djpr

I worked with a start-up that focused on providing software for private family offices. These are for UHNW people who have more than 100 million USD. They do not want to brag that they go to the Bentley of banks. They want to keep it as private as possible.

Typically UHNW has a private family office, something between a concierge and philanthropy and a private investment organization, which maintain relationships with private banking services provided by Credit Suisse, UBS, etc. It can cost 1-2 million USD a year to run a private family office.

You never hear about family offices and in some areas you may only see a discreet sign at a posh building saying "private banking" and all of these folks want to keep it that way. The branding play here is being tight-lipped and discrete.

India, Indonesia, and China are already using WeChat, GoPay, PayTM. I'm not sure what Bitcoins or Libra can offer that e-wallets don't already provide. And these e-wallets, unlike crypto, work well with existing gov't regulations.

Some of them, like GoPay works with the Indonesian gov't to provide loans for micro-small businesses. Since they have the data of business transactions they can forecast loan repayments.

> By the way, what are they all planning to do if the scaling efforts of real cryptocurrencies succeed and the dream of digital cash becomes a reality?

My fear is WeChat and GoPay will get there first well before cryptos.

In this case, the capability is caused by a need. As the other person said, it's about optimizing between different special offers & discounts given by different mobile operators.

Source: Indonesian with family that needs two-sim cards phones.

Be it Pocket or anything else, I learned that processing and reviewing is just as important part of the reading process.

I try to commit time on the weekends to read 15 articles/PDF per day (saved on Pocket). I take down notes on articles I find useful (usually 4-5 of the 15 articles).

At the end of the month, I review the notes again and see if there's anything actionable or should be filed/stored in my long term notes (e.g. things to cook, books to read, tools for work to try, resources I'll need later, etc).

This works okay for me but I'm interested if other folks have ideas of what to do after you've read the articles?

I'm curious, where do you work now and who are your clients? I worked in Asia and the work culture with the Chinese (mainlanders) and those of Chinese-descent (Chinese Malaysians, Chinese Singaporean) was more challenging than working with Americans.

When I was in advertising, stories of people working and staying (as in sleeping over) during the weekends was not uncommon. Clients would call me at 11pm asking for a concall with my staff. 12 hours a day for weeks on end, including working weekends, were common place.

We were able to hire great talent just by promising that we'd never ask our staff to work weekends and hardly ever after 7pm on a workday. We had mostly US clients so that was an easy thing for us to day.

This culture shifted a bit when stories of young agency people in Hong Kong and other Asian cities dying from exhaustion became a big deal 4-5 years ago. But its still very workaholic culture.

Don't get me wrong, Americans work insane hours compared to Indonesians or the French, but parts of Asia is a whole other level of madness.

I have not, but I'll check it out. I've read "The Futurist" which is also a satirical look. I think the field can be made better with a healthy dose of introspection via satire, so I welcome reading this book. Thanks!

madamelic, yeah I've gotten a lot of funny looks from people. When I explain that its relates to scenario planning, it sounds a bit less silly.

There are some govts, like in Finland or Singapore, that invest heavily in futures studies. Singapore Gov't has multiple foresight teams within the prime minister's office, ministry of trade etc. UAE has a quasi-Ministery of the Future: https://www.mocaf.gov.ae/en

I'd rather be working at the Ministry of Magic though. :p

Not the OP, but I can share what I got from Black Panther:

1. When they're in the market, people are still walking around in sandals and even barefoot.

This is counter to either ultra-sleek hygienic futures or the film noir/cyberpunk look where everything is dirty and wet. In this area, it's a bit more like Star Wars.

2. One of the elder advisors is wearing a giant lip ring (sorry, don't know what its called): https://media.comicbook.com/2017/06/black-panther-green-suit...

Basically, it means you can be "modern" but on your own terms (that is, have your ethnic identity still represented).

3. I like the idea that an African country being the most technologically advanced nation on earth, not Japan, China, or the US...but an African country!

I think #4 is very subversive (for unfortunate reasons). It really made me think what would it take for an African country - be it Nigerian, Botswana, South Africa etc - to compete with the likes of Singapore or California.

4. Lastly, I like the idea of the weapon that look organic rather than looks "hi-tech": https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/3e274163-f36d-4b79-bff7-...

I am okay with the kingdom part. Part of future studies is also the idea that the past can be revisited. In our academically training, one of the things we talk about is that the future is not exponentially changing in a linear direction (like Singularity folks), it can be circular, stagnant, and go "backwards", etc.

For me, the bigger issue is that despite being technologically advanced they're basically a vibranium-based economy, which makes me assume that they would have the same problems as petro-states. Perhaps that explains why they're a monarchy?

> "What does this mean?"

I have a Masters in Foresight and I'm a member of the Association of Professional Futurists. The field is commonly referred to as foresight and futures studies. We're sort of an awkward field, so at some universities, future studies program can be found under the school of design, political science, and technology.

In terms of careers, academically-trained futurists can be found in a few industries: defense, energy, and pharmaceuticals. My schoolmates from my program work at Disney, CPGs, and governments (defense, prime minsters office). In tech, I think Facebook and Mozilla also have foresight people.

Our field is by definition multi-disciplinary, so we had to learn a bit of everything: systems thinking, scenario planning, social change, business strategy, etc.

> "The future as it is and has been coming to pass? How we, today and recently, culturally portray the idea of the future?"

More so how we culturally portray the future. There are a lot of cultural preconceptions that are incorporated in visions of the future.

I grew up with Star Trek (TOS) and my dad is ex-NASA, so I'm well acquainted with the traditional American view of the future, but I'm also a strong supporter of the need for a diverse range of alternatives.

