Once the pandemic has eased, will the working week be pleasantly transformed?

For many, working from home has been better than expected, but others are very eager to spread their time more equally between the home and office. Will it be possible? Pilita Clark talks to an expert economist that reveals that, from dodgy tech to an imbalance in staff rapport, there may be several hitches in the work/home utopia that some are predicting.

Marni Penning

Financial Times

The ticking time bomb inside the new world of work

A counterintuitive approach to improving our psychological state.

The pandemic will have a long-term impact on our mental health and experts are disagreeing on whether standard medications will keep the world afloat, leading some to look elsewhere for answers.   Thomas Nail looks into how researchers are going against the grain of usual treatments and are turning to a psychedelic-enhanced, 'busy-brained' approach to treatment that could be a breakthrough in mental health science.

Simon Mattacks

Nautilus

Why making our brains noisier feels good

Are modern men facing a crisis of masculinity?

Henry Mance reviews three books that grapple with the ever-evolving state of masculinity: Tabitha Lasley's "Sea State", Guvna B's "Unspoken: Toxic Masculinity and I How I Faced the Man Within the Man" and Thando Mgqolozana's "A Man Who Is Not A Man", and predicts that male identity will soon be transformed.

Malk Williams

Undressing the troubled male mind

Struggling to cope with the demanding aspects of modern life? Here is a technique that could help.

"To live well, our focus must shift from the external goods we imagine will bring us happiness and on to ourselves: the judgments we make, the way we behave, the things we pursue, and what we value. In broad terms, contemporary psychological research on wellbeing lends support to these ideas." Joel Owen contemplates.

Emily Woo Zeller

Psyche

Sprinkle a little ancient philosophy into your daily routines

Good news if you're struggling to finish your daily to-do list: you're not alone.

Tim Harford explains why we're all hard-wired to expect too much of ourselves. Whether it's as menial as doing the laundry or as immense as staging the Olympics Games, it's normal to expect a delay. Then, the Undercover Economist turns to academic research to reassure us that even the planning experts struggle to stick to the task.

Michael Bott

From vaccines to homework, why humans can’t stop overpromising

Despite its popular energy supply, the state has suffered blackouts affecting over 4 million people.

Texas has suffered a cold wave from the Arctic, with temperatures down 50 degrees Fahrenheit from where they would normally be in February, signalling a new era of climate unpredictability. At least 21 people are believed to be dead, millions more affected and "the economic toll was expected to be more than $1 billion." Now, as Adam Taylor explores, the blame game has started.

Karl Miller

The Washington Post

Texas's cold-weather catastrophe is a global warning

Tesla spent $1.5bn in Bitcoins, a move that could help to cement trust in the cryptocurrency.

Elon Musk is famous for sending markets into a frenzy with just a tweet, but this decision seems far more premeditated than that. Interestingly, Musk is not the only one who's making a move. America's oldest bank, BNY Mellon, "said it would start holding and transferring cryptocurrencies for asset management clients, while Mastercard announced it would soon support 'select cryptocurrencies' on its network." With Bitcoin's value now over $51,000, Robin Wigglesworth and Eva Szalay investigate if this is the beginning of its institutional acceptance.

Emma Powell

‘Digital tulip’ or new asset class? Bitcoin’s bid to go mainstream

Two Big Tech Goliaths, two visionary CEOs, two different approaches to privacy.

The animosity between CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook continues to erupt over the subject and their duelling visions of the internet. As the Cupertino-based company prepares new privacy tools that could "further restrict Facebook’s ability to collect data," Zuckerberg escalated his rhetoric against Apple's move, labelling it an "interference with how Facebook apps work." Deepa Seetharaman, Emily Glazer and Tim Higgins report on the frosty relationship.

Betsy Foldes Meiman

The Wall Street Journal

Facebook meets Apple in clash of the tech titans — ‘we need to inflict pain’

We have all had to bite our tongues at work  — let's picture a world where we don't need to.

From mundane questions such as 'how are you?' to having to explain very complex company decisions, most of our workplace interactions have laid their foundations upon 'bending' the truth. Is this a vicious cycle? Lauren A. Taylor and David Berg contemplate that question and consider how a system that promotes truth-telling rather than punishing it can make for a far healthier working environment.

Imagine a workplace where you could actually tell the truth

How Tim Cook turned apple into a multi-trillion-dollar fortress.

