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21 April 2017

Posted on April 21, 2017 Leave a Comment

I enjoyed Yuval Harari’s “Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow”. You may have heard of its prequel “Sapiens: A brief history of humankind” which critics compared to Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel” and which became an instant bestseller after Gates, Obama and other influentials put it on top of their lists. Sapiens focused on the history of mankind. Homo Deus looks forward, to the future of mankind. Harari’s thesis is that while “the great human projects of the 20^th century [focused on] overcoming famine, plague and war, the new projects of the 21^st century [will be about] gaining immortality, bliss and divinity”. The 20^th century agenda was to save humans from external afflictions while the 21^st century mission is to upgrade humans by engineering their bodies, brains and minds. The scenario he unfolds in the book is depressing. The upgrade is affordable only to a small elite becoming superhumans, while most people remain in an inferior human caste losing their value as machines take over. The new religion guiding this future is dataism – faith in the power of algorithms. At first, dataism serves humans’ aspirations and enhance their lifespans, happiness and power, but it later outsmarts them leading to their extinction. Harari draws a parallel between how humans have undervalued animals and progressively led to their extinction, and how algorithms will treat humans: “Dataism threatens to do to Homo Sapiens what Homo Sapiens has done to other animals.” Yes, it is intense and feels rather crazy as I am trying to summarize it here. But Harari is a very good storyteller. He packages knowledge and connects ideas in an exotic and punchy way. So, often I have found myself super absorbed in his arguments forgetting to question their foundations. And there are many instances where we should. His technology-optimism is a case in point. Early on in the book he sets the scene: “every technical problem has a technical solution”. And thereafter he never questions the progress of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence nor their ability to surpass human mortality and consciousness. But again it is a fun and captivating 400-page journey that will for sure kick your thinking out of the box. I’d recommend the read.

Meredith Bennett-Smith’s “The case for being grumpy at work” uses evidence to reject the correlation between positive attitude and productivity. And she highlights the gender dimension of her argument. Here are some of the research-supported facts: women do not make it to corner offices if they look too happy; faking happiness can lead to depression or heart attacks; mild grumpiness increases communication and critical thinking skills while anger can boost creativity; and overall controlling emotions in the workplace is a lose-lose for the firm and the staff, especially for women. A bon entendeur…

My visual this week is from Hootsuite + WeAreSocial’s “Q2 2017 Global digital statshot” which shows the continuing explosion – scale and pace – of social media usage. 2.9 billion people are now active on social media. This number is increasing at a rate of one million additional users a day! Wait, what?

My quote this week is from Richard Branson via Rufina Park’s “The Future of learning and education: children, educators, and creatives as co-creators”: “Children look at the world with wonder and inquisitiveness, and see opportunities where adults often see obstacles. I believe that we should not only listen to them more, but also act more like them.”

13 April 2017

Posted on April 13, 2017 Leave a Comment

It is always good to have a quick look at the curtain raisers for the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings. They give a sense of where the IFIs are going. This year, they come out right after a joint WTO-IMF-World Bank expression of support for open trade and international cooperation. IMF Christine Lagarde’s “Building a more resilient and inclusive economy” brings some good news about the health of the global economy including in low income countries helped by a much awaited rise of commodity prices. She zooms in on equitable growth arguing that technology has increased income gaps and will slow employment growth in emerging and low income countries. She points to governments’ responsibility to provide lifelong learning (from ECD to online senior course) and to maintain intergenerational equity in ageing societies. World Bank Jim Kim focuses on “Rethinking development finance” which is about using billions of public money to leverage trillions of private finance. What is worth keeping an eye on, here, is the new IDA $2.5 billion private window that came out of the last replenishment round concluded last December. Note the focus on fragile contexts which could shake up operations on the ground. And note the push to change the organization’s culture and incentivize staff to work at facilitating investments rather than designing loans: the Bank is “putting in place a tracking system that captures indirect forms of mobilization, and figuring out how to reward staff who focus on advisory programs, building markets, and creating the environment for investment”. Heads up!

