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Ranting

  • World powered by women

    Last month, Nadine Hammer and I organized a series of free sustainability workshops around the city.

    Can you guess the gender ratio of the RSVPs and attendees?

    **99% women, from diverse ages and ethnic backgrounds.**

    Some thoughts:

    • 1. Research indicates that women often express greater environmental concern and feel more responsible for fostering sustainable practices. This situation invites a deeper look into how environmental awareness and activism are influenced by gender roles.
    • 2. Are we conditioning women to assume ‘nurturing’ roles, including environmental caretaking, while men may not view it as their responsibility? This observation challenges us to rethink societal norms and the distribution of environmental duties across genders.
    • 3. What implications does this gender imbalance have for creating effective environmental policies? If one gender is largely missing from these discussions, can our policies truly be representative or effective? This disparity prompts policymakers to explore new ways to engage all demographics in sustainability efforts. Or is it just a matter of electing more women?
    • 4. Could the gender uniformity in workshop attendance lead to an echo chamber where only the perspectives of one demographic are heard and amplified? This situation raises concerns about potential narrow representation in activist movements and the blind spots it might introduce in tackling complex issues like climate change.

  • Bicycle use now exceeds car use

    Not in the US, sorry, it was in Paris.

    Still, should we continue prioritizing the present comfort of our cars, electric or otherwise, over simpler, healthier alternatives like biking, which also safeguard our future physical and mental health and the planet’s well-being?

    This shift not only challenges the notion that EVs are the ultimate solution for urban sustainability but also prompts us to rethink our reliance on technology. As bicycles surpass cars in usage, it’s time to evaluate whether simpler solutions might better serve our cities and us.

    Another good stuff, one of the biggest urban cycling trends in 2024 is children-focused initiatives: the bike bus and school streets.

    “The future of cities belongs to its children, and this new movement just might prove to be a vital tipping point where they are finally considered and involved in the planning process.” – Chris Bruntlett, Dutch Cycling Embassy

  • Tech for Good?

    Friday Morning Hope: See more products that put us back in touch with ourselves, each other, and the world around us. Thanks Humane team, for being persistent and rethinking Human-Computer Interaction.

    Friday Evening Pessimism: I don’t think your first product (ai pin*) will take off. 🙁

    *In Brazil, Aipim means Cassava Root. I used to plant on my front yard, I miss that.

  • Digital Toxic Shock

    Reflecting on the thought-provoking work1 of Sharra Vostral, it’s intriguing to explore how her concept of “BIOLOGICALLY INCOMPATIBLE TECHNOLOGY” can be applied in the current digital age.

    In the ’80s, an innovative product was launched amid much fanfare – a smaller, lighter, and super absorbent tampon.

    Unfortunately, this new product led to an outbreak of Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS), especially among young women. The company said that the product itself was harmful, but in a complex interplay of variables, it enabled Staphylococcus aureus to reproduce rapidly, producing a deadly toxin. This concept has since been recast as “biocatalyst technologies” in her latest book, “Toxic Shock,” which has truly captured my attention.

    Ultimately, that particular tampon was removed from the market, but its users were blamed for using it “incorrectly,” a notion that persists and contributes to the stigma surrounding TSS today. The prevailing sentiment seems to be that if someone suffers from TSS, it’s her fault.

    Fast forward to the present day, we are surrounded by new digital projects, many of which have unanticipated outcomes. Social media has often been implicated in a rise in depression and anxiety², and thousands of novel digital solutions are emerging. Particularly alarming is the sharp increase in suicides among young women², which brings to mind the young women affected by TSS decades ago.

    These parallels lead me to ask:
    – Are we, as product innovators and leaders, unintentionally developing what could be deemed “psychologically incompatible technology?”
    – Are we fostering an era of anxiety and depression-catalyst technologies? Like a Digital Toxic Shock?
    – Will we blame the users (again) if something unexpected happens?

    We must remember to keep human well-being at the heart of technological advancement.

    For a deeper dive, here are the articles that helped me connect these ideas:

    1. Rely and Toxic Shock Syndrome: A Technological Health Crisis
    2. Jonathan Haidt and Zach Rausch‘s research on the teen mental health crisis
    3. Almost a Third of High-School Girls Considered Suicide in 2021

  • Justify my mistake, please!

    If you’re a non-engineer experimenting with prompt engineering, here’s the deal: understanding how LLMs actually work isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s non-negotiable.

    Take the Chain of Thought technique as an example. Using it after the model has already decided is like trying to screw in a bolt with a hammer, it’s just not going to work. At that point, the model isn’t “thinking” or “deliberating” anymore. It’s already locked in its answer and might just be scrambling to justify something wrong.

    Sounds obvious, right? But tons of articles and tools (looking at you, Langchain) get this wrong. They miss the timing and end up using models to evaluate their own responses in ways that don’t make sense, leading to garbage conclusions.

    If you want to build better AI solutions, get the basics down. Knowing how LLMs tick will save you headaches, lead to smarter results, and happier users.