Olá,

I discovered on this lovely weekend exploring Brandenburg, that Uckermark has hills caused by glaciers from the last ice age. I also paid tribute to some DDR customs and had my first (fkk) swim of the year – which indeed felt like melted glaciers.

A step forward

The weekend trip was a celebration for closing a chapter of the last year of work. Before we faced news of lockdowns, and what would soon be our new reality, I was in Brazil pitching to GIZ a new product idea we had developed at Envisioning. This would be a big step forward in the techDetector project we started in 2019 and in the process we delivered and shaped our research.

After twelve months of planning, methodology revision, design of new features, completely rewriting our software, and writing hundreds of research pieces, we are launching Envisioning's new platform with its first customer GIZ and a very relevant subject, Sustainable Development. In this new phase, the techDetector will be continuously reporting developments of emerging technologies, and their consequences on different topics, but most importantly it is kept open and free for everyone to access.

I'm really satisfied with how it turned out, and couldn't be happier to have such amazing people next to me developing this (thank you for all the patience and great work).

The project is launching this Tuesday and will be available at https://techdetector.de

Owning in a Digital era

Not only because of the recent NFT debacle, but I've also been asking myself what it means to own content or media in an age of streaming and online services.

I'm interested in understanding how the preservation of culture and memory will be affected when our access to films, music, books, applications, and other media are being more and more dictated by streaming or licensing platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Spotify or Amazon Books.

I'm investigating this topic, and any insights (books, links, ideas, etc…) would be very valuable. I've also had a couple of nice Zoom chats with friends to bounce some ideas around! If you're interested, I'd love to tell you more.

Recommendations

Keeping the habit of closing these newsletters with some recommendations, here are two

Luiz Bonfá: Solo In Rio

The sweet sound of the nylon strings of the classical guitar, specially in the hands of players like Luiz Bonfá are superb. This record has beautiful instrumental pieces with different examples of samba and choro rythms (samba teleco-teco, samba canção e choro canção). My highlights are Manhã de Carnaval, Perdido de Amor, and Sambolero.

Agnès Varda: Mur Murs (1980)

I'm a big fan of Agnès Varda and her documentary/essay films. Together with Chris Marker, they've developed beautiful pieces in this genre such as Sans Soleil (1983) or Les plages d'Agnès (2003). In Mur Murs, Agnès tells the story of how Murals among other things are used in Los Angeles to preserve and communicate the identity of migrant minorities in the city. It reminded me of the PIXO documentary about the movement in São Paulo.

Um beijo,