Dystopias

This is the great unspeakable fact of American politics: it doesn't matter all that much who wins.

Military suppliers, big Wall Street interests, and the economic middle-class may do better or worse, but they always do pretty well.

I think you'll find that political parties tend to reliably support policies that have nice distributional consequences for the interest groups that support them. And I think you'll find politicians and court intellectuals brilliant at framing pay-offs to party stalwarts as policies absolutely necessary to the common weal.

Blade Runner-meets-Babylon

even here in the country’s financial capital, where residents bear daily witness to the stark extremes of Indian wealth and poverty, Mr. Ambani’s building is so spectacularly over the top that the city’s already elastic boundaries of excess and disparity are being stretched to new dimensions

Blade Runner-meets-Babylon

we need, first, to take charge of our own learning, and next, help others take charge of their own learning. We need to move beyond the idea that an education is something that is provided for us, and toward the idea that an education is something that we create for ourselves. It is time, in other words, that we change out attitude toward learning and the educational system in general. That is not to advocate throwing learners off the bus to fend for themselves. It is hard to be self-reliant, to take charge of one's own learning, and people shouldn't have to do it alone. It is instead to articulate a way we as a society approach education and learning, beginning with an attitude, though the development of supports and a system, through to the techniques and technologies that support that.