EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY POLITICS SOCIOLOGY The Modern Relevance Of George Orwell’s Ideas Seventy-five years ago, in August 1946, George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” was published in the United States. It was a huge success, with over a half-million copies sold in its first year. “Animal Farm” was followed three years later by an even bigger success: Orwell’s dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” In the years since, Orwell’s writing has left […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY Amazon And Quantum Computing One of the most commonly used examples used in schools and colleges to explain the need for quantum computing is the so-called traveling salesman problem, which requires complex combinatorial optimization skills to solve the following question: “Given a list of cities and the distances between each pair of cities, what is the shortest possible route that […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK ENTREPRENEURSHIP STRATEGY How Images Get Customers To Time Travel Aconsumer shopping for a midcentury sofa may be more likely to buy it if the background in its advertisement is a little disorganized. Likewise, people looking to purchase a new smartphone could more quickly pull the trigger if the ad were simple and sleek. That’s because ads for vintage products are more appealing when they […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SCIENCE 6 Things To Consider Before You Sign Up For Space Tourism It’s been a momentous month for space-faring billionaires. On July 11, British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson’s Unity “rocket-plane” flew him and five fellow passengers about 85 kilometres above Earth. And this week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard capsule reached an altitude of 106km, carrying Bezos, his brother, and the oldest and youngest people ever to reach such a height. […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK POLITICS TECHNOLOGY Are Tech Giants Above The Law? A US federal court has ruled that the antitrust lawsuits that the Federal Trade Commission and 40 states had filed against Facebook failed to prove conclusively that the company is a de facto monopoly, rejecting the state lawsuits and giving the FTC 30 days to substantiate its arguments. As a result, Facebook shares are up 4%, pushing the company’s share price […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PHILOSOPHY SCIENCE SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY The Future of Knowledge: Can It Exist Without a Human Mind? When we consider the future of knowledge, we must consider whether something like knowledge can exist without a human mind to grasp it. Some would argue that without interacting with consciousness, it is possible to have data and even information, but not real knowledge. Such a view flies in the face of the normal way we think about knowledge. What are […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK ENTREPRENEURSHIP STRATEGY Amazon Is Ready To Take Over The Post-Pandemic World Amazon this week announced it is taking on 75,000 new workers in the United States and 10,000 in the United Kingdom, precisely at a time when much of the world is beginning to emerge from the pandemic and when many companies have announced cutbacks or even closures, making it one of the main drivers for economic recovery. The […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY Sorry Siri: The Problem With Algorithms Sounding Too Human In2016, Microsoft introduced to Twitter an artificially intelligent chatbot named Tay. By interacting with users, Tay learned new vocabulary. Unfortunately, the bot was quickly targeted by trolls, who taught it to spout racist and sexist commentary. After 16 hours, Microsoft withdrew the chabot. Tay was not an isolated incident, says Raji Srinivasan, professor of marketing at Texas McCombs. […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY Platforms Are The Future Of Intelligence As we organize human work and learning at fantastic scales, let’s strive for something inspiring. Through our relationship with machines, humans are building a new, synthetic intelligence. Organizations are the home for this part-human, part-machine intelligence. The topic to which we now turn is the role organizations play in coordinating the immense scale of work and […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS ENTREPRENEURSHIP FINANCE Here’s Why The Gamestop Fallout Is A Good Thing Here’s why the Gamestop Fallout Is a Good Thing In the age of extreme polarized political talk, an entirely new phenomenon is sweeping the trading world off its feet. As they call it, Meme Stocks are stocks targeted by inexperienced retail investors with the intension to prove a point. GameStop became a symbol of the resistance and […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
What Makes Basquiat Special? Key Takeaway: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work highlights racial inequalities and the lack of representation of racialized people in the media, but also the violence suffered by African Americans. Jean-Michel Basquiat denounced the violence of cartoons, which he saw as a reflection of 20th-century American society. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s painting “Toxic” is an attempt to denounce a stereotypical […] Written by John Harbour March 15, 2023March 15, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why Did Signature Bank Fail? Key Takeaway: The failures of SVB and Signature Bank were caused by two major risks: interest rate risk and liquidity risk. Interest rate risk caused the market value of previously issued debt to plunge, especially for longer-dated debt. Liquidity risk is the risk that a bank won’t be able to meet its obligations without incurring […] Written by Vidhura Tennekoon March 14, 2023March 14, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Art Of Balding Balding is really common, affecting more than 50% of men. It’s also physically inconsequential (bald men live just as long as haired men). So why, in his memoir Spare, does Prince Harry refer to his brother’s baldness as “alarming”? As a social psychologist with a special interest in balding (and author of an upcoming book entitled Branding Baldness), […] Written by Glen Jankowski March 1, 2023March 1, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Evolutionary Origins Of Imagination Key Takeaway: Mammals evolved to hide out while cold-blooded dinosaurs hunted during the day, but had to eat a lot more food than dinosaurs per unit of weight to maintain their high metabolism and constant inner body temperature. Mammals developed a new system to efficiently memorize places where they’d found food, linking sensory aspects of […] Written by Empirics Asia February 28, 2023February 28, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Art Of Receiving Feedback Good feedback, whether you are on the receiving or giving end, requires an attitude of curiosity and openness. Intentionally creating space for feedbackcan help, but even with the right space, receiving feedback can be really scary. Many organizations have formal systems of feedback in the style of mid-year and annual reviews. And it’s not uncommon for informal continuous […] Written by Andrea Mignolo February 27, 2023February 27, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The World After Oil Key Takeaway: The production and consumption of fossil fuels is on the rise, and expected to peak within the next decade. To consider alternatives to oil, we need to be aware of the scale of its integration into our lives. Caleb Wellum, an assistant professor of U.S. history at the University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada, […] Written by Nehal El-Hadi February 24, 2023February 24, 2023 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Secret Chemistry Of Chocolates Key Takeaways: Chocolate has been around for at least 4,000 years, and is now a trillion-dollar global industry. It starts out as a dull-tasting bean, packed into a pod that grows on a cacao tree, and requires two key steps: fermentation and roasting. Roasting is an art form, with different temperatures and times producing different […] Written by Sheryl Barringer February 23, 2023February 23, 2023 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