With the passing of Steve Jobs, critics were unsure that the new CEO would have the chops to cultivate Apple's potential. But, as Austin Car and Mark Gurman explore, Cook has exceeded expectations. By building a China-centric supply chain, diversifying the company’s line of products and playing the political field back home, Apple is now an empire verging on a market cap of 3 trillion dollars.

"On Jan. 27, Apple announced there are now more than 1 billion active iPhones in the world. 'It’s a stellar achievement for Cook to have navigated these unprecedented times for Apple’s supply chain with a cold tech war between the U.S. and China. If you look back at the last few years, many investors were betting that it was going to blow up and be a huge black cloud over Apple,' says Wedbush Securities Inc. analyst Dan Ives, who believes the company, which had a market cap of $2.3 trillion as of early February, could hit $3 trillion in the next 12 months. 'He’s done a great job being an unofficial ambassador between the Beltway and China.'"

Gary Furlong

Bloomberg Businessweek

Apple is the $2.3 trillion fortress that Tim Cook built

The Microsoft co-founder on the importance of re-designing our approach to nuclear energy.

Bill Gates became obsessed with developing clean tech through his philanthropic work. With a new book, "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster", and a cadre of billionaire partners, he now has an action plan for ending the world’s carbon dependency. Christina Binkley speaks to Gates himself to find out more.

Andi Arndt

Bill Gates has a master plan for battling climate change

The modern economy sprang to life in the Jazz Age, but today’s secular stagnation will be tough to overcome.

  As the United States is afflicted with another pandemic and many are asking whether history will repeat itself, Peter Coy reflects on the parallels between the two eras and believes that by replicating what went right and steering clear of what went wrong, the 2020s could yet be a success for Americans.

Michael Satow

The 1920s roared after a pandemic, and the 2020s will try

An astonishing behind-the-scenes look at the profession of sex writing.

"I had to admit, there was something darkly funny about the suggestion that my sexuality had been shaped by an illusion. And yet through watching and reporting on that 'illusion', I was introduced to a vital truth: sexual fantasy can be a route of exploration and revelation. It was a path to myself." Tracy Clark-Flory spent years as a reporter embedded in the porn world. Here, she shares how it shaped her own sexuality.

Sharon Bott

The Guardian

My porn life: what my years as a sex writer taught me about my desires

He sold 20th Century Fox to Disney at the peak of its value. Why not do the same with the rest?

For Alex Barker, the media company has become a grizzled rump that is being managed for decline, and two years on from selling its film division — something Barker calls "the masterstroke of Rupert Murdoch's career" — he argues the remaining assets are rapidly losing value. Here, he contemplates what business options make the most sense for Murdoch to do next.

Rupert Murdoch should sell Fox or take it private

Why we should observe things on the level of cosmological time.

 David Chai reflects on how Daoism rejects the human-centric concept of time and argues instead for a natural temporality of the universe. Despite the mysticism of this theory, we can use it to educate ourselves on the fallacies of many of our convictions.

“The reason for this is that we’re inherently limited in what we can know (physically, mentally, spiritually). By retraining ourselves to reside in the in-betweenness of things, we can release ourselves from the notion that time is being-centric, and consider the alternative: time is the resting nothingness of the Dao. This non-being is not a nihilistic threat to being but its natural counterpart.” 

Sean Crisden

How Daoism shatters our illusions of time and being

The Economist's Analysis: this is the moment for an ambitious attempt to deal with climate change.

"Time is pressing. Neither Mr Biden nor his successors may get a second chance to recast policy on such a scale. Global emissions from fossil fuels and cement production in 2019 were 16% higher than in 2009. It will be even harder to limit climate change to less than 2°C above the pre-industrial level, the global threshold from which America’s target for 2050 comes. To be carbon neutral, the world must curb emissions by 7.6% a year for a decade, a steeper decline than in 2020, when COVID-19 cut demand for oil and coal. For America, delaying action to 2030 would nearly double the cost of reaching net-zero or, more likely, mean it overshoots its targets."

The Economist Audio

The Economist

How America can rid itself of both carbon and blackouts

How different is COVID-19 from other diseases in human history?

"Since ancient times, pandemics have spurred sharp turns in political beliefs, waves of mistrust and far-reaching rejection of authorities," explains Marc Fisher, who here contextualises the pandemic's impact on society over the last year. Arguing it's not surprising COVID-19 has paved the way for different forms of extremism, he also believes the key to putting those ideas and lack of trust at bay, is getting the pandemic under control.

