August's Essential Reads

I got really into this article about Stuxnet, a computer worm that played no small part in taking down Iran’s nuclear programme. A fascinating story -- the worm was found to have attacked Siemens industrial machines, and then systematically burrowed its way through 50% of Iranian computer systems (and 2% of US systems).

"One of the great technical blockbusters in malware history, The attackers took great care to make sure that only their designated targets were hit...it was a marksman's job."

More lightheartedly, I'm totally in love with Carlo Ratti's scribit - a writing robot that turns any surface into a drawing canvas. Have a look at the debut at Milan Design Week.

We do a lot of work in the arts, and i’m always taken by new ways in which AI and image recognition algos might serve better recommendations (NB: we did a piece on the future of the gallery here). Have a read of this Fastcompany article on the latest experiment by Google to do for colour what Google Image Search did for pictures.

On that note, if you didn't catch the Google Viral Selfie - give it a quick look to find your fine art twin…

This is a great little roundup of 13 startup decks looking for VC funding. Including AirBnB, Dropbox, LinkedIn and more...If raising funds, kicking off a new tech venture or just curious, it’s totally worth a gander. Amazing to see the humble beginnings of business that have now achieved such scale.

Contrary to popular fear mongering, here’s a mainstream Guardian article to allay the fears of those worried AI will take all the jobs. Apparently AI will do the opposite and make even more work for everyone…(7m lost vs. 7.2 million gained - we’re slightly up, on the basis we don’t keep multiplying).

On that note...WeWork, worried by the state consumption, have banned all expensing of red meat. Isn’t it extraordinary quite how much the world has changed when it comes to things like this in the last 5 years?

If you’re interested in health and wellness, we have a research paper coming up in Q4. But before that, we have a trends piece on the future of work and living ready to publish in the next 4 weeks. Sign up here to get a copy.

And recently published of course, our retail trends piece. Download your copy here.

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