This week we have: The Automation Charade. Tim Berners-Lee’s Inrup. The Chia cryptocurrency. Plain, trains, and automobiles. IP and data in Toronto. In praise of mediocrity. Hidden details of the NYPL, and much more. Fall is here 🍂, make sure to take long walks outdoors, enjoy the colours where you have them, and don’t watch […]
Finishing this up later than usual, I hope everything’s in order! Big Sentiers week with the launch of a new website where you can see the archive of all issues and refer people for signing up. Only a couple of things are surfaced right now but there are a few other ideas being built behind […]
So this is issue No.50. I’d hoped to produce something special for it, either some twist on the content or some artefact to “commemorate” but in the end, it’s “just” a newsletter and, more importantly, I’ve spent some time on finally finalizing Sentiers at Work, the prototype of which I’ll be sending to a few […]
Harari twofer, lots and lots of tech topics this week, including an important copyright vote in Europe which I couldn’t really bring myself to write about more but it’s in there, you should read up. Also a longer than usual Miscellany section, including a couple that might be classified elsewhere but there you go, if […]
We need to teach our children to read, and to enjoy reading.We need libraries.We need books.We need literate citizens.— Neil Gaiman (see Miscellany, which is the “books section” today) Resisting Reduction: A Manifesto The MIT Media Lab director, Joichi Ito, proposing an interesting vision for the future. Contrasting the “religion” of the Singularity with a […]
Two things to celebrate this week. First, I found the problem with the lower open rates, it’s a “feature” of Gmail and I’ll make sure to stay below that limit in the future. Second, in two days is the one year anniversary of sending these things. Here’s the archive, if you’d like a look. No […]
This week features a good look at ethics for data, there’s some awesome mapping fun happening at Dynamicland, deeper thinking behind restrictive supply-side policies for fossil fuels, some Doctorow and some Morozov in tech, and two artsy pieces in miscellany. Quite a bit of an uptick on Mastodon this week, showing some actual promise but […]
Welcome to this new version of Sentiers, sorry it’s coming to you late. I’m introducing a new template (work in progress), and I’ve moved from Tinyletter to Mailchimp to have more visual flexibility and to centralize things for when I launch my new product in September. You’ll also notice a new index below which you […]
As broad as Sentiers is, it doesn’t cover every topic hitting my radar and is written from a specific perspective, for myself and for readers whom I see as “curious, engaged citizens.” This September, I’ll be launching a new project focused more tightly on a few topics, something that might be described as “relevant and strategic knowledge for people leading in organizations.”
Welcome new readers, thanks for joining! Quick reminder that if you’re in Montréal I also host a very informal coffee chat every couple of months, you can signup to be notified here, it’s called Les ponts (jusqu’à maintenant, plutôt en français mais “on parle bilingue”). ✕ Capitalism Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not “Human Nature” This at the […]
I’m very happy to say that starting in August I’ll be helming another newsletter, this one a collaboration with Atelier 10, who publish the excellent Nouveau Projet print magazine. It’s called Repères and you can subscribe here. It’s in French and will be sent monthly, threading much the same topic selection as Sentiers. Lastly, since finishing up an important contract a […]
For this issue, in the end, I kept a Cities section but I’m toying with the idea of streamlining things, having the usual few “featured” articles to start (any topic), then a Tech section (absorbing The Churn and AI), followed with something perhaps titled Shorts regrouping everything else. Oft included sections like Cities and Milieu would be folded in there. Thoughts? Yeas or nays? ✕ Elizabeth Denham: ‘Data […]
You might have noticed that I did end up skipping two weeks to properly enjoy my vacation. I hope you used the time to catchup on past issues and other newsletter because this one is gigantic. I’m not sure if I should say “sorry” or “enjoy”. ✕ Future Human Not a new section/category but rather […]
As you read this I am on vacation. As such, for once, I have enforced a hard deadline on myself and closed up shop before dinner/supper Friday. That has meant cutting reading and writing short a bit, making this issue more succinct than usual. Next Sunday is definitely off, then if I do manage to […]
Happy father’s day to the dads around here. I hope some of what I include in these newsletters helps you in understanding the world we are leaving our kids and in taking some actions. ✕ Tackling the Ethical Challenges of Slippery Technology Anab Jain, starting from Google’s AI principles, show us some of the thorny […]
This is a long one. It’s all good stuff (of course) but there are two main parts if you want to focus; ‘books and learning,’ followed by a ‘technology’ section. Then a short ‘cities’ and a very miscellaneous ‘miscellany.’ ✕ Don’t Eat Before Reading This I can’t say Anthony Bourdain is much in my usual “beats” […]
This week ended up with something of a futures theme with critics of technology, design fiction, and a very dark future by Charlie Stross. Lots of drones. And my extreme 😡 of the week with Trudeau ignoring the future and purchasing a pipeline, with Bill McKibben’s reaction. ✕ Futuring “Why don’t you go live in […]
Hello and sorry for the delayed arrival, quite a hectic week and the coming one will likely be the same so a shorter issue than the last few. ✕ ❤️ Barcelona is leading the fightback against smart city surveillance I really want to see an update on this in a year (or even 6 months), because […]
The longest section this week is the one titled ‘Milieu’ which makes me realize again that I never did publish that glossary of terms a couple of people asked for. The use of ‘Milieu’ is something we used in The Alpine Review to encompass the natural world, our impact, and the related solutions and tools we come […]
Lots of reading material this week as I did a bit of catching up and, as always, there’s a lot happening. Includes duplicitous Duplex, neo-colonialism, thoughtless AI, replicable cities, alchemy and hauntings, and minimal ethics for the anthropocene. ✕ Duplicitous About Google Duplex but it could easily have gone under The Churn. Google Duplex: An […]
Welcome to new subscribers coming from my short stint at Kottke.org this week. I hope you enjoyed what I posted there. To those who didn’t follow, imho I did a pretty darn good job. So after a day away, breezing through the blog this morning, I decided to link to a few in the last section below. I do encourage you […]
Sorry for sending this a bit late, the last couple of days didn’t turn out as expected. On the (very) positive side though, next week I’ll be guest editing Kottke.org. That’s a huge honour, I’ve been reading Jason pretty much since the beginning and I’ve always been a fan. I’ve said this before here but look at […]
Busy weeks ahead but at least spring seems to finally be here in Montréal, a few week late. There are at least four or five longform articles I didn’t manage to read for this issue, hopefully for the next. I’m still playing around with the balance between “this just happened” and more evergreen stuff I […]
There’s the very loose idea around this newsletter that it might, at some point, turn into something more like a magazine, or lead to a magazine project. Or a “publication,” which I see as a more bookish, less regular, but still periodical “thing.” CLOG being one example. Following a reader’s comment this week as well as a […]
Hello and welcome back, last week was likely the last break for a little while, thanks for sticking around. I’m hoping to keep thinking about the first item below and blog (or even launch) something in that area. Although what I’m writing is still pretty blurry, do hit reply and share your thoughts or links […]