Ron Butler

Eroding trust, spreading fear: the historical ties between pandemics and extremism

Is a backlash to the green wave on its way to the continent?

"Car wars belie Europe’s reputation for eco-friendliness. Green parties are riding high in the polls and could return to power in Germany this year. Climate-denier cranks have been routed. Those who believe man has nothing to do with global warming are bracketed with folk who think the Moon landing was fake and Elvis is alive. Ambitious targets are set, and then made more stringent, as the EU positions itself as the class swot of environmentalism. A few years ago, reducing emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 was deemed enough. Now the demand is 55%. All EU countries have signed up to it, after persuasion and copious bribes via EU funding." The Economist contemplates.

The rise of dirty politics in Europe

Are special purpose acquisition companies a useful innovation, a mania, or both?

"There are two big dangers. One is that the SPAC boom becomes a bubble. Financial markets show many other signs of froth, including the recent GameStop retail-investor frenzy and the surge in Bitcoin’s price. If interest rates were to rise suddenly as a result of inflation, and the music were to stop in markets, the SPAC boom might end abruptly. That is unlikely to pose a risk to the financial system, but some firms would be left stranded at the altar. And SPAC investors might be clobbered."

The Spactacular boom on Wall Street

The former North Korean diplomat on life under the Kims and how the world should counter the regime.

Few people on the planet could provide better insight into North Korea than Tae Yong-ho, an international ambassador who defected the country in 2016. Yong-ho — who also became the first North Korean defector to win a parliamentary seat in South Korea in 2020 — has lunch with Edward White in Seoul. They discuss his experience of growing up in the secretive country, the reason he left and why there is "great unease" in the Kim family right now.

Defector Tae Yong-ho: ‘A very small spark could topple Kim Jong Un’

Feeling in awe of nature is key to our vitality.

T. Ryan Byerly examines the evolutionary origins of the emotion and reflects on how its literal and figurative power can boost both our feeling of connectedness to others and our sense of spiritual fulfilment.

Jonathan Booth

Why natural beauty nourishes our spiritual and social selves

Who was John Kenneth Galbraith?

An intellectual celebrity 50 years ago, the Canadian-American economist was known as Harvard's longest-serving professor and close-advisor to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. His economic vision put industrialism over the financier, something which made him clash with Milton Friedman. While the US and the UK sided with Friedman in the 70s and 80s, other countries like Germany, Japan, South Korea and China embraced Galbraith's principles. Now his son, James K. Galbraith, ponders if America is ready to change course.

Foreign Policy

America abandoned its economic prophet — the world embraced him

'Rotwelsch' was the name it was given — a tongue created by outcasts, for outcasts.

Martin Puchner presents us with an interesting question. How much do we know about 'underground life' in Europe between the Middles Ages and the modern era? Here, he focuses on one particular aspect that may offer us some answers: the language used by travellers and outlaws at the time which, somewhat ironically, managed to survive through police documentation.

How a secret European language ‘made a rabbit’ and survived

Are we alone in the universe? A scientific hypothesis on the subject.

Did Avi Loeb spot an extraterrestrial spaceship in the night sky — or was it just the reflection of his own obsessions? The Harvard professor of astrophysics presented his theory that the Universe is "teeming with life, perhaps even intelligent life" in Hawaii, and three months later an interstellar object like no other was spotted by a network of telescopes there. This began a quest for answers in Loeb's life that remains until this day. Talking with Oscar Schwartz, he discusses some of his findings and why despite lacking solid evidence, he is utterly convinced we're not alone in the universe.

1843

The alien hunter of Harvard

Is pop culture ready to learn from its mistakes?

Framing Britney Spears is a documentary that chronologically combs through a mountain of Britney material and provides helpful insights into the definition of conservatorship.   Adrian Horton reflects on the nostalgic affection that the artist has fostered over the last few years and believes that the film is yet another showcase for reconsidering the way in which female tabloid figures of the 90s and 00s were mistreated.

The betrayal of Britney Spears: how pop culture failed a superstar

Frank Wilczek: there is too much emphasis on rewarding success in science.

The physicist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize himself in 2004, reflects here on the problem of recognising success without acknowledging the failures that came before it, and suggests that AI may be the key to resolving this issue in the future.

