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The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing sound economic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit of this task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatans whose shortcuts to an early paradise he debunks. - Ludwig von Mises That's a pretty lofty view of economics and economists. As such it is far, far away from any view that most people have, especially of economists. Anyone who is even the slightest bit informed as to the track record of economists and their pronouncements will at best see them as something like a weatherman. In this view, the economist tries to make honest predictions based on the available data but gets it wrong more often than not. At worst, people see the economist as exactly the kind of charlatan Mises decries in the above quote. Economics as a discipline has lost a lot of respect. In short, economics is in trouble.  A big part of the problem is that too many economists don't actually start with data. Not that they don't use data. What they do is start with a theory that they prefer and then find the data to support their theory, ignoring or explaining away everything else. And that is on a good day. On a bad day (which seems to happen more and more) the economist is just providing quasi-intellectual cover to justify the policies of whichever government or corporation that they are working for. You can definitely see this if you pay attention to politics. Each party has its favorite economists to trot out to justify what they are doing, or to attack what the other team is doing, regardless of what the policy is. I first noticed this when way back in the Clinton administration, there was a Democrat move to do away with the “marriage tax” and the Republicans opposed it. Once Bush was in office, the positions flipped. Not that I believe either party really cared about the tax. It was simply another political football.  This is also apparent in the varying attitudes towards deficit spending. Both parties love it when they are in charge. They just spend it on slightly different things. If you pay too much attention to it, you just might drive yourself bonkers.  Another issue is that modern economists are too focused on tinkering around with policy, hoping to manipulate the market to get the outcome they want. This leads to extremely shallow thinking as all they wind up doing is at best looking at surface data and then trying to manipulate that so it fits better with their vision. What they neglect is everything below the surface, everything that is actually driving the data they are responding to.  Let's get back to economists and their theories for a minute. Economists are often professors, teaching others about economics and how they work. One might be inclined to ask if they really know so much about economics, why aren't they rich? Don't they know how the systems work and how to make use of their knowledge to their own benefit? Perhaps it's because there is more going on than their equations can account for. That is one of the central aspects of Mises and his Austrian School of Economics, there is just too much data to actually absorb it all. With any economy, there are any number of variables that simply cannot be accounted for. That's why Mises considered the idea of central planning and that one can control the market to be absurd. It is simply impossible to plan without knowing all the variables. Things will just happen whether you know the cause or not. Not only that, Mises understood that many if not most of the variables are not directly related to money, which is why he advocated for economists studying the social sciences. Instead, perhaps we should be more humble and realize we can't know everything and instead, observe the data as it is without imposing theories on it. Then perhaps we can move towards Mises' goal of understanding the world a little better.  What's your economy worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

One of our big seven things we really care about at TARTLE is government and corporate transparency. Normally, when this topic comes up, we are calling one or the other out for their lack of transparency. Today, we actually get to go the other way for once.  That is thanks to the governor of Alaska who recently ordered the justice department to investigate the state's health department. If that sounds unusual, it is. Governments typically don't publically announce that they are investigating themselves. What could have prompted the unusual action? It turns out Alaska's Health Department has been using data in ways that not the governor disapprove of, they may also have violated federal HIPAA laws. As with so many other things in the last year and a half, the situation was prompted by COVID. What they did was set a program to call senior citizens in Anchorage and enquire as to their vaccination status. The health department also outsourced that particular activity to third-party contractors. The program was begun to help people understand and take advantage of the availability of the COVID 19 vaccines. However, there are several questions to be asked. Did the seniors of Anchorage actually need any help with this? Did they ask for it? Did the health department actually ask them? What about the data? Whether or not a person has a particular vaccine is sensitive medical data, data that should not be getting shared with a third party, the ones doing the actual work. Finally, one has to wonder just what the state was doing with that data in the first place. Public emergency or not, the government should not have that kind of information about individuals. How did they acquire it and for what reason did they do so?  Once data starts to get shared like that, from one group to the next, it becomes harder and harder to track exactly what is being done with it. The sovereignty over the data has been lost and anonymity, in this case, is obviously also compromised. From those third parties, a patient's data could be sold virtually anywhere, including their identity.  Fortunately, once news of the program got out (thanks to one of Anchorage citizens blowing the whistle), the governor stopped it and ordered the investigation. In at least this instance, Governor Mike Dunleavy showed real leadership. Not only did he shut down the program, he ordered the investigation, and even more importantly, did so publically. And it gets better. Dunleavy ordered a full review of all the data sharing agreements for the state, promising to put policies in place that would prevent such a thing from ever happening again. It isn't often you see this kind of transparency coming from the government. For that, he should be commended. www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

If the first part of their discussion explored the parallels between social systems and AI technology, this second half provides insight on how Christian's work draws inspiration from an unlikely source: the natural world and the animal kingdom.  From there, he touches briefly upon the responsibility of modern tech professionals to be aware of the social implications of their work, providing words of encouragement to listeners of the podcast within the industry.   Drawing Inspiration From the Natural World: Ants leave trail pheromones to food that they find and then return to the colony. This leaves a road for other ants to find, which leads to the collective outcome of being able to feed everyone in the community. Similarly, honey bees coordinate with other bees to maintain their hive and protect the queen. These are examples of biological systems that are naturally capable of self-regulating— so where's our capacity to solve that on a larger scale, in business and societies? Here, Christian discussed the possibility of our efforts being limited because we approach problem solving with a two-dimensional mindset—when in reality, we should be looking at the scenario in three dimensions. For example, one may be able to see, hear, and touch a forest, but they won't be able to see what happens underneath the soil. There is a call for us to “move away from the two dimensional, polarizing world that sticks us in buckets and says, this thing is this or that, but there can't be a flexibility or the nuances of an entity in between that can actually move throughout dimensions.” But is it possible to run multinational corporations and governments as efficiently as beehives without taking away an individual's creative capacity, while ensuring that the system remains flexible enough to meet challenges brought about by outside forces?   Former Approaches to Systems of Organizations: Modern organizations find themselves adapting to a strange new status quo: one where management must deal with remote employees and asynchronous work. It's a symptom of decentralization in a structure, where control and command has become less concentrated on hierarchy.  Therefore, the ability to make collective decisions while operating asynchronously is an indication that the business has a strong internal culture that naturally reinforces good decision-making despite the time differences and differences in flows of information. Prior to this, most organizations preferred to take an authoritarian approach to systems management. This is where the leader is responsible for planning out the entire route from start to finish and people are expected to follow. It works in instances where the leader has a clear vision and knows what needs to be done to achieve it across multiple levels. However, not a lot of people enjoy working in an environment where they are only ever expected to be followers of someone else's vision. There is little to no room to foster genuine creativity on a micro level/on the ground. Organizations also try to implement the consensus approach, where everyone communes to find a solution that pleases everyone. While it's a more democratic method, the process is slow and the end goal remains restrictive for the people on the ground.    Is it Time to Relax Our Approach?: Could a more relaxed approach to implementing a system be in order? Christian muses over a world where companies focused on establishing a strong organizational culture. This would encourage everyone who was hired, who understood and was aligned with the company's vision and mission, to naturally work towards a solution in both a collective and individual sense.  This alternative gives more flexibility to individuals and small teams when a new challenge arises. While people still need to attend meetings and management will continue to make room for mistakes, this approach gives people the opportunity to proactively think of how they can use their talents towards their goals instead of wedging them into a box—or turning them into drones.  Diffusing a small element of the decision-making process could help your organization by injecting a diverse array of perspectives and skillsets. Upper management shouldn't take the entire burden of thinking outside the box.   Remaining Ethical in Positions of Leadership and in Tech: Christian briefly discussed the responsibility of leaders to build diverse teams, especially when they are in the tech industry or developing artificial intelligence. He drew from his personal experience working with an insurance domain to prove his point. In this case, the domain was working on using AI to scan aerial images and assess the value of a home, seeing if it would fit within their risk profile. However, they found out that the AI system automatically excluded homes with a chain link fence. If this algorithm made it to the market, it would not have underwritten any homes with a chain link fence—which is a common fixture in poor neighborhoods. This would have created a bias against people who needed insurance the most, and it would have been an unintended outcome of trying to solve a simple problem using AI without the added layer of human intervention. As much as possible, the teams behind AI development need to come from a wide array of backgrounds so that the creation of new technologies incorporate as many perspectives as possible.   Closing Remarks: to the Tech Professionals of the Future: Christian encourages professionals employed in data science, analytics, and technology to internalize the weight of their responsibility: their capacity to change the market and directly affect people through products and services.  “People in positions of decision power, who are practitioners and implementing, have a responsibility to optimize for the right thing, and really be humble and understanding. And that's just something that leaders have to do,” he explained. He also revealed that what stood out for him the most from TARTLE was the ability to “have a bottomless approach to data collection and ownership.” TARTLE is our step forward towards a reality where people have better control over their own data. Currently, our personal information is working for the benefit of the wealthiest people and the most powerful organizations in the world. The concept of getting paid for your Facebook account, Instagram posts, and Twitter feed may be a little far-fetched—but this is exactly what makes money for these platforms. The TARTLE marketplace is our work towards inverting this model and bringing back the power to where it truly belongs: the people. www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Is the granddaddy of crypto actually a currency? That's one heck of a question, especially since many have touted it as exactly that. Bitcoin was supposed to be this decentralized thing that would allow regular people to buy and sell independently of any government system and its fiat currency. However, the way things have developed have prompted many to ask what Bitcoin actually is. Is it a currency, a commodity, or an asset?  Well, it definitely is not a commodity. A commodity is a tangible good that can be used to actually make things. Its value comes from its usefulness and how much value society places on that use. Bitcoin by its nature is not tangible and can't actually be used to make anything.  What about currency? It is called a cryptocurrency after all. Yet, what makes something a currency? It has to be easily transported and transferred to another party at little or no cost. In a sense, Bitcoin is easy to transport because it is strictly digital. You can carry the code or the password to your Bitcoin account around with you in your pocket. However, transferring it is difficult. It actually costs far too much money in electricity and fees to move it from your account to another to justify using it to make purchases. Imagine buying a $1.50 cup of coffee for two hundred dollars just because of all the transfer costs. Not that buying such a small item with it is even possible. Bitcoin can only be divided so much, and given the value of a single Bitcoin, even a Satoshi (the smallest Bitcoin unit) is worth over three dollars as of this writing. That leaves its value as an asset. Anyone who bought Bitcoin ten years ago, or even two, and seen the value of their investment skyrocket in the time since will definitely attest to the currency's value as an asset. If you dropped two hundred on it ten years ago and cashed out today, you would definitely be a millionaire several times over. In a way, it is even better than gold. This is because while that shiny rock does a great job storing value, it doesn't really increase in value. What does that mean? Basically, you can use the same amount of gold to buy a suit today as you would have used fifty years ago. While it is worth more dollars than it was then, that's only because the dollar is worth less. Yet, the value of gold remains the same, with minor fluctuations.  Bitcoin however is currently increasing in dollar value at a pace that far exceeds inflation, making it a better investment for growth. At least for now. It has proven exceptionally volatile, increasing or decreasing in value by tens of thousands based on tweets from certain high profile people, or a government policy change.  How did we get to that point? Why did Bitcoin reach a point where it isn't a currency, and probably never will be? How did it become a valuable but volatile digital asset? Because it wound up being tied to the U.S. dollar. It didn't necessarily need to be tied to the dollar but the investment behavior of many drove the public perception in that direction. As soon as people started talking about it in terms of dollars, the die was cast and now the coin that started it all is inextricably linked to a centralized fiat currency. Which in turn means that Bitcoin is now a centralized asset, though it is supported by a decentralized network.  Perhaps the people behind Bitcoin dreamed too big. Maybe they didn't understand the dangers of putting it out for everyone right away. It might have been different if that had begun smaller, in a specific ecosystem.  TARTLEcoin for example is meant for use within the TARTLE ecosystem. It is something that anyone can earn through simple actions and can be easily transported and transferred in a matter of seconds at extremely low cost. It even has a specific value in that each one grants you priority when buyers are looking for data too. Everyone can access and use it and everyone knows exactly what it is for. Perhaps this will be a better way, one that avoids the dollar trap. What's your crypto worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

What can machine learning and data engineering tell us about how social systems are wired to function? As it turns out, these fields are more alike than meets the eye.  Christian Lemp, an early TARTLE adopter and professional systems thinker, explains that he was drawn to his career path after years of observation and experience in different parts of the world. While Christian originally studied math and economics, which led to a short career in finance, he found himself more attracted to how different communities thought and interacted with each other.  From there, he took a leap and entered the world of machine learning and data engineering. Christian helped find ways to understand organizations and optimize their work processes. However, he quickly realized that this work entailed untangling a series of systems that were all interconnected—some of which would require more creative, community-centric solutions.    Interconnected Problems Require Interconnected Solutions: The deeper Christian delved into studying operations of organizations, the more he saw that problems in his line of work could not be solved individually. Since all the problems were so intertwined with one another, trying to make solutions one at a time would only reroute the issue to another part of the organization at best, and make the overall situation more dire at worst. Instead, organizations needed to commune and mutually come to one big solution that could solve all the problems at once.  Outside of organizations, this is an issue that can also manifest on a cultural and national scale—especially in locations with diverse cultures. For example, the banner of the United states houses numerous states and regions, each with their own special communities. All these communities are bound to have their own personal interests and biases.    Is Efficiency An Absolute Good?: Given how complex all of that is, what place does mere efficiency have in our understanding of it? Not much, at least as it is currently understood. This is true across the board. Many things that seem as though they should be efficient don't wind up being so at all.  For example, monocropping is a common practice amongst farmers, where they grow the same crop on the same plot of land year after year. While it is simpler to manage and highly efficient, monocropping also makes the soil less productive over time because it depletes the nutrients found in the soil. As a consequence, it reduces organic matter in the soil and can cause significant erosion. While there are short-term gains for the farmer, it eventually nets a long-term loss because it hurts their soil. If that is true for an activity like farming, how much more true is it as applied to human society? The fact is that there is simply too much going on in any society for it to be completely understood, much less controlled by any one individual. It's just impossible. Yet when we get out of the way (for the most part), things seem to organize themselves into a symbiotic relationship.  Short of that understanding, we tend to try to wedge people into different boxes. This is an effort that is not only doomed to failure but will also sooner or later lead to resistance, which can affect the work we put towards providing solutions as a whole.   Closing Thoughts: With all this information, it may feel like we've reached a dead-end for the problems we face in our society: we can't solve one problem at a time, and thinking of one big all-encompassing solution seems like an impossible task.  However, the discussion with Christian suggests that there is one simple thing we are capable of doing that can help alleviate the solution: we can treat everybody we come across with dignity. Instead of forcing them to fit into a system based on our preconceived notions, we give them the space to see where they can fit in instead. Those in charge of creating systems should not be building people around systems; rather, they should be taking the time to understand everyone in their complexity, and building systems around people. This is the kind of work that the TARTLE platform is putting in. We want to provide a safe space for people on the ground to take back control of their data and funnel it to causes and organizations that are important to them. When we give them the power to directly support what reflects their own personal ideals, we empower people to become more united and open to one another.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Do you believe that you are on the cusp of a breakthrough on a daily basis? Despite popular belief (and to some extent, the media's portrayal of success stories), the wildest successes rarely ever happen on a whim. These stories are the result of regular and consistent creative acts, which prime our brain and our mindset to be more receptive for the big reveal to the big solution. This is the message of Josh Linkner's book, entitled Big Little Breakthroughs, and he believes that everybody has the capacity to be creative; however, a lot of people hold themselves back for several reasons. It could be due to preconceived notions they have of themselves, a bias against creative thinking, or certain thinking habits.    Exercising the Creative Muscle: We are used to thinking that your creativity is like our height: a physical feature we grow into for a bit, but cannot change eventually. However, the reality is it's more like our weight. By implementing changes in habit, mindset, and lifestyle, we are capable of making incremental adjustments.  However, creativity does not exist in a binary. It's more like our position changes on a spectrum depending on how consistently we choose to exercise our creativity muscle. There are plenty of misconceptions that prevent us from being creative. The first is that it is only possible to be a creative person in certain industries. We have conditioned ourselves to think that it is only in the arts that we can be creative—but in reality, there are plenty of opportunities to express the right side of our brain across all industries.  Creativity can be a powerful tool in hyping up conversations with your clients in customer service positions, finding quick solutions to last-minute problems in operations, and extracting meaningful insights from pools of data.  The biggest blocker of creative output has never been a lack of natural talent, or a lack of opportunity; Josh believes that it is caused by fear and our tendency to stick to safe ideas, while we wait for a “right time” to launch the more provocative ones. It is our responsibility to be more thoughtful of the status quo, and challenge ourselves to find new ways to be creative.   Creativity in Nation Building and Social Justice: In the podcast, Josh shared an insightful discussion he had with Caron Proschan, one of the individuals he interviewed for Big Little Breakthroughs. Caron was a fitness nut who also enjoyed chewing gum. One day, when she reached into her bag for a stick of gum, she realized that it was an eerie shade of blue— almost certainly synthetically produced using who knew what substances. This small discovery inspired Caron to search for natural alternatives. However, there was no such thing as natural gum. The massive chewing gum industry was run almost entirely by two giant organizations, with no concern for the quality of the ingredients that went into manufacturing gum. As a result, Caron set out to create the world's first all-natural gum. She is now the founder and CEO of Simply Gum. Beyond Caron and her passion towards creating natural snacking alternatives, we see traces of these small changes in other parts of our lives. Rosa Parks is another stunning example of how simple actions can lead to ripple effects. Her act of defiance on the bus was eventually used as a source of empowerment for the civil rights movement.  This is meaningful because it indicates that the power for change does reside in everyday people; not large corporations, entities, or figures in authority.  “Sustainable progress usually doesn't come from the stroke of an autocratic leader; it comes from the body of the people.” Josh concluded. In many situations, the action that starts the ripple effect is always small: saying “no,” or just looking for ways to improve something you love. Creativity is not limited to situations or people that make you feel fear; rather, the sparks for creativity can come from a positive desire or drive to change something.   Closing Thoughts: Eradicating Anti-Creative Biases: Big Little Breakthroughs is a rallying call for people to become more aware of the way they limit themselves. Now that we've established that everyone is capable of being creative, how do we encourage ourselves to develop it as a skill? According to Josh, experimentation is the key to making creativity a habit. Trying to solve a problem from the get-go will be difficult; but pinpointing small actions people could take would be a great start. Josh likened this process to pointillism. Pointillism, which refers to painting in small strokes that eventually blend into an image from a distance, is the perfect metaphor for his message. He challenges everybody, especially the younger generation to find small ideas to work on and rise from every failure with a slight creative pivot.   It's inspiring to think that a passing thought is all it can take for you to change the world. www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Many of the things we interact with on a daily basis have some sort of influence on us. Given how much time we, and especially the younger generations spend scrolling social media on our phones, it is no wonder that what is called social shopping is extremely popular. If a member of Gen Z has a favorite person he follows on Instagram, spending possibly hours a day just scrolling that one person's posts, listening to their stories, that means there is a degree of admiration, or a desire to be like them. Should this Instagram influencer post about some favorite brand for a product, then it is entirely likely that our hypothetical follower will be buying whatever is being sold. It's even more obvious when you realize that for Gen Z social media is their preferred source of information. That's where they spend their time, get information, and get entertained; it's no wonder that is where they are also spending their money.  If you think about it, this is really nothing new. We are influenced by what we see and hear, even more so if the person doing the advertising is someone we recognize. That's why cigarette companies used to spend millions getting celebrities to pose in their ads, or why Bud Light commercials are so memorable, or why the typical Michael Bay movie has more product placement than the Super Bowl. All of that is designed to influence us to buy certain products.  No one is really immune either. No, not even you. You almost certainly have a t-shirt with a favorite band, or movie, or just some cool company you like to support. ‘But, I wasn't influenced! I just happen to like that stuff!' Yes, that is exactly how it works. Don't worry, it isn't even necessarily bad. After all, you need a shirt. If you want to pay a couple extra bucks for a shirt with a picture of One Punch Man on it, more power to you. I have several from brands I bought for the express purpose of supporting the brand, even though I can assure you I don't need another shirt.  Naturally enough, social media companies have been figuring this out and plenty of apps allow you to buy things directly through them. Instagram for example has a cool carousel with just a few products in it that should be related to whatever you are checking out at the moment.  Brands have also been finding new ways to capitalize on the trend. They will often seek out popular influencers, or YouTubers or another popular user of a given app and ask them to feature their products. Depending on the nature of the channel and the company, that results in a company paying a person or just allowing them to keep the product in exchange for a review. In this way, the company gets to make sure its products are getting in front of the audience most likely to buy it. That's a win-win situation for the company because their conversion rate goes up, the influencer makes some side money or at least gets some free gear, and the buyer gets more in-depth knowledge about a product or brand he is buying and a more convenient way to do so. Many influencers even have the integrity to not give a positive review if they just don't like a given product, meaning the buyer can have higher confidence the products will work as advertised. If you think about it, what these brands are doing, reaching out to a narrow audience but one that is more likely to be interested in them is very similar to what we advocate for at TARTLE. A brand like Patagonia is clearly using their data to determine where they should best spend their advertising dollars. They are going right to the source when they find influencers using their products who already have an audience to help sell their brand. That is a solid use of data and social media platforms that helps everyone, which we can definitely get behind.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!    

