Technology
Digital globalization is redefining the study of culture.
How do you define modern culture across devices, applications, software, and computer networks? It’s challenging given the number of people and the speed at which media is created every second.
When I think about defining modern digital culture, I don’t mean just looking at a subset of people in a single city, social listening, or measuring a generational demographic, but rather, how do we visualize whole-world cultural developments as a historical reference to forecast future trends?
Small groups of data analysts, focused on humanities, are using some interesting technical solutions to take this whole-world approach, collecting massive amounts of data…
Politics
The story few are following, but everyone needs to know.
Artificial Intelligence
Processing power, data storage, and development platforms are becoming easier to access and less expensive, so why is the adoption rate low?
In the 1940s, Alan Turing predicted that one day, computers would defeat humans in chess. In 2010 IBM started building a computer to win a game show, Jeopardy, competing against a human. Now, computers are known for less thrilling tasks, but no less important, like working through processes that would take humans months, in just days.
The Watson Recruitment tool, for example, can review hundreds of resumes in a single day. There are also programs for customizing answers to customer questions, optimizing digital marketing, and speeding up repetitive and predictive processes.
Politics
Is it time to update and rethink large politically driven sluggish, ineffective bodies?
What is the Organization of American States (OAS), and what do they do? If you’re not into foreign policy and international relations, you might have missed this one, but you might be paying for it if you’re a US citizen.
The Organization of American States was founded in 1948 to host a platform for communication between member states within the Americas and gain consensus on issues that transcend borders. The OAS is funded primarily by the US. In 2018, for example, the US paid $50 million of the $85 million needed to run the operation.
The headquarters is in Washington…
Psychology
Move your mouse through the safe space of a maze, centering your focus and reinforcing the idea that you can deal effectively with challenges and pivot to correct without giving up.
Mental strength is the capacity to deal with stressors, pressures, and challenges, irrespective of the circumstances in which one finds themselves (Clough, 2002).
Building mental strength is fundamental to human existence because no one can avoid experiences that test them at some point in their life. How do you stay fit for these experiences?
It’s just like anything else in that you must work at it. If you…
Africa
Gérard Prunier, author of “The Country That Does Not Exist,” highlights the lonely achievements of Somaliland’s sovereignty and argues for its relevancy today.
Somaliland is an autonomous region in northern Somalia, which broke away and declared independence from Somalia in 1991. ‘Somalilanders’ vote, issue passports, have a military, and even have a national currency, but the African Union and other agenda-setting powers have determined that acknowledging this small independent region will encourage other secessionist movements.
To understand why this region will not stay in the shadows much longer, you need to pay attention to two things. Somaliland’s port of Berbera is “Plan B” for the Djibouti Port, and Somaliland’s Taiwan alliance sends a clear message.
Psychology
It’s about how the “package” looks and less about what’s inside.
The Greatest Show on Earth!
The P.T. Barnum Circus was a fantasy that played out in the minds and hearts of its fans. It was less about reality and more about the idea of taking audience on a fictional journey, playing on imagination using props.
In reality, what we know today, was that most of what was happening before the audience’s eyes was a lie.
One example is Joice Heth, the purported 161-year-old former nurse of George Washington, but really a slave in her 80’s. …
Work
A key pillar of your identity is built from the stories you tell.
Max struts across a garden venue in a little white tux, covered in mud, while music flows through the air and people’s feet tap on a wooden dance floor. Max’s mother screams, “Why!?” Max gives her a line of “BS.” His cousin stands behind him and shakes his head, making his mom doubt his “BS,” so he gives her bigger “BS” to keep wriggling out of the fact that he ruined his little suit, and his mom is pissed.
Max, may not know it, but he’s learning to tell purposeful stories that can make his life better or worse or…
Immigration
“Since 1990, approximately 45 percent of migrants have returned to their home countries, a much higher estimate than previously reported. — The University of Washington Report”
Inside of just 100 days, 800,000 people were slaughtered during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, over 75,000 of them children, forcing more than a million Rwandans to flee their homes. Still, most returned within three years after the conflict ended. Global organizations and governments helped restore lives and provide security to foster mass reentry, but even more importantly, the people who fled the massacre just wanted to go home.
To come back, you first…
Sanctions
Do sanctions really force change or is it just of a public display of disagreement?
U.S. President Biden started speaking as soon as the press pool entered the State Dining Room at The White House, July 30, 2021.
Answering one question from Correspondent Jeff Mason, Biden spoke passionately for over three minutes when asked if there will be more sanctions against Cuba. Biden responded, “There will be more unless there’s some drastic change in Cuba, which I don’t anticipate.”
Biden called the situation in Cuba “intolerable” and blasted the regime’s censorship of the internet, calling Cuban-Americans the best ambassadors for Cuba, and the Cuban government a failed regime. …
