🥝 Chiwi Journal #18: Lisbon, AI 2041, Deepfake, Practical Utopias and Enter web3
🥝 Chiwi Journal #18: Lisbon, AI 2041, Deepfake, Practical Utopias and Enter web3
Greeting from Lisbon! 🇵🇹
This month I got four groups of friends from England, America, China and New Zealand to visit Lisbon. Revenge tourism is here, and Lisbon has become such a hotspot gathering founders and digital nomads worldwide.
After living in Portugal for a year, I got my Portuguese residency card this month, allowing me to stay for another two years! Why Lisbon? Apart from the good weather and food, the web3 and tech scene has been phenomenal since last year. I'll explain more in the below Nearcon session.
On the other note, I launched Season 2 of my Chinese podcast channel【理想屯 The Optimal Village】this month, which featured guests Shaonan Liu (Equivalent of the founder of Notion), Steve Shi (Equivalent of Joe Rogan or Lex Fridman) and Ellen Chen (Equivalent of Andrew Huberman). I also appeared on two other Chinese podcast shows to talk about philosophy, the digital nomad lifestyle and writing.
It's such a fun ride to create content in both English and Chinese so I can access wider audiences from different cultures that provide me with multiple perspectives to better understand our world. If you are bilingual, trilingual or even more, I highly recommend writing in English and your mother tongue. For more reasons, please refer to this article.
Now, let's get into this month's content.
NEARCON took place in Lisbon this month with 2,000+ attendants from all over the world to explore the limitless possibilities of building a better world with NEAR.
During this four-day conference, I got to learn NEAR ecosystem and the latest web3 developments and technologies and network with builders, makers and creators across various industries.
What surprised me most was meeting one of the most renowned sci-fi writers Stanley Chen (Chen Qiufan 陈楸帆) at the conference. After a couple of hours of chat about AI (his new book with Kai-Fu Lee is a must-read if you are into this topic), bilingual writing and China, I invited him to my podcast next month. Stay tuned and listen to Chiwi Journal on your favourite podcast apps!
At the Nearcon, I also encountered three Chinese builders/investors who have many mutual friends with me and three 1729ers from Balaji's community who shared the same vision. That's another reason I decided to settle down in Lisbon for now because location matters as it attracts like-minded people! If you are coming to ETHLisbon or Web Summit this year, feel free to reply to this newsletter and let's meet IRL!
AI will be the defining development of the twenty-first century. Within two decades, aspects of daily human life will be unrecognizable. AI will generate unprecedented wealth, revolutionize medicine and education through human-machine symbiosis, and create brand new forms of communication and entertainment. In liberating us from routine work, however, AI will also challenge the organizing principles of our economic and social order. Meanwhile, AI will bring new risks in the form of autonomous weapons and smart technology that inherits human bias. AI is at a tipping point, and people need to wake up – both to AI’s radiant pathways and its existential perils for life as we know it.
As mentioned above, Stanley Chen and Kai-Fu Lee co-wrote a new book, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future, which blends fiction and nonfiction in one book.
Kai-Fu Lee, the former president of Google China and bestselling author of AI Superpowers, wanted to make the topic of AI more accessible to readers. Hence, he invited Stanley to write ten short sci-fi stories first,. Then he wrote an essay about the technology, such as Deep Learning, Deepfake videos, Mixed Reality (MR), quantum computers, and synthetic biology that the stories were based on.
After reading this book, you'll better understand how artificial intelligence will change our world over the next twenty years. If you have any questions would like to ask the co-author Stanley Chen, please feel free to let me know and I'll include your question into our podcast chat.
Speaking of Deepfake technology, I recently finished watching a British TV show, The Capture Season 2, which sees image manipulation being taken to a new level, with live TV reports tampered with Deepfake technology.
In the first season, it featured a former British soldier who finds himself accused of kidnapping and murdering his barrister, backed by CCTV evidence. As Detective Inspector Rachel Carey (Holliday Granger) leads the investigation, she uncovers a multi-layered conspiracy and finds it clear that the truth can sometimes be a matter of perspective.