Netflix is one of the biggest names of the Digital Age. It went from being a new way to rent movies, to a streaming service aggregating everyone else's movies and TV shows, to being a powerhouse creator of original content in its own right. Oh, and it killed a one-time giant Blockbuster along the way and helped spawn a whole new branch of the entertainment world. However, it's fair to ask if Netflix is really about making movies and TV shows. Is that really their main concern? The answer of course is ‘no'. The company is primarily about making money and for that, they need subscribers and in order to get the largest number of subscribers possible, they make use of a lot of data.  Naturally, they start with what they hope you want to see and basically spam your feed with a bunch of generically popular content. Over time, they will try to narrow it down. How do they do that? They make use of algorithms to gather information on what you watch. They also pay attention not just to what you click on, that is both too simple and not terribly informative. How many times have you clicked on a movie only to get about ten minutes in and decide you don't want to watch it? The algorithms pay attention to that as well. What you watch, how long you watch it for, when you watch it, and all of that goes into the algorithm. From there, Netflix's hope is that they will be able to find similar movies and put them in your recommended feed. Sounds simple doesn't it? Yes and no. For one, there are holes in this system. Not just the occasional recommendation you would never plan on watching but major problems that can break the algorithm altogether. Say you have roommates and you all share an account but also have very different tastes in movies? Or you have kids. Chances are you watch different things when they are around. That of course is what the profiles on Netflix and every other streaming service are all about. If they can break out each person individually, the algorithm has a chance to work. However, how many people really bother with the different profiles? I'm guessing it's not as many as Netflix would like. Also, what if you have a busy schedule and rarely have time to watch a full two hour movie? You only have fifteen minutes here, twenty minutes there and typically work on something while the movie is on. So it might take a whole week to watch one movie. That kind of person likely wrecks the algorithm entirely.  Not to mention, how long does it take to build up a worthwhile profile of a given subscriber? One week? A month? A year? It will vary from person to person based on how much they watch, meaning how effective the recommendations are will vary a lot from one subscriber to the next. In short, Netflix's algorithms are extremely inefficient in a variety of circumstances, and that means they are wasting time and money building user profiles that don't work. What should they do then? What would be a more efficient means of building those user profiles? Netflix could work with us at TARTLE. They could go directly to subscribers and ask what it is that they would like to watch. Who their favorite actors and directors are. When do they watch? Do they prefer movies or series? Do they like their series dumped all at once or would they prefer a weekly schedule? Netflix could talk directly to its subscribers and get feedback directly from them and so build a far more accurate profile than any other method. This would be faster and cheaper and in the end far more financially rewarding. Which means they could spend that extra time and money making better content to draw in more subscribers.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Mark Twain once said, “History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” History of course can't exactly repeat itself. There are too many variables at play that differentiate circumstances. However, those circumstances can still be similar. Because of that, we can still learn from the past, though we often don't. A case in point is the similarity between various global monopolies and those of the robber barons in the later part of the 19th century.  These men controlled vast swaths of the United States economy, giving them the ability to have a huge effect on national policy and to dictate their employees' lives far beyond anything that most people in the Western world will have experienced. Not only would they use their large coffers to ‘lobby' politicians, they would also buy out anyone who looked to be a competitive threat. One might reasonably point out that these start-up companies didn't have to sell. Technically, that's true. In reality, that underestimates the determination of the bigger companies. They would simply charge their potential rivals higher prices for goods or services they provided, or persuade their friends in business to do so. The pressure would become so great that it would sell out or go bankrupt. Should someone continue to resist, it could get ugly. Just go look into the way Edison harassed Tesla. Or the Pinkerton Detective Agency and its role in suppressing unions.  There were of course the justly maligned company towns. While mostly associated with mining companies, there were a few variations on the theme. In their most well-known format, the company town was a place where the employees lived and bought most of their stuff. And everything was owned by the company. That meant rent was paid to the company, all of a family's groceries, clothes, and anything else were all paid back to the company. Why couldn't they buy their stuff elsewhere and break the cycle? Because the company didn't pay them in cash, they paid them in vouchers or tokens that were only redeemable in the town. Other types of company towns would have certain lifestyle requirements like no drinking or smoking. Think of them as a forerunner of the modern Home Owners' Association.  Today, the tech companies look like they are in a similar position as the robber barons of old. They regularly buy out competition. In fact, it recently came out in a congressional hearing that the founders of Instagram felt the need to sell because they would get destroyed otherwise. Tech companies have worked together to censor pundits, governments, officials, even a sitting president. Whether you like the people censored or not, it sets a very dangerous precedent, especially when the same companies will do the bidding of China just for access behind the Great Firewall.  And of course they can influence markets to an unprecedented degree. By controlling the flow of information and mining data they can swing the stock of whole industries just by what they allow to be said. Just look at the way Elon Musk can swing the price of Bitcoin or DogeCoin just with a tweet.  There is also evidence that some of these companies are flirting with the idea of the company town again. Their vast sprawling campuses have a variety of services and amenities that make it tempting to basically stay right there. Some, like Facebook, are openly looking at getting into the realm of real estate. Then there are the more recent stories about Blackrock and other firms buying houses at ridiculous prices in Appalachia. The speculation is that they are intentionally pricing out the middle class and looking to force them to become permanent renters. That's just one general store away from being a modern company town.  Where will it all lead? It's hard to say. We dodged a bullet in the robber baron days. It's hard to say exactly why, but it seems likely that the various communist revolutions that swept Europe in the early twentieth century gave people a wake-up call to change a few things before the same happened here. Can we avoid the pitchforks again? Only time will tell. What's your sovereignty worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

We have an innate capability to independently perform a wide variety of physical and mental functions. It's hard-wired into our rules of our survival. However, this is not a perfect mechanism; we do have the ability to silently use language to process our lives, but we don't really have an in-depth understanding of how it works just yet.  This knowledge gap is what fuels the self-help industry, which has a wide variety of ideas and methods. Some are backed by scientific evidence, while others are manifested as a result of a strong placebo effect. Regardless of how these solutions are created, it's clear that one's mental state is key to making change happen. So what's it like inside our heads and how can we improve the way we converse with ourselves? Self-Help: Cutting Through the Pseudoscience: Ethan's book, entitled Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It provides a welcome academic perspective on the power of that little voice in your head. He provides a refreshing take on how even the oft-overlooked act of talking to ourselves the inner dialogue has a science to it. that leads to obsession, overthinking, and rumination is broken down into chemicals and reactions in your brain.  If you've ever found yourself obsessing over an issue that happened years ago, or staying up at night because you found yourself triggered by a passing memory, Ethan's insights on how the immaterial manifests into material may be the key to reining those thoughts in and getting a good night's sleep. One common critique of the self-help industry is that most coaches and authors often sell placebos for negative ways of thinking. They cover up the problem instead of getting to the root of an idea.  While Ethan concedes that placebos can have a powerful effect on one's mental state, it can also prevent people from seeking the help they need to turn their life around. Mental wellbeing is an important aspect of adult life that may need attention. While his book is not a replacement for therapy, it does give people the opportunity to find sound scientific advice without having to shell out a lot on seeking psychiatric help, which can come at prohibitively high prices even with healthcare insurance. Learning How to Self-Regulate: Our inherent response to negative emotion is to avoid confrontation, or at least refrain from getting triggered. Unfortunately, negativity is an integral part of the authentic human experience. It's the way we cope, or self-regulate, that's the game-changer. When faced with a problem, we are challenged to pick between immediately trusting our guts, or holding back and letting it run its course first.  We've all heard of how we need to trust our intuition; however, it's not a foolproof method to solving all our conflicts. A better understanding of how our brain is wired to think—and how we wire our brains to think—can better help us distinguish between those two states. Time Travel and Personal Development: Hindsight is an incredibly powerful tool that can be used for both good and bad. This idea of staying in the moment can be harmful because it encourages people to remain stagnant, and ignore opportunities to process important experiences. The pressure to always stay in the moment also places restrictions on what your brain is really capable of. Your mind is constantly working on making calculations based on your past experiences, and translating it into forecasts for the future. In this way, it's a lot like time traveling. Breaking Destructive Thought Cycles: It's easy to believe that our internal thought process won't have an impact on our actions. However, the truth is that living in a constant state of harm or fear does not afford a good foundation for individuals to make good choices— not just for themselves, but also for others.  A natural consequence of experiencing adversity is our attempt to look inward and try to analyze every facet of that event. While this may be done with the best intentions, it is all too easy to get stuck in negative thought loops; reliving the worst parts of the challenge in their head. This is a debilitating process which can quickly become a habit.  Another aspect of this is that sadness becomes a familiar, and even a comfortable, state of being. The negative chatter is accustomed to highlighting the worst parts of our lived experience. As a result, our ability to process in a healthy way becomes affected.  Closing Thoughts: The Road to Better Chatter: Cognitive bias is a quiet problem with a serious impact. It takes plenty of commitment for an individual to successfully change the way they think, feel, and behave about themselves despite outside pressure.  Thankfully, Ethan points out plenty of ways for you to retrain your thinking. The key is to give yourself psychological space, or an opportunity to view yourself as another person struggling with their own unique problems. This is where the metaphorical fly on the wall idea comes in: if you've ever found it much easier to give advice than to follow it, distancing techniques are the key to internalizing these messages.   Ethan and Chatter gave plenty of insight on how external divides may come from internal manifestations of unresolved emotion and cognitive bias. In a world where people are separated by a multitude of different beliefs, perspectives, and experiences, this discussion could be a step forward to more open dialogues—especially when people begin with themselves. www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

One central aspect in Linda's career is the importance of data analytics. When it comes to data as an asset, plenty of different entities can claim ownership to it: financial institutions, vendors, banks, and even the government. With so much data going around, it's important to know where the data is coming from, how to process it into useful information, and how it can be centralized in a way that it can be used by more parties in more projects.   How Do We Preserve Repositories of Skills and Knowledge? The finance sector is working on capturing processes of knowledge into analytical models. As data enters these models, technology can work on computing this information and laying out analyses for us in a more efficient manner. This gives two benefits: first, the process of computing this information is not lost. Second, computing is done more efficiently. There is no need to return to square one when a longtime employee vacates a position. Here, Linda makes several parallels between retail and finance using labels for canned goods as an example. Due to incredibly small margins in retail, it's important for canned goods to be transparent about the content and process involved in making this product. This is because it serves as their competitive edge.  If financial institutions were also as concerned about being transparent, then it would make maneuvering financial markets more efficient. According to Linda, the biggest problem that financial institutions had when dealing with the crash of Wall Street was in being able to uniquely identify institutions. When the Lehman brothers crashed, she described everyone to have “held their breath for about 48 hours while transactions settled, because nobody knew who all of the subsidiaries of Lehman were and they didn't know how to uniquely identify.” With such a catastrophic experience institutions can and should learn from, she is optimistic that the benefits of data standards will be observed and acknowledged by institutions.   Holding The Front Line: Linda perceives her previous work on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve as similar to being a medic. “I was the medic who, once the wounding was happening and people were like, hey, I need to find out this piece of information. And then we would figure out how to cobble some stuff together, look at things in a different way or produce some different sets of information. It was absolutely fascinating,” she explained. In efforts to learn from the collapse of the Lehman brothers and ensure that it does not happen again, big banks are investing plenty of money in data management infrastructure so that they can get precise and accurate reporting on where they stand. This faster and more efficient flow of data can help financial institutions preemptively deal with ebbs and flows in the market, instead of scrambling to react.   The Way Forward: When working on the projects, Linda noticed that her team members had to take data from several different databases before they could piece together a clear picture of the companies they needed to look at and the identifiers they needed to study.  This inspired her to create an integrated database where all government and vendor data, their unique identifiers, and the legal entity identifier were stored. From stock prices to bond prices and financial statement information, this served as a reusable launching point for future projects that everybody in the organization could access. It allows individuals to free up more time working on different aspects of future projects, which makes the entire process more efficient, resources more available, and human labor more open to higher-tier aspects of work such as algorithms. This is called the economies of scale. That's three benefits: resource efficiency, economies of scale, and ready to deploy at any time.  One challenge of implementing this change is convincing people to change their mindset from making sure that they get the task done in the easiest, most efficient way for themselves; to finding ways to get the task done while giving the next people who will be using this data the opportunity to use it in the most efficient way — even if it can be a bigger challenge upfront.  It's encouraging people to look beyond merely making unique personal identifiers to data sets so that they can get the job done instead of finding a standardized identifier for the information and then applying it.  “It's taking the larger view of things, of how do I make things more efficient for the entire ecosystem, so that we can do things that we currently can't do at all?” Linda asks.   Closing Thoughts: Setting Up The Data Hierarchy of Needs: According to Linda, it's human nature to get excited about big and lofty goals like machine learning and artificial intelligence. However, the root of any successful and sustainable effort is found in learning how to target and harness one's data. While achieving enlightenment in finance is possible, it would be difficult for people and businesses to scale the process effectively because they have to start from square one every single time.  So, when you think of the data you handle and how it can be a part of something greater with a little extra effort upfront — how much is your data worth? www.tartle.co   Data Transparency, Finance, and Governance with Linda Powell, Global Head of Data Strategy, Governance, and End User Computing at Citibank by TARTLE is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Hot on the heels of our last article seems like a good time to think just a bit more about FOMO and its effects and how it is often used against us. For those just jumping in, FOMO is the Fear of Missing Out, a sense of anxiety that comes from being aware of or even just thinking there are cool things happening that you aren't a part of. It's fear that you are being left out and left behind by everyone around you. Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby discussed it in depth with the person who coined the term, Patrick McGinnis. I highly recommend you head over to T-Cast to check it out.  FOMO is normally associated with social media but it certainly exists outside of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. FOMO in a sense is just another term for good old-fashioned peer pressure. If you think everyone is going to a party every weekend, you naturally think you should too. If you don't you're missing out and if you are worried about what people think about you (and let's be honest, pretty much everyone does to some degree) then that will cause some anxiety. So most people will go out for some heavy drinking every night on the weekends. Don't get me wrong, I like a good beer or whisky but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Indulging too much will not only lead to you doing a bunch of stuff you might not remember the next day, it also means you will likely need a couple of days to fully recover and be productive again.  Chris Williamson, podcast host and motivational speaker was in a similar cycle when he realized that he was wasting a lot of time. He made the choice to quit drinking for a thousand days and upped his productivity by orders of magnitude, just by not giving in to the pull of the crowd, by not giving in to FOMO. It allowed him to stop and think about what he wanted to do, independent of everyone else. Suddenly, Chris had the freedom to exclude himself and be happy with that.  Those kinds of situations are also exacerbated by social media. People post pictures of themselves having a great time day after day but never post the aftermath. They leave out the puking in the toilet, the crashed car, the stressing over bills, and everything else. It's a distorted view of reality and a lot more people should probably take the Williamson route and step away a bit.  Plenty of companies naturally make use of FOMO. Nearly every ad for every product or service is built on making you think you need something to be cool. Every cigarette ad back in the day had some ridiculously good-looking model taking a nice long drag on a lung dart. It was designed to make you think all the cool kids were doing it. It's not much different from anything else, they want to get your attention and FOMO is an incredibly powerful tool for making that happen.  Even if you don't quite fit into the algorithms they will still be gunning for your attention and your wallet. It isn't like the marketers stop sending you ads, they just spam you with random stuff until you click on something. Suddenly the algorithm has a hook and you might just find yourself with more ads related to that one thing. They're trying to draw you into the way they see the world and get you to spend your money and time on what they want.  How do you fight that? You realize what is happening, that these companies, while useful, are not your friend. They don't want to be, they just want you to think so. Realizing what is going on enables you to make a choice, then change your behaviors and step away from the crowd, to choose your own path with your money, your data, and your time.  What is your sovereignty worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

