I am curious about HIPAA laws in the age of Surveillance Capitalism and proof-of-vaccination requirements. I shall soon take a course on this topic so I may soon find out.
As I mention from time to time, my youth and values were shaped by our mid-20th century enlightened optimism and confidence in our better future shaped by science & technology. This new documentary about Gerard K. O'Neill is a wonderful story that communicates the attitudes & feelings we had during that time. Reading The High Frontier was one of the most life-changing events in my life. It is no coincidence that the founders and leaders of all of the trillion dollar companies in the world today "bet the company" on big hairy audacious goals that required inventing new technology. They are optimistic we can invent and engineer our way into the vision. A simple example is that consumer Starlink satellite dishes currently sell for much less than their cost to manufacture.
As a big fan of Steven Pinker's popular science writing, TED lectures, and enlightenment ideas, I was thrilled to discover that Harvard has made all of the videos from his new Freshman college class on Psychology freely available. Many of the lectures are stand-alone, intrinsically interesting subjects. I wish I had time to watch all the lectures, sigh.
I had read most of these stories before but enjoyed re-reading them as well as the new ones. The fun part, of course, is each talented writer's homage to the style, plotting, voice, and writing of each author to whom the stories are attributed. Among my favorites is "Night of the Cooters" with the persona of Slim Pickins as a Texas Ranger, which I had read in 1987 in a magazine. 4/5 Stars.
Professor Jordan at Stanford wrote a really good description of how the terrible hype of "artificial intelligence" has prevented us from making important progress in engineering and more impactful computer science applications. We all suffer from the systematic "bad statistics" anecdotes he describes, including our over-generalization from insufficient data. The article is a little long and dated (2018) but highly recommended. 5/5 Stars