Tag Archives: January / February 2024

Innovations, Magazines, Previews, Research, Reviews, Technology

Preview: MIT Technology Review – January 2024

Leave a comment
Image

MIT Technology Review (January/February 2024) – The new issue features 10 Innovations that could change our World.

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2024

Every year, we look for promising technologies poised to have a real impact on the world. Here are the advances that we think matter most right now.

AI for everything

Passwordless Login

We now live in the age of AI. Hundreds of millions of people have interacted directly with generative tools like ChatGPT that produce text, images, videos, and more from prompts. Their popularity has reshaped the tech industry, making OpenAI a household name and compelling Google, Meta, and Microsoft to invest heavily in the technology.

Super-efficient solar cells

Solar power is being rapidly deployed around the world, and it’s key to global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. But most of the sunlight that hits today’s panels isn’t being converted into electricity. Adding a layer of tiny crystals could make solar panels more efficient. WHY IT MATTERS

Apple Vision Pro

Apple will start shipping its first mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, this year. Its killer feature is the highest-resolution display ever made for such a device. Will there be a killer app? It’s early, but the world’s most valuable company has made a bold bet that the answer is yes. WHY IT MATTERS

Weight-loss drugs

The global rise in obesity has been called an epidemic by the World Health Organization. Medications like Mounjaro and Wegovy are now among the most powerful tools that patients and physicians have to treat it. Evidence suggests they can even protect against heart attacks and strokes. WHY IT MATTERS

Arts, Culture, History, Magazines, Previews, Reviews, Travel

Arts/History: Smithsonian Magazine – January 2024

Leave a comment
Image

Smithsonian Magazine (January 1, 2024) – The latest issue features ‘Picturing The Past’ – A special report on Tracing A Lost Ancestry; Reimagining Portraits of Civil War Heroes; A Journey to Discover an African Homeland; Pinpointing Birthplaces of the Enslaved, and more…

The Top Ten Ocean Stories of 2023

This year was marked by many broken records in the ocean.

Major discoveries, an undersea tragedy and international cooperation were some of the biggest saltwater moments of the year

By Naomi Greenberg

Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Current Affairs: Prospect Magazine – January 2024

Leave a comment

Prospect Magazine (January/February 2024) – The latest issue features ‘America’s Meltdown’ – Gaza, Ukraine and the Limits Of U.S. Power; Top Thinkers 2024; Bellincat – Putin’s Nemesis; Teaching Generation AI, and more…

America’s undoing

Triumphant at the end of the Cold War, the United States pledged to lead humanity in a new world order. Two conflicts—in Gaza and in Ukraine—have exposed that it has never been weaker

By Samuel Moyn

The date of 7th October 2023 will go down in history as a turning point for the global role of the United States. The country’s promise both to defend and model democracy on the world stage has taken a huge hit, from which it is doubtful that it can recover. When the Ukraine War began in 2022, and the US responded with enormous military aid, the credibility of that promise had been briefly revived after the nightmare of Donald Trump’s presidency. Now it is smashed once again, joining the rubble of Gaza’s streets.

The World’s Top Thinkers 2024: ideas for a world on the brink

As a planet and a civilisation we are approaching tipping points—some frightening, others freeing—that will transform life as we know it. Here, we present our annual list of intellectuals—from priests and strategists to neuroscientists and historians—who will help us navigate the world in the year ahead

Analysis, Foreign Affairs, Government, Magazines, Politics, Reviews

Politics: Foreign Affairs Magazine- January 2024

Leave a comment
Image

Foreign Affairs (December 13, 2023): The new January/February 2024 issue features ‘The Self-Doubting Superpower’ – America shouldn’t give up on the World It Made; The Middle East Remade; Why Israel Slept; Hamas’s Advantage, and more….

The Self-Doubting Superpower

America Shouldn’t Give Up on the World It Made

By Fareed Zakaria

Most Americans think their country is in decline. In 2018, when the Pew Research Center asked Americans how they felt their country would perform in 2050, 54 percent of respondents agreed that the U.S. economy would be weaker. An even larger number, 60 percent, agreed that the United States would be less important in the world. This should not be surprising; the political atmosphere has been pervaded for some time by a sense that the country is headed in the wrong direction. According to a long-running Gallup poll, the share of Americans who are “satisfied” with the way things are going has not crossed 50 percent in 20 years. It currently stands at 20 percent.

Why Israel Slept

The War in Gaza and the Search for Security

By Amos Yadlin and Udi Evental

In a barbaric surprise attack launched by Hamas on October 7, more Jews were slaughtered than on any day since the Holocaust. Thousands of elite Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip infiltrated small communities and cities in southern Israel, where they proceeded to commit sadistic, repulsive crimes against humanity, filming their vile deeds and boasting about them to friends and family back home.

Business, Magazines, Previews, Reviews, Technology

Harvard Business Review – January / February 2024

Leave a comment
Image

Harvard Business Review (January / February 2024) –

The Right Way to Build Your Brand

The best ad campaigns make a memorable, valuable, and deliverable promise to customers. 

More than a century ago the merchant John Wanamaker wryly complained, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Because the proponents of advertising have always struggled to prove that the money is well spent, that indictment has long helped financial executives justify cutting ad budgets. As no less an authority than Jim Stengel, a former chief marketing officer at Procter & Gamble, has noted, the struggle continues, although huge resources go toward testing advertising copy and measuring effectiveness.

Leading in a World Where AI Wields Power of Its Own

New systems can learn autonomously and make complex judgments. Leaders need to understand these “autosapient” agents and how to work with them. 

The wheel, the steam engine, the personal computer: Throughout history, technologies have been our tools. Whether used to create or destroy, they have always been under human control, behaving in predictable and rule-based ways. As we write, this assumption is unraveling. A new generation of AI systems are no longer merely our tools—they are becoming actors in and of themselves, participants in our lives, behaving autonomously, making consequential decisions, and shaping social and economic outcomes.