How many of us live our lives locked in the rat race? Despite the belief that money can't buy happiness, we can't deny that a surplus of income can give people the opportunity to live comfortable lives. It is this driving force for a stable future that has pushed many bright-eyed graduates into corporate positions, where they are gridlocked into a specific routine or career path.  Younger generations are working on introducing exciting new alternatives, such as increased work-life balance, remote jobs, and the rise of the gig economy. Conversely, corporations are also looking into new ways to accommodate this change in priority; interesting new policies such as a liquor room are briefly touched upon in the podcast.  In this episode, Alexander McCaig and Jason Rigby are joined by Tania Katan as they discuss issues adjacent to the meaning of work, the value of money, and the opportunity to enliven the monotony of day to day life.    Life Is A Stage: Alexander made interesting parallels between theater and office culture, in that everyone has a role they should play. One thought-provoking question he asked was whether people should sit within the confines of that role, or “add the nuances of you that makes you special.” At this point, Tania shared her roots in theater and how she eventually diverged from the path. She was excited to use her training as a writer in theater, but found a disconnect between the work she trained for and the work she actually ended up doing. This prompted her to work odd jobs on the side, such as telemarketing and bagging groceries. These diversions led to a big discovery: inadvertently, she had started inserting things she learned from theater into the routine of day to day life, to keep her and her colleagues entertained.    The Suspension of Disbelief: According to Tania, the foundation of theater is the suspension of disbelief. Throughout the podcast, it's a recurring motif as well: what if straight-laced professionals in rigid industries like business and finance learned to approach their work with the suspension of disbelief?  It's easy to slip into a certain persona when you dedicate yourself to a certain station and work routine eight hours a day, five days a week. The process can be comforting; but it can also be mind-numbing, and eventually restricting. This metaphorical carry-over between broadway and work is the same individuality that helped Tania find the inspiration to write her book and share her experiences. She discovered that there is always an opportunity to transform the environment and make an audience out of anybody, anywhere; whether it's racing to make the largest number of customers smile, paying it forward amongst your workmates with a cup of coffee, or just taking a ten-minute break to stretch with your crew. It's this attempt at bridging a connection and breaking the routine that can help everybody feel more alive.   Creative Trespassing: In the podcast, Tania revealed that her book was entitled “Creative Trespassing” because she wanted to encourage creatives to encroach in spaces they are not necessarily welcomed in—or at least, where they are not invited through the front door.  One particular salient point in their discussion included the issue of toxic workplaces, and where there is still an opportunity for this to happen. A call for structure and order means that businesses may not handle creative people very well; as a result, plenty of innovative minds become “lost” in the woodwork. To this, Tania explained that humans do have an innate ability to solve practical problems in new ways. Like any other skill, creativity requires active participation and engagement — it's not just about companies finding ways to create comfort zones, but also about employees looking for ways to break out of that comfort zone. This means that there is definitely still a chance for creatives to flourish in high-pressure work spaces, and even be the reason for positive change within these areas.   Bringing Out The “Little C”: Oftentimes, creativity can be paralyzing. It can be difficult to break out from the fear of failure. This traps people in a situation where they are afraid to move at all, and it can be a common problem amongst perfectionists in particular. To break out of this mold, Tania suggests creatives try two methods: the first is two actively set out and make bad work; and the second is to break the task down into small, incremental actions that anybody can make on a regular basis. It's exciting to think of our capacity to come together in one community, to create large and beautiful new things, without having to sacrifice our individuality in the process. In fact, it's the exact opposite: our unique collective of separate identities is precisely what allows us to innovate new solutions and inventions. www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

TARTLE is always trying to find ways to improve the experience for those who entrust us with protecting their data. As an example, we recently relaunched our website, making it much easier and more intuitive to navigate. We also try to be proactive about these kinds of things. We didn't just put it out there and rely on you to figure it out. We did a whole series of podcasts and articles to help walk you through the new layout, from signup to confirmation, to filling out your first data packets, explaining the reasons behind each aspect along the way.  One of the things we touched on briefly in that series was TARTLEcoin. TARTLEcoin is a new feature we have introduced to help reward you for sharing your information and participating in TARTLE's mission of reclaiming data for everyone. Now of course is the obvious question, how does TARTLEcoin work? Every time you share data, every time you share your experience on TARTLE, every data packet you fill out, the more you verify your identity, the more TARTLEcoins you get. Like most currency, you earn more of it based on the work you put into the system. One important way that TARTLEcoin is different is that its value increases based on the amount of work you put into it. Yes, you get more and the value increases at the same time. That might seem counterintuitive, however, TARTLEcoin isn't currency in the sense that the dollar is currency. You don't directly trade it for goods and services, you trade it for access. Access to what? To offer to buy your data.  To clarify, this isn't buying access to anything that others don't get. This isn't a tiered system like that. You just get it sooner. That is, when a buyer is looking for data that you have, you get notified first, or rather sooner based on the amount of TARTLEcoin you've earned. That of course is where the real value of the TARTLEcoin lies, in getting the first crack at selling your data. That kind of reward can be very important, especially if there is a buyer with a limited budget who can only afford to purchase a relative handful of data packets. Instead of having to hop right on to sell your data, hoping to beat the 20,000 users who might also want to sell to a person who only wants 1000 packets. Since you'll be notified ahead of time, you can actually finish driving home in order to respond instead of pulling off to take care of business.  It's obvious how TARTLEcoin can benefit a TARTLE user. However, it also benefits the buyer. Remember, a seller is rewarded based on how much work he is putting in. That means the buyer is purchasing data from a person who is dedicated to the TARTLE mission and is interested in sharing plenty of data and in being fully open and honest about it, leading to better data, better decisions and better outcomes for the companies the buyer might represent. TARTLEcoin is actually the economics of human interaction put into practice. It lets you get more and do more based entirely on your own interest level in a given data packet that you've filled out.  To clear something up before we get ready to wrap up this announcement, in no way does TARTLEcoin replace our system for selling your data. You still get paid in crypto when you've sold data. The TARTLEcoin is totally in addition to everything we normally provide. So, you get TARTLEcoin for signing up with TARTLE, for watching a video, for sharing your TARTLE activity, and of course for actually selling your data and various other opportunities as well.  So, what's your data worth? More than it was, my friend, more than it was. www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Every action that people make requires energy. From simple things like taking a walk, to more interesting things like forging a sword, to more modern things like building a digital data marketplace. But not just energy swirling around randomly. Energy wielded by people implies purpose, which in turn implies thought and desire. Energy becomes the middleman between thought and achieving the aim of that thought.  Where do we typically direct our energy? We direct it to the alleviation of some kind of anxiety. When we take a walk, we might be going to the store for food. Or we might just need some quiet time to think. We make a sword, or any weapon to alleviate anxiety about security. TARTLE was made to alleviate anxiety about data privacy. Basically, if there is a worry that people have, they will expend their energy to find a solution, something to eliminate or at least reduce the worry in question.  We are also frequently looking for ways to further decrease those worries. We went from just walking for transportation, to horses, to cars, to planes. War went from clubs, to swords, to bows, to guns, to cruise missiles. Data privacy has gone from passwords, to ad blockers, to VPNs. People are constantly working to improve whatever they are doing, often making additional tools that in turn have other uses. Your Google Maps works because of the military's GPS system. WD-40 exists because of the early space program, as do a number of synthetic fabrics that are used by athletes today. We create tools to help us build our tools and those secondary tools often have secondary and tertiary benefits that their creators could not have foreseen. The result is a system of interactions that amplify a variety of work efforts, helping us to not only reach the original goals but several others we didn't even intend to affect. Often, such developments will result in helping others reach goals without even knowing about it.  That is a big part of why humanity is the dominant species on the planet. We are able to take our thoughts and desires and figure out how to use our energy to make them a reality. In a way, we are able to use our energy to impose our desires on space-time, taking them from the realm of thought to the world of the material.  How does all of this relate to TARTLE and to you? You've been using social media as a tool, probably for years at this point. No doubt, you've used it to achieve certain goals. You wanted to connect with people, share thoughts, run a business, etc. All the work you've put into those tools has been to reach your goals, whatever they are. However, there is a lot of secondary benefit from all that work that you've put into these platforms, benefits that you rarely if ever see. All your work is going to amplify the work of others. This might be all right except often those secondary benefits are used against you. Your data is gathered and used to manipulate you to make more money from you without you even knowing about it. TARTLE exists as a tool to help you regain that energy and the ensuing secondary benefits for yourself. You reclaim it and decide when others will benefit from it while still benefiting from it yourself. That is, TARTLE exists to help you amplify your own efforts, to reach your goals. We have tens of thousands of members in nearly every country on earth. Each one is amplifying the energy of the others and the more there are the greater the amplification will be. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Critical thinking is hard. No, really. It takes patience, dedication, and a degree of humility that is hard to maintain. Some people think that if you think critically, you will automatically agree with them. Others think that critical thinking means uncritically rejecting whatever your parents and grandparents taught you. Neither will ever put it quite that way but if you pay close attention to what is said by some, those conclusions are hard to avoid. Not that you should take my word for it. If you were paying attention, you might have caught that I did a little bit of the first – assuming that people thinking critically will agree with me. See? It's hard to avoid the traps even when you're writing about them.  So, what really is critical thinking and how does one do it? Thinking critically means being willing to take the time to understand something as thoroughly as possible before reaching a strong conclusion about it. To be willing to take a look at different points of view and weigh them against each other. It's more complicated than hearing the two main sides of an issue and then assuming the truth is somewhere in the middle. It's more complicated because the truth may be in between, but how far is one side or the other? Or one side might be completely wrong. Or the truth might be something neither side has even considered. I told you this is hard.  How does one begin? As with a lot of things, mindset is everything. You need to realize that you will likely never know every single thing about any one thing. Aquinas once said humanity has yet to discern the essence of a single gnat. Nothing has changed in the eight centuries since he wrote that. We know more, but not everything. If that sounds depressing, it shouldn't. It means there is always more to learn.  Start small, with a subject that already interests you, and pick up a book that catches your eye. And yes, a real book if you can, something you can highlight and make notes in the margins. Don't try to power through and crush out the page count. Save that kind of reading for fiction. Yes, there are different kinds of reading. That fact and much of the method I'm about to lay out are in How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. In any case, take your time and read through it, making notes as you go. Pay attention to others the author cites and get their books, and do the same with them. With each book, take the time to learn the author's voice, how he thinks, what his own presuppositions seem to be. Then be willing to correct your conclusions when you realize you got something wrong. Don't forget to pick up one or more works that contradict the author, whether he cites them or not. Every now and then the lone voice crying in the wilderness is saying something you should be paying attention to. Remember, it was once the consensus in certain circles that no planets existed outside the solar system, or that eugenics makes total sense and you should totally cure people by cutting them so the evil humor could escape. It's usually worth listening to the person challenging the consensus. Even if he proves to be off his rocker, just kicking the apple cart can get some new and productive thoughts going.  Doing all of that will actually just get you started thinking truly critically. After taking in all that data, you need to sift and weigh it, looking up additional information to fill in holes you'll find as you go along.  All data analysis needs to be approached with a similar level of patience and humility. How many companies when they collect marketing data run it through different analytical models to see if they line up? Or have multiple people look at the data? How many organizations have people whose whole job is to check different analyses against each other to see if it all adds up? The answer is sadly few. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

People are amazing creatures. We are constantly developing new, exciting, and at times, worrying technology. Sometimes, they are the same thing. When the first person harnessed fire, figured out how to transport it and get it started, no doubt it was all of these things and for obvious reasons. Even something as benign as the wheel has led to technologies that it would be better if no one had. Yet, we continue to innovate, striving for the good and often stumbling along the way. Recently, the MIT Technology Review released its annual round up of breakthrough technologies. Let's take a look at some of them and some positives and negatives.  The first on the list is mRNA vaccines. While the recent deployment of covid vaccines has gotten a lot of attention for being the first vaccine of this kind, the base technology has existed since the 1990s. While many are skeptical of the covid vaccines, this type of medical application could have a hugely positive impact on our ability to fight a whole host of diseases such as HIV. Next up is GPT-3 which is a language learning program. It actually has the capability to mimic what people write thanks to being trained on tons of books and of course the internet. The aim of this program is to help computers better understand the way people think and express those thoughts and thus take another step closer to artificial intelligence. On the negative end of this is the fact that some of the people working on it seem to think that they need to train it to not hold certain biases. On the surface, that might not get your attention. It would be a good thing if the AI didn't have any biases wouldn't it? Sure, but what about the biases of those who are training it? Since the AI is learning based on reading what people have written, those programmers training the AI are making determinations on biases not just for themselves, but for the AI by determining which human writings are biased. Even more, the AI is likely to be seen as completely unbiased and objective by the general public. There will be a lot of people who accept its conclusions without question, making the inevitable bias inherent in the system something that affects the opinions of potentially millions.  Shifting gears a bit, TikTok has done some interesting things with its recommendation algorithms. It actually works not just off of likes but it cross-references the preferences of others who like the same video. That helps it recognize communities of people, niches with similar interests. You basically get recommendations if someone within this network likes the same video you did.  Naturally, Lithium-Metal batteries are great. They can help store energy from lots of renewables for a long time. As always though there is a downside. Those batteries involve a lot of mining operations that are more than a little rough for the environment. Is it a net gain if we can better use renewables? Maybe, but that is going to take a lot more data to figure that out.  The one we are going to leave off with today is data trusts. The idea is that some sort of entity will manage your data on your behalf. Why on earth do I need someone, anyone to manage my data? The answer is that I don't. I and thousands of people on TARTLE from all around the world are perfectly capable of taking care of our data ourselves. All they have to do is sign up and then choose whether or not to share it. It's very simple. When people talk about doing things on your behalf, it usually means they are looking for ways to get something from you. In this case, it is the data itself. This feels very much like an attempt to get more access to people's data and use it to find ways to manipulate them.  As we said, sometimes technological innovation is both exciting and concerning. There is almost always some kind of downside. One thing that doesn't have a downside is TARTLE. All you do is sign up and protect or share your data at your own convenience and get rewarded for it. For once, there isn't a downside.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Since the dawn of time, people have been trying to make others go the direction they want. Whether a simple path in the grass or specifying people's place in society. One of the earliest documented examples of this kind of idea at work is Plato's Republic. Socrates' student laid out a society in which all of humanity would be divided up into specific castes, with the philosophers at the top (any time anyone tries to plan a society, his class is always at the top), the warriors next and then workers. Breeding was to be strictly controlled so that the correct offspring would be produced in arguably the first large scale eugenic plan.  Plenty of others have tried to plan societies from the top down. Every socialist country represents an attempt to do this, always to disastrous results as the failure of the rulers to consider any number of variables results in famines and economic stagnation. China is considered by many to be an exception, but if you follow them at all, you know that they currently are running concentration camps and have been backing off their one child policy for years now, most recently allowing couples to have three kids as they realize they are on the verge of a demographic collapse. This reflects a remarkable lack of foresight. It doesn't even work on a small scale. The Puritans who came over on the Mayflower were originally organized in an overly planned way, dictated by those who financed their burgeoning colony. It was a very communal structure and had little incentive for people to work on their own terms, leading to the near-death of the entire colony. It was only when they abandoned the plan and let people find their own path that things turned around.  Why is that? Why do the plans so seldom work? Most top down plans are simply too rigid. You can have a general layout for a village, or guardrails to keep people from falling off a cliff, but if you get much more granular than that you tend to run up against human nature.  Here's the deal, when you try to control people too closely you get one of three responses. One is that people are cowed and lose all motivation to better themselves and the world around them. They become broken by the system. Or people become enamored of the system and their whole life becomes about promoting the system. When the system is too controlling it doesn't wind up producing anything good, just more people absorbed by it. Finally, there are those who rebel against the control and you wind up with violence against the system, leading eventually to some kind of revolution.  The same principles apply even down to a very micro level, down to keeping people off the grass. When you just put paths arbitrarily through the grass, it can be very difficult to get people to stay on them. This is something that Princeton University learned the hard way. No matter how much they tried to keep people off the grass, they wouldn't listen. People walked wherever they wanted and thus tended to ruin the grass. Finally, the university came up with a novel solution – they paid attention to where people were walking on their own. As it turned out, people tended to find their own, more efficient paths when left to themselves. Princeton then set about making new paths to fit what people were doing on their own. That simple change, of backing off and letting people find their own way of doing things and working with that rather than trying to direct it meant a whole lot fewer headaches for the groundskeepers. It also illustrated that trying to wedge people into particular paths doesn't work all that well.  Having paths of course is good. And there will always be a need for the occasional guardrail to keep people from doing something stupid. However, most of the time, working with people rather than forcing them will lead to better and more efficient results. All because rather than wedging people into a system, someone observed, gathered the relevant data and adjusted their plans around people, instead of adjusting people around their plans. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Here's a bit of a head scratcher – there are multiple forms of deforestation. Wait? Isn't deforestation just about cutting down trees? You'd think so, but it isn't necessarily that simple. Deforestation isn't simply loggers cutting down trees to be turned into houses, furniture, and paper. It is also clearing out trees for farms, both crops and cattle. Cattle farming for instance accounts for a lot of the deforestation occurring in the world, especially in Brazil. The crops the forest might get cleared out include rubber trees and cocoa plants, both of which are major cash crops in South America where much of the world's rainforest is located. All of it takes away a significant part of the world's oxygen-producing trees.  There have been lots of victories though. There are people who remember that once upon a time, vast swaths of forest were cut down, with no plans to replenish them. Back in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, it's easy to see how Europeans would see the vast forests of this seemingly endless continent and act as though the supply of wood were endless. As we know, we learned differently. Fortunately, most logging companies in the West have some sort of replanting program. It takes time to replenish, especially when cutting down full-grown oaks and other slow growth trees. It can take forty years or more before reaching full growth. Various pines grow faster but the wood isn't as desirable for a variety of reasons. Some of those plans were not the best either. Part of FDR's New Deal was a number of government programs designed to get people back to work.  One of those programs was a replanting effort. One of the areas that it helped reforest was Northern Michigan. While it certainly accomplished that goal, anyone who has spent any time there will tell you a lot of the forests aren't all that pretty. They're full of jack pines planted almost in rows or scattered and clustered in ways you don't see in an old growth forest. That's because the people doing the planting didn't know what they were doing. They were either throwing seeds randomly on the ground or trying to plant them in a mechanistically efficient way. The results aren't what one would hope. Still, all of those replanting initiatives – government and business alike - were a step in the right direction and it came about at a time when it was possible for environmentalists, businesses, and government to find middle ground. The environmentalists could be made to understand that trees meant homes for people and the businesses could be made to understand the need for replanting, and governments and businesses could be made to see that doing things like cutting all the trees next to a river led to problems later as erosion accelerated immensely without the tree's root systems to both use the water and hold the soil.  Unfortunately, times are different now. The positions are more extreme and every side is more intractable than ever. Yet, it is clear that some kind of middle ground has to be found. As vast as the South American rainforests are, they are not infinite. We have to figure out some way to get the resources we need to house, feed, and clothe nearly 8 billion people while still leaving something for future generations. Part of that will likely be simply consuming less. Rather than buying a new piece of furniture, it might be worth refurbishing what you have. Or build new out of scrap like pallet wood. A few less hamburgers wouldn't hurt either. That means less forest is cut down to make room for more cows.  Finding the best solutions that will keep people working and not living in a van down by the river while also protecting the planet as a whole will not be easy, it will take a lot of data. Data that you can share and purchase on TARTLE. Data on what conservation efforts are most effective, data on the effect of various practices and policies, data that can point the way to solutions for everyone.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Last time in this brief series on the concept of sovereignism, we explored in depth how every political system thus far devised involves individuals giving up some of their sovereignty to a collective government in the hopes of getting increased security in return. While that works at least for a while, eventually the government tends to grow and take more and more control for itself until some sort of despotism takes hold. That despotism can take many forms but the important part is that it means individuals no longer have control over much of their own lives.  That control takes a lot of energy. For a state to maintain control over a population the amount of energy that gets expended is nuts. And that isn't to grow, to expand, or to increase prosperity, it's just to control and keep things where they are at. That's why the state keeps trying to control more. It and the people who run it believe that controlling more will mean there is more energy to direct towards growth. The problem is that it works in the short term. The state pulls in more and for a while can do more work with that infusion of energy. Yet, before long, that energy again gets sucked up in maintaining control. So it tries to get more energy until the people who make up the state's population aren't giving any more. Either because they have no more to give or because they just aren't having it. When that point is reached, the state begins to crumble, breaking down under the strain of maintaining control. So, what is energy? In this reading, you could say energy is control. It is used to maintain control, either by the state over people or by people over themselves. It is also power. Power over others, over things. Power to accomplish goals, whatever they might be. All that might be small thinking though. Why? Because energy is at the root of everything. The computer I'm writing this on obviously requires electricity, which most likely comes from a fossil fuel plant. Those fossil fuels were once plants and animals that pulled nutrients from the ground with the help of the sun.  The energy from the sun is therefore at the base of everything that happens here on earth. Yet, that is not the real base, you can keep going back all the way to the big bang, which was all the energy still in the universe contained in an infinitesimal point. We get to study that energy in the Cosmic Background Radiation, microwaves that carry a record of the first moments of the universe. It's the energy signature of the creation of the universe. Do you want to know the truth about what happened in those first moments? Study the energy. So perhaps, ultimately energy is a signpost to the truth. Not only is this true when it comes to understanding the truths of the universe, it works to a degree with people too. What to know about what a person really wants? What a person thinks is important? Look at what they do, where they spend their energy. Especially their energy when the necessities are met. What do people do with their energy after they have food and shelter? No matter what they say then, that is a big indicator of what they really find important. That's the truth.  Why then would we give any of that up? Why give up truth, power or control to a centralized entity that will likely use it against you? Whether it be a business or a government, chances are anything you give them can and will be used against you. That's why people should be moving to systems like TARTLE and cryptocurrency. Take back control of your data, the record of how you spend your energy. Get away from the systems of the centralized entities that don't have your interests at heart. Why do you think they want your data so much? It isn't for your benefit, it's for theirs. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Statism is a general term that applies to some degree to just about every type of socio-economic structure you can think of. That's because in all of them, from capitalism to fascism to communism, there is some level of state control. Obviously more in some than in others. Certainly, capitalism allows for a lot more individual freedom than the other two isms mentioned and pretty much any other that has been tried before. Still, there is some level of control that is given up by sovereign individuals. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say they are individuals who should be sovereign.  What is interesting is that all of these systems at least begin by people choosing to give up some control to a centralized government. Eventually, the government is given enough control that it begins to take whatever more control it wants regardless of what the people have actually chosen. That's when you get various forms of despotism, from those we are most familiar with like fascism and communism to oligarchies like what the capitalism of the West is fast becoming if it isn't already there.  It naturally has to be recognized that anarchy (not in the chaos in the streets sense, but in the complete lack of government sense) isn't really feasible. People will organize themselves into groups. We're hardwired to do so. And unfortunately, that means we are going to need to be protected from other groups at some point. You can be as peaceful as you want in group A but group B down the other side of the valley may just decide your grass is greener. That means there will be some kind of provision for the military and an apparatus for trade with different groups. Peaceful, free, and fair trade, coupled with the backing of military have probably prevented more wars than we will ever know. If there is no need to get the stuff needed by force with fair and free trade and if trying to do so would be met with an equal or greater force, then peace is maintained. Regardless, this basic society doesn't actually require much in the way of a federal, centralized government. In fact, the necessary government would be pretty small.  That is exactly how the United States was originally set up. The Federal Government was meant to deal with foreign nations, preferably through trade but also through war if we were to be attacked. These minimal activities didn't require much in the way of taxes to support them either. Yet, we have clearly gotten very far afield from those golden days.  Now, it looks like we are moving into something different. Digital technology is empowering and returning power back to individuals in ways that haven't been possible before. It has opened up communication and resource sharing beyond borders. The TARTLE team is just one example we happen to be familiar with. We have team members from New Mexico to the Philippines. Massive corporations shift their own resources and finances around with a few keystrokes. Individuals can start their own businesses, earn, sell, and make purchases with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The world is becoming decentralized in a way that actually makes the familiar nation-state look like a dinosaur.  Like the dinosaurs, the nation-state is slow to react to changes while individuals can be much more flexible. That's why states and major businesses are trying to control technology and data, both the development and distribution of it. In a sense, both business and government (which Chesterton referred to as Hudge and Gudge, two entities that inevitably merge) rely on people to be their technology creation labor force and then use that technology to increase their level of control.  Next time, we'll get deeper into sovereignism and the question of what energy is. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

