BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK MONEY & FINANCE Beyond GDP: Changing How We Measure Progress It’s an odd quirk of history that, on the first day of his ill-fated presidential campaign in March 1968, Robert F Kennedy chose to talk to his audience about the limitations of gross domestic product* (GDP) – the world’s headline indicator of economic progress. It seems stranger still that, despite the power of that iconic speech, […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY A Company In The Clouds The influential US venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, commonly known as a16z, which is based in Menlo Park, California, has just announced in a post on its corporate blog written by one of its founders, Ben Horowitz, that it is “moving to the cloud”. Big deal, you might say, thousands of companies “are in the cloud”, in the sense […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY How News Drives Economic Change News of a big pay rise might see you booking the nearest fancy restaurant for a slap-up meal to celebrate, or encourage you to go on a shopping spree even before your raise hits your bank account. Recent research shows that this is also essentially what happens on a wider economic scale when news breaks about future […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY TECHNOLOGY The Secret Of Tumblr’s Enduring Appeal When tech billionaire Elon Musk made a deal to acquire Twitter in April 2022, many Twitter users threatened to shut down their accounts and migrate elsewhere online. Tumblr – a microblogging platform launched in 2007 long known as a laboratory for social justice causes and burgeoning fan cultures – became one contender. However, many Twitter users proposing a migration to […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY The Exploitative Nature Of Crypto Gaming Video games are increasingly incorporating blockchains, the decentralised databases that underpin cryptocurrencies, as well as NFTs and other “digital assets”. New games are emerging expressly to support blockchain technology, while traditional games are being updated to incorporate blockchains. As of October 2021, “crypto gaming” accounted for more than half of the blockchain activity over that quarter. […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK SOCIOLOGY The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Critical Consideration Narrative frames are fundamental to unifying ideologies. They frame what is possible and impossible, which ideas can be accepted and which must be rejected. In her book, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics, storyteller and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola examines the framing of the Fourth Industrial Revolution narrative in this light. She argues that it is being used […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK TECHNOLOGY Can You Truly Own Anything In The Metaverse? In 2021, an investment firm bought 2,000 acres of real estate for about US$4 million. Normally this would not make headlines, but in this case the land was virtual. It existed only in a metaverseplatform called The Sandbox. By buying 792 non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, the firm then owned the equivalent of 1,200 city blocks. But did it? It turns out that […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK LIFESTYLE PSYCHOLOGY & WELLNESS TECHNOLOGY The Challenges & Benefits Of Digital Distractions We are in the midst of a battle for our attention. Our devices have hijacked our brains and destroyed our collective ability to concentrate – to the extent that we’re even seeing the emergence of a “goldfish generation”. That, at least, is the story that’s increasingly being told. But should we be paying attention to […] 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 How Spotify Has Quietly Expanded Its Content Platform An interesting article in Fast Company, “More than Joe Rogan: Inside Spotify’s audio revolution”, looks at Spotify’s success with podcasts, a phenomenon that has been growing in popularity since 2005, but has not yet become the next big thing many predicted. In 2005, three young Silicon Valley industry veterans, Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, created Odeo to try to […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Significance Of The Queen’s Funeral Great royal events in the United Kingdom are often a mix of old and new, and the commemoration and funeral of Queen Elizabeth II will be no exception. While there will be several strikingly new features, the seemingly traditional elements are not as old as they may appear. While some newer elements are revivals from […] Written by Philip Williamson September 19, 2022September 19, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How Pessimism Is Human Nature In today’s society, being happy and having an optimistic attitude are social expectations that weigh heavily on how we live and the choices we make. Some psychologists have pointed out how happiness has evolved into an industry. In turn, this has created what I call a happiness imperative, the social expectation that we should all aspire to […] Written by Ignacio Moya September 15, 2022September 15, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Significance Of The Queen’s Funeral Great royal events in the United Kingdom are often a mix of old and new, and the commemoration and funeral of Queen Elizabeth II will be no exception. While there will be several strikingly new features, the seemingly traditional elements are not as old as they may appear. While some newer elements are revivals from […] Written by Philip Williamson September 19, 2022September 19, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How Pessimism Is Human Nature In today’s society, being happy and having an optimistic attitude are social expectations that weigh heavily on how we live and the choices we make. Some psychologists have pointed out how happiness has evolved into an industry. In turn, this has created what I call a happiness imperative, the social expectation that we should all aspire to […] Written by Ignacio Moya September 15, 2022September 15, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
5 Challenges Of Education In The Metaverse More and more colleges are becoming “metaversities,” taking their physical campuses into a virtual online world, often called the “metaverse.” One initiative has 10 U.S. universities and colleges working with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, and virtual reality company VictoryXR to create 3D online replicas – sometimes called “digital twins” – of their campuses that are […] Written by Nir Kshetri September 14, 2022September 14, 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
