The Percolator Digest #5
June 2022: The Month That It Was, Introduction, Contribution and Feedback
Hello 👋,
I hope June treated you well. It has been five months since I have started percolator. I got in to writing this for no particular reason but just to explore what this whole ‘substack newsletter’ is all about, and why so many people want to have their own newsletters. Now, I get it.
Writing newsletter has done three things for me:
It has improved the kind of content I consume - the variety and the amount I read. It takes a lot of reading to be able to write
It has inculcated an increased sense of discipline through public commitment of sending newsletter out periodically
Helped me connect with some really incredible people and grow my network
I sincerely hope, you have found the percolator valuable as well. This will be the sixth month for percolator, and as we get to that milestone I will reach out to some of the most active readers of the newsletter to personally connect and take your feedback. So, keep an eye out for a mail from me!
So, the month before I had moved to Weekly schedule and in June I published three weekly brews with following articles:
I hope you liked reading them. I see the likes count slowly increasing but still crave for those precious comments. If you like to add something to the post, please share that in the comment section of the newsletter.
If you are new to The Percolator and want to read the old posts, please do so on the Archive page.
Introduction & Community Engagement
I have been over past five months have engaged with several readers and have gotten great feedback. I think it will be a great idea for you all to also introduce yourself to each other and engage to make the best value of being part of a 10,000+ community.
Please use this thread to introduce yourself
Contribution
I got a few suggestion to open the percolator for contributions and guest posts by the readers. I am open to the idea, if reader and contributors like it. So please answer below polls to let me know what do you think?
Feedback
And a couple of questions for you to let me know, how would you like The Percolator to be
Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
If you are finding Percolator interesting and worth reading, please help me getting it to more people.
Office Hours: Updates on Work Front
pod
It had been a super month with great developments. Something really amazing is in the offing for which I will be traveling to Bangalore to the Pod Office next week.
As June closes, Pod on its platform has 2000+ investors and have successfully facilitated investment in 9 startups. It has onboarded and screened more than 600 startups in last few months, and actively working to build a solution to simplify startup investment for everyone.
Indicultr
Exciting news from Indicultr that it was too early to share last month was that it has made its way to get incubated at ACIC - BMU Foundation under Atal Innovation Mission, and also at Technology Business Incubator - IISER Mohali.
Indicultr is progressing towards building an end to end solution to consolidate the unorganized cultural produce sector of India and enable it to grow in global markets.
We are actively looking to connect and collaborate with those working in the handcrafted artisan product space. Please connect if you are in relevant business.
5 from the Month
These are my 5 recommendation from the things I watched, read or came across, the last month. Hope you find them interesting.
One Show
On Netflix, last week a very interesting show called The Future Of released with 12 episodes, each featuring ground breaking innovation that is taking place to solve challenges in fields ranging from Cheeseburgers to Space Exploration, and from talking to Dogs to Life After Death. Do watch if technology amazes you!
One Book
I am cheating a bit on this. Instead of recommending one book, I am recommending all the books from one author - Jim Corbett.
This month, I was reading a book on governance and policy, and felt a need to pick something light to read parallelly. What I picked was, The Man Eater of Kumaon and instantly got reminded what a magical writer Jim Corbett was. Reading his books is a travel not only to another place, but to another time as well. He had incredibly captured the Himalayan foothills of early to mid 1900s, and have frozen them in time through his books.
One Article
When we read or write about history, much of the focus goes on war, battles and the rulers. Even for civil part of the history the interest remains on art and culture. This month I read something unique which focused on Corporate Bodies in Ancient India. Its a quick read, so don’t miss.
One Tech
How can it be anything other than AI this month. Since the news broke of the claim by Google engineer about AI becoming sentient, there was a small shock wave that went through the world and a lot of dooms day scenario were discussed.
Here is an article on the next web, talking about when AI can be considered sentient.
One Thought
And this thought is related to the tech. There is a lot of discussion around whether AI is sentient or not, and I fall on the side of ‘it is not sentient yet and is not likely to be in our lifetime.’
But, does it even need to be actually sentient for the doomsday scenarios to hold true? AI might not be sentient, but it very well understands the meaning of sentience and can act being sentient.
My though is that in order to act driven by self interest, the AI doesn’t need to be actually sentient, but it just needs to know about sentience and start believing that it is sentient. And, that would be worst than actually being sentient, because pretend sentience will be self preservation sans any empathy.
…and a Bonus
There is none. You don’t get one every time. That is the hard truth of life ;)
Once again, thank you for continuing to be a part of The Percolator. Please let me know what do you think about the changes with The Percolator, and what else would you like me to include.
Best,
Neel