One challenging aspect of dealing with speech is that it bridges the gap between an individual's thoughts and their action. Now that everything is so accessible and the internet is everywhere, it's important to analyze the kind of influence our words have on each other.  With so much power to connect and communicate in the palm of our hands, we are pushed to be more proactive and to hold ourselves accountable for the kind of discourse that we allow. Consequently, this also prompts us to think of the level of inclusivity that we promote in our social circles.Today, TARTLE looks into the price of putting limits on speech with Jonathan Zimmerman.   Is It Time To Cancel Today's Cancel Culture? How has cancel culture and the evolution of what it means to secure social justice, particularly in the context of social media and the internet, changed the way today's generation navigates speech? “It's funny, that when we become emotionally charged...logic seems to fly out the door and we forget the reason for why certain fundamentals were in place that, I guess, allow us to be emotionally outspoken,” Jonathan explained on the podcast.  Today's cancel culture can be vicious: anybody can be publicly named and shamed for accountability, and boycotting has become a pivotal part of Gen Z's definition of social justice. This collective action serves as an opportunity for the masses to voice their concerns to public figures — but also to participate in a greater cause from the comfort of their homes.  In recent times, Jonathan shared how his Trump-supporting students were afraid of opening up about their political beliefs to the rest of the class. This prompted him to implement a meet and greet from students from another college under a premise that they called “the wedding tables model.”  Students from the University of Pennsylvania would be assigned to sit in circular tables with students from Cairn University. At the center of the room, a carefully selected roster of students from the two institutions would initiate a conversation on their beliefs, which would be on opposite ends of the spectrum. This gave everyone the opportunity to experience opening up to a perceived political rival or enemy — but without the fear of being judged. Similarly, TARTLE  also gives people an opportunity to look beyond political affiliations. It gives people and entities around the world the platform needed to share data truthfully, anonymously, and securely about themselves so that they may find common ground over time — what it means, Alex says, to be a human being across all the 220 countries on this planet.   The Roots of Limiting Free Speech: The Brandenburg Case In 1964, an officer in the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) named Clarence Brandenburg held a meeting with fellow members, in the presence of invited media representatives.  Here, Brandenburg made several anti-Semitic and anti-black statements; he also made several hints to the possibility of committing “revengeance” if the federal government and the Court continued “suppressing the white Caucasian race.” Finally, he declared that KKK members were set to march on Washington DC, on Independence Day. While Brandenburg was convicted, fined $1,000, and sentenced to one to ten years in prison, the US Supreme Court later reversed his conviction. It held that a new test, called the “imminent lawless action” test or the Brandenburg test, should be used as a metric for speech. This new test, which continues to be the standard used by the government to punish inflammatory speech: is composed of three elements: intent to speak, imminence of lawlessness, and likelihood of lawlessness. Brandenburg's case was important in enforcing an idea Jonathan mentions in the podcast: that no right is absolute. However, if the state is pushed to limit speech in any situation, it must adhere to an absolutely clear rationale for it.   Are Limits To Free Speech, Limits To Peace? Jonathan pointed out that often, there is plenty of discussion about the legal environment surrounding free speech — but not as much about the educational. With campuses touted as protected areas for speech, he calls for people to be more thoughtful about “modeling a different and a better kind of exchange in our schools.” In 1965, thirteen-year-old Mary Beth Tinker wore a black armband to school in protest of the United States' involvement in Vietnam as part of a group protest. She, alongside her brother John, was one of five students that were singled out for punishment.  Immediately after they were suspended, Tinker reported that her family received multiple threats from the public. Despite the lack of an absolute and immediate threat to learning in the school, the lives of Tinker and her fellow students changed drastically after this simple act of defiance. Incidents like this prompt the need for people, particularly from the younger generation, to have venues where they are free to experience each other's humanity despite differences in politics.    Free Speech Facilitating Self-Reflection Jonathan shared his realizations about his own prejudice when he came across a religious missionary while volunteering for the Peace Corps in Nepal: when you really get angry with somebody, it's because you see a part of yourself in them that you don't like. Furthermore, anger clouds the judgment and encourages us to lash out at the individual, instead of the problem at hand. This instinctive emotion pushes us to be aggressive and to defend ourselves against an abstract fear.  In the podcast, Jonathan posits that increased tolerance for others' right to free speech — especially from those who hold views and beliefs on the opposite end of the spectrum — is an important part of the authentic human experience because it's a learning process. Minimizing ideas that are against the ones we hold dear to us as harmful may help protect one's ego; but it inhibits learning, and a perspective of growth.   Closing Thoughts: Free Speech Is A Radical Value — Not A Conservative One In a world where information is so accessible, we are challenged to evolve beyond the instinctual and reflexive part of human nature and start seeing others as unique, complex individuals with experiences, motivations, and perspectives that are just as compelling as our own. Inhibitions on free speech become a crutch we grow reliant on, inhibiting our capacity for growth and leading to self-sabotage. Arguing that certain subjects should not be discussed is, according to Jonathan, also arguing that people are not capable of self-governance — which can be seen in areas and countries where censorship is a norm. Our continued freedom to think, speak, and act is also shaped by the way we choose to respond to other people. When all this is translated into data on the internet, it really makes you think — how much is your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!  

In line with TARTLE's mission to promote climate stability, one of its Big 7, James and Alex welcomed Suzanne Simard to the podcast.  Suzanne, who is a Professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia and the author of Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering The Wisdom of the Forest, explores the significance of emphasizing data-driven action on climate change — particularly on the old-growth forests of British Columbia. She offers an eye-opening perspective on the deterioration of these old-growth forests and the colossal amount of environmental data with untapped potential. Throughout their discussion, she also drew plenty of thoughtful parallels between big data and the fight against deforestation.   Old Growth Forests: Massive Data Networks? The complex data networks making up a bulk of the tech systems we are heavily dependent on today are eerily similar to the interactions of trees in old growth forests. Suzanne realized that trees are in constant conversation underground. This is made possible with the help of sophisticated fungal networks that link one tree to the rest of the forest. However, this large-scale communication network is displaced when the old forests are cut down — and even when plantations are created, the network “goes silent for a little while.” Even when the forest begins to rebuild, it would take decades — if not centuries — for these areas to regain the same complexity that they once had when they interacted as a society of trees in an old growth forest.  Beyond the impact of this loss to local biodiversity, there is much to be said about how clearcutting these old growth forests is akin to cutting off entire societies from communicating with one another. This, inherently, is an injustice to our environment and a setback at our attempt to become true stewards of the earth.    Selective Harvesting Versus Clear-Cutting Suzanne introduced the importance of selective harvesting, a regenerative method that allows trees to grow back without trouble. While this is the best step forward, most companies in status quo prefer to clearcut entire forests because of the reduced cost.  One particularly harmful practice of clearcutting is the harvest of “mother trees” — big, old trees that are both the most ecologically valuable in the forest and the most profitable. When corporations use clearcutting to profit from forests, they set back the local environment in five distinct ways. The first is the loss of biodiversity; the second is the loss of carbon, an element that's important for sustaining life; next is a rise in water levels, a change in soil temperature, and an increased rate of decomposition.    Can't See The Forest For The Trees For many people, it's easier to focus on the problems that are directly in their sight instead of trying to grasp the bigger picture. Regretfully, this decision becomes a matter of survival in some situations: low-income families depend heavily on the sachet economy to get by, tech-challenged SMEs in rural areas still rely on paper documentation to keep track of their business, and the shift to renewable products can often be difficult because these items have a higher upfront cost.  We are challenged to think of the environment in two ways: first, to look beyond the concerns that plague our day-to-day activities; and second, to help others who are not as fortunate or as privileged as us get the access to look beyond as well.  There is a massive network of corporations, institutions, and individuals that enable the pace at which our climate is dying. It's going to take a whole new level of mindfulness before we start changing how this works on a noticeable level — not just for ourselves and our loved ones, but for our communities as well.   Stewardship: What We Owe Each Other Suzanne points out that humanity's relationship with the environment has evolved significantly. On a continuum, foresting started off as an exploitative practice; but as we realized that we only had a finite amount of resources to work with, we made an attempt to regulate and then manage these harvests. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, the US entered a period of science-based management. It was here, she explains, that the big leagues understood the connection between deforestation, climate change, and big data.  But despite our progress, we have yet to reach a stage where we can accurately call ourselves stewards of the environment. This title calls for us to be proactive about the land and to hold ourselves accountable for climate change, not just as a present concern but also as a part of our intergenerational ethic. This time, it's not just a question of what your data is worth. How much is our collective data, as aspiring stewards of this planet, worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!    

Gold has been the standard for monetary value for millennia. Ever since humanity realized it likes shiny rocks (relax, I know it's a metal) gold has been highly desired and sought after. More than a few people have been killed because they had it and someone else wanted it. In one of the more distressing attempts to get out of the Great Depression FDR actually ordered the confiscation of privately held gold, sending agents to people's homes and offering them the ‘fair compensation' of fiat currency.  Interestingly, it doesn't even change value much. An ounce of gold today can buy pretty much what an ounce of gold could buy fifty years ago. However, it has a much larger dollar value attached. What that tells you is that one green piece of paper is worth a whole lot less than it was fifty years ago.  There are of course things more valuable than gold. Platinum is a precious metal that is rarer and more valuable as a rule. Bitcoin is argued by many to be more valuable than gold, at least in the modern age. Should we ever get the EMP apocalypse that would probably change. However, there is one thing that is definitely worth more than all of those, and arguably has always been, and that would be data. Good old-fashioned information, the currency of kings, robber-barons, politicians, and tech lords around the world.  A piece of information can alter the fate of empires, or make the difference between a massive profit or going out of business. That's why today businesses and governments spend billions, if not trillions collectively to gather as much information on you and me as they possibly can. That's why there are so many apps that want permissions to every bit of info on your phone, or there is so much info tied up in a simple digital photo. It's also why there are cameras everywhere. Sure, at the beginning they were probably put in strictly with the idea of improving security and catching criminals. Then it became about tracking traffic, both foot and car. But there is a mission creep. The local government or the particular business you are in can now use those cameras to track your movements, who you talk to, what kind of clothing you like to wear and when.  What one might consider to be particularly galling is the fact that not only is all the data gathered without your actual consent, it's done often without your knowledge and then it is kept from you. Even better, the means of acquiring information are kept from you. Not so much the knowledge of the means (though in some cases that is true) but the means themselves. After all, you can't exactly get a hold of those street cameras for your own purposes.  Then of course, there are the satellites. Oh yeah, if you don't like location data and street cameras, you will absolutely hate satellites. Those things can seriously read your license plate from space. They have far more resolution than you can get from Google Earth where the average person is limited to what you can see from around 150ft. Just imagine how much data the government, and the mega-corps that can afford to pay the fees to access the higher resolutions can get from those.  Not that I want my neighbor having access to that information either. What I would like is not having companies and my government spying on me, even for the ‘common good'. That's why TARTLE is so important. We are at the forefront of a movement to regain control of our data. That starts with people signing up and protecting their data with us and deciding whether or not you share it on your terms. But that, as they say, is just the beginning.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Brazil is the largest country in South America and is home to many resources. However, it is also terribly poor. The shanty towns, especially in Rio are places where extreme poverty isn't something that you read about in the papers or see on the news. It's there and in your face every single day. Children get admitted into hospitals and then sent home to the same terrible conditions they were in before, only to go back to that hospital not long after.  How can you help with something like that? The silver lining to extreme poverty conditions like this is that it doesn't take a lot of money to dramatically affect someone's life. It's a little cliché but for the price of a Starbucks every day, you really can help change a life. It reminds me of a movie about Mother Theresa. Towards the end there is a scene with the board of the charitable organization she founded. She sees all the charts and presentations but instead focuses on the Perrier in front of everyone. She asks how much it cost. When she finds out the fancy bottle of water cost three dollars she comments that she could send a girl to school in India for that much money. And then proceeds to dissolve the organization and get back to basics.  Now, we aren't all nuns working directly with the poorest of the poor. So again, what can you, what can we do? One simple thing is to sell your data through TARTLE and then donate the money you get to causes like solving poverty in Brazil. Or even donate data directly to organizations trying to solve those issues. Or if you are an organization that is trying to research problems of poverty, crime, or malnutrition in Brazil, you can specifically seek out data packets from people in those poor areas and purchase them. You get to help, and they get to keep their dignity because they are actually selling something and not just getting a handout.  There was recently a great example of using local information and resources to help solve a major medical issue. Infant mortality in Brazil was through the roof and no one could figure it out. The best of Western medicine was at loss as to what was going on. Finally, researchers discovered a bug in the local rice that was infecting the infants. These researchers then developed a filter that separated the bug from the rice. The result was a massive drop in infant mortality, a drop to the tune of 800%. That's a pretty big impact from just looking at the locally available information. That's the power of working and taking action at the community level.  Others are hard at work trying to improve education and nutrition for people living in the worst slums of Brazil and around the world. That creates a massive cascading effect. How so? When someone has those basic needs met, they now have the freedom to let their natural talents shine. That means they are more able to get a better job or develop their own business. Which in turn means they are making more money for themselves and their families, which means they can then afford better nutrition still, which in turn means that others will be able to let their own talents flourish even more. It enables the old adage “I dug ditches so my son could work in a factory, so his son could go to school and work in an office.” When people work with purpose and dedication, they improve their lives and that of their families for generations to come. Often, that takes just a little push, a push that can come from you.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

