Social Society

It has long been recognized that most standard of living increases are associated with advances in technology, not the accumulation of capital. Yet it has also become clear that what truly separates developed from less developed countries is not just a gap in resources or output but a gap in knowledge. In fact the pace at which developing countries grow is largely determined by the pace at which they close that gap. Therefore, how countries learn and become more productive is key to understanding how they grow and develop, especially over the long term.

When we make decisions, our thinking is informed by societal norms, “guardrails” guiding our decisions, like the laws and rules that govern us. But what are good guardrails in today’s world of overwhelming information flows and increasingly powerful technologies, such as artificial intelligence? Based on the latest insights from the cognitive sciences, economics, and public policy, Guardrails offers a novel approach to shaping decisions by embracing human agency in its social context.

The most pressing environmental problem we face today is not climate change. It is pollution in the public square, where a smog of adversarial rhetoric, propaganda, and polarization stifles discussion and debate, creating resistance to change and thwarting our ability to solve our collective problems. In I'm Right and You're an Idiot, author and David Suzuki Foundation chair James Hoggan grapples with this critical issue, conducting interviews with outstanding thinkers from the Himalayas to the House of Lords.

Uncover everything you need to know about "deepfakes" and what could become the biggest information and communications meltdown in world history.

Hoy en día, el mundo se vacía de cosas y se llena de información inquietante como voces sin cuerpo. La digitalización desmaterializa y descorporeíza el mundo. En lugar de guardar recuerdos, almacenamos inmensas cantidades de datos. Los medios digitales sustituyen así a la memoria, cuyo trabajo hacen sin violencia ni demasiado esfuerzo. La información falsea los acontecimientos.

Philosopher Nick Riggle explores the beauty of being alive by investigating the things we say to inspire ourselves and each other: seize the day, treat yourself, you only live once. These clichés are at best vague, at worst stupid. They imply that you should do something wild with your life because your life is precious, a little like saying you should go swimming with your grandfather’s watch because it is irreplaceable.

Many people struggle to have honest conversations about race, even those who consider themselves allies or identify as anti-racist. For anyone who wants to have better, more productive discussions, Courageous Discomfort is an empowering handbook that teaches you how to do just that. In these minutes, authors (and best friends), Shanterra McBride, who is Black, and Rosalind Wiseman, who is white, discuss their own friendship and tap into their decades of anti-racism work to answer the 20 uncomfortable-but-critical questions about race they get asked most often.

In recent years our world has seen transformations of all kinds: intense climate change accompanied by significant weather extremes; deadly tsunamis caused by submarine earthquakes; unprecedented terrorist attacks; costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; a terrible and overlooked conflict in Equatorial Africa costing millions of lives; an economic crisis threatening the stability of the international system.

Toxic culture is eroding our sense of belonging, community and well-being. Our capacity to collaborate and innovate together is also being undermined by the rising incivility and divisiveness. We need each other to address the complex challenges facing our cities and communities—from the infrastructure deficit to climate change, homelessness, mental health and addiction issues. To thrive, our local democracies depend on our ability to revive the art of living and working well together.

Comment se sent-on lorsque les chansons qu’on aime, les films qui nous font rêver, les artistes qu’on admire sont jugés et moqués ? Qu’éprouve-t-on lorsqu’on réalise que ce mépris est la face visible d’un continuum de domination bien plus grand ? Revenant sur son histoire, Rose Lamy raconte le coût d’une existence déterminée par la classe sociale. La mort prématurée, les emplois aliénants, les déserts sociaux et médicaux... Elle montre tout ce que la figure du beauf et ses avatars permettent d’invisibiliser.

If you buy a book at the bookstore, you own it. You can take it home, scribble in the margins, put it on the shelf, lend it to a friend, or sell it at a garage sale. But is the same thing true for the eBooks or other digital goods you buy? Retailers and copyright holders argue that you don't own those purchases, you merely license them. That means your eBook vendor can delete the book from your device without warning or explanation - as Amazon deleted Orwell's 1984 from the Kindles of surprised readers.

In Work Mate Marry Love, Harvard Business School professor and former Barnard College president Debora L. Spar offers an incisive and provocative account of how technology has transformed our intimate lives in the past, and how it will do so again in the future. Surveying the course of history, she shows how marriage as we understand it resulted from the rise of agriculture, and that the nuclear family emerged with the industrial revolution. In their day, the street light, the car, and later the pill all upended courtship and sex.

Un titre qui sonne comme une confidence, un murmure susurré dans le creux de l'oreille. Mais qu'on ne s'y trompe pas : nul secret ici qui ne doive être dissimulé et ne puisse être répété. Car ce qu'a à nous dire Emeric Lebreton dans ce nouvel ouvrage concerne le plus grand nombre c'est-à-dire le genre humain.

In Robot-Proof, Northeastern University president Joseph Aoun proposes a way to educate the next generation of college students to invent, to create, and to discover - to fill needs in society that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence agent cannot. A "robot-proof" education, Aoun argues, is not concerned solely with topping up students' minds with high-octane facts. Rather, it calibrates them with a creative mindset and the mental elasticity to invent, discover, or create something valuable to society.

The SAD pandemic is real. Sexual Violence, Addictions, and Domestic Violence (SAD) result in too many children in care yearly, aging out to different systems such as prison, employment and income assistance programs, mental health institutions, drug rehabilitation, and homelessness. Are we going to allow the cycle to continue for generations?

At once a beautifully poetic memoir and an exploration of the various ways we live in the world, A Language Older Than Words explains violence as a pathology that touches every aspect of our lives and indeed affects all aspects of life on Earth. This chronicle of a young man's drive to transcend domestic abuse offers a challenging look at our worldwide sense of community and how we can make things better.

A decade ago, then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton chronicled her quest, both deeply personal and, in the truest sense, public, to help make our society into the kind of "village" that enables children to become smart, able, resilient adults. For more than 35 years, Senator Clinton has made children her passion and her cause.

An unflinching look at the aspiring city-builders of our smart, mobile, connected future. We live in a world defined by urbanization and digital ubiquity, where mobile broadband connections outnumber fixed ones, machines dominate a new "internet of things," and more people live in cities than in the countryside.

Flash crashes. Speed dating. Instant messaging. From the devices we carry to the lives we lead, everything is getting faster, faster. But where did this great acceleration come from? And where will it lead? In this vitally important new audiobook, Robert Colvile explains how the cult of disruption in Silicon Valley, the ceaseless advance of technology and our own fundamental appetite for novelty and convenience have combined to speed up every aspect of daily life.

As we cope with the lengthening effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic, considerations of everyday risk have been more pressing and inescapable. In the past, everyone engaged in some degree of risky behaviour, from mundane realities like taking a shower or getting into a car to purposely thrill-seeking activities like rock-climbing or BASE jumping. Many activities that seemed high-risk, such as flying, were claimed basically safe. But risk was, and always has been, a fact of life.