Sign up here to get Recomendo a week early in your inbox.

Who controls computers?

For the past half century the most powerful resource in the world has been computers. The book Chip War is the story of the political, commercial, and military struggle to control this global resource in the form of tiny silicon chips used in everything. Chip War is a brisk, insightful, punchy, fast read. The ups, downs, upsets, rebounds, and flameouts of the major players make it clear that this story is not done and there will be more surprises around this power in the future. Highly recommended. — KK

40 useful concepts

“Principle Of Humanity: Every single person is exactly what you would be if you were them. This includes your political opponents. So instead of dismissing them as evil or stupid, maybe seek to understand the circumstances that led them to their conclusions.” Read 39 other useful concepts in this issue of The Prism. — MF

Encyclopedia of the unknowns

Wikenigma is the wikipedia of unanswered questions and gaps in human knowledge for the curious-minded. For example, words of unknown origin, the dilemma of free will, or the purpose of the human chin. It’s a jumping-off point for the imagination. — CD

Video summarizer

We’ve recommended a site that summarizes YouTube videos before, but Eightify is markedly superior and very cool. This Chrome browser extension gives you a little button on the YouTube video play page. You click “Summarize” and in a few seconds the Eightify AI gives you a very usable text summary of the video content broken into ten parts with time stamps. You can click on the time stamps to play that part. You get three free summaries per week, or you can pay for more (which I have done) at about 30 cents a piece. I use it as a way to quickly get to the most important parts of any video. — KK

Tips to improve your memory

This article has some unexpected tips on how to work on improving your memory, like assigning vivid images to things you want to remember and spending 5 minutes before bed reflecting on what happened throughout the day. The one I swear to do more of is to take more pictures on my phone and actually go back and look at them. — CD

21 mind traps

A 20-minute video that looks at 21 kinds of thinking errors. Here’s an example of the Gambler’s Fallacy: “A University of Chicago review found asylum judges were 19% less likely to approve an asylum seeker if they had just approved the previous two. The same person applying for a loan was more likely to get approved for a loan if the previous two applicants were rejected and was more likely to be rejected if the previous two applications were approved.” — MF

— Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, Claudia Dawson

01/29/23