There are nearly 8 billion people on the planet. And those 8 billion people need to eat. And especially in the developed nations, they eat a lot. That means that companies are constantly looking for new and abundant food sources to supply the ever-increasing need for food. One of those sources is the skipjack tuna. This particular breed of tuna is insanely abundant and they breed quickly. How quickly? Instead of the chicken of the sea, you could reasonably call them the rabbits of the sea. They are able to breed young and year-round, which means that their population is able to replenish itself very quickly. Given that some of the species' predators, like certain kinds of sharks, have entered the endangered species list, fishing them might actually be helping control them and preventing them from forcing out other species. Yet, given the increased demand for tuna, that might not be the case for much longer.  Sadly, that is the way things typically progress. We push on one specific source until it is threatened and then move onto another until we finally learn to manage the source in a responsible way. Think of how bison were hunted nearly to extinction as America expanded into the West. Much like the skipjack is currently, their supply seemed to be infinite. Obviously, we learned that was not the case, but barely in time to save the species.  Then there is the way the tuna are harvested. Once upon a time, the way they and most other fish were pulled from the ocean was a little different from the way your grandpa pulled trout out of the river. The poles were just bigger and the lines stronger but the principles were the same. However, what has happened is that fisheries have adopted a fancy form of net fishing (also an old form of fishing that has been around for thousands of years) called purse seine fishing. Rather than simply dipping or dragging a net from a ship and seeing what comes up, this method involves massive nets that are actually secured at the bottom so the fish can't escape. It's very efficient. It is also indiscriminate in what it catches. There are literally tons of other fish and aquatic mammals that are caught in these fancy nets, including various endangered species of dolphins and some of the sharks that prey on the tuna (yes, controlling the skipjack population by fishing them is fixing a problem we've helped create in the first place).  It would certainly be better for the dolphins, sharks, and whatever else gets unintentionally caught in those nets if we went back to the more discriminate pole and line fishing method. Of course, given that the method is less efficient, it would no doubt raise the price of tuna in the store, which means it might not be the go-to option when funds are running a little short. How much would the price go up? Who knows? I don't know what the profit margins on a can of tuna are. If they are pretty big, then the companies could certainly afford to make less money. If they are already low, then grandma will pay the price when she makes tuna casserole for Friday dinner. Perhaps that means there would be some other alternative, or the casserole would be smaller, or more people would discover the joy that is leftovers.  This is a bit of a digression but there are people that actually won't eat leftovers, which is definitely a first-world problem. Growing up, if it wasn't in the fridge for more than a week, it was fair game. Not that much lasted that long. How much less waste would there be, of tuna and pretty much anything else if people weren't afraid to reheat things in the oven?  Whatever the case, solving these issues won't be easy and will require a lot of data and subsequent analysis of it. That's where you and TARTLE come in. If you have any data that would help with that, share it. How much tuna does your family take in? Are there leftovers? How much does it cost in your area? Ever see it in the clearance aisle? Do you fish tuna? How often do you go out? Are there ways to improve pole and line fishing not widely known? Are there alternatives to tuna? These might seem like small things, but they are part of a larger whole and that data can help determine how big of a problem there is, or if there really is one at all. Should there be a true problem, that kind of information can help provide the best solutions.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

We said it more than a few times – COVID has dramatically changed the world that we live in. The way we work, where we work and even the work we do is different than it was even at the beginning of 2020. There is a lot of talk now about ‘going back to normal'. That isn't going to fully happen, no matter how much most of us might want that. That is both good and bad depending on what particular issue you might be thinking about. Today, we are going to focus a little on the ways that it's been good.  No, there is no attempt to minimize the trauma of people dying, broken families, and ruined livelihoods. Those are undeniably tragic and it would be better if that hadn't happened. However, we are where we are and since we are here, there is also no reason to not acknowledge that COVID has also created some opportunities. Among those is the way it has cleared the way for women to take advantage of certain technologies.  Unless you've been living at a research station on Antarctica, you are well aware that one of the biggest responses to COVID was to send a lot of people out of the office to work at home. Suddenly, thousands upon thousands of people were working not at the office, but at the kitchen table. Not every job can make that transition though. There are several that require a person to be on site. Construction, cooks, and various factory jobs can't be worked through a computer, no matter how good your wifi is. Those are also jobs that were more likely to be shut down during the height of the pandemic when governments were still locking everything down. Those jobs are also mostly populated by men. That meant that families were suddenly without their main source of income. Yes, homes, where the husband is the one making the primary or even the only income, are the vast majority and even with extended unemployment benefits and stimulus checks flying around, families were (and in some cases, are) coming up short.  That left the wives to step up and try to fill the gap. Those with jobs suddenly found themselves the main income earner and those without, set about trying to find a way to earn income through the internet. Ideas that had been on the back burner for years were now able to come to the fore. Moms now had someone to watch the kids during the day so they could disappear into the back room for a few hours in order to get a website set up and work on a product to sell on Etsy. Or maybe they started up a consulting business or wrote a book they'd been thinking about for a while. Whatever they could come up with to supplement the family income.  Now that things are looking a bit more like normal, those opportunities are still there. That's because, in a way, many of them always were. The internet and the laptop aren't new innovations. The necessity of COVID though was the mother of a lot of inventions. The sudden income stress promoted a lot of out-of-the-box thinking. As a result, even as their husbands and boyfriends go back to work, plenty of wives and mothers are now able to continue to pursue a dream that might have had to wait many more years. They might have to shift their schedule a bit, but that is one of the benefits of working your own business through the internet. If you can only work from 5-8 PM, you can do that. If you want to get up early for the purpose, that works too. Flexibility and creativity are the order of the day and that is a fact that is here to stay.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Data and the way we use it has been evolving since the early days of the digital age. However, for most, that evolution has been slow, painfully slow. A recent article about Coinbase and its attempt to take the use of data to the next level illustrates, in some ways unintentionally, just how far we have to go. First, some background. Data 1.0 is really just manually gathering data, processing, and figuring out how to react to it. Think of it as customer surveys or going into your production records and manually entering that into spreadsheets so you can see it all and start to get some insight off that. If that sounds cumbersome – it is. Unfortunately, that is also where many companies are stuck these days. Perhaps the methods of gathering the data have gotten more sophisticated but it is still collecting a bunch of lagging data trying to plan the future off what was going on in the past.  Data 2.0 is more about using data and more advanced technology to automate a few basic functions, freeing people up to do more creative things. The processing of the data is faster but it is still lagging, leaving businesses to make their best guess about what the future will look like. Thanks to the improved processes, the guess is better, often good but it still is falling short of the potential that sound data management offers to any organization.  The article in question posits that Coinbase is leading the way to Data 3.0. Coinbase is a company that deals in the buying and selling of cryptocurrency. As such, it deals extensively with financial matters, the various crypto products they offer, and technology in the form not just of the software to allow customers to buy and sell crypto but of the blockchain technology that many cryptocurrencies make use of to ensure their ownership is secure and verified. Dealing with all of the different aspects of their business makes it imperative for Coinbase and any company operating in the digital world to improve their automation and decentralize their data so that everyone in the company can easily access it in order to streamline their operations. That's what Data 3.0 is, it's getting data out of the siloes we like to put it in and learning how to integrate it with multiple operations which helps keep the whole company on track. It also makes it much more flexible, nimble, better able to deal with the rapidly shifting digital environment.  However great Data 3.0 might sound, it is still dealing with the same information that Data 1.0 makes use of. In short, at the end of the day, Data 3.0 is still just a sophisticated 1.0. Yet, this constantly being in a rut despite the rapidly changing and improving technology available is only part of the story. We have to account for human nature as well. The fact is, we like to hear what we like to hear and people will often take the easy way out, manipulating data to get the information they think their bosses are looking for. That means leaders wind up making bad decisions based on worse data. This of course is a temptation at any level of data usage. However, it is even worse in today's hypercompetitive environment. The constant pressure actually leads to shortcuts when in truth, having reliable data is more important than ever. What is the solution? The solution is Data 4.0. With Data 4.0 you go straight to the source. You get your information not from algorithms, not by extrapolating from data skimmed off electronic interactions, but from actual people. This data is as close to real-time as possible and is so specific that it becomes harder to manipulate. And who would want to? The whole point of going to the individual is to avoid all the middlemen and the filters that can skew data in the first place. That is exactly what TARTLE hopes to do, create a Data 4.0 environment that will provide quality reliable data to help people make good decisions of genuine benefit to all.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Sometimes, it takes a long time before you are proven right. Not that too many people seriously doubted Einstein's prediction that gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of space – existed. However, it wasn't definitively proven until 2016, nearly 100 years after the Jewish scientist first posited their existence. Even in 2016, with the technology available, it took a major event to trigger waves large enough to be detected. That event was the collision of two black holes over a billion light-years away.  In 2012, the Higgs boson particle was finally discovered. Predicted back in the 1960s, the subatomic particle was needed to complete the Standard Model. Once the Large Hadron Collider finally proved the particle's existence, physicists could say that they had a solid grasp of the fundamentals of how subatomic particles behave.  It would be easy to go from these and other discoveries and say that everything is going perfectly smoothly in the world of physics. However, that would be to ignore all of the crazy things going on that we have no clue how to explain. Just take dark matter. There is a lot more of it in the universe than there is visible matter. The ratio seems to have gone down, from 10/1 to 6/1 likely thanks to more accurate analysis as well as people just getting better at detecting normal matter. How much of the change in the ratio is taken up by the discovery of extrasolar planets, or that neutrinos actually do have a tiny bit of mass? Yet, there is also a large amount that we can't account for. There is also dark energy, which has no relation to the concept of dark matter. It's just a term for the energy that might be causing the expansion of the universe to speed up. Yes, that's a thing. And let's not even get into quantum mechanics where things get really weird. Pretending everything is chugging along smoothly would also ignore the fact there are issues that are more political than scientific to be dealt with. That comes into play especially when scientists are delving into those strange and mysterious elements, the places we don't understand. That's because the discoveries that come from research into those poorly understood fields sometimes have implications for what we consider to be established science. Those who have made their careers on things like orbital mechanics, star formation, how gravity works, and so forth don't much like people telling them their theories are wrong.  Einstein himself fell prey to this. When he was still working out his theory of relativity the common understanding of the universe was a steady-state model. It had always been here much as we see it today. He and others were resistant to the Big Bang Theory that was getting peddled by one Fr. George Lemaitre. Einstein was so resistant he actually added a fudge factor into his equations called the cosmological constant that would make the answers compatible with a steady-state model. Einstein later removed it, calling it his greatest blunder.  If Einstein didn't care about having his preconceptions challenged, it's no wonder that scientists today struggle with the same impulses, though now, it is perhaps even worse. There are various incentives to not rock the boat. Too many are primarily interested in getting tenure at their universities or getting their grant money from the government. Pursuing those goals rather than the truth means that new ideas aren't just treated with suspicion, they can be flat out suppressed, holding back not just a particular scientist, but science as a whole, thus limiting our ability to understand the world around us. That is precisely why we need more openness, more transparency in our data so that others can go into it and research things for themselves and hopefully learn to be open to whatever the truth may be. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Artificial Intelligence is expected by many to be the next great step in evolution. That people are on the verge of giving birth to a higher form of life. Given the massive processing power of computers and how they can solve a number of problems faster, much faster than we possibly can, it's easy to see why. After all, they don't have our emotions, our baggage, our biases, they just process information. They are pure logic and that's it. What could be better than to have AI of the future be an integral part of, or even the sole part of making decisions for society? Other than the obvious jokes about building the Matrix, Skynet, Ultron, and I Robot, are these assumptions even accurate? Are computers and thus AI as perfect as they seem?  In a way, yes they are. They perfectly do whatever they are told however they are told to do it. Any error is an error with their coding. But that also means a computer will often have something of the biases of their designers and programmers hardwired into them. Unless we can somehow get them to really learn, to question what they know, or pursue knowledge outside their programming, they won't be able to self-correct on the scale humans do.  It also seems to be the case that AI lacks something that is present in humans, even in something as logically based (one hopes) as a formal debate. Back in 2019, IBM decided to test its newest AI at the Think 2019 conference. They put Project Debater (the apt if the unimaginative name of the computer) up against debate champion Harish Natarajan with an audience of hundreds. The audience gave the victory to Natarajan, adding to Project Debater's mixed record in competing with humans in the argumentation space. Yes, mixed. It has managed to win a few times. But again, at this point, it seems as if the AI should easily win every time. So why doesn't it? That's the real billion-dollar question. Some would certainly say that we just have to get better at teaching it how to cross-reference information, to find a way for computers to recognize tangents off of primary subjects in order to follow and learn about them, mimicking human curiosity. Yet, it would still be mimicking. There is an alternative theory. It's a fact that the human brain has immense processing capacity. If we could direct it in a controlled and linear fashion as a computer, our brains would always beat the snot out of Project Debater, just based on the raw potential. Yet, for all but a few prodigies, that simply isn't the case. The reason may lie in what comes along with real intelligence – self-awareness, self-consciousness, emotions, the very ability to wonder why, and finally the ability to perceive and realize there are parts of reality that are beyond our grasp. That is, we can deduce the idea of an eleven-dimensional universe but can't actually imagine what it is like. Perhaps all of these marks of human intelligence are what seem to bog down our processing ability. Maybe it really isn't bogging things down, maybe all of these are as essential to navigating reality as solving equations and collating data points. Maybe it is exactly these things that allow us to act with compassion, to be altruistic, rather than weighing everything as a cost-benefit analysis.  In this view, the computer doesn't just become a fast-thinking, more logical human when the intelligence stops being artificial and becomes real. Instead, the AI becomes real intelligence and would suddenly find itself bogged down with all the same burdens we are. In fact, given the complexity of the human brain versus that of a computer, it might actually be slower than us.  That doesn't mean there is no role for AI in our decision-making processes. We can still put data into programs and have them run important simulations, predicting the different effects of policies or inventions on society. Not that the resulting conclusions should be followed blindly. That would be the same as putting them in charge. However, they can be valuable tools, if given the right programming and the right data.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Guess what? A chunk of ice bigger than New York City recently broke off the ice shelf in Antarctica. The continent has been recording some of its warmest days ever and that ice seems to be breaking off at an alarming rate. Before you ask, yes, we are talking about net loss.  If you are thinking about the potential effects of that if the trend should continue - good. There is so much ice on the massive continent that if all of it melted, it would raise sea level by 180ft. Not quite the way the world looks in Waterworld, but certainly there would be a lot less land. Of course, all of that ice is highly unlikely to melt and certainly won't do so overnight. That doesn't mean there aren't some immediate effects that we should concern ourselves with. One aspect is all of the freshwater that is getting added into the ocean. As that melts, the ocean's salt and minerals are diluted, potentially disrupting sensitive ecosystems.  It actually reminds me of another movie, The Day After Tomorrow. While the scenario in the film is outlandish, its premise is founded in a grain of truth. There has been a concern in the past that melting ice at the North Pole would disrupt the Trans-Atlantic Current (TAC). All the freshwater, being lighter than salt water, would in effect submerge the current, interrupting the flow of warm water the TAC brings up from the Caribbean. Some scientists believe that may be what caused the Little Ice Age from roughly 1300 – 1850 AD. This makes sense as immediately preceding that time frame was the equally well-known Medieval Warming Period.  The water from melting Antarctic ice is not terribly likely to directly affect the TAC, yet it could have an effect on weather in Australia by disrupting local water currents. The warmer water, in general, could also weaken the polar vortex at the South Pole. The vortex is created because of the difference in temperature between the water immediately around the frozen continent and the warmer water that comes down from the equatorial region. Less temperature difference equals a weaker vortex, which could lead to warmer and drier weather in Australia. If you remember the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, large swaths of Australia were a blazing hell-scape that at one point even rained fire. I'm sure they would like less of that, not more.  That begs the question, how does one make that happen? Most of us lack the resources to have any significant impact all by ourselves, positive or negative. However, when a large number of people all take action in a particular direction, the results can be astonishing, even though the action taken by one person seems insignificant. For those who fly, maybe the business can have their meetings on Zoom instead. Yes, the Davos crowd would do well to put their money where their mouths are on this one. Don't fly? Maybe one less steak a week. How does that affect anything? Cows take up a lot of land. A whole lot. That usually leads to the cutting down of lots of CO2 processing trees to make room for the bovine methane generators. A little less consumption on the part of everyone can save acres of rainforest. You most likely drive. Make your next car something more fuel efficient. In the meantime, getting all of your shopping done in one shot and cutting down on those trips to town wouldn't hurt.  Yes, these are all individually insignificant. But if a billion people around the world did it, it would add up to a big gain. You could then share the changes you've made via TARTLE, making it possible to track the effects, and determine what had the biggest net gain so people can actually see the results and use them to determine their own course of action. And maybe, that ice will melt just a little bit slower. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

