Alex Wittenberg

“Twitter makes money from your attention, so they need to compel your attention. Sometimes that leads to good things, like connecting you to people and ideas that matter. But it also means that the addiction, abuse, and outrage that thrive on Twitter and other social platforms may be impossible to eradicate. So what’s left to do? You can change the... See more

What does it mean for a human being to be? (I realize this is starting to sound like a bad comedy sketch about philosophers lost in wild abstractions. I’m afraid that’s going to get worse for another couple of paragraphs before it gets better.) His answer is that our being is totally, utterly bound up with our finite time. So bound up, in fact,... See more

A computer inference however may draw upon massive data and complex correlations, you can’t argue with the machine, and you can’t see how to change. You have no say and governance is replaced with management […] 

So a surprisingly effective antidote to anxiety can be to simply realize that this demand for reassurance from the future is one that will definitely never be satisfied—no matter how much you plan or fret, or how much extra time you leave to get to the airport. You can’t know that things will turn out all right. The struggle for certainty is an... See more

Credentials have to be managed, updated, and exchanged. This layer aims to address how DIDs can negotiate proof of control and authentication, as well as securely passing data between identity owners.BrightID is a notable project in this area. It is a social identity network with over 30,000 users that allows people to prove to applications that... See more

Although A.I. technology can’t address the scarcity of qualified mental health care providers — there are not nearly enough to meet the country’s needs, said Dr. Bentley — there’s hope that it may lower the barriers to receiving a correct diagnosis, assist clinicians in identifying patients who may be hesitant to seek care and facilitate... See more

Tokenized subscription could create an angel audience of other creators, investing in something very early and very risky with the dream of a potential upside but also just for the fun of it. We see this already with so much of what’s happening with Web3. There are pure speculators but that alone would be nowhere near enough to spin the wheel as... See more

In the internet of value, greater amounts of liquidity are necessary to do more things and move additional value. Thin liquidity means participants will not move greater value, because the value loss to them is too high. Imagine an economy where value cannot flow freely because every time it moves, exchanges, or transfers; it loses value. This is... See more