BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY Megacities In The Digital Age Key Takeaways: Digitization and crowdsourcing will actually undermine the very foundations of the megacity economy, which is typically built on some combination of manufacturing, commerce, retail and professional services. Shopping malls, for example, which once thrived in megacities, are now suffering from the advent of e-commerce. Today, megacities have become synonymous with economic growth. In both developing and […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY Decentralized Autonomous Communities? The other day I heard Kim Stanley Robinson talk about The Ministry for the Future, his inspiring science fiction novel about tackling climate change and other huge societal challenges. I really like the book, even though I think “ministries” are the wrong direction. I believe that the energy needed to pull civilization back from the brink […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY POLITICS SOCIOLOGY Rethinking Education Key Takeaways: The Industrial model of education that fueled the modern era and its dizzying reach did its job incredibly well. In his writing, Flynn illustrates study after study, spanning nations and decades, in which modern educational gift of abstraction — a transcendent sign of intelligence, as we saw in Raven’s Matrices — has been […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY POLITICS SOCIOLOGY The Meat Paradox Key Takeaways: Most people eat meat and dairy with little thought of the consequences. Feeding the world’s appetite for meat costs the lives of billions of animals a year, and animal welfare is a concern on farms worldwide, with pigs, cowsand chickens often subject to overcrowding, open wounds and disease. In what is no doubt […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY PSYCHOLOGY SOCIOLOGY How Anna Delvey & The Tinder Swindler Exploit A Core Feature Of Human Nature Key Takeaways: The subject of a new Netflix series, “Inventing Anna,” Sorokin, who told people her name was Anna Delvey, conned over $250,000 out of wealthy acquaintances and high-end Manhattan businesses between 2013 and 2017. What’s fascinating about these studies is that most participants are cynical about ever seeing their money again – let alone […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY SCIENCE SOCIOLOGY The End Of Evolution Key Takeaways: As humans, we are just too smart, too industrious, too impatient and too egotistical to leave our fate to Nature alone. As the philosophy of ethicscame to be, then influence our feelings about one another (thanks, Aristotle), our values evolved, and we chose to apply our outsized creativity to keeping everyone alive as […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY SOCIOLOGY Understanding Origin Stories Not a day goes by that I don’t ask myself how we got here. How we inherited a world of limitless, self-perpetuating bounty so big and complex that we still barely understand it; and yet, somehow, we have managed to mortally squander our inheritance, nonetheless. Medical intervention provides us with an apt corollary. Today, ‘healthcare’ takes one of […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY The Death Of Farming As we did just yesterday, every winter weekend that I’m not in NYC, my family and I drive North from Toronto, through Ontario’s so-called “Greenbelt”—a protected swath of agricultural farmland—to ski. Every time we do, it seems that yet one more farm is abandoned, its infrastructure boarded up or falling apart—in ruin. As a photographer […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY How The Pandemic Changed Digital Journalism In the last decade, smartphones and mobile technology have altered newsrooms, transforming news gathering, live broadcasting and content distribution. Trained on an iPhone 4s at the University of Sheffield in 2011, I was one of the first mobile journalists in the UK. Over the course of my career broadcasting live, from war zones in Iraq to tornados […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY Influencers: Who’s Influencing Who? There’s an article in The New York Times worth reading about the relationship between influencer statistics and book sales, entitled “Millions of followers? For book sales, ‘it’s unreliable”, which has gotten the publishing industry talking about how best to market new titles. The limits of influencers are becoming increasingly clear: the first question revolves around […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How To Tell If Conspiracy Theory Is False Key Takeaway: Conspiracy theories are prevalent and can involve various factors. People believe false conspiracy theories for various reasons, such as the existence of real conspiracies. However, unfounded conspiracy theories often lack evidence and substitute elements that should be red flags for skeptics. To vet a claim, one should seek out evidence, test the allegation, […] Written by H. Colleen Sinclair May 10, 2024May 10, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Surprising Discoveries About The Origin Of Life Key Takeaway: Recent research has focused on replicating the chemical reactions that constitute life as we know it in conditions plausible for early Earth around 4 billion years ago. However, the rise of experimental work has led to many contradictory theories. Some scientists believe that life emerged in deep-sea hydrothermal vents, where the conditions provided […] Written by Louise Gillet de Chalonge May 9, 2024May 9, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
NASA’s Search For Life On Mars Key Takeaway: NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rover missions are investigating the planet’s evidence for life, known as its “biosignatures,” in unprecedented detail. The rovers are acting as extraterrestrial detectives, hunting for clues that life may have existed eons ago, including evidence of long-gone liquid surface water, life-sustaining minerals, and organic molecules. The Mars of today […] Written by Amy Williams April 30, 2024April 30, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Smartphones & The Source Of Our Anxiety Key Takeaway: Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, calls for action to limit teenagers’ smartphone access and address the mental health crisis caused by the widespread use of smartphones. Haidt cites the “great rewiring” period from 2010 to 2015 as a time when adolescents’ neural systems were primed for anxiety and depression by daily smartphone […] Written by Hugh Breakey April 29, 2024April 29, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Should TikTok Be Banned? Key Takeaway: President Biden signed a US$95 billion foreign aid bill in April 2024, allowing TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app. If the law stands, TikTok will be blocked from any US app store or web-hosting service, affecting over 170 million US users, including 62% of Americans aged 18 to 29. Critics argue […] Written by Sarah Florini April 26, 2024April 26, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Being Thoughtful In The Age Of A.I. Key Takeaway: Concerns about AI’s potential roguehood and potential harm to privacy and dignity are a significant concern. AI’s algorithms, programmed by humans, are also biased and discriminatory. However, a psychologist’s research suggests that AI is a threat to making people less disciplined and skilled in making thoughtful decisions. Making thoughtful decisions involves understanding the […] Written by Joe Arvai April 24, 2024April 24, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Are Single People Happier? The Science Of Being Single Key Takeaway: A study published in the Journal of Personality suggests that long-term single people can be secure and thriving, possibly due to their attachment style. The research found that 78% of singles were insecure, with 22% being secure. Secure singles are comfortable with intimacy and closeness in relationships, while anxious singles worry about rejection […] Written by Yuthika Girme April 23, 2024April 23, 2024 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Rethinking Education Key Takeaways: The Industrial model of education that fueled the modern era and its dizzying reach did its job incredibly well. In his writing, Flynn illustrates study after study, spanning nations and decades, in which modern educational gift of abstraction — a transcendent sign of intelligence, as we saw in Raven’s Matrices — has been […] Written by Anthony Fieldman March 2, 2022October 19, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How China Is Transforming Its Economy Through Learning I highly recommend reading the McKinsey Global Institute’s new report, “Reskilling China: Transforming The World’s Largest Workforce Into Lifelong Learners”, which focuses on the country’s biggest employment challenge, re-training its workforce and the adoption of practices such as lifelong learning to address the growing digital transformation of its productive fabric. How to transform the country […] Written by Enrique Dans February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why You’re Not Seeing Success With Influencer Marketing With the new year around the corner, now is a good time to re-evaluate your past marketing strategies and gear up for the year ahead. For some businesses, influencer marketing has simply not seemed to live up to its lofty promises of genuine engagement, credibility, and transparency. Some have claimed that it has been failing […] Written by Michael Tan January 14, 2021January 15, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A New Philosophy of Business I’m about to ask you to take a mental leap. For the next 8 minutes, suspend your notions of what a business is, and I’ll propose a new lens for you to look through. There are a lot of questions asked around what “community” means for business. “Where should community fit in my organization?” and […] Written by Empirics Asia September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked