There is little doubt that taxation is an economically necessary and ethically valid part of society’s structure. “Taxes” stated Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. “…are the price of civilisation.” Many cite taxation as having four ‘key’ roles in society, The generation of revenue for the state to provide infrastructure, education, defence,…
In April 2010, the Economist reported, ��One of the lessons from TV is to accept change and get ahead of it. Broadcasters� initial response to the appearance of programmes online was similar to the music industry�s reaction to file-sharing: call in the lawyers. But television firms soon banded together to…
“It feels great to have the iPad launched into the world” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, “…it’s going to be a game changer.” When observing the media analysis of such rhetoric, you always see a mix of embrace and cynicism. The latter being the ‘mainstream’ news titles, and the former…
Professor Ronald Arkin is one of the world’s leading roboticists. In 2009, he published a book entitled “Governing Lethal Behaviour in Autonomous Robots” which (as one review quoted) is, “….the most serious attempt to date to set out how to build an ethical robot.” The review continues, “This timely book…
April 20 (Bloomberg) “Stranded flyers created a surge in demand for travel industry Web sites and remote conferencing services as a shutdown of many flights in Europe continued through a sixth day.” Nothing Broke… That’s Important. The eruption of Eyjafjallajokull really caught the world off-guard, and created the levels of…
In the fields of political science and economics, you will commonly see discussion of the “Principal-Agent Problem” (also known as agency dilemma) which deals with the outcomes of situations of conflicted interest, or asymmetric information, where (for example) an agent (such as an investment manager) acting for a principal (such…
On March 29th 2010, The Economist reported that, “When the trials of four Rio Tinto employees opened in Shanghai last week, their guilty pleas to the first of the charges, of bribe-taking, dampened hopes that the matter might be settled without any severe penalties. Even so, the harshness of sentences…
In a statement issued on March 22nd 2010, Human Rights Watch said, “Google’s decision to stop censoring its Chinese search engine is a strong step in favour of freedom of expression and information, and an indictment of the Chinese government’s insistence on censorship of the internet…” They continued, “China is…
On March 11, 2011 at 05:46 UTC, Japan was hit with a Magnitude 9.0 Mega-Quake (the fourth largest earthquake ever recorded) . To put the size of this quake in perspective, it was 8,000 times more powerful than the one which devastated Christchurch (New Zealand) in February 2011, and around…
Recent economic events have brought the concept of financial bubbles from academic texts to the forefront of economic and commercial thought. Whereas economies used to be slow laborious creatures, the globalisation of capital markets, and growth of technology within them, has increased the ‘speed’ of economies to a pace never…
Explore an archive of more than 3,000 quotes.
Art is a vocation for me, not a career, not a job… you wouldn't say to a nun. 'so, how did you get into God?'
I'm fortunate that I can make a change that in a very positive way affects a better way of life for many humans as well as all living creatures and our planet while I'm alive and that will live on
We have a lot of phobias around algorithms. Sometimes this is justified, but in the main, it's like being afraid of cockroaches or spiders. Algorithms aren't spiders or cockroaches, they're an instrument and sometimes will outperform human judgement terrifically well – and sometimes won't. If lives are on the line and it turns out an algorithm reduces the noise of the human decision maker and the bias, then the moral case for using the algorithm starts to look really strong.
Western civilisation has veered off course; we have de-sacralised the world in which we live. We are collectively insane, and we need to mount our own intervention.
Poverty is a result of history first of all. Mankind was always 'poor' according to our development standards. Growth has been very high in the last two centuries, but only in the west for a while, and now
Ten in-depth articles distilling insights from over 550 interviews with the world's leading thinkers, creators, and changemakers.