Do we need an anti-Nobel Prize?

The future of this flourishing industry is uncertain.

Unexpected changes in temperature and disruptions in regular rain cycles have turned the Lebanese winemaking world upside down. Sarah Dadouch talks to businesses in the touristic region of Bekaa Valley, who are desperately searching for practices that will alleviate the newfound pressures of climate change and save their booming trade.

Climate change is upending Lebanon's booming business of boutique wineries

It's a very versatile material — how can we keep producing it while reducing its CO2 emissions?

After the intense pressure on oil and gas, heavy industry’s role in the climate crisis is now under growing scrutiny. Today, steel "accounts for 7-9 per cent of all direct fossil fuel emissions," and it's an important element of almost every building construction. Michael Pooler, who in his career has covered everything from steel to engineering and logistics, takes a closer look into the industry's current situation and what a not-so-distant future may hold for it.

‘Green steel’: the race to clean up one of the world’s dirtiest industries

Take it from the Power Moms: working-mother guilt is a futile waste of energy.  

How do women navigate their high-flying careers whilst raising a family? Joann S. Lublin explores how this gendered form of guilt persists in American society and talks to executive moms who described how ditching work guilt had positively affected both their careers and their families.

Jodie Bentley

How women can ditch the guilt when juggling careers and family

Bankers are seeing a chance for profit in tackling climate change.

Is it a turning point? Maybe, but as Gillian Tett explains: the jury is still out on whether Wall Street's change of heart is a reflection of our changing times or just pure opportunism. In this insightful piece for the Finacial Times, Tett takes a closer look into Larry Fink, co-founder of BlackRock — "the world’s largest asset management group" — who believes "there is no company whose business model won’t be profoundly affected by the transition to a net zero economy," but these initiatives will eventually "become entirely mainstream, and not sit in a ringfenced category."

"If the world was going to hit the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, Mark Carney declared, 'one-fifth and one-third [of the] world’s proven reserves of oil, gas and coal' would become unusable, leaving 'the vast majority of reserves 'stranded' — ie worthless. And since 'the exposure of UK investors, including insurance companies [and banks], to these shifts is potentially huge', he warned of a potential future market panic if investors suddenly woke up to these risks, or a so-called 'Minsky moment' (named after the 20th-century economist Hyman Minsky)."

Wall Street’s new mantra: green is good

How the pragmatic curiosity of Japan was mistaken as Westernisation.

Jon Davidann analyses how a false yet influential narrative overlooked the intelligence of a country that built its national strength to ward off Western power and why it illustrates the chasm between Western thinking about Japan and the Japanese themselves.

"The Japanese and many other non-Westerners, however, saw their options as not nearly so binary. Western capitalism proffered by businessmen, for instance, offered riches to the winners and promised to accelerate their development, a promise that in the Japanese case worked; but rarely did development on the Western model go so well in other non-Western countries. As attractive as economic growth was, other parts of Westernisation were equally repellent. Foremost among them was a pervasive fear that Western values abetted by Western imperialism would destroy non-Western national cultures, themselves mythic but extremely powerful."

Aeon

The myth of Westernisation

Finding the truth is not as straightforward as the tabloids painted it back in 2012.

Nine years ago Mundill Mahil went on to be dubbed by British media as the 'honeytrap girl', when she was tried for the murder of Gagandip Singh, alongside two others. Her case divided the public's opinion on how much responsibility Mahil had in the murder of a man that had assaulted her. We have never heard her side of the story, until now.

"In media coverage of the case, Mahil has been portrayed as a vengeful student at the heart of a honeytrap plot to kill Singh, once her close friend. And she admits she was her own worst enemy in the days that followed: it was true she had invited him to her house under false pretences; and that when his body was found, she failed to tell police the full story. She even acknowledges that Singh would not have died had he not come to see her. Looking back, Mahil says she is not surprised the jury convicted her. But she says she was oblivious to any plan to hurt Singh, let alone kill him."

Mundill Mahil was a straight-A student with a bright future — then she was charged with murder

Even though staff are working from home, indefensible behaviour never stops.

As the former colleagues of Mike Wallace — one of the original correspondent of CBS' "60 minutes" — speak out about his unacceptable workplace behaviour, Pilita Clark considers whether pandemic induced working from home has been a reprieve for those in similarly uncomfortable office environments and talks to an expert on workplace conflict resolution to find out more.