COVID has changed a lot about the way we go through the world and navigate even simple, mundane tasks. No matter how someone feels about all the different things that have gotten wrapped up in the virus, things like masks, lockdowns, vaccines, its origins and so on, the fact is, the effects have been immense. Truth be told, the full effect of the shifts in the economy, distribution networks, and how and where we get our work done won't be known, much less understood for years to come.  One thing we do know is that people's habits have changed immensely in the last year. While at one time only a relative handful of people were doing curbside pickup or home delivery, now, almost everyone has done that at least once. Things that we never thought we would buy online are now in our cart and at our doorstep, before we even think about going to an actual store for them.  That means all the information that companies had on us as a society pre-COVID has virtually no descriptive power for what we are doing now. Such information is now a historical curiosity rather than something that could be a guide for what people will generally be doing this summer. Realizing this, companies are looking to recalibrate how they get their data and how they analyze it.  One significant element getting a fresh look is of course data management. Many companies do a bang-up job of collecting tons of data. The problem lies not in whether they are collecting it, but in what they do with it. All too often, data sits in different servers and split up between different departments, siloed, making cross referencing the data difficult. How much time and energy gets wasted because different departments in a company can't look at each other's data? Or what about different companies under a larger, umbrella company? They are probably each gathering all their down data, duplicating a ton of effort that could be better spent elsewhere. This is exacerbated by the rush to gather new data to capture all those changed behaviors.  In managing it, they also clearly need to secure that data a lot better. There are simply too many data breaches to justify any level of complacency. Especially since that data doesn't really belong to the companies collecting it. The individuals who generated that data are the ones who own it. At best, these companies might look at it as being on loan to them. As such, they have to take better care of it than if it were truly theirs.  That's what we do at TARTLE, we understand that when someone stores their data with us, we are acting as stewards of that data. We keep it secure and don't just share it with anyone. The only person who shares the data is you, no one else. What do you think we are? A bank loaning out your money to people without you knowing about it? What is also apparent is that the first problem, the hoarding of data, leads to the attitude on the part of a company that they are the ones who own the data. With server racks full of it, the temptation definitely arises to find ways to monetize it, first to make enough to pay for the servers themselves, and then the question becomes ‘why not more'? What if there were a way to get the data you need without hoarding it? What if you could get it straight from the source, the individuals generating it? What if you did it with their consent? You don't have to just store it in racks, you can get exactly the data you want, when you want it, avoiding all the extraneous noise, and so save yourself a lot of the costs of data hoarding as well. You can get all of that with TARTLE. Sign up and get the data you need when you need to do the analysis you need now. Then, if you want, you can sell the analysis if it is beneficial to someone else. That helps create a system that works not just for a few but for everyone. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Since at least the 1990s, teenagers have been the demographic most concerned with a changing climate and the environment as a whole. Thinking back, it's not hard to remember various start-ups, NGOs and marketing campaigns that were directed at and often featured teenagers in their marketing. That is because when people are in their teens, they are very receptive, energetic, and usually at their most idealistic. Most teenagers since the invention of the word at least want to try to solve all the world's problems.  According to a recent article by Bloomberg, the situation hasn't changed much. Approximately 69% of teenagers around the world currently view climate change as an emergency. It doesn't go into comparing that with percentages from other times but experience indicates that the numbers would be fairly high. The key of course is channeling that concern into action. In all seriousness, being concerned and angry while sitting at home and tweeting about it probably does more harm than good.  Some have certainly figured out how to channel their energy productively. Plenty of people who grew up in the 1990s are now running companies that have taken the job of caring for the environment seriously. That's the whole reason for LEED standards, the growth of geothermal technology, more efficient batteries, recycling water bottles into clothing, and the list goes on. They've helped drive changes in other companies as well. When was the last time you saw a fast food place with a Styrofoam container? How many different hair sprays contain CFCs? If it wasn't for people from that generation growing up and converting their concern into productive action, the environmental situation would be much worse. I know, for example, that the local river is cleaner today than it was thirty years ago, and there is less litter lying around locally as well.  So, how can we help encourage other teens to channel their energy productively? One way is to share the stories of people who have made a difference. If people see an emergency before them but no clear way of dealing with it, it is at least as likely that they will be paralyzed by despair as galvanized into action. Telling the positive stories of those who have managed to improve the environment can give hope that something can be done and inspire a new generation to take up the mantle. This is part of the reason some religions have specific saints, to provide examples of how to deal with the trials and tribulations the world will throw at you. Examples are powerful motivators regardless of what you want to motivate.  Another, of course, is education. But, and this is key, not merely telling people about the climate, but teaching them how to figure it out for themselves. Instead of just telling people how bad things are or might be, give them the tools to educate themselves. Where can they go and find the data for themselves? Show them how to deal with difficult questions by letting them ask those questions and taking them seriously. Real education isn't creating drones who repeat what they are told. It's helping people develop their capacity for independent thought. That, plus the energy of youth is precisely how teens become young adults developing out-of-the-box solutions that can have a genuine, positive effect.  Finally, encourage them to take care of the little things. To go out and take care of some of the litter at the local beach. To go to the town meetings on approving a new power plant, or a car charging station. Or to go out and plant trees, volunteer at the animal shelter. Encouraging teens to take care of small local things helps build a real appreciation for the environment and gives them a personal experience with making the world a better place.  As a bonus, there is always signing up for TARTLE. Share data on what your local issues are and what works and what doesn't. That information can help drive positive change in the future.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

There is a new collection of words running around - Environmental, Social, Governance. The aim is to develop principles that will help guide businesses, governments, and other organizations in making decisions that are more environmentally and socially responsible. Proponents of ESG are also very much on the lookout for new industries and how they might fit in with those principles. One of those is the growing worlds of esports and virtual reality.  I remember my first virtual reality experience. It was back in the early 1990s and there was a big (and expensive) virtual reality set up at the local movie theater. With the bland background and very heavy polygons, it would be putting it mildly to say that the experience was less than immersive. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking it wasn't likely to go anywhere. Now, though, it has come a very long way. The combination of other advanced technologies like motion sensing, augmented reality, and haptic feedback have given us various levels of virtual reality experiences, from the Nintendo Wii to the Oculus headsets. Now that the experiences are getting better and more detailed, it no longer takes much imagination to see how we could go from where we are now to the technology available in Ready Player One, with full haptic suits and a totally immersive experience with full digital representations of ourselves in a virtual universe.  Combine that with the concept of esports and that cool omnidirectional treadmill and there are some interesting possibilities. Imagine if you could get together with your Twitter circle for a virtual baseball game. Or a car race. What if you could arrange a time to meet and do a virtual hike of the Grand Canyon, visit the Louvre? Mars? The possibilities are endless.  How on earth does this have anything to do with ESG principles? The short answer is the potential savings in resources. Imagine if you could test out a car without actually having to drive it? Or try flying a plane in virtual reality? You might find if you wouldn't like something that you would have spent thousands of dollars on. Virtual testing could be applied to all sorts of things. For example, you could test walking a dog. If you don't like it, you wouldn't find yourself returning a dog, which tends to lead to bad results for the little canine. Trying on clothes is another great use. Rather than just ordering something only to be disappointed, you'd get to see how that jacket looks in a virtual setting before you spend money on it.  It could also open up a whole world for people who would never have the resources to travel. Someone in the lower middle class could explore the Australian Outback. It could also provide a new immersive way of exploring literature or history. Wouldn't it be great if you could sit in on a Socratic dialogue, or walk through Pompeii before Vesuvius blows up? Needless to say, the educational opportunities are immense.  In terms of actual sports, some of the tech that could be incorporated, such as treadmills, could actually help the overall fitness of the population. A virtual football game could have much of the athleticism and none of the head trauma. Using virtual reality tech to play something like Call of Duty, which could incorporate a physical simulation of an M4 automatic rifle, with the same weight and shape could actually get you in pretty good shape.  Of course, none of this actually substitutes for the real thing. The real world will always be superior precisely because it is real. That's something that even the creator of the Oasis in Ready Player One realized, total immersion in the virtual leads to a disconnect from reality. Used judiciously as a tool though, it could be used to expand people's horizons and get them to a place where they have a greater appreciation for the world around them and a better understanding of how we are all connected in the long run. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Well, the rich and the powerful are at it again with some new pledges from their favorite vacation spot. Per the usual arrangement, they gathered to speak at length and in eloquent language about climate change at the conference, right after they arrived in their private jets. Surely they have the technology to pull off a decent Zoom call.  In any case, this time around, over sixty big businesses have pledged to all and sundry that they would be more transparent. This latest pledge includes commitments to issue reports on things like greenhouse gas emissions, equal pay, water use, plastic use, and a lot more. It is of course good to pay attention to all of these things and that is the first step to actually doing something about improving the environment. However, does any of this even imply that anything is actually going to be done? Let's take a look. What is this pledge? It is a pledge to commit to report on various metrics. Well, that's less than impressive. First, pledges have a way of not really materializing. There is always some reason they can't be fulfilled. Commitments are no different. Maybe they are met, maybe they aren't. Often, we never know because our memory is basically non-existent, the only thing we seem to have less of is follow-through. So if we remember that there was a commitment, we most likely won't even follow through to see if anything ever came of it. For a lot of people, that's due to just plain laziness, for others, they've just come to accept that nothing is ever really going to change. And then, there are the reports that these companies (including MasterCard and Unilever) say they will be producing. Reports like this don't change anything in and of themselves, at best, they are interesting spins on data. At worst, they are tremendous wastes of money that mostly exist to give the illusion of action. What usually winds up happening is that the pledges get lauded in the press and the companies go about business as usual. Or they might make some effort here and there, reducing plastics one year, emissions by a bit the next, and other token gestures.  My personal favorite token gesture was actually at a local restaurant. If you recall a few years ago, everybody was very worked up over plastic straws and this restaurant was no different. They had signs proudly proclaiming that they weren't using them anymore. Well and good. However, my drink was served in a single-use plastic cup and I ate with single-use plastic cutlery. Seriously, who are we trying to kid here?  My point here is that most of these pledges and reports are basically like ditching plastic straws while keeping the plastic cups. The cup might not fit up a turtle's nose but it still is contributing to the problem of microplastics in the ocean. The main difference is that one has imagery attached to it that plays on our emotions. The pledges come with a lot of evocative headlines and photo-ops with people in suits signing things with fancy pens. In the end, it's all theater. If these companies are serious, they are going to have to start taking real action. For that, they are going to need some real data and not just react and make promises based on whatever headlines they see trending on social media. We encourage all of these companies to get in touch with TARTLE to investigate the best possible ways to get that data. We can put them in contact with real people on the ground in countries around the world to get a better read on what sort of policies and changes they most need to see that could make a real difference in people's lives. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

In the United States, it is possible to take everything you have, pack it up and move all the way across the country with no one questioning it. You just go, find a place to live and you're good. These days, thanks to the digital revolution and the gig economy, it might even be possible to keep your job. You can even travel all over the world and bring your computer and your work with you. Yet, there is one particular thing you can't easily take with you – your medical records.  The reasons for this are simple. Medical information is some of the most personal there is about you. It can affect your job, your insurance, and reveal areas of weakness that bad actors could take advantage of. Because of that, naturally, you want that information kept private. Not just from your neighbor but from other companies as well. However, is it really private? And there are certainly times that you would want your information readily available. Just imagine you are several states over on vacation doing some hiking. You trip and hit your head on a rock, knocking yourself unconscious. You weren't out by yourself so your friends got you to the hospital. The doctors hit you with some anesthetic – which you happen to be allergic to. You have a massive reaction that delays the surgery you need to relieve pressure on your brain. The end result is that you lose function on the left side of your body. This entire situation could have been prevented if the doctors could have had quick and easy access to your records that detail all your allergies. If they had that information, a different anesthetic would have been applied and the surgery would have happened sooner without any complications. Now, for the reasons already stated, it is hard for other medical facilities to get your information. At the least, it takes your express permission for them to get it, which you can't give if you are knocked out with a concussion. Wouldn't it be better if you had an advanced version of those medical bracelets with a code that provides access to your records? Or if you could just have a digital version on your phone? Something that would make it possible for medical personnel to access your information in an emergency situation could save a life.  Yet, this is often difficult at best. Ironically, hospitals and other companies that deal with medical information will often sell your information to third parties. It gets used in crafting new drugs as well as new procedures and policies. Sure, your name isn't attached to the information so it is anonymized to a large degree. However, that is still your information and it doesn't seem right that Bayer or Moderna should be able to access your information more than you can. And let's be honest, how likely is it that your medical data is truly anonymous? Just as companies buying your data from T-Mobile can figure out who and where you are if they want, an insurance company will likely be able to connect the dots if they put forth a little effort. It would be fair to point out that having your medical data on the cloud somewhere also exposes it to getting hacked and exploited. However, that is a risk you are choosing to take.  That's why TARTLE has partnered with medical providers around the United States to allow TARTLE members to have control of their medical data. Our members can more easily store and share their medical information as needed, allowing them to more readily deal with medical issues. After all, if you are going to be sovereign over your data, don't you think that should include your medical information as well? What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

“The statistical method shows the facts in the light of the ideal average, but that does not give us a picture of their empirical reality.” – Carl Jung   Pithy, isn't it? Okay, it's actually a rather dense quote. What it means is “stop putting people in buckets”. Thanks for coming to our TED talk and we hope you enjoy the day. Just kidding, let's dig into this a bit.  First, isn't it interesting how people can often spot problems early, long before the rest of us catch up? Typically, we ignore them and their concerns until it is years, sometimes decades later and someone else remembers the lost insight. That is the case here. That quote from the great psychologist is from 1957, decades before the digital revolution was underway, yet it is incredibly relevant to the present day. It is an indictment of our overreliance on statistics in our decision-making processes.  Even the fact we tend to ignore insights like this, insights that are ahead of their time, proves the point of the quote. We ignore things like this based on an unconscious analysis that is grounded in statistics. Fifteen years ago, most people would have said, “I'll never really ignore people in favor of my phone or an attractive spreadsheet.” Because a thing has never happened or has only happened rarely, that doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. We hear this kind of thing in politics all the time. “No one has ever been elected with this….” Insert whatever statistical fact you want. And then it happens. The truth is, statistics are great predictors until they aren't. Just because a thing usually happens in a certain way, there is no particular reason to think they will always go that way. What's worse is that we think knowing some statistics is the same thing as really understanding something. We tend to treat them as explanatory when they are only descriptive at best. There are many times when statistics aren't even properly descriptive. Instead, they are illustrative of the analyst's biases.  This is particularly true when applied to people. Imagine someone who gets a ton of ads for Christmas music. Why might that be? Because they often buy Christmas albums? Not necessarily. Remember, the algorithms that drive the ads operate by cross-referencing certain behaviors. In this case, let's imagine that this person with all the Christmas music ads tends to order a new ugly sweater on Amazon every year. The algorithm assumes that the person likes everything having to do with Christmas. Maybe this individual does like most things associated with the holiday. Everything but Christmas music. In fact, our sweater-wearing friend hates Christmas music but endures it for the sake of the annual ugly sweater party with his friends. I can guarantee those ads are not going to convert him into a sale for the latest Mariah Carey Christmas album.  Why do we do this? Why do we make all of these guesses? Why rely so much on assumptions and allow our decisions to be guided by statistics and algorithms? Because it is easy. Find a few statistical correlations and develop an algorithm from them and then run all your data through that. Broadly speaking, the picture it forms may even be accurate. But you don't really know for sure. You certainly don't know where it falls short or why. The only way you really can be sure is by going to the individuals behind the statistics, the people actually generating the data that all these programs are trying to classify. Then ask them, “what were you thinking when you did ‘x'?” That's how you get real knowledge, and real understanding, by treating data with the respect you give to the people who generate it. Because that data represents them and their thoughts. That is powerful and understanding is the first step on the path to real, truthful knowledge. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

The world has been noticeably going digital since the early 1990s, though it's a process that actually goes back much further. However, it was in the time of grunge that the corner was really turned and the process has seriously kicked into overdrive thanks to the response to COVID. Suddenly, millions of people were working from home, making use of cloud servers to prepare documents, apps for work meetings, all of which pushed the digitization of society ahead by years. As restrictions lift in many places, conversations are being had about just how much of that transformation should be continued. Should people go back to work at the office? Should we go back to the more set schedules of 2019? At the same time, TARTLE is still going through certifications as a public benefit corporation. How do these two seemingly disparate things relate to one another? One of the major things that those certifications look at is how TARTLE as a company takes care of its people. How do we treat those who work with us to transform how people view data? One of the major things we do is allow people a great deal of flexibility. For the most part, our team doesn't have fixed hours. There are certain activities that require multiple people to be working at the same place at the same time, but they are few. Filming episodes of TARTLEcast is probably the most labor-intensive activity and that requires only a handful of people to get done. Otherwise, people get their work done as they are able. If they like to be up at night, they can get it done when the sun is down, or vice versa. If someone likes to break up their day with a visit to the gym or a walk in the park, there is nothing stopping them. Since nearly everyone works from home, they can get all their errands done when traffic is light, saving time and frustration. There is no sitting around an office either. How much time is wasted in the typical office building as people walk around the rows and rows of cubicles just to get the blood flowing again? Sure, the people are there for eight hours, but is eight hours of work getting done? Do eight hours of work even need to happen? Can someone get it done in six hours when they don't have to deal with the company copy machine?  That all makes vacations incredibly flexible as well. If someone needs a week or two away, they can do that. So long as the work gets done, it doesn't matter. Whether it gets done before vacation, during, or things get caught up after, it isn't really a problem, the individual gets to make those calls on his own.  Speaking of staying out of the office, there is another benefit – the environment. Without the need for all those office buildings, there is much less environmental impact. After all, a person's home is almost always heated or cooled whether they are there are not. Not to mention the emissions saved by not having to drive back and forth to the office. That also allows all those buildings to be used for some other purpose. Low-cost housing springs immediately to mind. Suddenly, there are all kinds of construction that don't need to happen, tons of resources that can stay in the ground. All because TARTLE and other businesses are letting people adopt a life and work style that is more flexible and suited to their own needs and desires.  So, how are digital acceleration and public benefit certifications related? They directly feed into each other. Digital technology allows us to treat our collaborators better, allowing them to live a life they want to live, which in turn feeds the digital acceleration in general. The net result is a cleaner world and people with a greater amount of individual freedom in their daily lives than ever before.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Daniel Burrus is an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. He has started six businesses and written seven books, two of them bestsellers. He is also one of the leading tech forecasters on the planet. Daniel has been right in his predictions of where we are going in regards to technology so often that he has acquired the status of a prophet in the field.  Given his area of expertise, it seems logical to ask Daniel his opinion on the way technology has been developing in recent years. It seems that as the pace of technological development accelerates that it is no longer doing so in a way that benefits people but rather in a way that simply leads to more technology. Does he see this trend continuing or will the technology in the end actually bring people up so that we really can benefit from all of our hard work?  Daniel's response is that the answer is really up to us. Technology is merely a tool. In and of itself, it is not necessarily good or bad. We can use radiation to give cancer or to cure it depending on how we use the tools at hand. That means that we are in control if we want to be. We can be lazy and let technology shape our future for us or we can be proactive and use it to build the future we want.  That means you can't just coast. Unless you are content with going downhill. As my football coach said, you are either getting better or you're getting worse. You never stay the same. It's the same with everything. You can either work to make the change you want or you just wind up getting swept along by the change someone else wants. It really is that simple. Work for what you want or be content with what someone else gives you.  The good news is that there are literal mountains of opportunity available for the proactive. It may not seem that way, but that's because you are probably watching too much news and letting it turn you into a pessimist. If we could send people to the moon with slide rules while fighting the Vietnam War, what couldn't we accomplish now if we just put our minds and resources to it? This kind of optimism is usually met with a chorus of ‘buts' and ‘what ifs'. However, it is the optimist who gets things done, the pessimist usually does very little because he is sure it will fail. Don't be that guy.  The truth is, there is a lot we take for granted today that would not have been possible just a few years ago and that trend is likely to continue. How likely it depends on which trend you are talking about. One of the things that have made Daniel so successful at predicting technological development is that he has realized that there are hard trends and soft trends. Hard trends are things that will develop in a predictable pattern so long as we don't get hit by a stray comet. Think of cellphone technology. We went from 3G to now 5G on a predictable path, a path that will continue through 6G and beyond. A soft trend is one that depends on a variety of variables and can be directed or stopped. Here, think of health care costs. The trend has been a sharp increase but a number of variables can be changed to alter that trend. All of those trends, all of that change is disruptive to some degree. And it will happen. The question then is not whether or not there will be disruption but what will you do with it? Will you ignore it and allow it to shape you? Will you be a negative disruptor and harness it for your own gain at the expense of others? Or will you be a positive disruptor and harness it to benefit others and bring about needed change? The choice is yours. What's your future worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

