Article Archive for June 2007
An MP3 clip… Richard Sambrook is surprisingly bloggy for the person who runs the BBC World Service. (His official title is Director of the BBC’s Global News division.) He blogged for years internally at the …
An MP3 clip… In this podcast, Craig Newmark and David Weinberger, author of Everything Is Miscellaneous, discuss craigslist’s unstructured approach to managing the site’s growth and its features, and what that might mean for planning …
In Apollo’s Arrow, Canadian scientist David Orrell looks back at past prognosticators, from the time of the Oracle at Delphi to the rise of astrology to the advent of the nightly news, showing us how …
Based on a decade of exclusive research, Lowell Bryan and Claudia Joyce of McKinsey & Company have come up with a simple yet revolutionary conclusion: Your workforce is the key to growth in the 21st …
Since humans migrated from Africa and dispersed throughout the world, they have found countless ways and reasons to reconnect with each other. In this entertaining book, Nayan Chanda follows the exploits of traders, preachers, adventurers, …
In The Clean Tech Revolution, authors Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder identify the major forces that have pushed clean tech from back-to-the-earth utopian dream to its current revolution among the inner circles of corporate boardrooms, …
A RealAudio clip… Would a hurricane in Madagascar drive up the price of your vanilla ice cream? Should you check the Chinese stock market before your first down payment on a house? This hour on …
A RealAudio clip… Rob Gifford spend 6 years as NPR’s Beijing correspondent. In 2004, he traveled all 3,000 miles of a highway traversing China from the Shanghai to the border of Kazakhstan. He writes about …
A RealAudio clip… What if you could ask anyone anywhere anything? That’s the slogan for Chat the Planet, an influential website that has young people all over the world talking to each other. This hour …
A RealAudio clip… We have more microbes in our bodies than we have human cells. We fear them as the cause of disease, yet are reliant on them for processes as diverse as water purification, …
A RealAudio clip… Digital diaries, online posts, life loggers and bloggers and Facebook and bed cams are increasingly making the very idea of a “private life” sound antique, retro, pointless. Today, millions of people are …
All generations are not alike. While Baby Boomers base their vision of professional success on climbing hierarchical corporate ladders, Gen-X and New Millennial workers view success quite differently. These younger workers care little for tradition, …
What is the ultimate destiny of our universe? That is the striking question addressed by James Gardner in The Intelligent Universe. Traditionally, scientists have offered two bleak answers: fire or ice. Gardner envisions a third, …
Charles Perrow is famous worldwide for his ideas about normal accidents, the notion that multiple and unexpected failures — catastrophes waiting to happen — are built into our society’s complex systems. In The Next Catastrophe, …
Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is ripping, burning, and mixing our lives apart. In the past, everything …
The potential of light emitting diodes — tiny specks of semiconductor material — to replace Edison’s energy-wasting incandescent lightbulb had been recognized since their invention back in the early 1960s. LEDs give off no heat, …
A RealAudio clip… This month, the Baltic nation of Estonia was temporarily paralyzed by a cyberattack. Security professionals are alarmed by its scale, but also its apparent motivation: political retaliation. Kojo explores what happened, and …
An MP3 clip… Part two of the interview with Andrew Keen, author of the new book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture. [Future Tense]
An MP3 clip… Former Silicon Valley entrepreneur Andrew Keen says user-generated content like blogs, Internet video, wikis, and podcasts is eroding the pillars of society by replacing professional media. Keen is author of the …
An MP3 clip… Technological and industrial advances during the last century have made a tremendous positive impact on our daily lives. Some argue that these advances have come at a significant cost to the …
An MP3 clip…IdeaCast Producer Steve Singer talks with Howard Gardner, author of the new Harvard Business School Press book Five Minds for the Future. We live in a time of vast changes, and those …
If we measured personal happiness with dollar signs, then North Americans would be the cheeriest souls on Earth. Not so. Despite more than 50 years of constant economic growth and material consumption, our rates of …
An MP3 clip… Host Sheela Sethuraman interviews Jessica Jackley Flannery, cofounder of Kiva. Based in Silicon Valley, Kiva is an innovative social enterprise, which uses the Internet as a platform to connect lenders with …
An MP3 clip… Lord Rees-Mogg, former Editor of The Times, gives a free public lecture on the changing international scene. [University of Bath]
An MP3 clip… With Neuromancer, he introduced the world to cyberspace — and science fiction has never been the same. [Times Talks]
In this provocative book, Richard Ogle argues that creative breakthroughs are born when individuals and groups access new idea-spaces and exploit the principles that govern them. Boldly outlining a new science of ideas, he sets …
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