Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
The global tsunami of mental misery is ever-more-closely tied to rising human interaction with digital technology. Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff explains why in his recently-published manifesto, “Team Human.” In short, our natural collaborative instincts have been undermined and toxified...
Recently, I came upon a blog written by a well known yoga teacher by the name of Gregor Maehle. In it, Maehle berates Sharath Rangaswamy, a young Indian teacher who, as it turns out, is the grandson of the late Pattabhi Jois, founder of Mysore Ashtanga yoga. Several women had come out with...
Yes, the world seems less trustworthy every day. Politics is corrupted, science is corrupted, the law is corrupted, etc. Worst of all, education and the news are corrupted, so we can’t even know what’s true. It’s like John Wanamaker said a hundred years ago, “I know 30% of my ad budget is...
As data scientists, we’re lucky. Data scientists, in the broadest sense, are the very first human beings whose conceptual language — in particular dimensionality-reduction, compression and statistical validation — can explain human bodies and minds, and hence “consciousness,”...
You may be a skeptic and deny that the Earth is not warming up because, depending on where you live, the effect may not be noticeable to you. But, hopefully, what you can't deny is the increasing number of weather-related disasters occurring around the world, which happens to be a really expensive...
Neil Young was a famous rock musician in the 1970s, specializing in live performance and weird acoustic spaces, like the echo-filled iron sawdust burner I once camped in as a kid. In a recent interview for The New York Times Magazine, he claimed that digital compression technology — CD, MP3,...
Despite being marketed as cooler and healthier alternatives to smoking, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that e-cigarettes should come with similar health warnings as regular tobacco products. Yet, while further research is needed to determine once and for all whether...
There are two kinds of people — and not just people. Rather, I should say, there are two kinds of sensory styles. This applies to animals, even to Roombas. Knowing those styles helps fix some common arguments. Think of sensory processing in general — the making sense of the world we...
At the climax of a “60 Minutes” segment on ethical technology design, host Anderson Cooper demanded suspiciously of Tristan Harris, “Is technology neutral?” While Cooper made the word “neutral” seem like a loaded challenge, the truth is that “neutral” is as neutral a word as can...
Health in the US is a tale of two starkly different realities. The better-off and well-connected are not only in a stronger position to receive care when they need it, but they also start off with advantages that have a tremendous effect on health — in housing, employment, stress levels, food...
This is a list of straightforward ways to feel better in the age of smartphones. This list can serve as a companion to an earlier edition of Tech Turncoat Truths listing how screens damage the human nervous system, and also to a peer-reviewed article making the same case. Here's the gist of...