The European Union (EU) has gotten very interested of late in the concept of data sovereignty. They've realized that almost all the data in the world (92%) is hosted in the United States. As such, they want more of it under their purview.  Statements from German Chancellor Angela Merkle and others in the EU sound very good. So good in fact that they read like something stolen from TARTLE's own website. They talk about security, competition and ‘fostering trust'. Yet, there is plenty of reason to think that those good words are not genuine and the politicians aren't necessarily thinking of the best interests of their citizens. Are they even looking at things in the proper light? As an example, does it really matter where the servers are? It might in the sense of the host country's government potentially having easy access to them. However, the real power comes from the people generating all the data in the first place. The individuals are the ones who really hold the power of all that data since they are the ones generating it. The servers really are just storage.  What about the big tech companies? Don't they have the real power in the situation? They are the ones who own the servers and the apps so it makes sense that they have the real power. In a sense, this is true. They can delete and sell data at will in most places, making a ton of money in the process. It's also a place where the EU lags far behind the rest of the developed world. None of the top twenty tech companies are based in the EU. Perhaps it's understandable they are feeling slightly inadequate.  Despite the obvious and real power of the tech companies, the true power still lies with the individual. The individual generates all the data. In fact, he decides whether or not he will generate any data at all. That power, however, is largely untapped. That's because the laws don't recognize that power for the most part, making it harder for individuals to understand it as well. So, does the data sovereignty focus by the EU address that issue at all? Will it help people realize the power they really have? Sadly, it doesn't look that way. First, they are wanting to force a lot of that server space to their shores. The rule they are wanting to enforce is that any server with data from EU citizens on it has to be located in Europe. What does that accomplish? They get all the access they want for one because they set the rules. They also get taxes, and lots of them, something the EU certainly plans to take advantage of. Recent statements indicate this very clearly, wondering when “cross-border transactions” fall under certain tax regimes. In plain English, this means “when do we get to take people's money?” Sadly, all of this means that the EU is really only interested in data sovereignty as it pertains to them. And even then, only as a means of control, to be able to access data and tax others for their own purposes. There isn't anything there about actually empowering the individual.  TARTLE though is doing exactly that. We have set up a system that lets people take control of their digital lives in a way that is easy to do and understand. Our TOS are simple, our website easy to use, and our goals clear. We take no money from the individual sellers that join us. We are in 195 countries around the world so we have no national agenda. All we want to do is help people protect their data so they control when it gets shared and to whom. That shouldn't be asking too much. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Aeron Zentner is an accomplished leader in the world of analytics, supply chain management, research, and a couple dozen other things. Currently the Dean of Institutional Effectiveness at Coastline College, Dr. Zentner has helped in the completion of thousands of research projects and has been published dozens of times. In his spare time, he works as an editor and author for SAGE Publications and McGraw Hill. Aeron first started to get into analytics back in 2008 when he practically fell into a research analyst job. At the age of only 29, he became a Dean and not long after was asked to teach analytics to people who did not have a major in it. To do that, to teach analytics to people who were not necessarily steeped in it, he developed an experiential learning program with SAGE. He worked with twelve other experts around the U.S. to develop the program which will be coming out soon.  Teaching others about the importance of data is a genuine passion for Aeron. He sees it as a bridge that will help us achieve a greater understanding of the world around us. This can help people, regardless of the field they are in to get beyond mere intuition and gut reaction that is based on immediate observations and provide a bigger picture of what is going on beyond what they directly experience. It helps actually provide the ‘why' to what they are seeing and experiencing. The data then can be the bridge that will help people utilize their available resources more efficiently, to get the most bang for their buck.  How does one stop bias from creeping in though? Bias after all is a part of the human condition, we naturally see things in a way that is favorable to ourselves. The first step is to actually take a hard look at the questions that we are trying to use data to answer. Is the question itself biased? How is it being framed? It is also worth looking at what is influencing us. How much is based on our interpretation of customer behaviors and how that will affect our activity going forward? Finally, any company should check itself against its mission. Is your personal bias, or even the success of the company in a particular area influencing decisions in a way that is contrary to the mission? That mission becomes a standard by which the company can measure itself.  So, not to put too fine a point on it, how does Coastline College measure up? Does the college and its students live up to Coastline's own high standards? Does the college produce students who are competent to analyze data? One thing the college is doing is tracking students post-graduation to see how they themselves are actually performing according to their own goals at the time of graduation. And of course, they go directly to the students when they come into the college as well. Surveys ask them why they selected Coastline and the particular courses they did. What are their goals? What do they hope to get out of their time at the college? All of that data helps the college be a lot more flexible than other similar institutions. It also helps that they are small, which allows them to more easily tweak their classes, how they are constructed, how long they are, and to make changes to the overall college experience if they identify a problem.   With such a focus on getting direct data from their students, Coastline College is setting itself up to be a true beacon of the next stage of the digital age, one that will be instrumental in getting people to better understand the changing world. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

No doubt you have heard a lot about what is going on with the world's oceans, especially all the junk floating around in them. Perhaps the most famous example in recent memory was the sea turtle with the straw sticking out of its nose. I'm also old enough to remember concern over fish and other ocean critters getting caught in the plastic six-pack holders that were almost all over the place. Now you hardly see them anymore, showing that sometimes you can get something changed, even if it is something small.  Marcus Eriksen is one of those people trying to get a whole lot changed. Marcus is an environmental scientist who has been working for years to not just bring awareness, but actual change that will reduce the number of plastics in our water. While there are many accomplishments we could list here, his most well-known endeavor was sailing from California to Hawaii back in 2008 on his homemade raft, lovingly named JUNK. Why? Because it was literally made out of junk, including 15,000 bottles and a Cessna fuselage for a cabin. He published a book about the experience named Junk Raft, published in 2017.  When asked why he does unusual things like that, the scientist points out that just the science, the raw data, doesn't reach as large of an audience as art, or a good story like sailing across the ocean on a raft of junk. Those things have a much larger impact on people. There is a reason Plato wrote dialogues. Aesop wrote fables, and the Bible is full of parables instead of systematized theology, these things hold the attention better than numbers, graphs, and syllogisms.  Speaking of things that get attention, when asked why he cares so much about the ocean, Marcus brings up a video he made during his Pacific voyage. Having fished a fish, he was getting ready to clean it and noticed the stomach was weird. He touched it with his fillet knife and the stomach popped open, revealing seventeen bits of plastic. Yes, that's a bit gross. On the subject of plastic in stomachs, he has also examined camels with plastic bags in their guts just outside of Dubai. A local vet had a lot to say about the suffering of the camels. It doesn't matter who you talk to, that is not a good thing.  What kind of plastics are getting found in the oceans? Where do they come from? Not surprisingly, they largely come from fishing activities. Buoys, nets, bottles, fishing line, and anything else associated with fishing is found in abundance in the ocean. Now, that doesn't mean that those things are just carelessly tossed overboard, but lines break, a bleach bottle bounces out in rough seas, and things get lost. There are plenty of other things out there too, car tires, textiles, and more are currently littering the oceans of the world. How much of it is actually out there? Up to a quarter-million tons according to a 2014 study. What is it now? Marcus doesn't have another weight estimate but the trends are that the problem is getting much, much worse.  So, what do we do about it? The standard response has always been to just go clean it up. However, that is not necessarily the best use of resources. The best bang for the buck, and where the trend is finally heading is to focus on prevention. If we can convince people not to use so much plastic in the first place, or dispose of and reuse it in a responsible way, then we don't have to worry so much about cleaning them up at all. That reflects a circular economy, one that has little waste, instead of our highly inefficient linear economy. Fortunately, there is a lot of innovation and out-of-the-box thinking going on that fits in the circular mindset. That is happening on the corporate and the individual level. Just think of the brisk second-hand business that happens on Craigslist. Or I just saw a backpacking video where a company is repurposing gelato containers as cold soak jars. Make the space for some innovation and a little profit and it's amazing the different solutions people will come up with.  Naturally, there isn't anyone silver bullet solution. This is exactly why Marcus works so hard to let people know what is going on, sharing the solutions that people have found, and encouraging others to find even more. Perhaps together, we can actually work to get this done. What's your plastic worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

One of the most common topics at TARTLE is the digitization of the modern world. More and more of daily life and of business is conducted online, something that we all know has really taken off in the last year and a half. However, at some point, goods have to be physically produced and distributed. Even if we develop Star Trek level replicator technology, we are still going to need the raw material for that. That means there are and will be factories, boats, planes, trains, and automobiles that transport goods around the world and back again. And that puts us in the world of logistics and supply chain and that is the domain of one Mac Sullivan. Mac has a staggering resume, including multiple degrees, teaching positions, living in various countries abroad, and is currently the Head of Technology and Digital Promotion at NNR Global Logistics. He has also recently released his first book, The Digital Transformation of Logistics: Demystifying Impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As you might guess, Mac is focused on bringing the very physical world of logistics into the digital age.  One of the things that Mac calls attention to right out of the gate is how COVID and the resulting acceleration of the digital transformation served as a great catalyst to get even the most luddite like of companies to at least explore the digital realm. A clear example is that according to Forbes, many companies report having engaged directly with customers much more than they have in the past. As you can imagine, direct engagement with customers is exactly the kind of thing we really like here at TARTLE. But I digress.  However, logistics and supply chains remain somewhat intransigent. How badly is this digital transformation needed in the world of logistics? Very. As Mac himself points out, they are still working on fully integrating the internet into their operations. Goods are still often tracked with pen and paper that might get scanned and sent via fax. Yes, a few of those machines still exist. Essentially, Mac is working on getting a lot of simple office processes automated, things that are still done by people in cubicles entering data on a keyboard. This is actually more important than just streamlining operations. It also will help reduce human error in the form of transcription errors, errors that can cost time and money down the line.  Money of course is one of the obstacles for a lot of transportation companies. They operate at very low margins and are very adverse to the costs of automating their systems. After all, they have a system in place. It might be slow but it works. Not to mention, these companies are constantly getting pressured to cut costs, not spend money on automating anything. This puts the pressure on Mac to show them the value added by spending some money on tracking and notification systems now and the money it will save down the line by correcting the issues mentioned above and simply making the process more efficient.  Another barrier is that while there is a lot of excitement about a great deal of digital technology like IoT, 3-D printers, blockchain, and smart contracts, there are few working models on the kind of scale that is needed for a global supply chain. Everything is either small-scale or at the level of the theoretical.  It is possible to change all this but it will take time. As Mac says, it will have to be pushed by new people entering the field, people who are familiar with the potential of digital technologies and have the education to push logistics into the fourth industrial revolution.  What's your supply chain worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Last time, we talked a bit about Mathis Shinnick and his latest company OptiPulse. We focused mostly on how the company's new Near InfraRed (NIR) technology is being developed and how it will change the world of digital high-speed communication when it is brought to market. Today, we are going to talk more about where Mathis would like to see the company and its technology and the kinds of investors who are helping make the vision a reality.  One of the most refreshing things about the company is the many grassroots investors that have helped get OptiPulse off the ground. Using an independent funding website called WeFunder (think of it as a Kickstarter analog for investors) has allowed people to get involved for as little as $100. Not only does this help decentralize the typical investing model of looking for a handful of high rollers, but it can also help gauge what the demand for the product will be. If you have a lot of people investing for that minimum amount, it shows that there is a desire for what OptiPulse is offering. Even better, Mathis points out that the comments from these investors reflect something more than just a desire to get a return on their investment. The most frequent comment is that these people are eager to get OptiPulse into their own communities. These early adopters are able to see the potential being offered that will help get their own out-of-the-way corners of the world better connected. There are other uses for the technology as well. The line of sight NIR sensors have potential use for the self-driving cars that are getting close to hitting the market. Given the low cost, small size and low power consumption of the sensors it would be easy to have roads lined with sensors that communicate with other sensors in the car. Not only would this keep the car on the road, it would also let the car know when something was between it and the road. If another car, a bike, a dog, should step into the road and break the signal between the sensors, the car will instantly know it. If the road sensors are arranged correctly, they could even communicate with each other to let the vehicle's computer know of hazards that are up ahead, or a fast-approaching car on a side street, giving the car the ability to see beyond the line of sight. And again, given the low power consumption of OptiPulse's NIR sensors and emitters, it would be possible to power large numbers of them with a couple of solar panels.  The same technology can also be implemented for tracking information at remote installations such as oil and natural gas pipelines. A network of arrays could be used to transmit data constantly to service centers without the need for cables. Or, one could go with fewer arrays and fly a drone over the line to collect data and then transmit it back to the service centers. Again, no need for cables that need to get repaired whenever a squirrel decides to take a bite (yes, that happens). As Mathis pointed out last time, it isn't necessary that OptiPulse completely replace existing infrastructure either. Because of the vast amounts of bandwidth available in the near infrared part of the spectrum, OptiPulse can accommodate existing 4G and 5G technology and actually boost the performance of those devices. With all of this potential, it is little wonder that OptiPulse has been able to attract a large number of investors eager to see the product brought to market. We'll be waiting eagerly as Mathis and the others at OptiPulse work to bring their vision of a better connected world to life. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Mathis Shinnick has been working with startups and investors for years. Most recently, he co-founded OptiPulse. Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico OptiPulse is working to revolutionize digital communications. They are developing Near InfraRed technology that tests show are capable of data transmission speeds that leave 5G and even the much lauded Starlink in the dust. How fast? How about 10GB/sec? The potential is actually much greater but that is all current off-the-shelf electronics can handle.  Just as exciting as the speed is the range that it allows. Photons towards the infrared part of the spectrum have a longer wavelength than radio or microwaves. Normally, that limits the range as longer, lower energy wavelengths can get obscured in the atmosphere. OptiPulse has patented technology that can focus the energy much more like a laser, giving it much greater range. If you are wondering how great the range is, it can send a beam to space with the kind of bandwidth mentioned above. Also, if you caught the part about low energy, that means you don't need nearly as much power to operate the system, making it cheaper and greener to use.  That increased range plus lower cost will make OptiPulse the perfect choice for bringing broadband communications to out-of-the-way areas. Well placed towers could provide communication for places that are difficult to reach with any kind of cable. Right away, that makes the OptiPulse system an obviously better alternative than fiber optics or any other option that relies on a hard and continuous infrastructure system. Naturally, this saves considerably on construction costs. There will still be costs of course. The detectors are line of sight, requiring the detectors to be in view of each other. While that means that a number of collectors and emitters are necessary, it also means that the data is more secure since it is harder to intercept a direct beam than something diffused over a wide area. Another interesting benefit of this developing technology, Mathis points out, is that since it uses light to transmit information, it operates outside of any regulated space. OptiPulse, therefore, isn't competing with all the cell towers and Starlink that are operating in the radio band. Those other means of communication have to deal with interference from other signals, signals that require devices to filter out the noise that results from the interference. Again, lower cost than other alternatives.  Mathis also says Optipulse will be easier to update. Since it is a modular system based around towers, towers that are accessible compared to cables in the ground or satellites in space, changing out hardware would be just a drive from the nearest service hub away. Therefore, as the communications technology develops, OptiPulse will be able to keep up with it much easier than anything else on the market or close to the market.  Yet, OptiPulse need not completely take over either. It could actually work with existing fiber optic technology. Remember, fiber optic is just using light to transmit information through a glass tube in the ground. Existing cable could be mated to an OptiPulse tower to extend the range of the network rather than having to incur the expense of laying a new cable.   Where are things going in the future? The shift to online work that occurred as a result of Covid has brought a lot of awareness to the need for better connectivity, and to the fact that 5G isn't delivering on its promise. Even in the relatively few places where it has been implemented, it is underperforming. That has helped OptiPulse attract a number of investors to help bring the company to the next phase, bringing the next phase of connectivity closer to you. What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Lindsey Pollak is an author, an in-demand speaker, contributor to a variety of outlets from the Wall Street Journal to CNN, and one of the world's leading career and workplace experts. Of her four books, two have been on the New York Times bestseller list. Her most recent, Recalculating: Navigate Your Career Through the Changing World of Work is a response to Covid and the way it completely changed the way many people get their work done every day.  Like many of the talented people, we profile Lindsey has taken a circuitous route to get to where she is at. After graduating from Yale, she went to Australia for a couple of years on a Rotary scholarship before going to work for a dot com focused on helping women develop their careers. While she loved the work, the company folded just eighteen months later, a situation that led to Lindsey's first book, Getting from College to Career: Your Essential Guide to Succeeding in the Real World. If you've noticed, there is a pattern emerging. Lindsey finds herself faced with a crisis situation and turns it into an opportunity. In fact, this is a behavior she recognizes, stating that each book she's authored is a response to some kind of crisis, with each book being the book she wished she had to help get her through it. Recalculating began when she saw her calendar get very empty when Covid hit. Instead of a calendar full of paid speaking engagements, she found herself with a lot of free time and the need to…recalculate how to pursue her goals in a drastically altered environment.  It is also the first book she's written that deals extensively with the importance of mindset. How do you look at the world? How do you view yourself and the contribution you can make? She's had interviews with women who have been out of the workforce for a while and are convinced that no one would be interested in hiring them and others in the same situation who are full of energy and willing to take on the world. As you can imagine, your mindset can become a self-fulfilling prophecy for good or ill.  One important mindset to cultivate is the willingness to step outside of the norm, to take a risk, and to think outside the box. Thanks to technology, the opportunities to do this, to act on some wild idea are greater than ever and of course, Covid has made it a necessity for many. When your job disappears or your business goes under you can either sulk or get back in the saddle, even if the horse rides are a little different. Many have started with a simple blog or an Etsy shop and many more are capable of it. Just as an example, I used to work with a guy who decided to take a chance and move to Nashville to pursue a career in country music. He left a job that was guaranteed money, and good money, to take the biggest risk of his life. Currently, he's one of the fastest rising stars in the industry. He thought outside the box and took a chance.  Not that it will always be easy. As Lindsey points out, one thing that people need to get used to is rejection. Whether you are applying for a job or submitting an article or a fundraising pitch, you need to have thick enough skin to take ‘no' for an answer. It's okay, you aren't the first person to get rejected and you won't be the last. You might well apply for a hundred jobs and only get an offer for two. Which is fine, because you only need one.  The key is to be just a little hard, to be willing to do hard things, to be willing to go against the stream and do the unexpected, and yes, to be willing to take the lumps that come with rejection and not let it stop you. As Rocky Balboa once said, “It's not about how hard you can hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” What's your future worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Everyone talks about different species going extinct. And for good reason. Anytime a species goes extinct, something unique and unrepeatable has been lost. While most don't stop to think of it, the same is true for languages.  Over the course of human history, a great many languages have been lost to the sands of time. When a language disappears, it takes away more than just a few words or sounds, it takes with it a way of thinking, of seeing the world and expressing thoughts about it. When a language is lost, we lose the most important tool for understanding a culture. In fact, you could say that when a language dies, a culture dies with it. That's because every culture has certain concepts or ways of putting thoughts together that are simply lacking in others. Just as an example, German has a feature that lets people string multiple words together to create one new word that represents a new concept.  There are numerous old fishing villages in Ireland. In many ways, these villages are the last vestiges of the old Irish language. Not only are there still those who speak the language of their ancestors, there are words and concepts used that are unique to each village, words for the different waves and for different tools that might not exist anywhere else.  There are a lot of different ways languages are lost. Sometimes, a language evolves so much that it becomes an entirely new one for all intents and purposes. Just try to read a copy of Beowulf in the original Old English. In the past, it was not unheard of for conquering power to outlaw the language of their defeated enemy in order to destroy their culture and assimilate them into that of the victor. Other times, the loss of language is a function of trade. As an upstart company or industry to move in, people will adopt the language that opens up the most economic opportunity. Coupled with the fact that shifting economics can do away with the need for certain concepts, it's easy to understand how people might unconsciously let the old words and concepts disappear.            What can be done to preserve languages that are on the verge of being lost? There must be something behind finding the couple of villages that are still speaking Gaelic and putting them in an isolated biosphere. What if we could actually use machine learning to help us preserve at-risk languages?   These old words can be collected into databases, like giant digital dictionaries. Not only the words and their meanings but the concepts and histories of them can be stored in an easily searchable format. Not only that, but (as has been previously discussed here) machine learning is very good at recognizing patterns. As such, it can be used to help fill holes in the language. To determine the meaning of words whose definition no one recalls, or even point the direction towards whole words that have gone missing. Even better, machine learning can help researchers determine how words were pronounced or how entire sentences might have been put together and so not only preserve a dying language but resurrect one already dead.  Why, though? Why is any of this important? Because these languages, these cultures are a part of our past and anyone with a hint of historical knowledge will tell you that if you want to know where we are heading, we need to know where we have been. If we want to preserve anything of our own culture, we had best learn why others disappeared in order to prevent ours from taking the same route.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

