boutique search engine, metaverse software & quadratic voting
CC#29 - play to earn, the american dream & networking for introverts
Hey there and welcome to ✨ CuratedCuriosity - a bi-weekly newsletter delivering inspiration from all over the internet to the notoriously curious.
Sorry for being a little late this time. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy reading and have a good start into the week!
Things I Enjoyed Reading.
🔎Re-Organizing the World’s Information: Why we need more Boutique Search Engines
With insane amounts of information available online its becoming harder (for us and search engines alike) to distinguish between high quality and low quality information - continue reading for some thoughts on what we could do about it.
For most queries, Google search is pretty underwhelming these days. Google is great at answering questions with an objective answer, like “# of billionaires in the world” or “What is the population of Iceland”. It’s pretty bad at answering questions that require judgment and context like “What do NFT collectors think about NFTs?”(…) There’s an emergence of tools like Notion, Airtable, and Readwise where people are aggregating content and resources, reviving the curated web. But at the moment these are mostly solo affairs, hidden in private or semi-private corners of the Internet, fragmented, poorly indexed, and unavailable for public use. We haven't figured out how to make them multiplayer.
🏡How to design a house to last 1000 years (Part I)
What the title says. Written in an entertaining and comprehensible way also for people like me with no clue about house construction.
In the US, our buildings tend to last somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 100 years, depending on the type of building (residential buildings tend to last longer than commercial buildings). This means every year, something like 1 to 2% of our buildings get torn down or demolished. (…) In a world of sustained economic growth, there’s an economic calculus for this sort of replacement cycle, since the present value of any extra building life would be less than the cost to purchase it. But this cycle of replacement is relatively modern - medieval houses would often last for centuries, and there are examples from around the world of buildings that have lasted for many hundreds or even thousands of years while remaining in use - The Pantheon, Aula Palatina, Brihadeeswarar Temple, Verona Area, Chartres Cathedral are a few examples.
🎮 “Play-to-earn” and Bullshit Jobs
An increasing amount of people are earning a living by playing online games in which they mostly undertake repetitive tasks (i.e. playing is not fun for them). What’s the societal value behind all of it (if any)?
In a crypto economy crowded with vapourware and alpha-stage software, Axie Infinity stands out. Not only has it amassed a large base of users, the in-game economy has actually provided a real-world income stream to working-class Filipinos impacted by the pandemic. Some spend hours each day playing the game, and then sell the in-game currency they earn to pay their real-world bills. That’s obviously a good thing for them, but it also appears to be a near-Platonic example of Graeber’s definition of a bullshit job.
Food for Thought.
💭Interesting to see how powerful the decade-old narrative of the ‘American Dream’ still is. Also, to all the Europeans here - let’s be more optimistic!
❎ Ever heard about quadratic voting (QV)? The state of Colorado has run some trials on it and if you are interested you can find resources online to implement it yourself.
QV is a redesigned voting method reflecting the intensity of people’s preferences in collective decisions.(…) Voters receive budgets of “voice credits,” which they allocate to different questions on the ballot to signal the intensity of their conviction. Their voice credits convert to “counted votes” according to their square root. So if you put one voice credit on an issue, that is one vote; four credits are two votes; nine credits are three votes, and so on.
Why is it interesting? When groups need to make decisions involving many different issues, it is useful to enable each voter to express where they are more or less passionate. However, most ways of letting voters express preference strength make it too easy for the “loudest voices” to prevail. QV specifically and elegantly addresses that problem.
🌏Apart from a country’s size and economic situation, what else is affecting whether people move abroad?
Random Stuff.
📝 In 2021, the idea of working in VR/the metaverse has gone from “nah, only weirdos would think of doing this” to something a growing group of tech enthusiasts is actually trying out (for more insights, I can really recommend the article I mentioned here). Still, there isn’t a stack of software yet that has been specifically built for VR and allows users to leverage the advantages of a 3D virtual work environments. But seeing this metaverse-version of a brainstorming and note-taking app gets me kind of excited to see what 2022 has in store for the work-in-VR movement.
📝 Writing is Networking for Introverts. 100% agree.
🏭 Ever wondered how carbon removal actually works? If so, this is a great starting point.
My Update.
Caught COVID two weeks ago. Luckily only very light symptoms (I guess thanks to the booster shot) and feeling all well again. Just hoping it was Omicron so I am not running into the risk of getting it again too soon.
Still in Austria due to the above but heading back to Denmark tomorrow. Gonna have my first Danish lesson this week - jeg ser frem til det. Or so.