Hacked news feeds, government surveillance, interference in politics, Deepfake technology, Big Tech manipulation, geopolicy tactics, and corruption at the heart of mainstream media... Season two is an even more timely and enthralling conspiracy thriller that again questions whether we can believe what we see.
If you are into art, classical music, architecture and historical anecdotes, you don't want to miss The Culture Tutor's weekly educational newsletter: Areopagus.
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A guide to Gothic cathedral architecture
21 key dates from European history
How to write like George Orwell
Superheroes and supervillains of literature & art throughout history
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“There isn't ‘the future’ that we're doomed to enact. There are all kinds of possible futures. And which one we're going to get is going to depend on what we do now.” — Margaret Atwood
Early this year, Tim Ferriss interviewed the legendary writer Margaret Atwood on his podcast, discussing Margaret's creative process, The Handmaid's Tale and her new course Practical Utopias: An Exploration of the Possible.
After listening to Margaret's vision of collaborating within the world's most creative virtual classroom to unlock practical solutions to some of humanity's most significant challenges, I immediately jumped to the website, submitted my application, and got accepted by the course committee.
The course started this month led by Margaret and featured guest speakers, including award-winning scientists, entrepreneurs, writers, and directors from various industries.
I aim to develop crucial skills to be a more creative, innovative, and effective change agent after 8 weeks of learning with fellow students from all over the world and taking my civil responsibility to contribute to this Practical Utopia vision in my lifetime.
This is a mammoth list featuring stylish bookstores and libraries I visited around the world: a secondhand bookstore on a boat in London, a weird corner shop full of antique and rare books in Paris, a theatre-turned-bookshop in Buenos Aires, a modern and glamourous bookseller building in Tianjin.. and MANY more!
Follow my journey on Google Maps. I'll add more to this thread as I go :)
Question from CY Circle:
How to get into web3 and find a job in this new industry?
Answer:
To start, I'd recommend searching on YouTube (channels such as Whiteboard Crypto, Simplilearn and Daap University) or referring to this article on a16z to have a general view of what web3 is (although no one can explain fully and clearly atm).
Don't forget to learn the terms and abbreviations often used by people in web3, such as WAGMI, HODL, WHALE, GWEI and so on. Just do some research, and you'll figure it out.
Podcast is also an excellent learning material. Here are the ones listened to regularly:
- Bankless
- web3 with a16z
- The Defiant
- Green Pill
- The Pomp Podcast
- What's Money by Robert Breedlove
@Misha has summarized a list of the must-follow accounts in web3:
Second, remember to put your knowledge into practice. After you build a theoretical understanding of web3, it's time to interact with like-minded people and contribute your learnings by joining online groups and communities (beware of pyramid schemes or scam groups, there are LOADS of them in web3 space) or offline meet-ups.
In the beginning, you can join many communities and spend at least 1-2 hours daily seeing how each community works and feeling its vibes. After a couple of weeks/months, it's time to settle down and focus on 1-2 communities where you align the value and find the fits. You can continue participating in community activities or buying tokens to become a DAO member or core contributor and get the rewards from the community in return.
Finally, look at web3 job sites, study the gaps between your current skills and the requirements you are interested in, and then make up for them by signing up for courses or self-education. Most web3 jobs are remote and part-time, so don't worry about the salary. The key is to knock on the door to web3 and gain relevant experience first; later, the road will naturally get wider.
Recommended web3 job sites:
Search keyword web3 at other big job boards or LinkedIn
The above is based on my personal experience and first-hand observation., which cannot represent a standard procedure.
We're still in the very early stages of web3, and no one knows what the hell this thing is and how to imply it to create a better future.
Everyone is exploring this space with trials and errors. Early adaptors may get a big portion of the pie; those who come late don't need FOMO because, like in the early Internet days, when early adaptors built up the infrastructure, the late joiners may enjoy the technology with more ease and comfort.
WAGMI!