The idea that the future is architected by our choices (or lack of it) is the crux of one of the opportunity spaces at the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) in the UK.
(full disclosure: I'm working with the programme director on helping define the funding programme, so if you're working on related problems, by all means share your thoughts on the site or by reaching out!)
RE your link, I am not sure that anything of value has been articulated in describing this vague notion of "Collective Flourishing". After reading the page two or three times, the best I can understand is that it seems to be a call for technical solutions to problems that are actually deeply social in nature and require social solutions. Strange to see such nebulous slop coming from an official government agency.
Hi - the opportunity space page is meant to be broad; a more specific and targeted programme thesis within that is going to come out in the coming months. I should mention that it's not just a call for technical solutions because, as you note, a lot of this is deeply rooted in social systems and requires design solutions (i.e. it's not just building more tech). But that is good feedback!
I'm sure there are people who spend their time doing this, but I don't understand the motive. Doesn't one post in comment threads because one wishes to share their thoughts with other humans?
That's one reason why I post comments (and none of my comments are AI-generated). But I think some people cut-and-paste AI responses because they like winning upvotes and running up an upvote counter.
Yes well bubbles are a core part of the innovation process (new tech being useful doesn't imply a lack of bubbles), see e.g."Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital" by Carlota Perez https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_Revolutions_and_...
I agree with you but there's something ironic about seeing that comment here, especially considering how many jobs tech has replaced in the last few decades without people having the time to retrain.
Yes, it depends on what you're doing; for general paper discovery / search tasks, title abstract can be enough (which is also why Springer and Elsevier have been pulling even their abstracts from sources like OpenAlex).
But for something like that you need full texts to look into results sections. I'm very curious how you're dealing with information contained in tables, or if you're dealing with snippets of text from the full-text alone. Have you poked around Elicit yet?
I've recently had this problem where the important information (number of study participants, and how many were filtered out during which step) were only encoded in figures, not in the text. Maddening.
I always say that Iowa City is the Paris of the Midwest ;). Except when there's a home game.
The art culture is incredible. Two of our favorite artists spent a considerable amount of time there, so we made a few trips when researching trying to find pieces.
There is craft in business, in product, and in engineering.
A lot of these discussions focus on craft in engineering and there's lots of merit there regarding AI tools and how they change that process, but I've found that folks who enjoy both the product side of things and the engineering side of things are thriving while those who were very engineering focused understandably feel apprehensive.
I will say, in my day job, which is often at startups, I have to focus more on the business / product side just given the phase of the company. So, I get joy from engineering craft in side projects or other things I work on in my own time to scratch the itch.
Worth getting on your radar if this stuff is of interesting: https://aria.org.uk/opportunity-spaces/collective-flourishin...
(full disclosure: I'm working with the programme director on helping define the funding programme, so if you're working on related problems, by all means share your thoughts on the site or by reaching out!)