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In recent years, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has seen tremendous progress, particularly in the area of natural language processing. The development of powerful language models like GPT-3 has made it possible for machines to generate human-like text at a scale and speed that was previously unimaginable. This has led many to believe that we are approaching a tipping point where the speed of execution of ideas will become a key differentiator in a variety of industries.

The idea of something being “old-school”, “retro” or even “cyberpunk”, exists because we attach a feeling of nostalgia to it. I’ve been fascinated recently by this because culture sometimes reaches back in time to (re) experience something, or at other times might even be ahead of its time!

Tape

Last month Taylor Swift released her latest album Midnights with the usual fanfare, highly anticipated by fans and critics. Many things were written and said about the promotional cycle, which leveraged TikTok and cutting-edge features on Spotify like little explainer videos for each song.

In a distributed workplace it can be challenging to understand each other as a whole person, so I’m trying to share some personal things about myself with anyone I might collaborate with. I hope this will frontload the trust-building somewhat, and so far I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback.

By being open and upfront about who I am and how my brain ticks, I hope to build transparency and foster psychological safety. If you like this and create a manual too, please share it!

While some of us might feel comfortable with working from home, there might be others who don’t. There are plenty of resources available now on what tools, frameworks and other tips to help improve or maintain productivity, but between those it can feel very disruptive to suddenly find yourself at home alone without the structures you have in the office. I’ve found that we mostly talk about being efficient or productive but the aspects of managing our own well-being are just as important. I’ve written down some tips to try that can help organize your day or that can help improve the collaboration with your direct squad members.

In June 2018 I’ve participated in a Vipassana 10 day meditation course. After having processed most of it, I feel the need of articulating my thoughts and feelings here. The below is only a summary of my own experience. There is no guarantee you will experience similar things. If you have been considering participating in a course, I hope my experiences can help make up your mind. I’m considering this adventure one of the best investments I could have made in terms of personal development, but Vipassana is not a simple walk in the park!

There is something missing on the internet, but I can’t build it myself. Usually I would try to hack something together, but one of my 2018 goals is to not start any new side projects. Instead, I decided to publish my thoughts here, perhaps someone else will like this free product idea and build it!

Product Perspective

As a product manager, I often look at screens, user flows and websites with different lenses:

Ever since @marcohamersma pointed me to Going to the Store, I’m hooked on this kind of 3D art. I can’t explain why it’s so mesmerizing to me, as it makes many other people quite uncomfortable. I was very happy to have found some more lately, and even more so to collect a bunch of those videos here to show you. Here it is, a list of my favorite uncomfortable, hyper-realistic, human-like 3D animations. Be sure to check out the individual artists, because there is much more to be discovered that will keep you watching for a while longer!

The internet became a terrible place. It seems that today we need to give our data, content and attention to others in order to receive a virtual form of social affirmation. This is my answer to that.

Attention as a currency

I don’t like this. I have trouble managing my attention and I noticed I started to develop several nervous habits. I am a child of the internet, a true early adopter. Hence I used to be an avid user of any services that had gained traction. It was interesting to see platforms rise to the liking of the crowds, but also to see them disappear again to be forgotten. The end result seems to be a war of titans, with monopolies fighting for our attention and content. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google {Home|Photos|Mail|Drive|etc}. The patterns and habits we develop in using these services and apps are new. When we pat each other on the back and talk about rising engagement numbers or stickiness, what does that mean to the person that has been using your app? Did we solve a problem? Maybe. Did we improve that person’s quality of life? Probably not. Not really, at least. But to keep these services running we need to monetize them, make money off the attention that we’ve generated.

Since a couple of months we’ve been anxious, excited and proud. A new human was about to be born, but most importantly; it would be our human. We quickly learned that the old-school Dutch name “Teun” is a little complicated to pronounce for non-Dutch speakers. Luckily we could do something about that. Borrowing some code I’ve previously wrote on Music Hack Day projects, we’ve whipped up this little landing page to help people to learn how to pronounce his name. Of course we’ve registered his name as a domain. So, a little landing page, a little domain, here’s to you little man: https://www.teunvanderven.com.