Toxic offices don’t change when they go virtual

Today's daily story from around the world.

The legacy of Apartheid is affecting public health efforts as the pandemic continues to ravage the country.

The world today breaks you out of the news cycle, keeping you informed on the ideas shaping world events. Discover carefully researched information, condensed in as little as 3 minutes every Monday to Friday.

Search "The world today" to find the latest episodes.

DailyChatter

South Africa: Division, disease and doubt

Today's daily story from around the world.

Will the potential withdrawal of international troops bring peace or create a breeding ground for terrorism?

The world today breaks you out of the news cycle, keeping you informed on the ideas shaping world events. Discover carefully researched information, condensed in as little as 3 minutes every Monday to Friday.

Search "The world today" to find the latest episodes.

Afghanistan: No exits

To better understand our past, we need to set our focus underground.

Geoscientists are stepping in to fill the historical gaps of the holocaust, by employing geophysical mapping and soil sampling. Science commentator Virat Markandeya talks to some of them and explores their most important findings in Eastern Europe to date.

Chris Brinkley

Digging deeper into holocaust history 

Flying together or solo? Being open about money will keep your relationship in check.

The volatile nature of the pandemic has highlighted the significance of effective money management with a partner. Rachel Obordo and Hilary Osborne examine how four couples are managing their finances in this challenging time.

'We created a spreadsheet': how couples manage their cash

Exploring their often-humble final resting places, from Alvar Aalto to Frank Lloyd Wright.

One could say an architect's building, if well-received, ends up becoming a monument to the architects themselves. But what about their gravesites? Are they just as magnificent as some of the things they created? That's the premise of Henry H. Kuehn's book, "Architects’ Gravesites: A Serendipitous Guide", which offers a wonderful compilation of photographs and notes on them. Here, we listen to a fascinating excerpt from it.

MIT Press Reader

A guide to the gravesites of architects

The Economist's Analysis: business leaders eager to cultivate acolytes should be careful what they wish for.

"Combining star power and scale is not risk-free. Mr Musk forged his reputation as a David, fomenting rebellions against Detroit and Wall Street elites. But now he is a Goliath: the world’s richest man who runs its most valuable carmaker. Playing both roles is a dangerous game. This is made more so by being a cultural icon, which leaves him more vulnerable to changing social taste — and taste can change in a trice online."

The cult of an Elon Musk or a Jack Ma has its perks — but also perils

None of our technologies has managed to destroy humanity yet.

But one day we may create a black ball: a technology that's destined to destroy the civilisation that invents it. Though it highlights how much we're at the expense of volatile technologies, Nick Bostrom believes that the real significance of this hypothesis is how it highlights important considerations on the collective effort of planning against such a scenario. There are several options, such as developing our current surveillance network or introducing global governance, that could save humanity from armageddon, but the key is the requirement of a united Earth.

"Suppose that the urn of creativity contains at least one black ball. We call this ‘the vulnerable world hypothesis’. The intuitive idea is that there’s some level of technology at which civilisation almost certainly gets destroyed, unless quite extraordinary and historically unprecedented degrees of preventive policing and/or global governance are implemented. Our primary purpose isn’t to argue that the hypothesis is true — we regard that as an open question, though it would seem unreasonable, given the available evidence, to be confident that it’s false. Instead, the point is that the hypothesis is useful in helping us to bring to the surface important considerations about humanity’s macrostrategic situation."

How vulnerable is the world?

Today's daily story from around the world.

President Jovenel Moïse's refusal to step down has triggered huge protests across the country. It also raises concerns for the country’s democracy, which has only been free of dictatorship for thirty-five years.

The world today breaks you out of the news cycle, keeping you informed on the ideas shaping world events. Discover carefully researched information, condensed in as little as 3 minutes every Monday to Friday.

Search "The world today" to find the latest episodes.

Haiti: Eras new and old

What can we learn from the secret habits of genius?

Lesson one: "many great minds, it turns out, are not-so-great human beings." Craig Wright — professor emeritus of music at Yale University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences — travelled around the world to trawl its archives and unearth the hidden lessons from history’s most brilliant people. In this remarkable essay for Aeon magazine, he shares his learnings.

How to be a genius

An unusual duo, but a classic American swindle story.

