Quinta’s weblog

I had some conversations with a friend about the future of post-pandemic corporate work in light of technological evolution. Before the Industrial Revolution, work tended to value people’s contributions with muscle power. Most of the value came from physical manipulation activities. Then came the Industrial Revolution, with machinery that reduced the relevance of muscular effort by automating a major part of it. Most of the value at this point came from symbol manipulation activities. We valued and value the contribution of people, expressed with their brains. Now the digital revolution is under way, with Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and the…

“It’s not enough to be right: you must also have someone to recognize it. “G. Andreotti The second part is the most difficult, the part that requires the vast majority of energy, time, understanding, respect, empathy, etc. A mistake we often make is to believe that the first part is enough: I know how to do it, I know what is right; if things don’t go that way it is because the system is broken and those who don’t agree are jerks, in bad faith or corrupt. Communicating is first of all listening. To be open, to understand the reasons…

Riflessione (7 marzo 2012) Intervista con lancio dell’idea (13 marzo 2013)

It really strikes me the level of influence on the industry that GAFAMs have. Facebook was under scrutiny due to poor metrics, upped the ante stating they would invent a new virtual dimension even larger than the previous, where they would grab a larger share of the pie, called it metaverse and everyone followed suit. Yet, except for immersive videogames, technology for an entertainment B2C mass market, high quality experience, is many years away (at least). Videogames are one of the last B2C entertainment activities that require undivided attention. B2B augmented reality will definitely come first. But envisioned business cases…

Two years ago I made a bet (a beer) with a friend who works in autonomous driving for a major automotive technology provider.My bet was that in 5 years, we wouldn’t have self-driving cars circulating diffusely in our urban centers.His bet was that it could happen by making them drive very slowly.I recently spoke with him and suggested that we double the bet. He refused ? . Eight months ago I talked to a friend who works at an important autonomous driving company.I raised my central point with him as well, which is that there is an underlying unpredictability about…

(good to know, Cut&paste from here) Conventional lithium-ion batteries are reaching their theoretical maximum gravimetric energy density of just 387Wh/Kg. A major EV battery supplier in the market has reported that their best batteries currently deliver 260Wh/Kg, with a forecasted improvement of just 20% over the next 5 years. Lithium-sulphur batteries have a theoretical gravimetric energy density of 2,567 Wh/Kg – in the order of 5x that of lithium-ion batteries. A battery with a higher gravimetric energy density will last longer before needing to be recharged, which should enable EVs to travel farther and drones to fly for longer between…

This looks exactly the type of dystopic digital power behavior by the executive branch that I think should be impossible in a democratic State, as I wrote on my brief reflections on the issue (an article which is basically a revised transcript of my keynote at Nexa’s annual event). A trustworthy state does not require its citizens to trust it. Source: Civio.es A Spanish court has rejected the publication of source code for the software that approves applications for subsidies created to combat energy poverty. Civio, having noticed errors in its functioning, requested the code under the Transparency Law to…

I think government software is the second real use case for blockchains (besides DeFi):You need a system where you don’t have to trust by default the people running the systems. The key point is that states have the monopoly on force. it’s an asymmetry compared to the rest of the situations IT is used in (b2b, b2c, ..). This asymmetry justifies that the citizens should not be required to trust the State’s systems by default, whoever manages them. A trustworthy state is a state that does not require its citizens to trust it. This implies that transactions, logs, data, be…

Here’s my keynote with the proposal of anonimity protection for online content moderation.The Euroconsumer’s event was held online on Feb 3rd, 2022

This post is a revised transcript of my speech during the XIII Nexa Conference on Internet and Society, dedicated to Digital and the State.. Many thanks to Lucio Bragagnolo for the effort The design of Italy’s public digital infrastructure and the current legislation, starting from the Constitution, indicate that the road for public services must lead towards decentralization; on the contrary, we are witnessing an ideological trend towards centralization on which important questions must be asked and on which we should reflect at a time when the stability of institutions and governability is not in question. UPDATE: if you thought…