Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
Around 20 years into the new millennium, everything about our lives and surroundings is changing at an incredible pace. The ways we work, play, study, communicate, spend and earn are rapidly evolving to bear little resemblance to how we’ve lived through most of modern times, let alone history....
In April, Reuters reported that automakers are investing heavily in electric vehicles despite still-low demand. They are releasing “a flurry of new electric vehicle models” because governments are raising regulatory requirements for emissions around the world. Automakers are being pushed into...
Each year, the MIT Technology Review publishes a list of outstanding innovators under 35. They come from fields as diverse as biotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, energy, the web, transportation, communications, materials and computer hardware. Their innovations are...
Imagine that your government could identify you and track your movements digitally, solely based on your physical appearance and perceived ethnicity or race. This is not the stuff of dystopian science fiction, but is happening now due to the widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools....
The world’s governments and peoples must decide how to address the increasing surveillance and data collection — and the resulting loss of privacy — that digital formats provide. In recent years, much of this attention has focused on the rapidly building surveillance and data aggregation in...
Almost all observers of economic transformation have recently focused on the feared (or cheered) future dominance of artificial intelligence and robotics. This week, Atul Singh, the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Fair Observer, reviews a fascinating book, “The Smartest Places on Earth,”...
In 2016, Antoine van Agtmael and Fred Bakker published “The Smartest Places on Earth.” Van Agtmael, a personal friend and a donor to Fair Observer, asked me to review the book. Unfortunately, day-to-day writing, editorial and administrative tasks in a crazy year ensured that this fell off the...
Here are 10 interlocking reasons why using screens damages the human nervous system. The reasons are derived from basic mathematical principles of how matter and energy move in space and time. The gist is that the human nervous system, seen as a sensitive instrument, needs to calibrate itself using...
Distributed web, cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based video live-streaming are some of the so-called alt-tech tools that some radical right actors are beginning to use as they continue to be removed from regular social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Just to make sure...
The pace of change in the artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning arena is already breathtaking, and it promises to continue to upend conventional wisdom and surpass some of our wildest expectations as it proceeds on what appears at times to be an unalterable and pre-ordained course....
