February 18, 2014
What’s behind the high-profile efforts of large corporations to embrace sustainable policies? Why are these big-brand companies making zero-waste and sustainable-packaging promises? Why do they seem to be accelerating their efforts? Is this merely crafty marketing? Are they using feel-good rhetoric to placate governments, activists, and consumers?
February 9, 2014
Do human beings possess free will? Are all events causally determined by prior events? Is free will incompatible with determinism? Philosophers and scholars have long pondered these questions, and the debate has continued to evolve in recent years.
February 6, 2014
More sad news: Suzanne Scotchmer, author of Innovation and Incentives, passed away on Jan. 30.
January 31, 2014
In honor of Chinese New Year, Matthias Messmer and Hsin-Mei Chuang share reflections on select images from their book, China’s Vanishing World. This book offers readers a rare opportunity to glimpse China as it once was, and as it will soon no longer be.
January 28, 2014
Pablo Boczkowski and Eugenia Mitchelstein, authors of The News Gap, answer questions about their book, media trends in the U.S., and news consumption during a recent political scandal:
January 17, 2014
Sad news: Zoltan Torey, a clinical psychologist and philosopher of mind, has passed away at the age of 85.
December 30, 2013
Much commentary has already been generated by the report from the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies – widely referred to as “The NSA Report” – especially its recommendation that the NSA discontinue the controversial Section 215 program of collecting telephony metadata. We thought it worth pointing out that Susan Landau’s authoritative book on the subject, Surveillance or Security?, is cited in a footnote in the report at page 192, during a discussion of cryptography standards.
December 23, 2013
Today the Fed turns 100. On this day in 1913 President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act that created the U.S. central banking system. To mark its centennial, here is an excerpt from Inside the Fed in which Stephen Axilrod reflects on the institution’s image and credibility over the years:
December 10, 2013
David Gunkel, Professor in the Department of Communications at Northern Illinois University and author of The Machine Question, continues the discussion of Amazon’s plan for drone delivery by exploring the ethical questions it raises, and more. The following are comments from Dr. Gunkel:
December 9, 2013
At the beginning of December, Amazon unveiled its plan to use delivery drones—called “Octocopters”—to fly packages to customers’ doorsteps. We asked Illah Nourbakhsh, Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon and author of Robot Futures, to give us his perspective on this controversial proposal. He sent these thoughts: