👋 On time for your weekend: a round-up of this week's most remarkable stories at the intersection of #ecosystem #innovation and #platform #organisation.
Using Technology to Make Work More Human
There will be parts of jobs that are suitable for automation, but few, if any, that can (or should!) be completely replaced by smart tech. What automation can change for the better is the experience of work. Rather than doing the same work faster and with fewer people, smart tech creates an opportunity to redesign jobs and reengineer workflows to enable people to focus on the parts of work that humans are particularly well-suited for, such as relationship building, intuitive decision making, empathy, and problem solving.
Smart, or Human Tech on the rise 🎢 - by Allison Fine & Beth Kanter
Inside the Bitcoin Bust that Took Down the Web’s Biggest Child Abuse Site
From the perspective of Welcome to Video’s money-laundering-focused agents and prosecutors, perhaps the most interesting of the ripple effects of the case stemmed from the fate of the HSI agent they had arrested in Texas, just before their trip to carry out the site takedown in Korea. The Texan man had taken a rare approach to his legal defense: He’d pleaded guilty to possession of child sexual abuse materials, but he also appealed his conviction. He argued that his case should be thrown out because IRS agents had identified him by tracking his Bitcoin payments—without a warrant—which he claimed violated his Fourth Amendment right to privacy and represented an unconstitutional “search.”
😖 a long story of tracking down some nasty and inhuman actors - by Andy Greenberg
Patreon CEO Jack Conte on his $4 billion company’s future and the creator economy
At the moment, Conte says he’s zeroed in on doing what he thinks Patreon does best: “Our focus is helping creators build their businesses. It’s getting creators paid. It turns out that’s a very different problem than helping creators find audience. They may seem related, and in some ways they are, but they require very different road maps. They require very different skill sets. They require very different types of expertise. They require very different products. And they have very different implications for the business and who your competitors are. It would require 100% of our resources even just to make a dent against those other companies.”
👊 Choices over prioritising optionality, Patreon seems to have a clear idea of its position in the ecosystem - by KC Ifeanyi
🎧 Taylor Lorenz on Why All Culture is Internet Culture
Traditional media was so heavily showing only one viewpoint and really catering to the interests of the big 1 % (as they say). There wasn’t this diversity. I grew up as a woman in the early 2000s with women’s magazines and just the toxicity, you know, how much stuff was pushed towards you like “How to lose weight, How to please a guy” right. That media was incredibly toxic. Is the media we consume now toxic? Sure, it’s toxic in different ways, but it’s also a lot more diverse. When you look at the media ecosystem and content creators, people are getting voices and being able to develop and speak to audiences. You can build a whole media company just by speaking to an audience, and that’s good, that representation matters.
🧘🏻♀️ A lady journalist Taylor details out how she stays calm in the stormy internet world - Offline with John Favreau
If you like this digest, you might appreciate the sister newsletter at the intersection of #technology, #business, #design, and #culture as well. This week's edition is all about Not Normal!
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