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| There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs. |
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| Topic: Society |
10:14 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
Most people think overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe. In fact, the opposite is true. As countries get richer, their populations age and their birthrates plummet. And this is not just a problem of rich countries: the developing world is also getting older fast. Falling birthrates might seem beneficial, but the economic and social price is too steep to pay. The right policies could help turn the tide, but only if enacted before it's too late. The Global Baby Bust |
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| Topic: War on Terrorism |
10:12 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
The US occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was willfully ignored by the people in charge. Here is the inside story of a historic failure. Blind Into Baghdad |
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Why Do Societies Collapse? |
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| Topic: Society |
9:54 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
Throughout human history, societies, civilizations have prospered and collapsed over time. The reasons, obviously, have lessons for the whole of our intricately interlinked planet today. Eminent professor Jared Diamond, Professor of Physiology at UCLA, gave a speech at Princeton University about the collapse of ancient societies. "Why did these ancient civilizations abandon their cities after building them with such great effort? Why these ancient collapses? Why is it that some societies collapsed while others did not collapse?" Why Do Societies Collapse? |
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Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion |
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| Topic: Science |
9:50 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
Ralph Merkle admitted that dunking your dead body into a tank filled with liquid nitrogen like a Krispy Kreme into a cup of Kona would have side effects. On the other hand, what would you have to lose? "Rapture is a nuanced portrait of the intersection of idealism, capitalism, politics and science on the frontiers of biotechnology that will leave readers eager to see what the future might hold." Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion |
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How to succeed in history |
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| Topic: Science |
9:36 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
... remarkable for its ambitious sweep and interpretive panache ... What factors made some societies implode and others prosper? What determines a society's fate, Diamond concludes, is how well its leaders and citizens anticipate problems before they become crises, and how decisively a society responds. Many leaders were (and are) so absorbed with their own pursuit of power that they lost sight of festering systemic problems. "We have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of distant peoples and past peoples." But the question remains, will we? How to succeed in history |
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Skirting the disaster ahead |
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| Topic: Science |
9:29 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
Why did great civilizations of the past collapse, and how likely is it that ours will, too? Jared Diamond tackles big and vital questions. ... a fascinating excursion into the latest scholarship ... Collapse is a magisterial effort packed with insight and written with clarity and enthusiasm. It's also the deal of the year -- the equivalent of a year's college course by an engaging, brilliant professor, all for the price of a book. Skirting the disaster ahead |
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| Topic: Telecom Industry |
9:25 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
Julie Snyder found herself in a ten-month battle with her phone company (MCI Worldcom), which had overcharged her $946.36. She spent hours on hold, in a bureaucratic nowhere. No one seemed able to fix her problem, and there was no way she could make the company pay her back for all her lost time and aggravation. Finally, she enlists the aid of the national media. The Middle of Nowhere |
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We know everything about you |
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| Topic: Surveillance |
9:21 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
The way we think about privacy is wrong. In his new book, "The Digital Person," law professor Daniel Solove looks to Franz Kafka's "The Trial" to capture the sense of hopelessness, frustration, and vulnerability created by "digital dossiers." ... we are almost entirely powerless against these vast bureaucracies ... We know everything about you |
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Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers |
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| Topic: Science |
9:07 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
We find that when selecting a problem-solving team from a diverse population of intelligent agents, a team of randomly selected agents outperforms a team comprised of the best-performing agents. This result relies on the intuition that, as the initial pool of problem solvers becomes large, the best-performing agents necessarily become similar in the space of problem solvers. Their relatively greater ability is more than offset by their lack of problem-solving diversity. Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers |
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Indirect Reciprocity, Assessment Hardwiring, and Reputation |
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| Topic: Science |
8:52 am EST, Dec 30, 2004 |
The world of Edge.org wakes up to reputation, and MemeStreams is explained. "General altruism": here you give something back not to the person to whom you owe something, but to somebody else in society. "We had become prisoners of the dilemma." Here the question of trusting the other, the idea of reputation, is particularly important. Google page rankings, the reputation of eBay buyers and sellers, and the Amazon.com reader reviews are all based on trust, and there is a lot of moral hazard inherent in these interactions." Indirect Reciprocity, Assessment Hardwiring, and Reputation |
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