Long read: Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?
Oxford University Press’s word of the year for 2024 was ‘Brain-rot’, referring to the deterioration of mental and intellectual abilities caused by excessive consumption of low-quality online content on social media. Apparently, with AI, this is only getting worse. Whilst AI can augment human ability, the usage currently suggests that it is coming at the […]
Long read: Shashi Tharoor writes: The world after the American order
Congress MP and chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs, Shashi Tharoor, was formerly UN Under Secretary-General and former Minister of State for External Affairs. Therefore, he’s well placed to comment on the new international order (disorder) that is emerging in the Trumpian world. Mr Tharoor’s column begins on expected lines by castigating […]
Short read: Does watching reels have the same effect as alcohol on the brain? Neurologist explains a new study
Short video scrolling is the new ‘substance’ that humanity is abusing and is getting addicted to and this time it isn’t just a small cohort. Large swathes of human populations across the world, across generations are getting their ‘kick’ from scrolling short-form videos on TikTok, Instagram Reels, Youtube Shorts and the likes. New research published […]
Short read: From Industrial Revolution to China’s rise: 2025 Economics Nobel winner reveals secret to growth
It is that time of the year when the Nobel foundation recognises outstanding work with the principle of ‘for the greatest benefit to humankind’ by awarding the prestigious Nobel prize across physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, peace and economic sciences. This year’s prize of Economic sciences was awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and […]
Short read: ‘Let Them Live In Peace’: The Fight for Uncontacted Amazon People
Those who have read Jared Diamond’s remarkable book “Guns, Germs & Steel” would know that the way the European colonialists wiped out the Native Indians in South America was more by exporting new diseases from Europe to the New World than through actual shooting. The Native Indians’ bodies could not cope with these new diseases […]
Long read: What’s Happening to Reading?
No, this isn’t yet another rant from us on the decline of reading. This is about the role of AI in our reading habits and what it means for writers as well. First, on the latter – with AI models ‘reading’ everything that’s out there to synthesize an output for a user, writers such as […]
Long read: America gifted China its rare-earth monopoly — and India helped too
As China once again turns the screws on the rest of the world using its near-monopoly on large-scale rare-earth production, Praveen Swami’s informative piece tells us something that most of did not know: “The reason China ended up with a de facto monopoly on rare-earth is that the United States gifted it one. Even less known […]
Long read: When Semiconductor Manufacturing Went East and Chip Design Followed
Vik’s newsletter follows a logical stream of thought to reach the conclusion that, “This storm of events has opened the doors to India becoming equivalent to what Southeast Asia was in the 1960s: a place to outsource chip design at low cost – relinquishing America’s last stronghold in chips: design. Today, India is well poised […]
Short read: By treating cricket as war, India and Pakistan do the game a disservice
As the farce of India-Pakistan ‘cricket’ continues into the women’s world cup, Sandeep Dwivedi expresses the anguish of a true sport fan better than most in this op ed for the Indian Express. He begins by sharing the perspective of a cricketer who has actually been in war: “An invaluable all-rounder of Don Bradman’s “Invincible” […]
Short read: ‘There’s a scam in everything’: Cyber frauds in guise of welfare schemes target rural Indians
For the last several years, all of us had become accustomed to becoming scammed online and through phonecalls and via email. In our world view, we – the affluent city folk – were being targeted because the scammers wanted to empty our wallets. However, such is the pervasiveness of cyberfraud now that even low-income rural […]
Short read: Agentic commerce will transform shopping into personalized buying — brands must adapt fast
Jaspreet Bindra is the Founder & MD of a firm called Tech Whisperer. In this piece for ET, he says that AI enabled agents are already doing some of the online purchasing that humans used to do. For example, AI is apparently buying books online on behalf of other people. Mr Bindra says that such […]
Long read: The dawn of the post-literate society
Over the past few months, we featured a couple of pieces on the decline of reading as a habit and its implications based on data from new research. Here’s a more detailed take on the implications for a post literate society – on intelligence, creativity or even democracy. The author begins with this remarkable quote […]
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