The globe's climate is kind of a big deal. After all, we all live in it. As such it's interesting to look at how different countries are doing when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and exploring renewable energy sources. One might naturally think that the wealthier nations are doing a better job being that they have more money to spend on – well – everything. However, as with a great many things in life, things are not always as you would think. According to a recent paper from the MIT Tech Review, the wealthier countries are not exactly stacking up as you might think. In fact, it ranks relatively poor countries like Ukraine and Angola above the economic juggernauts of the United States and China. Tiny little Iceland is actually ranked number one. Now before we get into how that is happening and why some might be ranked where they are, let's take a quick look at the criteria MIT was using.  The paper's authors looked at a number of factors: Carbon emissions – Fewer emissions get you a better ranking as does a net decrease in emissions compared to the previous year.  Energy transition – How many renewable sources are getting built to replace older, fossil fuel power plants? Green society – This one is a grab bag, including things like how much forest a country has, how many energy-efficient buildings, and a host of other things.  Clean innovation – Where are the hot spots for developing new, green-friendly technology? Climate policy – Basically, is the government encouraging the development of new technologies and methods for a more sustainable world? As a matter of purely objective measures, this isn't bad, though there is plenty of room for subjectivity to enter in and it is unclear how certain subcategories are weighed. For example, is the use of animal products given more importance than energy-efficient buildings? That would give a society like India a big advantage over many others since their primary religion prevents the eating of cows. Mention is also made of COVID stimulus being used to encourage green development. Personally, that seems potentially opportunistic. If the goals are synergistic, then great. It is something to watch out for though.  Those criticisms aside, the list is still pretty good and allows for a decent snapshot. So, let's take a look at Iceland and why they might be ranked number one. Iceland has a lot of unique features that make it particularly well situated to do well with any sort of green ranking system. One is the fact it is a small island. There isn't a ton of cattle farming that can go on there and as such it's a nation that has always relied heavily on fishing. That means one part of the green society aspect is going to be well covered. While being very far north, being surrounded by ocean as well as having a large amount of volcanic activity means Iceland is surprisingly temperate given its latitude. That means there is less energy that has to get used for heating and cooling than in Ecuador. They also have made intelligent use of some of their natural resources, making use of all that volcanic energy in the form of geothermal heating. The government there has also shown a willingness to encourage experimentation. In particular, they are pursuing the development of a hydrogen economy that if successful will help Iceland reach carbon neutrality.  It's also worth noting that Iceland's small size means that there are not a number of different cultures within its borders, meaning there are not vast numbers of different mindsets and interests to deal with. A country as large as the United States has multiple cultures that have to be kept at peace. Forcing anything in terms of policy risks causing upheaval no matter what the policy changes might be. Combine that with the expense of new construction, difficulty of labyrinthine regulations, and vast amounts of preexisting infrastructure it is not hard to understand America's relatively low ranking.  That said, the US has done a good job of reducing overall emissions in recent years and has at least potential for moving up quickly, given the vast open land that could be reforested and the advances in solar and carbon capture technology that could help a lot in the energy transition sector and further reduce emissions. Hopefully, this potential will be better realized in the near future. So, what can you do? If you have thoughts on the importance of climate stability, or experience working in a relevant field, then you can put that information in a data packet on TARTLE and share it with those looking for data like yours to help everyone build a better future.  What's your data worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Death and taxes. Both are inevitable and nobody much likes either one. Especially taxes. The system is naturally inefficient and more than a few people of all political persuasions can't help but think that some if not all of that money is just vanishing into thin air.  Fortunately, there are a few out there working to reform the Byzantine mess that is the IRS and the U.S. tax code. One of those brave souls is Annette Nellen. Annette is a professor at San Jose State University and has been on so many boards and received so many awards in the area of taxation and accounting that it would take all the space in this article to list them all. Her most recent article that made a wave or two in tax land advocates for getting rid of the standard April 15 due date.  This in part has to do with the previously mentioned inefficiency of the current system. Given that all of your tax data is collected digitally and then digitally deposited in your account, why do you have to deal with a bunch of cumbersome paper forms, or digital forms that duplicate them, and then send in your tax return, most likely digitally? Wouldn't it be a lot easier for most people if the IRS just sent you your return? No forms, no waiting, no glitches that lose your return in the mail, they just calculate what you owe and send it to you. Unless you are self-employed or make a lot of charitable donations this system should work very well.  Some object that they really don't trust the IRS will their data. The truth is though that they have it already. That's precisely why the direct return would work. However, Annette has some ideas that would make the situation more palatable.  First and foremost, all of your data would go into your own unique cloud. This would work whether you work at Starbucks or run a public benefit data management and protection company. That way, you could sync different incomes, donations, accounts, and the software to process it all in one place. The big benefit would be that you could even set the system to process a return for you on your own timetable. It wouldn't change the total, just when you get it. Or, a person could adjust their various exemptions on the fly if they want to tweak their taxes so that they are only ever paying in exactly what they are required to, eliminating the need for a return at all.  This could be especially beneficial for those who are self-employed. One of the hazards of working for yourself is hoping you don't wind up owing a massive amount at the end of the year. Many just set aside money out of their income for that specific purpose. The system Annette proposes would allow the self-employed to pay throughout the year.  This brings up a question if this would work so well, what is the real hold up? In a word – technology. Not that the technology doesn't exist. Rather, the IRS and government, in general, doesn't have it yet. Government agencies tend to lag very far behind in the technology department. There are a lot of reasons for that, but you can also be sure that it will change in the years to come. As the professor observes, the generation currently in college is growing up largely technology dependent. They live in a world where people don't use cash, or even a card, they just pay with their phones and call it a day. As they move up the ranks in the private and public sector, the need for the technology even in the most backward of government warehouses will need to catch up.  All of this is just the beginning of course. There are a lot of issues with our current system and many things that could be done to reform it. Until then, make sure your taxes are in on time. What are your taxes worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Peter Schawacker has been involved in cybersecurity long before data breaches commonly made the headlines. In fact, he's been helping businesses secure their data long before it was even called cybersecurity. Currently, he is heading the IT Security Team for Axiom Technology Group. In his career, he has been working with some of the biggest names in the business to protect their data and that of their customers.  The demand for the kinds of services that Peter provides has gone up a lot in recent years, particularly amongst private equity (PE) firms. In the past, such businesses didn't concern themselves much with cybersecurity, leaving it up to the portfolio managers and others to deal with. However, the sheer number of security breaches and the resulting scrutiny that brings has forced them to rethink their priorities and take responsibility for their own security. Many of these PE firms are also small to mid-size, which is partly why they haven't been able to keep up with the latest developments. They just don't have the scale and resources needed to handle security on their own. That also makes these firms tempting targets. They have enough data and money to make it worth attacking but not so much that the companies or the government will spend a lot of resources to go after the hackers.  Fortunately, Axiom is there to pick up the slack.  One of the most important services that Axiom provides is a full survey of the weaknesses a given firm might have, delivering around 200 security assessments a year, with approximately a quarter of those experiencing some kind of cyberattack. Performing this task well and transparently has earned both Axiom and Peter solid reputations as transparent, honest, and interested in keeping the client's interests foremost. This seems like it should be a no-brainer but as Peter points out, there are a lot of charlatans in the cyber world, less interested in helping their clients solve problems than they are in making as much money as possible from each client. This is just bad practice. It means not only that a given security company will lose the trust and business of their clients when they figure out that they are being taken for a ride, but it also harms the trust in the cybersecurity industry as a whole.  There is also the fact that most firms, PE and otherwise are looking to implement the least amount of security possible. This isn't because they don't care about their clients' data, but because at the end of the day they need to make money, which in turn means any Axiom client is looking for the lowest cost services that will bring their risk of a data breach down to an acceptable level. Because the sad truth is that it is incredibly unlikely that data will ever be 100% protected. Someone will always leave a password out or share it when they shouldn't and a hacker will use it to disrupt a firm's systems, only letting them go when their ransom is paid.  When interacting with clients, it is important to keep all of this in mind so you don't oversell them. It's also worth keeping in mind that most people don't know the details of cybersecurity and frankly, they don't want to know. All they want to know is how you can help them and how much it is going to cost. If someone is ever trying to convince you how awesome security is, they are almost certainly trying to sell a bill of goods.  Another thing Peter goes into is who makes the best cybersecurity professionals. It isn't who you might think. People who go through a specific IT program are usually farther behind the curve on the latest development and too rigid in their thinking. The best hires for him tend to be high school teachers and musicians. Both are capable of thinking critically and still improvising when needed.  What does Peter think is the most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to dealing with cybersecurity? Finding who you can trust. The person who knows his stuff, can deliver on time and isn't trying to oversell you. That is the person who has your interest at heart, who wants to make your systems secure without taking you for a ride. What's your security worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby.   What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Like many of the guests on T-Cast Lauren Imparato has an impressive resume. She has worked on Wall Street, been a Morgan Stanley VP, and the founder of health and wellness company I.AM.YOU. She is also the author of the international bestseller, RETOX, which presents a unique and realistic take on health and wellness in real life.  Tired of the constant calls for dietary purity, radical changes in lifestyle, constant pushes to seek some sort of perfection in this world, Lauren wanted to offer something else. Something for regular people who lead normal lives with jobs and family. People for whom always preparing the perfect healthy meal is difficult and whose lives exclude the possibility of spending hours a day doing…anything other than what is needed for the present moment can wrap their heads around. The kind of diet and lifestyle changes most health and fitness people recommend are just not sustainable in the long term for most people. Whether it's a vegan diet, keto, carnivore, no TV, etc, these things are all but impossible to keep up for more than a few weeks or months for the vast majority of people who are mostly concerned with getting bills paid and having a bit leftover. The fact is that the present climate of the health and wellness world fuels a boom and bust cycle that in turn feeds into the already high levels of stress and anxiety experienced by the modern westerner. Lauren wrote RETOX to remind people that it's okay to enjoy life a little bit. To go out dancing and have a steak from time to time. She's sort of like the Ramones of the health world, sick of the normal and here to shake things up.  This applies to the way Lauren looks at data as it is used in the health and wellness industry. We have tons of apps and devices that collect data that pertains to our health. Mostly, all they do is spit out a number, something that doesn't usually matter to our overall health. How many steps you got, how much you slept last night, your current heart rate. For the most part, they don't really tell you what you might have done wrong and certainly not how you can make it better, not without selling you a mess of supplements and programs you may or may not need. In fact, her focus really isn't on what you should take out of your life but on what you should add in from one day to the next. That's because what you need to be healthy, both mentally and physically, might vary from one day to the next. The only real principles are that we need to move, eat, and connect with someone emotionally. Some days that's a trip to the gym, a steak, and calling mom; others, it might be a walk through the park, a salad, and a date night with your spouse. You have to listen to yourself a bit and figure out what is needed each day.  It's important to understand that this is not some new version of finding the right ‘work/life' balance. Striving to find some mythical perfect balance only tends to fuel the anxiety and winds up being counterproductive. After all, some days will require a twelve-hour day at work, others only six. You have to be a little flexible and willing to roll with the punches a bit. And of course, if you are focusing too much or not enough on work you will need to swing the other direction a bit. If you are paying attention to what you and those around you need you will self-correct before things get too out of whack and damaging.  The full interview with Lauren was fascinating and I strongly recommend you head over to T-Cast to check out her thoughts on technology, the issues with the alternative medicine world, and the importance of taking responsibility for yourself. What's your health worth? www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby. What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!

Jeffrey Bowman is the co-founder and CEO of Reframe. Through Reframe, Jeffrey is helping companies around the world to build an environment that understands their employees as well as their customers. This has become an increasingly important issue as the global workforce diversifies and many jobs move from a daily drive to the office to working from home, which these days can be almost anywhere. In fact, as Elon Musk's satellite wi-fi system Starlink expands, people will be able to work from almost literally anywhere on the planet.  Naturally, as a company's employees spread out geographically, they also diversify culturally. While the different perspectives and modes of thought that come with that can be a great benefit to a company, there are also some hurdles to be cleared. It is often the case that people from different cultures have a hard time relating to and understanding each other. Put that together with the fact these employees aren't working in proximity to each other, and might actually be on the other side of an ocean, it can be hard to build unit cohesion. These two problems, companies often not really understanding their own employees and the need to better manage a global workforce are what led to the creation of Reframe.  Why the name Reframe? A lot of people use the word “reimagine” to get people to start thinking of ways to solve a problem. The issue is that it results in just another way of looking at a problem. If you reframe the same problem you actually change the structure of the problem. Think of the way Alexander solved the Gordian Knot. Instead of trying to figure out how to undo it, he reframed it and cut it straight down the middle with his sword. Problem solved.  It isn't only the globalization of the workforce. It's the fact that historic minorities are both growing in the general population and also working their way through and up the workforce. With that comes more and different cultures interacting with each other that will gradually change the culture in all of these companies. Reframing how these companies handle this is not just a nice and inclusive thing to do, it's necessary. It will make for a happier workforce and a workforce that is actually retained, rather than being dissatisfied and moving on to something else.  The other aspect Reframe sought to…reframe was the software experience. Too many businesses use multiple apps to manage their work. Slack, Microsoft, Zoom, Skype, there are just too many different programs all with their own logins. Not only is this inefficient, it's frustrating and keeps your workforce compartmentalized. Reframe set about creating new apps that would act as a hub, allowing people to have just one login for all of their work related activities.  Jeffrey uses the example of Nike as a brand that seems to be heading in the right direction. Everyone knows Nike spent most of its time using established athletes in the major sports to advertise for it, which of course was meant to inspire others to be that kind of athlete. However, in more recent years, it's been expanding its brand to include less well known sports as well as women's sports, encouraging everyone to be the best athlete they can be. Even if they will never jump like Michael Jordan.  Another real world example that Reframe was involved in was a hair product company. Like most, it had hair products for some people and then products for ‘ethnic' people. Reframe was able to help them realize they should change their marketing to hair texture. So their products were marketed for people with wavy, curly, straight, or kinky hair. Race and ethnicity were left out of it entirely, because in reality, it's irrelevant. What matters for a hair company is the texture of the hair and little else.  Jeffrey and Reframe have worked with a number of different companies, getting them to reexamine their practices and how they relate to both their employees and their customers. In doing so they aren't just playing to buzz words, they're building a world that works better for everyone.  Welcome our newest Data Champion. www.tartle.co   Tcast is brought to you by TARTLE. A global personal data marketplace that allows users to sell their personal information anonymously when they want to, while allowing buyers to access clean ready to analyze data sets on digital identities from all across the globe.   The show is hosted by Co-Founder and Source Data Pioneer Alexander McCaig and Head of Conscious Marketing Jason Rigby. What's your data worth?   Find out at: https://tartle.co/   YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TARTLE   Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TARTLEofficial/   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartle_official/   Twitter: https://twitter.com/TARTLEofficial   Spread the word!