The Grey Swan Guild News Wrap — The Week That Was Friday, June 25, 2021.
Grey Swan Guild — News Wrap Edition: #23 of Vol. 1
Theme: Impermanence
These are a series of stories and headlines we are tracking in the
Grey Swan Guild’s Global League of Sensemakers Newsroom. Here is The Great, the Good, the Bad, the Undecided and the Ugly of what we observed this week.
Check the Grey Swan Calendar for upcoming happenings, including a new member “bank and wedge” orientation session on July 7, and our weekly Clubhouse discussions every Sunday.
Grey Swan Guild Atelier #4 — Tech Swans Applied
We are hosting a workshop on one of our favorite Guild topics: “emerging technology” and what exciting applications they attach to in the near future. Join us and exercise your digital genes on July 9th at 4pm ET. Discover ten interesting advancements in technology with new use cases & human benefits.
Let’s make the promise of technology real. What can we expect, not expect, some time frames, some offshoots and some unexpected occurrences.
Grey Swan Weathervane IV — Here Today or Going Away
Provide us your thoughts on which behaviors, habits, values and societal norms have changed forever and which are going to snap back to a 2019 previous normal. Consider the future of serious societal changes, niche important shifts and fun, provocative considerations. Which way does the 2021 wind blow? Please help us answer these quandaries with the attached survey.
Please join us on Sunday, June 27th at 8am (PST) 11am (EST) / 4pm BST on Clubhouse to engage with your favourite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors, including Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Agustín Borrazás, Rob Tyrie, Ben Thurman, Louise Mowbray, and Antonia Nicols.
The theme that emerged this week is one of “impermanence”. Like hemlines going in and out of fashion, the stories this week remind us that the current state of the world is just a moment in time, and subject to creative license at that. To make a difference is to own your interpretation and take action.
This week, we got our inner Miranda Priestley on and looked at the more glamorous side of sensemaking, from digital fashion to laser pointers to long overdue and important accessories. It’s been a fabulous week, darlings.
Meanwhile.
Let’s Wrap.
The Great 😇
- Nice laser pointer you got there. Researchers are proposing the use of quantum cascade lasers to achieve private free-space communications without electromagnetic disturbances. Chaos Synchronization and dynamic networks are enabled with this innovation.
Dynamical networks are important models for the behaviour of complex systems, modelling physical, biological and societal systems, including the brain, food webs, epidemic disease in populations, power grids and many other. Such dynamical networks can exhibit behaviour in which deterministic chaos, exhibiting unpredictability and disorder, coexists with synchronisation, a classical paradigm of order.
2. A quote for all seasons. “What would men be without women? Scarce, sir…mighty scarce.” -Mark Twain. Women who are known and trusted in their local communities were the key to administering polio vaccines in developing nations. Now, they may do the same for COVID-19.
3. Purple puts us in touch with the part of ourselves that is regal. A Black WWII veteran received a long overdue honor this week.
The Good 😀
- Fashion is not about product; it’s about an interesting idea that you can’t resist buying into.” — Alessandro Michele. Some critics say digital fashion lacks a use case outside of Instagram, but The Dematerialised’s Nobbs and her co-founder Marjorie Hernandez are building a bigger value proposition. By authenticating 3D assets on a blockchain, they can be owned and used not just in static images but in video games, virtual reality and to collect and sell as digital art, which is something crypto enthusiasts have been embracing for years.
- Is that an algorithm in your pocket? Mathematicians are using computer-assisted proofs to verify complex theorems. We would elaborate on this point but we could barely understand this article ourselves. One thing we did get excited about: the grand unification theory of geometry, functional analysis and p-adic numbers. We are happy to see you.
- It’s airplane food, but make it fashion. Air travel is a thing again, and what better way to celebrate than by eating your airplane meal, and then the tray it is served on. Have your plate and eat it too. 🍽️ 🍰
The Bad 😬
- Les Certificats du Faux. As predicted, fake vaccine certificates (paper and electronic) are on the rise. We expect this is happening internationally. Without strong identity management and a clear vaccine registry that updates in real time, this is public health as theatre. Double Jeopardy?
- You may not own that glamorous accessory you think you do. Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act broadly states that it’s illegal to “circumvent” digital locks. Manufacturers interpret this to mean that you don’t own the software that makes your gadgets work. Call Clouseau.
- Time for a cosmic re-”boot”. The Hubble telescope computer crashed this week and still isn’t back online as of this writing. Waiting for the new version of “I can see clearly now…”.
The Ugly 😱
- Mousetraps could be the latest thing in home decor. Drought followed by wet conditions are causing rodent infestations in Australia.🐭
- You may want a hanky for this one. Unbalanced phytoplankton are creating sea snot along Turkey’s coastline.🦠
- You’re in or you’re out. Bitcoin had a bumpy ride at the beginning of this week, plunging to 50% of its highest value on Monday before recovering somewhat within 24 hours.z🪙🎲🎲
The Undecided:
- Hang on to your hats. Testing the boundaries of gender identity as it relates to sport. It’s great that Laurel Hubbard has an outlet to exhibit her abilities and training but it runs up against the inherent advantages she may have against her competitors in biological advantages she may have had in the past. Is this progress in sport or a hornet’s nest of who should fairly compete against another?
- In related news, New Zealand says yes to transgender athletes competing as their declared gender, but the US is starting to say no. Legislation aside, this is another of a series of indications that the new gender norm may just be a fluid expression that could change at any point in time.
- What’s your favorite label? That said, it’s a human tendency to want to label things for easy categorization and relating. A new label we may be contending with is proof of COVID-19 vaccinations at work. There are social implications for those people who have chosen not to get vaccinated, including the possibility of not being able to return to the office.
The Tapestry:
Quote of the Week :
“The color of truth is grey.”
Andre Gide, French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1869–1951
That’s the Wrap! Your thoughts?
Why not join us on Sunday, June 27 at 8:00am (PST)/11am (EST) /4pm (BST) on Clubhouse to engage with your favourite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors, including Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Agustín Borrazás, Rob Tyrie, Doyle Buehler, Ben Thurman, Louise Mowbray and Antonia Nicols.
See you next week for Edition #24 where we will ponder and ruminate on the week that was, what it means for the future and Wrap it for you.
The GSG Medium is The Message
Visit our Medium channel every Friday for a weekly wrap on the world’s biggest challenges and other fresh articles and points of view The Guild is sharing. Please drop by our Grey Swan Guild website (greyswanguild.org) for more publications and articles about how we make sense of the world ongoing and also the raft of possibilities to participate as a Sensemaker.
This Week’s Grey Swan News Wrap Editor: Antonia Nicols, with help from the Editorial Team: Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Agustín Borrazás, Rob Tyrie, Doyle Buehler, Ben Thurman, and Louise Mowbray.
Grey Swan Guild — Making Sense of What’s Next
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We call these sessions Regattas and Bank & Wedge sessions. Why not join us and learn more about becoming a member of our movement? Come and ride our wave alongside our 2nd thousand members who are flocking in.
Regatta Onboardings: 2nd Wednesday of every month.
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Our mission is to Make Sense of the World’s Biggest Challenges — curating and creating knowledge through observation, informed futurism, sensemaking and analysis. Our proposition is to inspire the world to think differently through Sensemaking intelligence, The Foundry learning and The Leader’s Alliance business activation realms — it’s the Grey Swan Guild Way. 🦢
