Five Things Tech: Greentech, AI Bubble, Longevity, Gold, BASIC
Saturday is tech day!
Hello and welcome back to Five Things Tech, your weekly newsletter where I present you with five articles about recent developments in tech that I found somewhere on the interwebs. As somebody who has been in tech for over 20 years, I still find this industry amazing and my curiosity leads me to reading about new developments, new ways to solve old problems, and new crazy ideas that might lead somewhere useful but could also end up being just stupid.
Yes, I like this move fast and break things attitude that still prevails in tech and I like it, because people have bold ideas and try to turn them into reality. Sure, not everything works out as planned. But the entrepreneurial spirit lets people try to figure out how to make it work and if they don’t succeed, others can build upon it, which is how innovation works. When I look at recent developments in Greentech, I sure hope they figure it out very fast as we need to fight climate change now more than ever.
Inside Silicon Valley’s Grand Ambitions To Control Our Planet’s Thermostat
“Given the risks of screwing with the only habitable planet we have, can we afford the potential costs of letting profit-motivated ventures stab at the problem? A rising tide of climate tinkerers might say that given impending global catastrophe and the pathetic response of world leaders, we can’t afford not to.” - that is a huge question we’re facing right now. As somebody who generally has a positive view on new tech developments, I’m rooting for the people who try to figure out how to use tech to fight climate change. If Venture Capital companies see potential in these companies and want to invest, even better.
Three reasons we’re in an AI bubble (and four reasons we’re not)
I don’t think we’re in a bubble, we are just in a phase where people recalibrate their expectations a bit, which is always a good thing. Technology adoption usually takes longer than we think and this is the case for AI as well, even after the explosive growth of ChatGPT at the end of 2023.
Some questions (and answers) I had about longevity research
This is a fascinating topic. I personally don’t want to live forever, but I’d like to stay healthy for as long as possible. Biotech and all the available data we get from various sensors can guide us into the right direction. Here’s a good overview on where we are at this point.
Royal Mint starts turning e-waste into gold
This is actually quite cool. There’s all this technical waste, old circuit boards that there’s no use for anymore - and the Royal Mint can make gold from this trash. Just imagine the potential behind this process, when we can turn lots of the technical waste into gold.
Back to BASIC—the Most Consequential Programming Language in the History of Computing
I taught myself BASIC when I was 12 or so, on a Commodore C64. What a fun and simple programming language that was. I’m sure that it influenced many kids like myself back then, 40 years ago.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! If you missed last week’s Five Things Tech, you can find it here:
— Nico