whatever three players is called) is a negative to the rest of society.

With the rise of the machines/AI, we will need more jobs, and some inefficiencies will be good for us.

Back to the computer example – we can easily have Windows/Mac/Linux. Having multiple sources of microprocessors would be great! Instead of 90% coming from Taiwan. Having spaceships going to the space station using different computer systems will mean those astronauts have two ways to get home. When the airline booking systems go down, it only affects a third of airlines (per country). Or supermarket checkouts.

We could even perhaps extend it to money – as in state currencies cost enough of a premium that crypto alternatives become appealing.

Farewell AirBnB

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This won’t happen everywhere, but in many cities that are popular with tourists, the rise of AirBnB has coincided with chronic housing shortages and low housing affordability.

These are not actually a coincidence, they are both the result of worsening economic inequality. More people with money are travelling, and that will keep getting worse with time, unless inequality is seriously and properly addressed.

Taxing or effectively taxing tourists will help. It will directly take money from the rich and distribute to the poor, if done correctly.

That means government taxes and tariffs on hotels, visas and the like, as long as it is redistributed to social housing. That means no AirBnB, or at least limiting it to leasing a single room within a residential home on a temporary basis.

Cruises are booming, so increase their port charges dramatically. Their appeal fades once desirable ports are off the menu.

Countries that do this first (yes countries, because it doesn’t work as long as individual destinations are vying for the tourist dollar and will fight to the bottom), will benefit soonest.

The Clusterfuck of 2024

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I reckon the media might call it the clusterfail.

At least 5 of these will happen before Feb 2025 (in my futurist opinion…)

  • 9/11-level terrorism (and retaliation). The Olympics is predictable but anywhere is up for grabs.
  • AI-crash (house of cards collapses)
  • EV-crash (not just a slump)
  • Some major financial ponzi scheme revealed
  • Tariff wars (isolation is in)
  • A new proper war (in an unexpected place)
  • A major twist in the US election (like someone no longer running)
  • Climate change ramps up (skeptics run and hide)
  • Space disaster (human casualties)
  • Volcano or earthquake (enough to affect economies)
  • Inflation shoots up again
  • Major civil unrest, almost unprecedented, in a western country (beyond the French having a little riot)

The Wegovy Backlash

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I hope not, of course, but there has never been a weight-loss pill that hasn’t backfired somehow. While the short-term safety of Wegovy seems to be understood, it is too new to possibly know of the long-term effects. There is definitely a psychological aspect to it, so conceivably that wears off, and our brains find new pathways to desire eating again.

Possibly, the long-term side-effect is not something that can be measured in a lab. Something like a loss of zest in general, a loss of appetite for life, and the myriad of ways that can present itself in our everyday lives. For example, a loss in the desire to have children, or complete tertiary studies.

The Future of Protesting

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Public protests are not new, and not uncommon. These days they are evolving, perhaps sparked by the Reclaim Our Streets happy protests who were very prescient in their anti-car advocacy. Rather than simply being seen and heard, protests are increasingly aiming to be disruptive. The Extinction Rebellion regularly makes the new in this regard.

The very nature of disruptive protests mean that costs are borne by many, from everyday folk having their progress through the city hindered, to business, and of course policing. Climate protesters would argue that the hindrances they cause are an important aspect, to make their point heard. Yet the same people would argue that a white supremist rally would wrongly interfere with their day.

In the western world, where protesting has been generously allowed (and rightfully so) in recent history, the trend is towards punishment for disruptions, especially those that are purposefully designed to affect business operations. I expect that in the near future there will be codified controls and regulations that allow protests but in a more restricted way.

In-situ protests, outside a particular location that is meaningful, would probably continue unchanged. But for marches, I can see a new way emerging, a compromise between visibility and order.

  • Dedicated march journeys, from A to B
  • The journeys are in prominent places, with many viewers, like inner city pedestrian malls
  • Permits are required
  • Minimum numbers are required. Say 100 named people of which 80 need to attend or will be fined.
  • Names are confidential unless a crime is committed.

Ultimately it would not be too different to how buskers are often regulated and controlled. Initially there might be a great increase in the number of protests, but in the long term mostly only the larger, important rallies would be occurring.

