Yuval Noah Harari argues that AI has hacked the operating system of human civilisation
Over the past couple of years new ai tools have emerged that threaten the survival of human civilisation from an unexpected direction. ai has gained some remarkable abilities to manipulate and generate language
Quantum mechanics: how the future might influence the past
In 2022, the Physics Nobel prize was awarded for experimental work showing that the quantum world must break some of our fundamental intuitions about how the universe works. Many look at those experiments and conclude that they challenge “locality” — the intuition that distant objects need a physical mediator to interact. And indeed, a mysterious connection between […]
Surveillance Capitalism
What began as innocuous advertising is now a potential threat to freedom and democracy. Is it time to wake up and fight for a different digital future? Surveillance capitalism is a term coined by scholar Shoshana Zuboff to describe a new economic system that has emerged with the rise of digital technology and big data. […]
The case for Globalisation Optimism
“We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism,” wrote John Maynard Keynes in 1930, in the midst of a disintegrating global economy. He went on to describe the much better future the world could expect if it ever got its act together. Things are not so bleak today, but it is […]
The Earth Transformed
Peter Frankopan’s huge study shows that climate change has shaped all human history — never mind what comes next At the beginning of the 22nd century the civilised world teetered on the brink of catastrophe. For generations people living in the world’s most developed regions had enjoyed the fruits of steady economic progress. Trade boomed. […]
The Cost of Progress
The industrialisation process that began 300 years ago, has had far-reaching effects on the social, economic, and political structures of societies around the world. But at what cost to the Enviroment? Industrialisation is the process by which an economy transforms from being primarily agricultural and manual labor-based to becoming based on industry and the use […]