 How a teetotaling fundamentalist teamed up with a hard-partying tycoon to dupe the lucrative American biodiesel production industry. Vince Beiser explores the rise and fall of Jacob Kingston and Lev Dermen, who undertook on a wildly complex series of exploitative business ventures, involving barges of recycled grease, forged papers and phantom truck trips to earn hundreds of millions of dollars. 

Mark Deakins

WIRED

The lion, the polygamist, and the biofuel scam

Here are some helpful ways to make your screen time work best for you.

It's a Monday morning and we get the notification we have been dreading: our screen time weekly report. Turns out usage is up again, by a lot. We're not entirely sure how we have used our phone so much, but it certainly doesn't feel like it was in a very productive way. Can we do anything to change that? If you're familiar with this scenario, then this six-minutes piece is a must-listen for you. In MIT Technology Review, Becca Caddy lists four simple tactics we can use to start building a healthier relationship with the technology we use.

Sarah Naughton

MIT Technology Review

How to have a better relationship with your tech

Big names in Hollywood, politics and tech are turning to them as a way to expand their reach.

Less than a year since Clubhouse launched, it has "raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, from investors including venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz," reports Heather Somerville for The Wall Street Journal. The app's rising popularity signals high confidence in audio-driven platforms centred around social features. But, are they a game-changer for the industry or a means to an end in a world temporarily, we assume, driven by social distancing?

Clubhouse and social audio apps are having a moment — is it all talk?

With a note from the author: "It shocked for the sheer joy, the sheer rage, of it."

This fascinating story explores the history of the brashly named Fag Rag, one of the most distinctive queer magazines of the 1970s. The brainchild of Charles Shively, a history professor, poet and anarchist, its thirty issues spanned the dawn of gay liberation and the depths of the aids crisis. Here, Jeremy Lybarger considers Fag Rag's relevance today and how, in its powerful essence, it pushed for a political revolution by presenting queerness as a rejection of everything wrong with America.

Stephen Graybill

Jeremy Lybarger

Fag Rag: The ’70s paper of gay political revolution

Living for the buzz of the doorbell can become extremely addictive.

The pandemic has prompted a frenzy of online shopping and if you feel your spending has recently spiralled out of control, it's important to know you are not alone and there is something that can be done about it. In the Guardian, Sirin Kale provides helpful ways to recognise and control emotional spending.

‘I thought buying things would make me feel better. It didn’t’: the rise of emotional spending

Will we soon need to draw a line on what we do with it?

CRISPR offers the prospect of defeating lethal viruses and curing genetic diseases, but it also raises the most seriously complex moral questions of modern science. Walter Isaacson weighs in on the promises and the perils of the treatment and reflects on why it is useful for all of us to make sense of the brave new world of gene modification.

"Imagine a world in which genetic engineering is determined mainly by individual free choice, with few government regulations and no pesky bioethics panels to set limits. You would go into a fertility clinic and be given, as if you were at a genetic supermarket, a list of traits that you can buy for your children. Would you eliminate serious genetic diseases? Of course. I personally would also ensure that my children wouldn’t have genes leading to blindness or deafness. How about avoiding below-average height, above-average weight or low IQ? Many of us would probably select those options too. I might even pick a premium-priced option for extra height and IQ. Some people might even rationalize choosing their child’s sex and sexual orientation."

What gene editing can do for humankind

Have our written words lost their significance in modern times?

The simple frictionless design of modern technology has made the world more convenient, but our ability to continuously update our online profiles has also taken away the meaning of our words. Richard Hughes Gibson contemplates the importance of resistance in writing and how it can offer significant opportunities for self-reflection in a world of constant oversharing.

“Frictionless environments give us the false sense that we can stay on top of things all by ourselves. But against that often destructive delusion we can cultivate a healthy sense of humility about what we know, what we ought to share, when we need to speak up. That humility, in turn, may lead us to seek out a still better source of friction, the counsel of others — trusted friends, a fellow writer or scholar, or maybe even an editor — before we weigh in on the topic du jour. The baleful social effects of the frictionless sharing approach are increasingly plain. Now is the time to waste more words in hopes of sharing better ones.”

The Hedgehog Review

An appeal for friction writing

Humans are being crunched into a robot system working at a robot pace.

Sarah O’Connor was once a techno-optimist who believed that automation would be the saviour of those with ‘robot-like jobs’. Now, she has growing concerns with the ways in which these systems have actually worsened workplace conditions. In the Financial Times, she explores how a new distribution of power can still change the course of automation in a more positive direction.