The generations that grew up in the 20th century were trained to use specific symbolic representations in encoding the world. Among these, the images of “construction” and “building” had a …
Orphans – and golden
Pharmaceutical companies chase “rare diseases”: they make crazy profits from the drugs for these cases. When a disease affects up to 5 people per 100,000, it is considered rare. In …
Web footprints
Those who believe that cyberspace is the great opportunity to “disappear” (hiding their identity) are sorely mistaken. The conscription of providers (i.e., the data of their customers) is a well-known …
Job stealing
How many clicks does it take to place an order on Amazon? Very few! With zero effort, online, a product from anywhere on the planet arrives right at the buyer’s …
Risky jobs
We can make fun of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, but its bosses are ahead. Way ahead. Their latest feat was legislation granting extraction rights for raw materials from extraterrestrial …
Unilateral actions
“Rare earths,” a list of metals with futuristic names such as yttrium, lanthanum, or neodymium (and 14 others), are used everywhere: from the construction of rockets and turbines to the …
Mapping
Which country the map in the photo below corresponds to is difficult for anyone to guess. It is Bangladesh. So, one would assume it is some kind of meteorological map. …
the armed parade : robot, work, ideology
In our parts, the issue is not burning. High unemployment but limited (compared to other places) use of information technology and its derivatives in the secondary sector. Internationally, however, it …
The “bad eye” and the blessing
Belief in the bad eye, in “counter-magic”, charms and blessings is a hallmark of the primitive mind and of humanity’s earliest, superstitious attempt to “protect” itself from dark forces believed …
MOOCs and adaptive learning
In July 2011, Sebastian Thrun, who among other things is a professor at Stanford, published a short video on YouTube, announcing that he and a colleague of his, Peter Norvig, …
At a glance
Would it ever cross your mind that something as commonplace as “I’m looking for my keys—where the hell did I leave them?” could become the subject of “scientific research”? No. …
genetic cut-and-paste: the great deception
Think of a cinematic film. You identify a specific sequence of frames that you want to replace. If you have a film reel, you go and cut the celluloid, and …