Among other things, the provisions made for returning to schools this year include health examinations, “thorough cleaning”, gloves and masks, demarcation of space and time, tele-procedures and tracing protocols. One …
Health as capital
The aim of this study is to construct a model of the demand for the commodity “good health”. The central proposition of the model is that health can be viewed …
Article 230
Twenty-six words in an article of a 1996 u.s. law allowed the internet to be what we know it to be; and in “content publishing” giants like google, facebook and …
Automatic service quality
A rumor has it that at the peak of the “hot autumn” strike wave in northern italy, Agnelli, the owner of fiat, imagined, wished or wanted to hope for a …
A handful more observations
It is likely to be disconcerting that a story presented as a “mass public-health problem” (like covid-19) is in practice far more and far more significant… And that, consequently, the …
Capitalism, the state and epidemics: Event 201
The Event 201 simulates the outbreak of a new coronavirus of animal origin that is transmitted from bats to swine and eventually manages to be transmitted from human to human, …
Fear is the best medicine (of the system)
Hygiene phobias (of all scales and intensities) are a direct expression of fears related to ablebodiedness, youth and death. For a (measured!) century now, (eternal) youth and immortality have been …
Education at the threshold of the 4th industrial revolution
The education system as we know it is only about 200 years old. Before that, formal education was mostly reserved for the elite. But as industrialization changed the way we …
Cold Fusion
For some, it represents the ultimate energy solution: a cheap energy source without environmental implications. The final (and, above all, practical) form of such a nuclear process does not appear …
Cage (safety)
In 2016, the well-known Amazon patented what is shown in the photo: a narrow cage on wheels, controlled from inside, equipped with a robotic arm. Amazon has not yet implemented …
Closed stores
Retail stores are closing as if they’ve been struck by an epidemic. In the USA, the world’s largest retail chain, Sears, announced it will shut more than 70 stores in …
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 …