Newspaper 3/11/2020

1. An insight into Singapore’s cultural heritage

- case in point of Telok Ayer Street: amidst the metropolitan scene of cafes and restaurants are wafts of incense,
indicating part of Singapore’s multicultural religion practices.
- foundation as a trading port in 1819, migrants from many places put down roots, laying foundation for a
multicultural Singapore.
- Culinary world: multifaceted, derivables of many cultures. Which may be indicative of Singapore’s culture
trajectory: a mix of a multitude over time.
- A cross-culture share of religion: Sakinah, Muslim fitness instructor who also practices Ramadan and Hari Raya
and Chinese new year, as well as Christmas.
- Interracial and inter-ethnic marriage -> breeding ground for a homogeneous community.
Case in point of a Chinese-Peranakan couple who defy differences due to adaptability of Singapore.
2. How Starbucks became an $80B business
- iconic status + standing in the café market: 57%, with nearly two thirds of all coffee sold at cafes in the US
comes from a Starbucks.
- too many stores -> fewer transactions at individual stores -> raised price.
- History: 1970, three college friends, aided by a coffee expert, opened the first Starbucks in Seattle. But no coffee
bars -> this Starbucks only sold coffee beans and ground them if requested.
- First professional director of marketing and sales: Howard Schultz.
- 1983: Schultz had the idea of turning coffee bean stores into cafes. -> a success.
- When Schultz became the new stakeholder of Starbucks -> adopt aggressive expansion strategy.
- 1999: 2000 locations
- During the first decade of the 21th century: open an average of 1,500 stores every year. Sales shot up from $2
billion to $9.4 billion.
- iconic paper to-go cups
- 2007 financial crash as consumers ration their luxury spending habits.
- Starbucks focus on the customer experience: shuttering cafes and laying off staff and retraining remaining staff.
- this in turn made the company’s stock soar to more than 143 percent in 2009 and same-store sales rebounded.
- profit cannibalization: over-saturation -> sales thin in individual stores.
- customers more health conscious too
-> new line of upscale stores: starbucks reserve roasteries.
- innovative beverages, different brewing methods
- first weeks, shanghai roaster made an average of $64,000 every day, double what a regular café makes in a week.
3. The agony of Sophia, the world’s first robot citizen condemned to a lifeless career in marketing.
- 2017 given citizenship of Saudi Arabia.
- Her creator argues this will promote women’s rights. But Saudia Arabia: reserved regarding gender equality.
- used twitter account to promote various stuff.
- opponents of this granted status of citizenship for Sophia: argue that this will impinge on human rights.
- case in point of sex robots for incel young men -> makes this granting awkward.
- the case of allowing robots human rights mirrored in games:
- Detroit: become human -> ethical questions about humans and robots rights.
- Hanson, creator of Sophia, believes a general global acknowledgement of android rights won’t be achieved until
the 2040s.
- Hanson also recognizes that Sophia only has a development more akin to a baby than an adukt.
4. How the racism baked into technology hurts teens.
- one twitter image-detection algorithm was designed to optimize photo previews cropping out black faces in favor
of white ones.
- acts of tech racism inevitable.
+ predictive models methodically deny ailing black and Hispanic patients’ access to treatments that are regularly
distributed to less sick white patients.
- systemic errors in predictive technologies: referred to as algorithmic bias.
+ psychological impact on teenagers
+ research suggests being discriminated is correlated with poor mental health outcomes for all ages.
+ sleep, aca performance, self esteem might suffer.
+ alter gene expression across life span
- but machine learning models may be too intricate for engineers to understand. -> microaggressions
- tiktok’s content filtering algorithm can drive adolescents toward echo chambers where everyone looks the same.
- algorithms have been shown to amplify the voices of human racists.
- radicalization pipelines on social platforms like youtube can lead users down rabbit holes of videos designed to
recruit the youth and radicalize them and inspire to commit violence.
- this problem well acknowledged by tech firms but done little.
5. six reasons why social media is a bummer.
- jaron lanier : pioneer turned digital sceptic explains how we must take control of social media.
- power concentrated into a number of hands that control giant cloud computers.
- devices for mass behavior modification.
- analogy to lead-containing paint: lead harmful but still must we paint. Instead lead-free paints became the new
standard.
- “Behaviors of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent” -> Bummer
- if u use bummer platforms -> changed a little
- bummer has 6 components.
- A: attention acquisition: nastiness
- B; butting into everyone’s lives: surveillance
- C: cramming content down your throat (personalization)
- D: directing behavior in the sneakiest way possible.
- E: earning money from letting the worst people secretly screw with everyone else.
- F: fake mobs and faker society