A Scientist’s Joke Goes Horribly Wrong When People Take Him Seriously
Just because a piece of information comes from a “credible” source, we don’t live in a world where any media source should be trusted blindly–no matter how credible they seem.
Just because a piece of information comes from a “credible” source, we don’t live in a world where any media source should be trusted blindly–no matter how credible they seem.
It took me three weeks to write this article. Sometimes you just need a little more time listening before speaking. What I was listening to (and watching), were the 54 conversations we hosted last month as part of our Non-Obvious Beyond Diversity Summit – an event that Chhavi Arya Bhargava and I created (in collaboration with SRC Partners … Read more
Every few months, there are stories about an impending food crisis. From the death of the humble banana, to the loss of fertile farming land to doomsday stories of outbreaks at food production plants, there are plenty of things to be afraid of. Yet the truth, proven by facts and data, is that the world is growing more than enough food … Read more
A new Netflix eight-part mini-series called Indian Matchmaking has been sparking a big debate online because of how it shines a spotlight on what one observer called “Brahmanical patriarchy … shaped by gender, caste, and economic relationships.” The show tells the story of arranged marriages from the perspective of a famous matchmaker who uses “biodata” to connect people. … Read more
After peaking at 9.7 billion people in the year 2064, researchers believe that the world’s population will begin to decline. The primary reason cited is more empowerment of women/girls and widely available contraception. The researchers go on to talk about the major impact this is likely to have on economies around the world, and particularly the … Read more
What happens when you train an AI algorithm only with murderous images from horror films or macabre photos from the Internet? A seriously disturbed AI, as researchers at the MIT Media Lab discovered. The AI, named “Norman” after the lead character from the horror film “Psycho,” reacted disturbingly in image association tests and exhibited severe tendencies toward … Read more
“Futurists labor over questions about the nature of Android consciousness and empathy. Afrofuturists ask how race might be wired into Android consciousness and whether the android world might be as divided as ours is.” I admit, before reading this article on Afrofuturism from WIRED, I hadn’t considered some of these questions related to the future — … Read more
For the past ten years I have gone through an annual ritual of publishing a book about trends that describe our shifting culture and business environment. Over the past decade, my team and I have identified and written about well over 100 trends covering everything from the rise of the #metoo movement (a trend we … Read more
Every year my team and I read and review hundreds of books in the process of curating ideas to incorporate in our annual list of trends. Beyond using those books to inspire how we see the world, we also select our favorites each year to feature as part of the Non-Obvious Book Awards program. For … Read more
This week the Library of Congress mapped out an ambitious vision to expand its collection of digital content and broaden access to all of it. On the surface, cataloging all of this data seems like the ultimate impossible task because of how exponentially it is growing. It’s hard to imagine how any one group will be able … Read more