The Rise of the “Sovereign Internet” The original dream that guided the early days of the internet, a dream of a free space for communication and commerce, is slowly coming apart globally. The internet has shifted from a free space owned by users to one monopolized by giant technology corporations across communication, commerce and search. Expand
Author: Mikal
The Autoimmunity Crisis
Across the world a health crisis is quietly brewing. Diseases of autoimmunity are soaring across the globe and particularly so in the developed world. An autoimmune disease is when otherwise healthy cells provoke an immune response and are attacked and destroyed by the immune system. Autoimmune diseases are particularly pernicious because they attack the body Expand
Short-Termism in Capitalism
“Modern capitalism is plagued by short-termism and myopia.” “Shareholders are king and everyone else gets left behind.” “The public markets hurt companies more than help them.” This is the popular narrative today and to some extent it is true. It is true that modern capitalism does present numerous challenges for public companies. Quarterly reporting cycles Expand
American Isolationism
Today the American intelligentsia is increasingly up in arms at President Trump’s steady and consistent reining in of US foreign policy, military and economic engagement with the world. Hundreds of news articles in publications like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and others have lambasted these decisions and the long-lasting damage that they are Expand
Surveillance in Public Spaces
The space for privacy has been rapidly shrinking in the last decade worldwide. In 2013 American whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked information on a massive global surveillance campaign being conducted by the US government in partnership with the Australian, British and Canadian governments. Facebook and Google are capturing and storing ever more detailed information about users Expand
Cellular Agriculture and Global Meat Production
Meat has for thousands of years been an aspirational and rare meal for most of the world’s population. But as the world has rapidly modernized and industrial agriculture has taken off in the last 100 years meat consumption has soared globally. Industrial meat production however is a highly carbon-intensive activity. As the world begins to Expand
The End of University Inc
Universities have long been critical components of public life and deeply formative institutions in the lives of many. Unlike in most nations, US universities also play a very active role in economic activity nationally thanks to their high tuition fees, extensive real estate holdings and the base of consumers and renters they bring to many Expand
The Antitrust Hammer
The technology industry has seen almost two decades of explosive growth after many observers predicted the industry had died after the Dotcom Bubble of 2001. In the last 20 years a generation of superstar startups have scaled and revolutionised how we communicate, transact, find information and what devices we own and use. A lot of Expand
A COVID-19 Endgame
The historic COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the modern world has continued to rage for a year now, after it first started in Wuhan in November and December of 2019. Today, 56 million cases have been confirmed globally (a guaranteed understimate of the true case numbers) with over 1.3 million people having lost their lives to COVID-19. Global economies Expand
Can AI Create?
In recent years artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies have developed at breakneck speed. Today you find them across the economy doing everything from underwriting risk for new loans to language translation and helping diagnose cancer. Not only can machine learning systems do these tasks successfully, they usually do them orders of magnitude better than Expand