EDITOR'S PICK Understanding Agrivoltaic Technologies The success of a growing number of countries around the world with agrivoltaic technology, or locating solar panels on farms, a topic I have written about before, suggests this could be a win-win formula, particularly for the developing world. “Harvesting the sun twice”, a €1.6 million research project by the University of Sheffield in East Africa, has made great […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY Decentralized Autonomous Communities Community is experiencing a renaissance as new, blockchain-based “Decentralized Autonomous Communities.” These next-generation social networks could help solve some of society’s greatest challenges. One of the ways they’ll do that is by building new types of mission-driven markets. Just as “impact investing” does for equity, “impact markets” turn commercial markets into a positive force for […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK MONEY & FINANCE Understanding Insider Trading There’s a growing bipartisan push to prohibit members of Congress from buying or selling stocks. The shift follows news reports that several senators sold stocks shortly after receiving coronavirus briefings in early 2020 and that at least 57 lawmakers have failed to disclose financial transactions since 2012 as required by law. Congress passed that law – the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge […] 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
ART & DESIGN EDITOR'S PICK How We Observe Paintings According to researchers, most visitors spend less than 30 seconds on average looking at an artworkwhile visiting a museum. In contrast, conservators, whose work involves understanding how artworks were made, can spend hundreds of hours looking closely. In addition to examination with our eyes, painting conservators also use different imaging technologies to see the interior structure […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SCIENCE Solving The Fermi Paradox I often wonder if the majority of us choose to believe in life on other worlds because of scientific reasons, or sentimental ones. There are, of course, plenty of encouraging numbers about the many Earth-like exoplanets and the many radiating stars around which habitats might form. The odds seem to be in the favor of […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK MONEY & FINANCE Is Bitcoin A Religion? Read enough about Bitcoin, and you’ll inevitably come across people who refer to the cryptocurrency as a religion. Bloomberg’s Lorcan Roche Kelly called Bitcoin “the first true religion of the 21st century.” Bitcoin promoter Hass McCook has taken to calling himself “The Friar” and wrote a series of Medium pieces comparing Bitcoin to a religion. There is a Church of […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ART & DESIGN CULTURE EDITOR'S PICK The People Who Made Shakespeare A Global Celebrity Walk into any decent bookshop today in search of Shakespeare’s plays and you’re sure to find at least one. And even if you can’t find what you’re looking for on the bookshelves, there is always the internet, where a great variety of different complete works and editions are also available – almost all of them […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY The Future Of The Internet But let’s begin with life 3.0. As it’s imagined by the physicist Max Tegmark, the third iteration of life is boundless and self-improving, evolving at a rate far faster than the millions of years divorcing the emergence of bacteria and humankind. Bacteria is seen as Life 1.0: elegant yet primitive because these organisms are incapable […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK ENTREPRENEURSHIP STRATEGY How Cup Noodles Became One of The Biggest Business Success Stories Of All Time See a container of Cup Noodles at a convenience store and you might think of dorm rooms and cheap calories. But there was a time when eating from the product’s iconic packaging exuded cosmopolitanism, when the on-the-go meal symbolized possibility – a Japanese industrial food with an American flair. Cup Noodles – first marketed in […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Uncovering One Of A.I.’s Deepest Mysteries The black box problem is a profound mystery surrounding AI. It says that we may understand the input, we may understand the output, but the AI’s decision-making process which bridges these two is a black box we can’t seem to peer inside. When given the task of helping diagnose patients, for example, why might an […] Written by Ella Alderson May 9, 2022May 9, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why Data Is The Future Of Healthcare A growing number of studies around the world show that healthcare is steadily evolving into a science based on the analysis of mass data, on detecting the signs that make it possible to know, evaluate and eventually treat a person’s health problems preventively. This is a transformation that will fundamentally affect the development of science […] Written by Enrique Dans May 6, 2022May 6, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why Data Is The Future Of Healthcare A growing number of studies around the world show that healthcare is steadily evolving into a science based on the analysis of mass data, on detecting the signs that make it possible to know, evaluate and eventually treat a person’s health problems preventively. This is a transformation that will fundamentally affect the development of science […] Written by Enrique Dans May 6, 2022May 6, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Understanding Agrivoltaic Technologies The success of a growing number of countries around the world with agrivoltaic technology, or locating solar panels on farms, a topic I have written about before, suggests this could be a win-win formula, particularly for the developing world. “Harvesting the sun twice”, a €1.6 million research project by the University of Sheffield in East Africa, has made great […] Written by Enrique Dans April 29, 2022April 29, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Can Twitter Really Bring Absolute Free Speech? Elon Musk is the planet’s number one billionaire. If anyone can turn cyberspace into a heaven – or hell – of free speech “absolutism” via a US$44 billion (£35 billion) Twitter takeover, then surely he’s the man. Right? When free-market elephants like Musk or Jeff Bezos (who bought the Washington Post in 2013) take charge of major mass-media […] Written by Empirics Asia April 28, 2022April 28, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Rethinking Education The Industrial model of education that fueled the modern era and its dizzying reach did its job incredibly well. Its prime accomplishment was the expansion of our ability to abstract the world. Until then, pragmatism reigned, limiting most people’s thoughts and interactions primarily because we lacked the tools to extrapolate information, to wield it for things that lay beyond obvious […] Written by Anthony Fieldman March 2, 2022March 2, 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