Weekend Reading, Watching and Listening Recommendations (October 2, 2020)

A useful primer on what lies behind Tiktok’s success. ; Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers; Understanding the Air Quality Index; Is This the End of Recycling?

1. Read: A useful primer on what lies behind Tiktok’s success. It is not from some magical AI algorithm but rather investing heavily in training data and meta-data for the algorithm. It boils down to the idea of “algorithm friendly design”, observes Eugene Wei, who has written a series of deep dives on TikTok, and formerly led product at Hulu, Flipboard, and video at Oculus, among other things. What does TikTok suggest about the future of product development, and more broadly, the future of video?

2. Read: Is This the End of Recycling? Americans are consuming more and more stuff. Now that other countries won’t take our papers and plastics, they’re ending up in the trash.  [From The Atlantic]

3. Read: Unmade in America: Decades of decline left the US’s industrial commons incapacitated in the face of the pandemic. [From MIT Technology Review]

4. Listen: How to Make the World Add Up. Tim Harford is a behavioural economist, BBC radio and TV presenter and award-winning Financial Times columnist. Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers.

5. Listen: What Will the World Look Like in 2030?: Big economic, technological, and demographic changes are coming, and the pandemic is accelerating many of them, Wharton’s Mauro Guillen says in his new book.

6. Listen: Another brilliant episode from NPR’s Radiolab on what is translation? How it is that the right words can have the wrong meanings, and why sometimes the best translations lead us to an understanding that's way deeper than language. 

7. Watch: AI Will Be as Transformative as Electricity, Says Reid Hoffman

8. Watch: Harvard Philosopher Michael Sandel Exposes the Flaws of Meritocracy 

   8. Chart of the Week: Understanding the Air Quality Index