Five Interesting Things: Today’s Scan Hits
Here are five indicators, observations or articles that caught the eye of FA futurists today.
- Association of Professional Futurists member Andrew Curry pointed out a 2011 paper from Microsoft and the University of New South Wales, “Six Provocations for Big Data,” that offers “critical questions about what all this data means, who gets access to it, how it is deployed, and to what ends.”
- Scott Smith discusses some obstacles on the way to the sharing economy — if it is on its way at all.
- An amusing perspective on what would happen if all news sites started to look like Buzzfeed. Given the desperate need for mainstream media sites to attract web traffic, this may be less of a joke and more like a dystopian scenario for the future of online news.
- A researcher suggests six limitations of big data.
- Slate offers an interesting juxtaposition of stories–“The Glorious Future of Shopping” extolling the rapturous possibilities of online shopping with same-day delivery, including access to “the long tail of groceries,” and a story citing Costco CEO Craig Jelinek’s recent comments that no one can figure out how to do same-day grocery delivery profitably. (Slate points out that betting against Amazon and its AmazonFresh service may be risky.)