Archive

How to Survive the 21st Century

Of all the dif­fer­ent issues we face, three prob­lems pose exis­ten­tial chal­lenges to our species. These three exis­ten­tial chal­lenges are nuclear war, eco­log­i­cal col­lapse, and tech­no­log­i­cal dis­rup­tion. We should focus on them.

The Beauty of Inclusion

As a black, African, woman, with albinism, my very exis­tence attracts social and polit­i­cal con­se­quences. And all of it is sig­nif­i­cant for me. It is my world between worlds. In the same way I could not just pick one doll, I can­not just pick one iden­ti­ty. An inclu­sive cul­ture accepts that it is not this or that. It is this and that. 

We Need A New Image of Africa

To have the hunter tell it, Africa is full of meek sto­ries about des­per­a­tion and despair. So when artists like myself offer an alter­nate vision, often we’re asked to defend our imag­i­na­tion. Why do we feel we have the lux­u­ry to cre­ate? Shouldn’t we be deal­ing with more impor­tant issues like cor­rup­tion, or war, or AIDS, or poverty?

A Brief History of Industrial Revolutions: Ian Goldin

Our con­nec­tiv­i­ty not only spreads good ideas, it spreads bad ones too. Our con­nec­tiv­i­ty not only allows us to make finance trav­el around the world and help peo­ple, it means that a cas­cad­ing risk that orig­i­nates in the South of the US can be every­where with­in a mat­ter of hours. And this hyper­con­nec­tiv­i­ty, this but­ter­fly defect of glob­al­iza­tion, requires new management. 

A Brief History of Industrial Revolutions: Hannah Dawson

The ques­tion that philoso­phers have asked since antiq­ui­ty is how should you live? What is the good life for a human being? And the two answers that have repeat­ed­ly come back time and time again are that there are two things that mat­ter. One is agency. That’s to say being in con­trol of your life, active­ly, cre­ative­ly engag­ing with the world. And the oth­er is community.

A Brief History of Industrial Revolutions: Patrick McCray

One of the ways that indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tions are inter­est­ing to think about is that they look dif­fer­ent­ly depend­ing on how and where you see them from. They look dif­fer­ent whether you see them from Europe or Asia or Africa. But regard­less of time or place, econ­o­mists and his­to­ri­ans gen­er­al­ly tend to look at indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tions through the lens of inno­va­tion. And in my short talk today I want to encour­age a dif­fer­ent way of think­ing about this.