While this sounds overly bureaucratic, it can also codify the right to protest, especially in cities like London where public spaces are increasingly being operated by corporations who can issue trespass notices.

Palestine: The End Game

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The situation as I see it:

Israel and continually gone against prior agreements and keep taking more and more Palestinian land, because they think God said it was theirs.

Palestinians rightly are angry, not just about the land but by effectively being in a prison (Gaza) and a substantial number of them have lives that hinge on absolute hate of the Israelis (the Jewish ones).

Israel don’t want a two-state solution with an enemy right next door, who will continue (with the support of Iran) to keep attacking and terrorising them. Israel (half of the population) loves the expansion into the West Bank by “settlers”.

This is what Israel will bring to the table, and a future Palestinian leadership will agree to:

West Bank continues as normal. Any land without houses is free for Israelis to build on, and the West Bank will effectively be a part of Israel, and existing Palestinians can continue to live there, as they do now.

Gaza becomes its own state. It will have full access to the outside world, via the sea and air. Land connections and workers crossing the border will continue as before. However, terrorism needs to end. An international task force will be there – potentially forever – to run democratic elections, co-ordinate aid, and to shut down any terrorism. No anti-Israeli sentiment is allowed. No murals of martyrs. All history taught in schools is carefully worded and monitored. The end result is peace and freedom with hate for their neighbours snuffed out. Any rebels are deported, somewhere.

Per Person Apps

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We have many ways of communicating with one person – email, SMS, calls, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat and so on. I have several annoying friends who use multiple forms of chat to reach me, often one a few minutes after the other if I don’t respond obediently.

If all of these apps shared a common protocol, and gave permissions to the OS, then the OS could aggregate the communications on a per person basis.

On my phone screen I could see an app named Barry, and clicking on it will show all my communications with Barry in a single, uniform interface. Replying to any of Barry’s messages would default to the app it came via, but that can be changed if I want.

Most of us would have less than 10 people that need a per person app. For business folk, they could perhaps be in folders of type, like potential client, existing client, exec team…

Where It Came From: Attribution 2.0

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Deep fakes and the like are a growing problem:

Of course it will get worse, and new angles will emerge that are unheard of. Regulation could be the solution, although nobody will be a fan. If you want to have a platform where you are immune from having wrong content on it (as long as you police the content to a reasonable level), then you must also follow this one simple rule. All content has to have an origin, and that origin is posted with the content.

  • Music comes from the artist’s home page
  • Memes have an origin
  • Photos come from the page of who took the photo

Any authorisations, all types of rights, are stored at the source.

So, if I want to share a meme I found online, I have to go to the source, and maybe agree to something, and maybe get a link back to the source with my auth ID in it… and so on. We are talking Creative Commons for everything.

To post something from a particular source, the platform must have registered it. So to post a picture of King Charles, it must come from a news source, or his own website, or a registered source that will take the fall if they have acquired it or used it wrongly or illegally.

There are some downsides to this approach, obviously!

Posting content in social media will take longer, sometimes. Sharing a link from a registered source won’t take any longer. Reposting something that already cites a source, won’t take longer. Banging out a funny meme using content that is not yours, will take longer, and can only improve things for everyone – it will be a good opportunity to be a bit more serious, especially for topics that warrant it, like politics and anti-woke.

It is anti-freedom of speech. Er, no, it isn’t, but it will be seen that way. People misunderstand what those freedoms actually entail. Never mind though, because attribution regulations will only apply to social networks of a certain large size. Your anarcho-mischief collective will fly under the radar, although they will need to have a prominent message stating that they are non-regulated.

Off Season Boycott Club

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An online community spends 3 months discussing and eventually voting on which nasty corporation (or country?) is worthy of a boycott.

Members then, individually, by choice, pledge to not use their products or services for the 3 months of the next season of Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall. You go off them for a season 😉

If you cannot bear to be without them beyond the 3 months, that is sad, but OK.

The idea is to use the timeliness for publicity – who will be boycotted next? At scale.

To incentivise the boycott, direct competitors can be canvassed, seeing what they might offer to any member who switches allegiance. Such offers need to be above and beyond anything else they otherwise offer others.

Canvassing members first on whether they use particular brands is critical – it means the boycott can be meaningful and measurable.

Imagine the dread faced by corporations who are in the shortlist each quarter!