Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
Human attention is a scarce, yet commercially valuable resource today, and social media competes for access to it. The wealth of digital connectivity and advances in browsing and filtering gives internet users more options and increases their perceived control over cyberspace. However, this is...
Some phenomena occur and become highly visible in the wrong place, at the wrong time. TikTok, an app created in China, came into prominence as a major source of expression and entertainment for the youth of the United States only in the past two years but rose, in that short time, to the status of...
Fair Observer’s Atul Singh told me of his own friend, Pankaj, a father of three daughters. Pankaj was concerned that his daughters have been subjected to around three to seven hours a day of online classes, and he felt it was deeply wrong. I was invited by Fair Observer to write an article...
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools closed their doors this spring, impacting the lives of 1.5 billion students around the world and sending teachers and school administrators scrambling to keep students connected to learning opportunities. To do this they deployed a range of old and new...
No one doubts that Elon Musk is rich, which, according to a fundamental axiom of US culture, suggests that he is smart. Everyone knows the proverbial wisdom often directed at a category of humanity called losers: “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” Musk himself has...
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is “living through an unrivalled drop in carbon output.” According to the International Energy Agency, global use of energy will drop 6% in 2020, an amount that equals India’s total energy demand. Worldwide demand for electricity has already fallen 5%,...
In 1954, when television sets were just becoming widespread in American homes, Alfred Hitchcock made “Rear Window.” The film portrays L. B. “Jeff” Jeffries, a magazine photographer played by James Stewart, stuck at home in a wheelchair with a broken leg, whose only entertainment is gazing...
July 15 was a very good day for Apple. Not so much for the European Commission, nor for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). What happened? In 2016, the European Commission (EC), following a lengthy investigation, ruled that Ireland had granted Apple “illegal tax...
As groundbreaking as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act is in its scope, sticker-price and level of bipartisan endorsement, the global pandemic it was rightly drafted to combat remains even more historic. Economists will be measuring the impact of the novel coronavirus...
National legislations across the European Union — with the exception of states that have implemented their own digital laws, such as Germany and France — are very difficult to enforce when it comes to online. This is because, in the absence of overarching legislation that...
Conspiracy theories seem to be a staple of major global events, so it's no surprise that COVID-19 has become the biggest hotbed for unfounded “alternative narratives” since 9/11. Various theories are circulating across social media, sucking in a worrying number of high-profile public figures...