Tom Jackson writes about technology in Africa. His March round-up helps us keep up with the fast financial services transformation in Kenya. Safaricom-supported M-Pesa, the super successful mobile money transactions system born in Kenya a decade ago, has since spread to India, Afghanistan and Romania. But Kenyan banks who originally tried (and failed) to regulate M-Pesa out of their industry just launched a competitor product, PesaLink, cutting transaction costs, allowing real-time inter-bank transfers, and attracting 2 million customers in two months. Safaricom responded by launching an M-Pesa App, and halving its fee. And it is now possible for Kenyans to buy government treasury bonds through their phones.

My graph this week is from Ana Moraru’s “Ghost village project” that uses monthly data of household power consumption to map population density and identify patterns of rural-urban migration in Moldova. Moraru works with the UNDP-sponsored Moldova Social Innovation Hub and tells us that this project is meant to inform a major 2018 administrative reform and associated local investments in public services in a context where internal migration is only documented by low frequency census data.

My quote this week is from Kevin Watkins’ interview with Sarah Brown in her Better Angels series “[The SDG agenda] ought to appeal to anyone who is driven by values and by a sense of solidarity, compassion and empathy. We need hard skills that are harnessed to good values. We need economists, people who understand finance, people who understand the law. Because these are great instruments for achieving change.” [30’]

3 February 2017

Posted on February 3, 2017 Leave a Comment

Last week’s “how to talk about books you have not read” suggestion generated interesting feedback. Some thought it was funny while others found it naive in a “post truth” context. And some asked why I chose that book now. I read it a while back and liked it because I come from a culture where quoting a book can be used to assert power in a conversation. I picked it up again recently as I saw all these celebrities arguing that reading books was THE thing to do. Leaders, say presidents, read books to find ideas and inspirations. Big investors, say some of the biggest, read books to get richer. Philanthropists, new and more seasoned, just read books. Etc. Then I came across Lorraine Berry’s historical review of bibliomania where she argues that “Bibliomania [is] now a bragging right”. That brought me back to Bayard, for a breather.

This morning I sat for a couple of hours at a geospatial data show-and-tell. I did not understand all the acronyms but saw some pretty cool tools to better understand infrastructure, settlements and population dynamics. Google earth engine was one. Click on timelapse and select an area to see changes from the 1980ies to now. Looking at the Aral Sea is really depressing. Looking at Dalian’s urbanization is fascinating. The googler told us that earth engine was used to better target health service delivery (eg bed net campaigns). Internet.org was another one. This is the Facebook initiative to connect the most remote areas to the internet. A first step to do this was to map these areas. They used satellite data and worked in 35 countries. The data they collected confirmed that more than half of the world population lives in cities and it also showed that 99% live within 55 km of a city. The discussion was also super interesting. A lot of talk about definitions (what is “urban”?) and about which data are reliable (versus official). A passionate exchange about open access data where the rep from the Gates Foundation recalled that grants will now be conditional on data and knowledge being published in open access journals. As we also heard from the recent World Data Forum: geospatial-for-social-good is trending.

Evan Osnos’ “Doomsday prep for the super-rich” explores a trend not much talked about. We follow how the 1% gets richer than the rest of the population. We track the 1% increasingly giving back through philanthropy. This article is about a growing portion of the 1% embracing survivalism. They are making back up plans to protect themselves and their family from disasters like an earthquake, a global pandemic or a political breakdown. Their two main strategies are (i) buying airstrips and farms in New Zealand and (ii) buying condos in nuclear-proofed bunkers. It’s all about escaping as fast as possible.

My graph this week is from Benedict Evans’ “Mobile is eating the world” updated presentation. As the Iphone is celebrating its 10^th anniversary, the world is half way to being fully connected. And 2.5 billion people have smartphones. Yes: 2.5 billion. The rest of the presentation is great if you have not seen an earlier version.

My quote this week is from an anonymous British civil servant in “Civil servants warned office cake culture could be a public health hazard”: “I get it. When you’re writing a submission with a tight deadline and may not have time to eat, it’s easy to put an extra sugar in your tea or grab a chocolate bar from the vending machine for that energy boost. I know – I’ve done it. And don’t forget mid-week cake, ‘back from travel’ treats and birthday doughnuts ‘in the usual place’.” You’ve been warned.