Daily chart: Global population forecasts

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/08/daily-chart-growth-areas

From horseless to driverless

http://worldif.economist.com/article/11/what-if-autonomous-vehicles-rule-the-world-from-horseless-to-driverless

Car-lovers will doubtless mourn the passing of machines that, in the 20th century, became icons of personal freedom. But this freedom is illusory. The empty roads seen in car advertisements are not most people’s experience of driving. In a driverless future, people will come to wonder why they tolerated such a high rate of road deaths, and why they spent so much money on machines that mostly sat unused. A world of self-driving vehicles may sound odd, but coming generations will consider the era of car ownership to have been much stranger.

Lunch with the FT: The Fat Jew

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/15fe6c4a-3127-11e5-8873-775ba7c2ea3d.html


For the past few years, companies have started to pay for exposure to his audience. Clients ranging from Burger King to Virgin Mobile to Stella Artois have all hired him as an “influencer” to feature product placement in his posts.
©James Ferguson

Malcolm Gladwell: the Snapchat problem, the Facebook problem, the Airbnb problem

http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/24/gladwell-on-data-marketing-the-snapchat-problem-the-facebook-problem-the-airbnb-problem/

Last night futurist, journalist, prognosticator, and author Malcolm Gladwell told pretty much the most data-driven marketing technologist crowd imaginable that data is not their salvation.

In fact, it could be their curse.

“More data increases our confidence, not our accuracy,” he said at mobile marketing analytics provider Tune’s Postback 2015 event in Seattle. “I want to puncture marketers’ confidence and show you where data can’t help us.”

The changing geography of drinks

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21659754-booze-around-world

We are data: the future of machine intelligence

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/475789b8-2b2b-11e5-acfb-cbd2e1c81cca.html

©Courtesy of The Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto

Prints by Douglas Coupland. Acrylic on archival pigment print 49’x37’ (2014)

Lunch with the FT: Pavel Durov

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/21c5c7f2-20b1-11e5-ab0f-6bb9974f25d0.html?siteedition=intl


He believes a battle of ideas is raging in Russia that will determine the country’s future. As someone who during his military service studied how to wage propaganda wars, he admires the Kremlin’s approach, from a purely professional standpoint. “You can imagine a situation when the state propaganda is so good this new generation will actually believe centralisation is better than decentralisation, planning is better than improvisation, regulation is better than freedom. I can imagine that happening, but I hope it wouldn’t be the case.”

©James Ferguson

The future of news: Stop the presses!

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fb40299c-1fca-11e5-aa5a-398b2169cf79.html#axzz3eis2ifHS

©FT; Facebook

Facebook launches European Instant Articles service soon; Apple starts News service in Autumn

The Data or the Hunch

http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/features/data-or-hunch?page=full

More and more decisions, from the music business to the sports field, are being delegated to data. But where does that leave our intuition? 

How Russian TV changed during Ukraine crisis

http://www.bbc.co.uk/monitoring/how-russian-tv-changed-during-ukraine-crisis

On "Goodnight, Little Ones" a furry animal says he wants to join the army to protect Russia's borders

The tabloid king who shapes how Russians sees the world

http://mashable.com/2015/06/16/lifenews-mastermind/