Late last week I spoke at a conference in New Zealand which had an unusual audience.  It was made up of deep thinkers who deal regularly with ambiguity at the sharp end of policy.  The Q&A session was fascinating, and a lot of attendees asked for more information.  With this in mind, here’s a few bullet points that provide more context on some of the topics:

Practical Tips for Online Privacy

• never connect to a public wifi, even in hotels – they’re magnets for hackers and stealing your data is literally child’s play.
• when going online away from work or home, either use your mobile phone as a hotspot, or purchase a virtual private network service.  It increases security and makes it harder to steal your data when online. I use this service.
• cover the front facing camera on your laptop – it’s relatively easy for hackers to access the camera even when it looks like it’s not turned on
• when you’re browsing online, it’s very easy for advertisers to track you and show ads targeted at you across different websites.  It’s a significant privacy intrusion that you can combat with this tool.

VUCA

• Here’s a link to the comments from Mikhail Gorbachev about the world preparing for war
• I forgot to mention that Sweden has recently re-introduced compulsory military service
• Young people today don’t have the same faith in democracy as their parents.
• Here’s an interactive map that shows the different effects of sea level rise and lets you see how it will affect cities around the world, including in New Zealand
• the jury is out on artificial intelligence – here’s the view of an academic who looks very deeply at the issue.

Read/Viewing

• A short video on the Cynefin framework for complexity
• an interview that explains more about software biases with Cathy O’Neil – author of the book Weapons of Math Destruction
• a sobering view of the future is painted in the book Homo Deus.  Here’s a review of the book in The Guardian