For example, Sohail Inayatullah of UNESCO writes a lot about alternative Muslim futures. They're not tech-based at all but thinking about political, economic, and social changes.

Haha, yes, I'd trade futurist for data scientist.

In academic circles, we're called foresight or futures studies field but no one knows what that is.

I agree with and excited about this development. I'm an academically trained futurist and I'm continually frustrated by the future as being techno-solutionist-driven and mostly Western or some Hong Kong/Tokyo future.

Black Panther, I hope, will help people to be inspired by other ideas of what the future can be - from different cultural lenses, changes in view of technology, changes in ways of doing etc.

It's about decolonizing the future and opening the door to other ways of being.

Here's one of my favorite piece of futures work that I like to talk about. It's about the future of human relationships: https://jfsdigital.org/2017/09/22/the-future-of-marriage/

Yes, it's still techno-driven and still very San Francisco, but at least its not about flying cars or fancy tech, just different ways of being.

Interesting, I grew up with have inclusive/exclusive forms in Indonesian but never really thought about how it would really help in situations like this!

> I have a bunch of notes for an article pitch about how AI/ML tech could easily create resource cursed economies and governance (akin to Jeffery Sachs description), but don't want to wade into writing again yet.

Sounds like an important subject though. Any chance you can share or will post an outline of your thoughts?

For me, the most interesting problems are governance & economic development models. It's obviously broken and it's obviously being supplemented by corporations to AI, so I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.

I see I'm being down-voted. That's okay, I'm just curious to know your thoughts.

There has been plenty of discussions if Singapore needs a "hinterland" to survive and if Johor can be that hinterland. I'm leaning yes on that camp, but I'd like to hear counter points.

Again, I'm not sure what's the difference between Singapore and most of Southeast Asia and say Latin America, if you are talking about challenging the gov't brazenly.

Its only in Western Europe, Australia, and Canada where I would feel safe (as a citizen only) to openly challenge the gov't. The rest sounds iffy.

If that's your criteria of countries you'd visit or live in - then I respect that. But you'll be within only a tiny slice of humanity.

Agreed. If Singapore could somehow unite or federate with Johor, I think it would be perfect. There would be the hyper-capitalist CBD, suburban "Heartland" and the wilder (relatively speaking) Johor where people could experiment.

The great thing about Singapore (and Kuala Lumpur) is that you can travel to other countries easily and cheaply.

That said, Singapore has some of the best cocktail bars in the world (they can keep up with New York & London), lively museum scene, incredible amount of parks and outdoor areas, etc.

When I lived in Singapore, we BBQ'd in a different park by the water every weekend and if we weren't eating, we were trekking around the different parks and nature reserves.

Stay away from CBD - like most Singaporeans do - and you'll find lots to do. That said, yes, its not as wild as Jakarta or Bangkok.

I think you are a bit mistaken here. I have lived in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia for over 10 years:

1. Drug laws are harsh in Southeast Asia, but Singapore is the only place you don’t have to worry about bribery. It’s probably the only country in Southeast Asia where you can’t bribe anyone.

It’s places like Bali where cops plant drugs on tourists or sell drugs to tourists to arrest them later to get cash from them.

But if that really scares you, avoid Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia - it’s a safer bet in Singapore.

2. Canning isn’t a common occurance. I would be more afraid to be Black in America than being canned in Singapore.

Agreed. Singapore is at a very critical point in their history. They are at a moment where they have to rethink and reinvent themselves to compete mid/long term, but at the same time, locals are so weary of gov't spending and foreigners. I love Singapore but it's a shame.

I think Kuala Lumpur - including PJ & Cyberjaya areas - is one completely under-rated area in the region. It's easy to get a foreign visa, infrastructure is good, culture is relatively open, most people speak English, and it's a very affordable city (for people on Western-level, say Spain's level, income).

Plus, with AirAsia flights its easy to hop over to Vietnam, Thailand, or elsewhere for weekend vacation.

I'm curious what laws specifically or areas of law? Especially when compared to Malaysia, Indonesia or other neighboring countries.

Firefox and Chrome give me that warning page, but I just click on "Advanced" and it will let me continue to the website. At least for me, it's just a huge warning to be careful but I still have ultimate control.

I dislike it too, but there's a huge number of people that don't. I noticed a lot of South Americans and Spanish people using WhatsApp via voice recordings. Coming from Asia, I gotta say we prefer communicating with emojis. :p

Vietnam has an amazing energy right now. Lots of enthusiasm and optimism among its people.

I know Malaysian companies that have back-offices in Vietnam because of the great talent there. The lack of English is a hurdle, but not impossible.

Indonesia in ecommerce and fin-tech. There are plenty in the scene, but the two bigs ones to know are:

> GoJek - Fintech/Uber-like startup:

Raised over USD 550 million. They started out providing on-demand motorcycle taxis (called ojeks), but expanded to on-demand food delivery, cleaners, make-up, courier, massage, housecleaners, etc.

Their bigger play is GoPay. That's their e-wallet service that lets you pay for service you pay for via GoJek and also transfer money to other GoPay users

> Tokopedia - C2C ecommerce

They're a C2C ecommerce site with over 4.0 million product listings with 250 million USD raised.

Others to check out are Traveloka, Bhinneka, Bukalapak, Doku, Qerja, Talenta, Qraved, Fabelio...tons of energy and funding going around.

It's the Chuwi Lapbook 12.3. Alternative review by TechTablets.com: https://techtablets.com/2017/04/details-chuwi-lapbook-12-3/